Reading report for December 2007

I had some vacation time left over from the summer, so I was able to use some of those days to extend my Christmas vacation and have a nice, long midwinter holiday, starting on Saturday the 22nd and ending today, January 2nd. In that time, I read 4 of the 7 books I finished in December, and finished about 60% of the translation project, so I never felt like I was cheating by leaving my “desk” (actually my parents’ dining room table) to go and read. 3 of the books were rereads, since I tend to seek out familiar comfort reads when I am too busy to give my full attention to books I have not read before. Rereading doesn’t take as much time or effort as first time reading, since I already know which parts I can safely skip…

It was raining when I left Reykjavík for the north, on December 22nd, but on the 23rd it started snowing and we had the nicest kind of white Christmas: about 3 cm of snow, just enough to cover everything with a layer of white, but not enough to impede traffic (that came later). I did have a scary journey back home yesterday, as the road was covered with a thick layer of wet and slippery snow for about a third of the route, and ice the rest of the way.

The new reads:
Fannie Flagg: A Redbird Christmas
Charlaine Harris: Shakespeare's Christmas
Ngaio Marsh: Death and the dancing footman
Sister Carol Anne O'Marie: Death goes on retreat

The rereads:
Jennifer Crusie: Bet me and Anyone but you
Gerald Durrell: The Bafut Beagles

I hope to post the annual reading report before the end of the month, and to start publishing reviews by the end of February.

Comments

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog