Reading report for February 2008

I decided to include the genre and my star ratings with the books this time. Some reviews will follow later in the month.

As you can see, I am below average in my reading this month. It is not surprising, since an annoyed customer managed to put a damper on my reading activities. I got the big translation project I have mentioned before through a translation centre that I do freelance work for and my middleman misunderstood the client’s deadline requirements, telling me I had 10 days longer than I really did. My plan had been to finish 3-4 days ahead of the deadline I thought I had, but an emergency call from the middleman changed all that and instead of finishing at a leisurely pace, I had a couple of long days of proofreading the translation at double my usual pace, resulting in a myalgia-related headache that lasted a week and two physiotherapy sessions. But I did it and now I have free time to read again.

Jennifer Crusie: Charlie All Night (contemporary romance): 3+ stars
Susan Donovan: He loves Lucy (contemporary romance): 2+ stars
Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford (classic novel): 3 stars (reviewed)
Shannon Hale: Princess Academy (YA fantasy): 4+ stars (working on a review)
Cynthia Heimel: If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet? (essay collection): 3+ stars (may review)
Matthew Parris: Inca-Cola: A traveller's tale of Peru (travel): 3+ stars
Diane Setterfield: The Thirteenth Tale (novel): 4+ stars (working on a review)
Alan Taylor, ed.: Long Overdue (writings about libraries): 3+ stars

Reread:
JRR Tolkien: The Fellowship of the Ring (fantasy): 5+ stars

Upcoming reads:
I’m thinking about making Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle my classic for March, and I have Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morrell calling out to me from the TBR pile. It's hard to judge whether it's going to be a slow read or a fast one (not counted in pages per hour but number of reading sessions).

Comments

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

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...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Reading in Reykjavík

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