Skip to main content

Reading report for September 2008

I have been on leave from work with nothing to do except exercise for 50 minutes 2-3 times a day, eat my meals and attend the occasional lecture designed to improve my lifestyle. This has given me time to read voraciously. I therefore got through 20 books in September (I could have read a book a day, but I was pacing myself). This is not a record number of volumes for me but I am sure it comes close to being a record number of pages (or words) I have read in one month, since I only started reading 3 of the books before the beginning of the month, and some of the books were above average length. Only one was a reread (I think you can guess which one, at least if you read this blog regularly). I doubt I will be able to keep this up in October, as I will be going back to work then and starting an exercise regime where I work out for a minimum of 60 minutes a day, meaning I will have 60 minutes less potential reading time. But my health comes first, so I will be on the lookout for interesting audio books to listen to while I exercise.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar (murder mystery)
William Dalrymple: City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (travelogue, history, India)
Susan Dunlap: Too Close to the Edge (murder mystery)
Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts (travelogue, Europe)
Karen Kijewski: Katapult (murder mystery)
Camilla Läckberg: Prédikarinn (The Preacher) (murder mystery)
Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet Egypt (guide book)
Charlotte Macleod: The Palace Guard; The Convivial Codfish; Rest You Merry; The Luck Runs Out; The Corpse In Oozak's Pond; Wrack And Rune. (murder mysteries)
Barbara Michaels: Other Worlds (supernatural novellas)
Manuel Vázques Montalbán: Hressingarhælið (The Spa) (murder mystery)
Matthew Pearl: The Dante Club (historical murder mystery)
Elizabeth Peters: The Curse Of The Pharaohs (historical murder mystery)
Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment (fantasy)
Patricia Wentworth: Poison in the Pen (murder mystery)
Susan L. Wilson: Culture Shock! Egypt (guide book)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...

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...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...