Reading report for February 2009

I finished 21 books in February, which is quite a bit better than my monthly average for 2008 (not that I'm competing with myself or anything...). Out of those, I had started reading 5 before the beginning of the month – 2 of them last summer.

In the reading challenges the situation is as follows:

I finished the last of the Mystery Reader Café challenge books: the book with the word "murder" in the title, so that challenge is finished.
In the 52 Icelandic books challenge I read 4 books.
In the Top Mysteries challenge I finished 2 books.
In the TBR challenge I finished 7 books that had been on my shelves for more than a year.

Additionally, I culled 7 of the books I read this month and will be adding them to my BookMooch inventory, making room on my book shelves for the 7 mooched books I received in the mail. 5 of these I will be reading for the Top Mysteries challenge. I also found 2 TM challenge books in the book section of a local charity shop.

I listened to one audio book in February, or rather a filmed reading: Neil Gaiman was generous enough to offer live audiovisual recordings of his reading of The Graveyard Book through his blog. The recordings were made when he was on the promotional tour for the book. (If you follow the link, scroll to the bottom to start listening (and watching) in the correct order).

The books I read or listened to in February: (I have posted reviews of those marked with *)

*Arnaldur Indriðason : Myrká (police procedural)
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: The Physiology of Taste (kitchen science and philosophy)
Mary Higgins Clark: The Lottery Winner (detective stories)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: The Mistress of Spices (novel, romance)
Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book and Coraline (children's fantasy/horror)
John Grogan: Marley and Me (memoir)
*Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon (noir detective story)
Tony Hillerman: The Dark Wind (police procedural, thriller)
Ingólfur Jónsson (collected by) : Þjóðlegar sagnir og ævintýri (folk and fairy tales)
Jón R Hjálmarsson : Þjóðsögur við þjóðveginn (folk tales)
H.R.F. Keating: Death of a Fat God (mystery)
India Knight, editor: The Dirty Bits - for Girls (anthology, erotica)
Sharyn McCrumb: Paying the Piper (mystery)
*Steven Saylor: A Murder on the Appian Way (mystery)
*Fred Vargas: Have Mercy on Us All (police procedural)
*Fred Vargas: Seeking Whom He May Devour (police procedural)
Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson : Flateyjargáta (mystery)
*Hillary Waugh: Last Seen Wearing (police procedural)
Jeanette Winterson: Boating for Beginners (fantasy, satire)

Reread:
Gerald Durrell: The Whispering Land (travel, animals)

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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