Top Ten Feel-Good Books

I found this Top Ten Picks meme over on the Random Ramblings blog and decided to participate.
This could just as well be titled My top ten perennial reads. These are books I return to time and again when I need consolation, familiarity, comfort, relaxation and/or guaranteed entry into the story world. In no particular order:

Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals. Memoir. This is a cosy, comfortable and occasionally very funny read that is perfect for those chilly winter afternoons. It will transport the reader to sunny Greece and into an eccentric family with an oddball cast of friends and hangers-on. Abounds in wonderful descriptions of nature, people and animals. First encountered when it was published in an Icelandic translation when I was about 10.
Lucy Maud Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables. Coming-of age novel. A good soother for frazzled nerves. Another book I first read in translation, and re-read over and over throughout my teenage years, along with books two and three in the series. Especially nice when I want to read about a more innocent time and place.
J.R.R. Tolkies: The Hobbit. Fantasy. The first full-length fantasy book I read, I think when I was about 9 years old. Never fails to transport me to Middle-Earth and into the company of Bilbo, Gandalf and the dwarves on their trek to the Lonely Mountain.
Michael Ende: The Neverending Story. I discovered this as a teenager, and found in it a perfect escape from the stress of being bullied.
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Good Omens. Fantasy, alternative reality. Full of dark humour and wonderful characters, this is a book I always take with me when I go travelling, because it never fails to deliver comfort and distraction from the annoyances and discomforts of the getting-there phase of travelling. I’m on my second copy and looking for a hardcover edition.
Jennifer Crusie: Bet Me. Contemporary romance. A perfect modern fairy tale with a couple I can relate to. Perfect for when I need a little romance in my life. Excellent bath-tub read.
James Herriot: All Creatures Great and Small. Memoirs, novelised. This omnibus edition of his first two semi-autobiographical books never fails to cheer me up.
Elizabeth von Arnim: The Enchanted April. Novel. Perfect escapism into a romantic world of perfect weather, good food and friendship. I can't think of a better rainy day book.
Terry Pratchett: Moving Pictures. Fantasy. Always good for several laughs: a perfect pick-me-up after a bad day at the office. (I could actually have chosen a number of Pratchett’s novels, e.g. Small Gods or Guards! Guards!).
Georgette Heyer: These Old Shades. Historical romance/adventure. The perfect historical romance and boredom reliever: spirited heroine, bad-boy hero, abductions, swashbuckling adventure, revenge and a happy ending.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

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...

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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