Skip to main content

Useful website of the week - and a new reading challenge

I just came back from an information lecture on Iceland's role as guest of honour at the 2011 book-fair in Frankfurt, where I became aware of a fabulous new website about Icelandic literature, art and culture. It will play an active role in promoting Iceland and especially Icelandic literature in the months leading up to the fair.

The website is in three languages: Icelandic, German and English, and they are adding new material all the time. There is a newsletter you can subscribe to for free, and each month they introduce a new Icelandic author, a reader of the month, and a video. Do visit this gorgeous and very informative website (the biggest website about Icelandic literature on the web). The link will take you to the English version of the website.

In connection with this event, I am planning to read and review at least one Icelandic book every month until the fair, choosing books that have been translated into English and German, starting in November. I am calling this the "Buchmesse Frankfurt 2011 Challenge", and I even made a logo for it:



The image shows some of the books I am considering reading for the challenge, plus some more Icelandic books from my library.



Labels:

Comments

IngridLola said…
Thanks for sharing this link! I look forward to your reviews of Icelandic books. I've always been interested in Scandinavian literature and I can't wait to here of more,
October 22, 2010 6:47 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
9 comments
Read more

Meme: Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations

This meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . To see more favourite book-to-movie adaptations, head over there to see which movies the other participants have nominated. I am going to cheat and interpret ‘movie’ as ‘film’, so I can include television adaptations. Oscar and Lucinda , from the book by Peter Carey. Apart from the changed ending it is an incredibly faithful adaptation, with every character perfectly cast. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , from the book by Stieg Larsson. This one actually improves on the book, which is well plotted but badly written. Cold Comfort Farm , from the book by Stella Gibbons. Perfect casting and quite faithful to the original. High Fidelity , from the book by Nick Hornby. Moving the story to America didn’t hurt it one bit. Fried Green Tomatoes (at the Whistle Stop Café), from the book by Fannie Flagg. Perfect casting and faithful to the story. Pride and Prejudice from the book by Jane Austen, the latest BBC adaptation. Incredibly f...
16 comments
Read more