Reading report for October 2010

I finished 15 books in October. 1 was a Chunkster Challenge read, 3 were Top Mystery Challenge reads, 3 were rereads, 6 were TBR challenge books, and 3 were neither rereads nor challenge reads.
8 of the books I read in October were mysteries or crime stories, which is a lot, even for such an avid fan of detective stories as myself.

One of the books I didn't review has such a strange title that I must mention it here: Do Ants Have Arseholes? and 101 other bloody ridiculous questions from the popular 'Corrections and Clarfications' [sic] page of Old Git magazine. This is, as astute readers may have guessed, a parody of popular trivia books like Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? and Do Polar Bears get Lonely?. As such, it is pretty good, giving irreverent and completely fictitious (and often funny) answers to what are mostly perfectly legitimate questions.

Catherine Aird : The Complete Steel - mystery, police procedural
Margery Allingham : The Tiger in the Smoke - mystery, detective story
Jon Butler & Bruno Vincent : Do Ants Have Arseholes? - parody
Agatha Christie : One, Two, Buckle My Shoe - mystery, detective story
Susanna Clarke : Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - fantasy, alternative reality
Colin Cotterill : The Coroner's Lunch - mystery, detective story (review upcoming)
Jennifer Crusie : Maybe This Time - paranormal romance (review upcoming)
Christopher Dolley, ed. : The Penguin Book of English Short Stories - short stories
Shirley Jackson : We Have Always Lived in the Castle - psycho-gothic suspense
Elmore Leonard : Stick - caper story
Edward Marielle, ed.: The Penguin Book of French Short Stories - short stories
Dorothy L. Sayers : Clouds of Witness - mystery, detective story

The rereads:
Georgette Heyer : These Old Shades - historical romance
Terry Pratchett : Men at Work and Feet of Clay - fantasy, mystery, detective stories

Comments

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...

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 ...

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...

Reading in Reykjavík

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