Reading report for November 2010

I finished 14 volumes in November. I refer to them as volumes because if you count each novella in the three novella collections separately, I read 19 pieces that could have appeared as separate books. As with the Edward Gorey books I read earlier in the year, it is difficult to decide whether to count each piece as a separate book or not, but in the end I decided to use the same criterion, namely this simple question: Has it been published separately before?

If the answer is ‘Yes’ then it’s a separate book, even if I read it in a collection or anthology. Using that criterion, the Santa, Baby anthology is one book, because although two of the novellas in it have been published before, they both originally appeared in other anthologies. The Debbie Macomber novellas are both still in print as single volumes, and the Nora Roberts volume was originally two books, a novel and two novellas, respectively, so that counts as two as well. That, if my mathematics doen’t deceive me, makes 16 books I read in November.

Out of the 14 volumes, 8 were TBR Challenge reads, one a Top Mystery read and one a Chunkster Challenge read. Of the 5 non-challenge books, one was a re-read and one was supposed to be a Buchmesse Challenge read, but I had faulty information that disqualified it, so I had to review a previously read book to keep my promise of reviewing one translated Icelandic book per month until October 2011.

Here are the books:

Anthology: Santa, Baby. Christmas-themed romance novellas by Jennifer Crusie (Hot Toy), Lori Foster (Christmas Bonus) and Carly Phillips (Naughty under the Mistletoe). TBR challenge.
Anthology: The Midnight Reader. A collection of chilling short stories by various masters of the macabre, including Algernon Blackwood, J.Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and F. Marion Crawford. TBR challenge.
Rhys Bowen: Evans to Betsy. Murder mystery. (TBR challenge.
John Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps. Spy thriller. Top Mysteries Challenge.
Charles Dickens: The Cricket on the Hearth. Sentimental Christmas story. Non-challenge.
Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers. Adventure tale, classic historical novel. TBR challenge, Chunkster Challenge.
Einar Már Guðmundsson: Eftirmáli regndropanna. Literary fiction.Non-challenge.
Jane Langton: The Dante Game. Thriller. TBR challenge.
Debbie Macomber: A Gift to Last. Two Christmas novellas (Can this be Christmas? and Shirley, Goodness and Mercy). TBR challenge.
Ngaio Marsh: When in Rome. Murder mystery. TBR challenge.
Stephanie Meyer: Twilight. YA vampire fantasy. Non-challenge.
Terry Pratchett: Jingo. Fantasy. Reread. Non-challenge.
Nora Roberts: The Gift. Two Christmas romance novellas (Home for Christmas and All I want for Christmas) and one short romance novel (Gabriel‘s Angel). TBR challenge.
Lynn Viehl: Midnight Blues. Urban fantasy, romantic novella. Non-challenge.

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 and

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

Reading in Reykjavík

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