Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Ten Settings In Books

Top Ten Tuesdays is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. To see more lists of weird and wonderful places people would like to visit after having read about them in books, please visit the hosting site and click on any or all of the links to the participating blogs.

There are so many places I would have liked to mention, but I am going to stick to ten places. However, next time I don’t participate in Top Ten Tuesdays, I just might post my alternative list of top ten settings instead...

Middle-Earth, especially the Shire and Lothlorien. From The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien. In real world terms this means New Zealand, because since the movies it is Middle-Earth.
The Discworld, esecially Anhk-Morpork and Lancre. From the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. Mind you, there are areas of Ankh I would rather avoid, but I would love to visit Unseen University and take a tour of the library in the company of the Librarian. I would also like to climb the Tower of Art and have a drink in the Broken Drum and avoid having a meal off Dibbler's tray, before heading to Lancre and paying a visit to Nanny Ogg.
Arches National Park as described in Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. He saw Arches in the 1950s, before it was really developed and he saw it in winter, and as a park ranger he went to places within the park that are closed to visitors. I would love to do that.
Prince Edward Island as described in the Anne books by L.M. Montgomery. It is just so wonderfully idyllic and golden.
Gormenghast castle in the books by Mervyn Peake. All those forgotten, dusty old rooms and strange people are fascinating. Definitely before Steerpike.
The lands beyond the wall, in Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Dangerous and charming.
Brekkukot and environs in Brekkukotsannáll (English title: The Fish Can Sing) by Halldór Laxness (pre-World War I Reykjavík). Another golden and idyllic place, but mostly I would like to see what the area looked like before the urban sprawl began.
Xanth in the books by Piers Anthony. The books have long since gone sadly down-hill, but I thoroughly enjoyed the early ones with all those wacky puns brought to life.
Fantastica from The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. Another potentially very dangerous place, but full of endless places to explore.
Regency England, but only among the aristocratic classes and as described in the books of Georgette Heyer. She manages to make it seem so unutterably romantic and dashing, while the truth of course was somewhat different.

From Arches National Park

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. You…

Reading report for January 2014

Here it is, finally: the reading report for January. (February‘s report is in the works: I have it entered into Excel and I just need to transfer it into Word, edit the layout and write the preface. It will either take a couple of days or a couple of months).

I finished 26 books in January, although admittedly a number of them were novellas. As I mentioned in my previous post, I delved into a new(ish) type of genre: gay (or M/M) romance. I found everything from genuinely sweet romance to hardcore BDSM, in sub-genres like fantasy, suspense and mystery and even a quartet of entertaining (and unlikely) rock star romances. Other books I read in January include the highly enjoyable memoir of cooking doyenne Julia Child, two straight romances, and Jennifer Worth‘s trilogy of memoirs about her experiences as a midwife in a London slum in the 1950s. I also watched the first season of the TV series based on these books and may (I say 'may') write something about this when I have finis…

Stiff – The curious lives of human cadavers

Originally published in November and December 2004, in 4 parts. Book 42 in my first 52 books challenge.

Author: Mary Roach
Year published: 2003
Pages: 303
Genre: Popular science, biology
Where got: amazon.co.uk

Mom, Dad, what happens after we die?

This is a classic question most parents dread having to answer. While this book doesn’t answer the philosophical/theological part of the question – what happens to the soul? - it does claim to contain answers to the biological part, namely: what happens to the body?

Reading progress for Stiff:
Stiff is proving to be an interesting read. Roach writes in a matter-of-fact journalistic style that makes the subject seem less grim than it really is, but she does on occasion become a bit too flippant about it, I guess in an attempt to distance herself. Although she uses humour to ease the grimness, the jokes – which, by the way, are never about the dead, only the living, especially Roach herself – often fall flat. Perhaps it’s just me, but this is a serio…

Reading in Reykjavík

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