The TBR challenge

I mentioned in the In memoriam post that I inherited some of my grandmother's books. They weren't a bequest, as she didn't leave a will, but I think she pretty much knew what would go where once she was gone. I, for example, am the only one of her adult descendants who is interested in folklore and fairy tales, so I got her collection of those, along with some historical novels, cookbooks and miscellaneous other books. I have entered 43 of those volumes (some of which contain several books) into my book database so far, but there are more waiting for me because we still haven't explored a number of book boxes my uncle was storing for her, and in addition to that there is a stack waiting to be gone through in her apartment.

In addition to this unexpected addition to my library, I also acquired 27 books from my grandfather not long ago. He had a sizeable collection of books and decided that he wanted to pass them on to his children and their children and grandchildren while he was still alive. I suppose it was because he wanted to make sure we got them and not his stepchildren and their descendants. Whatever the reason, he put them in boxes and had them delivered to my aunt and then we visited her and chose what we wanted. In that way I got a couple of collections of folktales and essays on Icelandic history, plus some popular history books and novels.

In addition, I have bought about a dozen books since the beginning of the year.

Before all this I had been meaning to reduce the TBR stack to 625 books, meaning I would have to read and/or cull about 100 books from my collection in 2012. Now I'm not so sure I can make it to that goal because the number of TBR books has swollen to over 800 again despite a vigorous cull to make room for the new books. Therefore I am going to set myself a new goal and plan on reducing the stack to 725 books in 2012.Than should be manageable while still being challenging.

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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

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

First book of 2020: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach (reading notes)

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I loathe movie tie-in book covers because I feel they are (often) trying to tell me how I should see the characters in the book. The edition of Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things that I read takes it one step further and changes the title of the book into the title of the film version as well as having photos of the ensemble cast on the cover. Fortunately it has been a long while since I watched the movie, so I couldn't even remember who played whom in the film, and I think it's perfectly understandable to try to cash in on the movie's success by rebranding the book. Even with a few years between watching the film and reading the book, I could see that the story had been altered, e.g. by having the Marigold Hotel's owner/manager be single and having a romance, instead being of unhappily married to an (understandably, I thought) shrewish wife. It also conflates Sonny, the wheeler dealer behind the retireme

Reading in Reykjavík

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