Reading report for February 2013

I finished 13 books in February, in a variety of genres: historical novels, romance, crime, trivia, humour, history and biography. I am right on track with the TBR challenge and expect to continue at the same pace in March.

No one author dominated the month like Nora Roberts did in January, although I did read two books by Agatha Christie, neither of which I have read before. At least I don’t remember having read them, but its hard to be sure because I read quite a number of her books when I was a teenager.

There were no fewer than three stand-outs in February, not counting Dodger (on account of being a reread), which is the best Pratchett I have read in several years.

The best of these was Third Class Ticket by Heather Wood, which I brought back with me from India in 2009 after coming across it in the wonderful Blossom book-store in Bangalore. I had heard of it long before, found on a list of ‘must read’ books about India, but had been unable to acquire a copy. This is a lovely tale about a group of Bengali villagers sent on a 7-month journey by train around the sub-continent, made possible by a bequest from their landlady.

The second stand-out was Mauve by Simon Garfield. It is a fascinating blend of history and biography, of the first aniline dye and the man who discovered it, and the wide-ranging consequences of that discovery, both good and bad.

The third stand-out was Federico Andahazi’s The Anatomist. This satirical novel is based on events in the life of 16th century anatomist Matteo Realdo Colombo and his discovery of the clitoris and the consequences of this discovery.

Although these three stood out, most of the month’s books were satisfying reads, except for Agatha Christie’s Easy to Kill, which I found to be full of stereotypes and obvious clues.

Statistically, four books were ‘sweepings’, i.e. books I started reading at some point in the past and then either stopped reading for a time (3) or read very slowly (1); three were rereads, books I sought out for comfort reading; and three of the others were non-fiction. One was in Icelandic.

The Books:

Federico Andahazi : The Anatomist . Historical novel, satire.
Bathroom Readers' Institute : Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader . Trivia, humour.
Guy Browning : Never Hit a Jellyfish With a Spade . Humour, collected newspaper columns.
Agatha Christie : The Murder at Hazelmoor and Easy to Kill . Murder mysteries.
Jennifer Crusie : Tell Me Lies . Romantic thriller. Reread.
George MacDonald Fraser : The General Danced at Dawn . Short stories, humorous, semi-autobiographical.
Simon Garfield : Mauve: How one man invented a colour that changed the world . History/biography.
Dashiell Hammett : The Dain Curse . Thriller, murder mystery.
Georgette Heyer : The Unknown Ajax . Historical novel, romantic. Reread.
Terry Pratchett : Dodger . YA historical novel/alternative reality. Reread.
Sverrir Kristjánsson & Tómas Guðmundsson : Íslenskir örlagaþættir: Konur og kraftaskáld . Biography of three Icelandic poets.
Heather Wood : Third Class Ticket . Travelogue.

I have now started reading a collection of Icelandic folk-tales in 4 volumes which I expect to finish at the end of the coming summer, and am rediscovering my love of that genre. But that's not the only book I am reading: I have gone back to an old arrangement of having several books on the go at once. At the moment I have one each in the bathroom, kitchen, living room and office, three in the bedroom (with very short, short and long chapters, depending on how much I intend to read before I go to sleep) and two to go - one on the phone and another on the Kindle. These days I only read on the phone while waiting in queues, but the Kindle I take with me to work to read during lunch and coffee breaks.

Incidentally, should you want to know what I am reading at any given time, how many books I have finished during the month or year and how the TBR challenge is going, all you have to do is take a look at the 'Monthly statistics' in the left sidebar.

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

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...

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 ...

Reading in Reykjavík

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