Reading report for April 2013

I read 20 books in April, all but one of which I started and ended within the month. The exception was Tim Moore‘s Nul Points, which I was reading last year but set aside as I found it somewhat bleak. I picked it up again and finally finished it, discovering that either I wasn‘t in the right mood when I first began reading it, or the last three chapters were more upbeat than the previous ones. I even got some laughs out of it. It's not as good as some of his other efforts, but as always very informative. This time around he was digging into the history of the Eurovision Song contest and going around interviewing the people who came last in the contest with zero points.

Of the 20 books, 8 were TBR books, which puts me at 31 TBR books read this year, which is not bad at all. It looks like I may reach the goal of 50 before the end of the summer, and since I am currently reading more of them than I am buying, the purpose of the TBR challenge has been achieved.

I have been spring cleaning and rearranging my living room and got a number of unabridged audio editions of Dorothy L. Sayers‘ Lord Peter Wimsey novels to listen to, since it's impossible to read while dragging around furniture and mopping floors. Three of those were re“reads“ (Whose Body?, Strong Poison and Have his Carcase) and the remaining two were new to me. All were read by actor Ian Carmichael, who did it very well. I am now considering buying (if they are available) the DVDs of the TV series in which he starred as Lord Peter.

The month‘s stand-outs were Can Any Mother Help Me? and Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight. The former gives an insight in the the lives of British women in the 20th century, and the latter a by turns horrific and fascinating look at the lives of a family of white farmers in Africa during the 1970s and 80s in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. I also enjoyed The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo, although I wish they had included more of his fantastic romance novel covers in the collection.

As a modern retelling of a beloved Jane Austen novel, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star was a nice effort, but would have been better if there had been less sex in it. I know there is supposed to be lots of sex in rock star romances, but it's not good when the sex begins to take away from the romance.

The Books:
Jenna Bailey: Can Any Mother Help Me?. Women‘s history.
Alexandra Fuller: Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight. Memoir.
Paul Gallico: Mrs. Harris Goes to Moscow. Humorous novel.
Rachel Gibson: I'm in No Mood for Love, Crazy on You and Rescue Me. Romance, contemporary.
Chris Mattison: Snake. Ophiology.
Tim Moore: Nul Points. Music history.
Heather Lynn Rigaud: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star. Romance, contemporary; Pride and Prejudice retelling (and bonkfest)
Nora Roberts: The Next Always, The Last Boyfriend and The Perfect Hope . Romance, contemporary.
Dorothy L. Sayers: Strong Poison, Whose Body? and Have His Carcase . Murder mysteries. Rereads.
Dorothy L. Sayers :Unnatural Death and Murder Must Advertise . Murder mysteries.
Arthur Upfield: Wings Above the Diamantina. Mystery.
Boris Vallejo & Lester del Rey: The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo. Art. Book covers.
Patricia Wentworth: The Watersplash. Murder mystery.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

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...

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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