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...

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...

Reading in Reykjavík

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