Skip to main content

Reading report for June

I read a total of 17 books in June. 6 were rereads and 7 were TBR. The genres included romance, travelogue, history, geology, biography, fantasy, true crime and visual humour.

I reached the 100 books mark around mid-month, meaning that if I keep up the current rate of reading I will finish just over 200 books in the course of the year. I also read the 30th TBR book of the year, putting me on course and boding well for the completion of the challenge.

The stand-outs of the month were Krakatoa and The Kon-Tiki Expedition, closely followed by The Nonexistent Knight and Medicine Road. I bought all four books on clearance sale at one of the charity shops I sometimes visit.

Krakatoa is one of those juicy history/science books that I love to read, and it doesn't hurt that it was written by Simon Winchester, whose writing never fails to please me. The subject of the book is the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, the lead-up to the event and the aftermath. Winchester is a trained geologist and clearly interested in the subject, and manages to make the complexities of volcanic activity and tectonic movements understandable for a layperson.

The Kon-Tiki Expedition is Thor Heyerdahl's first-hand account of his epic journey by raft from Peru to Polynesia in 1947. I read an English translation I came across in a charity shop, but when I was about 2/3 finished with it I found a copy of the Norwegian edition. However, I decided to finish it in English because otherwise I might be liable to remember it as two separate stories. The Norwegian edition has many more photographs and also illustrations and artwork by one of the expedition members, so I'm keeping both.

The Nonexistent Knight and Medicine Road are both accomplished works of fantasy, one a humorous medieval tale of knights on a quest and the other a gorgeously illustrated romantic story of mythical beings in modern south-west USA looking for love and trying to break a spell.


The books:
  • Þjóðsögur frá Eistlandi (Estonian Folk Tales). Folk tales.
  • James Bowen: A Street Cat Named Bob. Memoir.
  • Italo Calvino: Riddarinn sem var ekki(The Nonexistent Knight). Fantasy, historical novel.
  • Jennifer Crusie & Bob Mayer : Agnes and the Hitman. Romantic suspense. Reread.
  • Kate DiCamillo: Because of Winn-Dixie. Children’s book.
  • Georgette Heyer: The Unknown Ajax. Historical romance. Reread.
  • Georgette Heyer: The Nonesuch. Historical romance. Reread.
  • Thor Heyerdahl: The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By raft across the Pacific. Travelogue.
  • Elizabeth Kaye: Lifeboat No. 8: An Untold Tale of Love, Loss, and Surviving the Titanic. History.
  • Charles de Lint: Medicine Road. Fantasy.
  • Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love. Novel.
  • Derek Pell: Doktor Bey's Book of Brats. Humour (mostly visual).
  • Nora Roberts: Jewels of the Sun; Tears of the moon; Heart of the sea. Paranormal romance. Rereads.
  • Ferdinand von Schirach: Glæpir (Crime). True crime.
  • Simon Winchester: Krakatoa: The day the world exploded: August 27, 1883. History.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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. Yo...
25 comments
Read more