Reading in Reykjavík

In 2013, impressed by the number of book titles popping up in the books I was reading at the time, I began posting what I called Friday Book lists , in which I would list all the books, plays, periodicals, poems, short stories and other publications that appeared in the books I was reading. The endeavour fizzled out after a while when I took a break from rereading the Ngaio Marsh detective novels and began reading books that contained few, if any, mentions of books or reading. However, one thing I found fascinating about the exercise were all the fictional titles I came across. Years before, I had discovered the - now, alas, long defunct - Invisible Library website and had been intrigued by the titles contained therein. Other webmasters and bloggers have since then made their own versions of this library of fictional books (as has Wikipedia ), and now I have decided to join that club. On my Invisible Library page you will find (to begin with) the fictional books, short...

I love the chilling promise in this opening sentence:  "There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood."  From Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers.

Count : 15 Of which I have already read 3 : Return of the Straight Dope, Touching the Void and Map of Another Town (one of the two volumes contained in M.F.K. Fisher's Two Towns in Province ). Previously read : A Considerable Town , the other volume in Two Towns in Provence .

I read 12 books in July, most of them fairly quick reads due to either being short or having a lot of pictorial content. None were rereads and 10 were TBR, meaning I am now several books ahead in the TBR challenge, with only 18 books to go. However, I don't plan to go slacking off, and neither am I going to push the number of challenge books up - I am simply going to finish the challenge and by then I will hopefully be in the habit of choosing more of my owned books to read and fewer loan books. If all goes well, I might push the limit higher next year. If you wonder at seeing the same title twice, it‘s because I read two different editions of the same book. I jump at the chance to buy second-hand guide books of places I have visited or plan to visit one day, figuring that although they may be old, the important information, that about the old buildings, monuments, state museums and works of art, remains mostly valid, even if the information about hotels, restaurants, openin...