Last Week's Book Haul (September 26 to October 2 2016)

I only bought 2 books last week and was sent one brand-spanking new one.

Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate by Felicity Lawrence.
This looks both interesting and worrying. It was written about the situation in Britain but may well reflect on Iceland as well, as we operate under the same EU food regulations as Britain did at the time the book was written. I have read a couple of chapters and it is interesting and heartbreaking at the same time, as part of the system she investigated included some rather terrible treatment of itinerant workers, some of whom are illegal immigrants. Review from The Guardian.

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by John Fletcher.

This is a literary novel that won the Prix Goucourt in 2009.

It was the title that caught my attention, and as I had recently read two non-fiction books about Central Africa I had the continent on my mind. This book, when I get round to reading it, will also fill in one more gap in my list of countries I will have read books about. It takes place in Senegal and France and will add one more country to my list of places I have visited in books.
Review from The Guardian.

Finally, there is Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson, a historical novel which I have just realised I could have written my very first Mailbox Monday post about. Oh, well: maybe some other time. Here's a review from Lögberg-Heimskringla.

When author Karen Emilson contacted me a couple of years ago while looking for information, it was not through this blog, but my Icelandic food blog, where I write about Icelandic food, both traditional and modern. That first exchange turned into an-on-and off correspondence about Icelandic heritage and language, and I was able to supply her with information about the true meaning and correct spelling of some Icelandic terms she wished to use in her book and had heard but never seen written down, and also about Icelandic names, places and food and certain other information relating to the language. As a "Thank you" gesture for the information, she sent me this book, her first novel.

This book takes place among Icelandic immigrants in Canada in the early 1900s and is a mystery.

Here is the blurb:

Set in 1906 along the unspoiled shores of Lake Manitoba, Be Still the Water brings us into the fold of the Gudmundsson Family—immigrants determined to begin life anew in the Icelandic farming and fishing community of Siglunes. At the heart of the novel is dutiful Asta, the middle daughter who lives in the shadow of her siblings—fiery Signy, headstrong Leifur and sweet, naive Freyja. When Freyja goes missing, Asta embarks on a quest to bring her sister home. She tells the family’s story some seventy years later, while on her deathbed, finally discovering the truth of what happened on those fateful days that set the course for her life and the lives of everyone she loved. Loosely inspired by area events, this is an emotional, slow-burning story of family love and sacrifice, of secrets revealed and promises broken—told in the spirit of the Icelandic Sagas.

I am a couple of chapters in and enjoying it, apart from kicking myself for not finding the time to read the eArc she sent me previously, because the first paragraph I read in the book contained two errors in Icelandic words, one grammatical and the other a spelling error. However, the paragraph is not in the novel proper, but in some explanatory notes, so it really doesn't matter that much and will not be spotted by anyone who doesn't speak Icelandic.

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...

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

Search This Blog