Reading in Reykjavík

It's Monday! What Are You Reading ? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week." Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the last week. -- As for myself, I reread two books last week, and finished one first time read. The rereads were: Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart & Lani Diane Rich. I needed a bit of zany fantasy and this fit the bill perfectly. Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie. A nice bit of romantic suspense. The first time read was Marco Polo's Silk Road: The Art of the Journey . I'll say nothing about it for now, as I intend to review it. As for other activities, I continued to weight-lift and then went on a long hike yesterday with my hiking group. This was a good 18 km in length, starting out on trails and then going on to trackless, rougher terrain alternating between beaches...

I still have quite a backlog of links, so these are mostly older: I came across this Icelandic Saga map by accident. It is an interactive map with geographical location data for places mentioned in the Icelandic Sagas. The text for the Sagas is included (in Icelandic), but it should still be useful for people reading them in translation. I can sympathise with this woman, as I have been in this situation myself: Becoming a Book Lover on a Budget . On using mathematics to expose a literary fraud (maybe): Ossian, the ‘Homer of the North’, and the truth behind the world’s greatest literary hoax . I am an on-and-off journaller. The only consistent journalling I do is for my travels, especially abroad, but I love doing it and my journals keep getting better with each one I complete. For those who wish to start journalling but don't know where to start, this Buzzfeed article about bullet journalling actually has pointers that apply to any type of journalling: 16 Tips To Make 2017 Y...

I've mentioned this book in my last two Monday reading reports, and commenters have been showing some interest in it, so I figured I would review it. First, however, I thought I'd mention what I found inside it. The review will come once I have finished reading it. I buy most of my books second hand, at a rather marvellous charity shop not far from where I live. Since the shop lies between my home and the two supermarkets where I do most of my grocery shopping, I often stop by there on my way to buy groceries. Sometimes I come out empty handed, but occasionally I emerge with a stack of books, or a bag of yarn, a new-old handbag or some other "necessity" of life. Because most of the books are second hand, I often find stuff inside them. Most often it's a bookshop receipt, but sometimes I'll find a boarding pass or a handwritten note, a postcard or a purpose-made bookmark. On this particular occasion I found three items inside: a bookmark, a paper tag an...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading ? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week." Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week. --   I didn't do a whole lot of reading in the last week. I decided to focus on crafts and listen to podcasts and was quite productive. Through the week I worked on an adult-sized Call the Midwife blanket . During the weekend I took a break from the monotony of the blanket and made two amigurumi toys. These are all yarn buster projects - I own a lot of yarn and decided it was time I used some of it.   I did finish a couple of books: Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie was a reread. This is a 20th century reimagining of The Turn of the Screw , or perhaps it's about what happened after the house was disassembled and then rebuilt in Ohio. Here's the author's explanation . ...

I haven't done one of these in a while, and in the meantime I have been stockpiling links. Books: This one is brand new: Steve McCurry has a photo book out with photos of people around the world reading. A BBC article showcases some of them . This case of library fraud is both funny and sad. Then there was the woman who decided to only read Danielle Steel novels for a month . Big mistake. Just like another famous bestselling romance author, Nora Roberts, Steel is best read with enough time between books so that you get hazy enough on the details to not notice the formulas and overused tropes too much. That said, I love Nora Roberts and have read a considerable part of her oeuvre, while I have only ever finished two Danielle Steele novels (and given up on a couple more). I bet you can tick off several of these without even reading the article: 10 Reasons Why People Who Read A Lot Are More Likely To Be Successful . A meditation on customer service: Bookselling in the 21st ...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading ? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week." Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week. -- I have only finished two books in the last week. The time that would have been spent reading or listening to a couple of other books I instead used to listen to a number of podcasts. In the last few months I have been exploring the BBC website and finding podcasts to listen to and I have discovered some that I like and others I am ready to like but haven't listened to enough to decide if I do. Among the former are iPM , a program where listeners are interviewed, often revealing extraordinary stories; More or Less , where statistics are discussed and sometimes set right; Woman's Hour , a long-running program for women where everything and anything of interest to women is discussed; an...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading ? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week." Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week. -- The reading year began well for me. I have finished three books so far, which is considerably fewer than the same time last year, but they were good books. First came Thee Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann. I found the idea of the story intriguing: a herd of sheep, a mixed bag of an old Irish heritage breed and some other breeds, some of them rescue animals, find their beloved shepherd dead in their pasture, a spade lodged in his abdomen. The humans around them don't seem too concerned or eager to investigate, so the sheep decide to solve the mystery themselves. There is a sequel, about what happens to the sheep after the case is solved. Then came Maigret and...

I have just tallied the books I read in 2016, and they come to 234 (oops, forgot some that were on my Kindle, so  make that 246 ), only including those I finished after a full reading. I also skimmed several more, maybe 20 or so, but they don't count. When you read this many books in one year they tend to blur together into a muddle of indistinguishable plots, characters, pages and covers, even some of the good ones. However, I keep a scoring system for the books I read, and so I can go over them and use the list to jog my memory.  Books were judged memorable by the simple expedient of taking the top-ranking books from my list of read books, removing all rereads and then weeding out the others until I had narrowed the choice down to the 16 books I remember the best from the year's reading. If there had been any memorably terrible reads I would have included them, but I generally stop reading such books as soon as i realise how terrible they are. Note that memorable does ...

Happy New Year!  These are the rest of my November and December book haul: First photo: I bought the Billy Connolly book because I saw an episode of the TV series some years ago and liked it. The Bro Code is a rescue book. I was never regular watcher of How I Met Your Mother, but have enjoyed the few episodes I have seen, and decided this might be interesting. A Light in the Attic I got because I have enjoyed Shel Silverstein's song lyrics and drawings and have hear good things about his poetry. Feathered Friends is a colouring book my mother gave me. I have a fair number of adult colouring books that I use as inspiration for my own art and this was a nice addition to the collection. Dr. Mütter's Marvels is the kind of intimate history book that I love to read, and   The Science of Discworld IV is the final book I needed to complete my collection of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. It's the only new book among those shown. Second photo: Being...