Reading report, 30 January 2017

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.
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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 (sandy/rocky) and terrain composed of very tussocky stretches interspersed with short stretches of very rocky terrain, and then onto roads for couple of kilometres before we reached our cars (the cars are driven to the end-point, and the hikers are taken by bus to the starting point and then they hike back).

I was unlucky enough to forget my phone at home, so I could not track the hike, but my father was with me and he brought a GPS tracker. I also forgot to bring a camera, but never mind: it was cold and quite windy so I buried my head inside the hood of my sweater and that of my down jacket and wrapped a scarf around my neck, with the result that I could barely turn my head and my field of vision was mostly limited to the people walking ahead of me. I could only really look at the landscape when we stopped. I would love to repeat at least the wild part of this hike in good summer weather.

This is part 2 of an 8-part serial hike from Reykjavík to Botnsdalur, a beautiful nature area in Hvalfjörður. We go every second Sunday, and the last hike will take place on the Sunday after Easter Sunday. This suits me just fine, as on the following weekend I am setting off on an adventure...

Reading report for January 2014

Here it is, finally: the reading report for January. (February‘s report is in the works: I have it entered into Excel and I just need to transfer it into Word, edit the layout and write the preface. It will either take a couple of days or a couple of months).

I finished 26 books in January, although admittedly a number of them were novellas. As I mentioned in my previous post, I delved into a new(ish) type of genre: gay (or M/M) romance. I found everything from genuinely sweet romance to hardcore BDSM, in sub-genres like fantasy, suspense and mystery and even a quartet of entertaining (and unlikely) rock star romances. Other books I read in January include the highly enjoyable memoir of cooking doyenne Julia Child, two straight romances, and Jennifer Worth‘s trilogy of memoirs about her experiences as a midwife in a London slum in the 1950s. I also watched the first season of the TV series based on these books and may (I say 'may') write something about this when I have finis…

Stiff – The curious lives of human cadavers

Originally published in November and December 2004, in 4 parts. Book 42 in my first 52 books challenge.

Author: Mary Roach
Year published: 2003
Pages: 303
Genre: Popular science, biology
Where got: amazon.co.uk

Mom, Dad, what happens after we die?

This is a classic question most parents dread having to answer. While this book doesn’t answer the philosophical/theological part of the question – what happens to the soul? - it does claim to contain answers to the biological part, namely: what happens to the body?

Reading progress for Stiff:
Stiff is proving to be an interesting read. Roach writes in a matter-of-fact journalistic style that makes the subject seem less grim than it really is, but she does on occasion become a bit too flippant about it, I guess in an attempt to distance herself. Although she uses humour to ease the grimness, the jokes – which, by the way, are never about the dead, only the living, especially Roach herself – often fall flat. Perhaps it’s just me, but this is a serio…

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. You…

Reading in Reykjavík

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