Reading in Reykjavík

Guide books of all kinds are generally seen as more or less disposable goods, since they contain a lot of ephemeral information, e.g. about moveable holidays , moveable events, one-time happenings, and about shops, nightclubs, eateries and accommodation that might be gone (or plunged from good to terrible) before the book was even published. However, guide books can be valid for a lot longer if you look at them in a different light. Much of the information doesn‘t really expire as quickly as all that, and unless something wipes out a landmark or two, that particular information can stay valid for many years. Still, there is something sad about an outdated guidebook, bought for too much money (they are EXPENSIVE), briefly used with often a small portion of the book actually consulted, and now wanted by no-one - that is right up to the point where it becomes vintage, and then it is suddenly quaint, with its strangely coloured, grainy photographs of ancient cars and people wearing fun...

I am often reading several books at a time. I call this book-hopping and I got into the habit when I was in college. Thing is: People don't seem to think it's normal. In fact I often get asked how I manage not to get confused and mix up all the plots and characters. Here's a common occurrence chez moi: In the loo I'm currently reading 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die . I started reading it 2014 and expect to finish it in 2017. After than I'll probably read 1.000 Places You must See Before You Die . I usually keep books of articles and essays in the kitchen that I grab to get my reading fix with my breakfast whenever I haven't brought in another book that I'm carrying around between rooms. Currently, however, I'm reading The Boy's Book of Survival (How to Survive Anything, Anywhere) . I might be reading a novel and a travelogue by turns in the bedroom and living room. In addition I always have a book or two loaded into my smartphone fo...

I checked in at the Booking Through Thursday blog, which is the centre for a weekly book meme or blogging prompt. Today's subject proved so tempting that I decided to hop in and join the party. Today's prompt is this:  Does your current mood affect your reading? Affect your choices? I know there are plenty of books I enjoy, but only if I'm in a particular kind of mood–or books that can lift me out of a bad mood without fail. Surely I’m not alone? My moods do affect my reading choices, and, to a lesser extent, my reading speed and the number of books I read, even how well I retain what I have been reading. I have struggled with depression for many years and even before I realised it was depression that made me tired and dispirited, one of my methods of dealing with it was to delve into books. I would choose old, familiar books that I knew would lift my spirits and make me feel better and allow me to escape into another world for ...

It occurred to me, as I was preparing to add my e-books to my library database, that library size really doesn‘t matter any longer, at least where space is concerned. You could have a library with the same number of volumes as America‘s Library of Congress (over 22 million volumes), and yet you could carry it with ease in your pocket. In terms of the sheer number of owned books this is a great big opportunity for bibliophiliac one-upmanship.  There are a little over 800 titles in my e-book collection, mostly free books downloaded from Project Gutenberg and other websites that legally offer e-books for free, plus a few I have bought or been given. Altogether they take up about 650 megabytes of hard drive space, which is enough to fill the largest hard drive available for the type of laptop I own, and then some. That hard drive takes up about the same amount of space as a small powder compact. The 2 terabyte external hard drive I use for backing up the contents of the comp...

Here is my contribution to this week's Weekly Geeks : The future. I consider myself to be open-minded when it comes to the format of the books I read. Give me audio books, pop-up books, books with upside-down, spiraling or variable text, books like The Dictionary of the Kzars which you read out of order of the pages, or books like the Griffin and Sabine trilogy which are told in a series of letters and postcards, some of which are removable or stuffed inside envelopes – if it can be read or listened to, I’ll read it or listen to it as long as the subject interests me. The immediate past. E-books are no exception. I have been reading them on my computer since I discovered Project Gutenberg way back in the mists of the 20th century and I knew that with the advent of portable computers it would only be a matter of time until someone came up with a dedicated device for reading books on a screen. As a matter of fact it surprised me that it didn’t happen sooner. Reading book...

A view of my TBR shelves from when I was experimenting with colours. D isplaying the finest volumes of the family library in the living room is a good old Icelandic tradition.  Visit an Icelander of my parents’ generation or older, and it is likely that there will be books in the living room, even in the humblest of homes. It might be one shelf, incorporated into a unit also displaying such dust catchers as crystal, ceramics, family photos, small stuffed animals and the family stereo system. On the other hand, it might just be a whole book-case. The books on such public display will generally be nice-looking ones, bound in leather or faux leather, with gilded spines and always looking suspiciously new. There will often be whole oeuvres of works by particular authors, all from the same publisher and in the same identical bindings. You will in all likelihood spot the name of Halldór Laxness on book-spines on such shelves, as well as those of Jónas Hallgrímsson, Davíð Stefánsson an...

People who read often talk about life-changing books, books that gave them an inspiration or an understanding that changed the course of their lives. The change can be of any kind, but especially common seems to be the one that made the reader decide to pursue an occupation or a calling that they had not considered up to then, the one that made them rethink an issue and/or take a stand, and the one that awakened a longing or strengthened an idea into the resolve to do something specific. These books are responsible for people veering off the path of least resistance that their lives have taken up to then and cause them to make important life changes, like to go into the church, change college majors or drop out, start charities, run for office, vote differently, move to another country, change their lifestyle, give up high-paying jobs that were killing them in order to pursue their real interests, to travel around the world, to find themselves and a million other things, big and smal...

Apropos of my last post, I decided to post some thoughts about reading challenges. After having done one or more reading challenges per year since 2004, I like to think there are a few lessons I have (finally) learned about making/choosing ones that can be followed with enjoyment and relative (but not too much) ease. There are three principal rules I have found that work for me: Make it simple Make it enjoyable Make it new  The fourth, unwritten, rule is of course to make it challenging. I have noticed that I tend to be somewhat overambitious when I think up a new reading challenge for myself. I often begin by making things too complicated, either with too many rules, overly complex rules, or too many books. Everything goes well for a couple of months and then either my enthusiasm begins flagging or something comes up that puts a spanner in the works and throws me so far off the track that it’s difficult to get back on it. This is why rule no. 1 is to make it simple . Too...

I love getting books for Christmas and birthday presents. My friends and family know this, which is why, when I was about 10 and still got presents from all my aunts and uncles and cousins, I once got 15 books for Christmas and 7 for my birthday. These days I am lucky to get one book, usually for Christmas. As a child and young teen I was happy with whatever books I got, but then things developed so that the only people who ever gave me books were the ones who had no clue as to what I liked to read. But that was fine because I realised that unwanted books could be exchanged for books I wanted, or for store credit that could be used later. How I loved store credit! In Iceland the main season for publishing and buying books is the months before Christmas. At some point, about 10-15 years go, the supermarkets got in the game, selling books at considerably cheaper prices than the book shops, but only the books likely to sell well and only from about mid-November to Christmas. It’s a bo...

Disclaimer: I don’t think I really need to summarise this one, since it is so widely known. But in case you haven’t read it, be warned that the following discussion is full of SPOILERS and should not be read by persons who wish to be surprised by the book. I don’t want to call this a review, but there are some review elements in there nonetheless. When a book gets as hyped up as Twilight I tend to recoil from it rather than jump on the bandwagon and read it right away. This is not because I don’t like hype, but because I hate buying books at full price and then discovering I don’t like them. I’d much rather wait until I can read a book and then decide if I want to own a copy, which I can, by that time, probably get second hand. Foreign bestsellers don’t arrive immediately in the libraries here, and I don’t know a lot of people who read foreign books, so unless I buy them, I can’t read them right away. I had decided, as much as a couple of years ago, that I wanted to read Twilight ,...

I can’t count the times I have been asked how I find the time to read so many books. The asker will sometimes add that they never have time to read, or say they envy me for being able to find so much reading time, and so on. Sometimes the non-readers radiate an unspoken assumption about my nerdishness or my lack of a social life, but for the most part these questions come from other readers who want to know my secret. Well, guess what? There isn’t a secret. If you are determined enough you WILL find time to read, even if you have a spouse and kids, high-maintenance pets, lots of friends, a busy job and an active social calendar. It’s just a matter of planning your time, prioritising and grabbing every opportunity you can. Here are some tips – just choose the ones that apply to you and you’re on your way to reading more: Any time you find yourself with your hands empty and nothing to occupy your brain, read. If you have no such moments, create them. If this means taking the bus to w...

Scenario 1: It’s a book so wonderful that all the critics and reviewers are falling over themselves to praise it to the skies, it’s been shortlisted for several awards, and your highbrow cousin who teaches college literature can’t recommend it highly enough. Scenario 2: Everyone is reading it, it has a budding cult following and a Hollywood movie is in the making. 6 people have recommended it to you already because oh-my-God it’s their favourite book in the whole world!, and it’s been on top of the best-seller lists for months. Outcome: You acquire a copy of either book, open it and by page three you’re wondering what everyone sees in it. Because you don’t like it. Not after 3 pages, not after 20, not even after the last page is turned. The reasons vary. It may be the writing style, or the story, or that indefinable something that makes a book come alive for you, but you just couldn’t get into it. It might be because you found it boring, or because you thought it was trying too h...

This post by Matt reminded me of the worst book (magazines actually, but they are as precious to me an any of my books) disaster ever to befall chez Bibliophile. I was living in the first apartment that I owned, a large one-bedroom place with a huge south-facing balcony and a stunning view of Skagafjörður. My apartment was on the first floor of a three-storey apartment building and one Sunday morning my upstairs neighbour decided to take a bath. As people will do, she left the tap running and went to do something else while the tub filled. The water must have been running pretty fast, because the bathtub overflow drain couldn’t handle the flow, and the water filled the tub and flowed over the side and continued to do so for some time while my neighbour was busy elsewhere in the apartment. The first anyone knew about the accident was when water started dribbling, flowing, and finally gushing, through the outlet in my ceiling where the hall light was connected to the electricity sup...

I decided to rework this old essay from my original 52 books blog and re-post it, because this subject seems to be on people’s minds right now, at least considering how many of the book bloggers whose blogs I regularly visit have written about it in the last couple of months. Everyone has different criteria for deciding if a book is worth finishing. Some will read any book to the end, slogging through piles of tripe or suffering endless boredom just so they can say they have read it. Several people I know of did this with The DaVinci Code and/or The Name of the Rose . (Please note that I am not belittling either book. It just so happens that many people think the former is tripe and the latter is boring). Others will give it a couple of chapters (or 50 pages or so in the case of “chapterless” books like those of Terry Pratchett) before deciding. Still others will read the reviews, read the blurb, skim the book and read the ending, and then decide they’re not interested. Each met...

I would like to propose expanding our definition of entertainment to encompass everything pleasurable that arises from the encounter of an attentive mind with a page of literature. From the essay “Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the modern short story” Year published: 2008 Genre: Literary essays This is a collection of 16 interconnected essays (and a 17th supplementary essay) on literature, reading, writing and the genesis of three of Chabon’s novels. It starts with a proposition to expand the definition of entertainment (see the beginning paragraphs of the opening essay, “Trickster in a Suit of Lights”, that I already posted) and goes on to explore aspects of popular culture like short story writing, genre fiction and comic books, and their influence on Chabon and other authors. He is unapologetic, albeit sometimes a bit defensive, about his enjoyment of genre literature, and makes the same argument as I have sometimes tried to make about genre fiction being unfai...

I read. This is no secret, and I would hardly be running a reading blog if I didn’t, but there’s more to my reading than just reading one book after another. I read multiple books at a time. This may just be pure biblio-gluttony on my behalf, but I like to think it’s simply because for me books are like food, and I like variety in my reading fare just as I do in my culinary diet. When I go to a lunch buffet, I don’t restrict myself to just one dish – I try to sample as many as I can, reject some and go for seconds of others. Since I have a TBR stack of nearly 900 books, a collection of over 1500 possible rereads and a small but beguiling pile of library books by my bedside, I look upon these books much as I do a buffet. A very large buffet, to be sure, but one I know I can make it through with steady effort. I used to be a ‘one book at a time’ girl, but when I started secondary school this became impossible. Besides all the non-literature subjects like history and mathematics, by the t...

I find it incredibly difficult to cull my books. I convince myself that I have a good reason for keeping every one of my keepers. Most of the time I have, but not always. Generally, I keep a book I know or strongly believe I will read again. I have also kept some of my old university text books, knowing that they can be good for reference, and so it has proved, for some of them. Others I keep just because I once enjoyed them, and might again, which leads me me to the next category: the many books that I keep planning to re-read, but I never get round to. My travelogue collection is big on those. And then there are the travel guides I keep that are years out of date, because they have memories attached to them. Can't let go of those, now can I? I cull about 95% of my owned books after I read them, which is a lot. Many go on my BookMooch list, some I give back to the charity shop, and the hardcovers and the paperbacks that are in a 'like new' condition I donate to the library...

I love second-hand bookshops and (by extension) second-hand books. The number of second-hand bookshops in Reykjaví­k has dropped severely since I was a teenager. Most of the shops I remember from my forays into the city in those years were situated on the fringes of the city centre, away from the main shopping streets, sometimes skulking inside residential areas. The windows were usually dirty enough to allow only a dim view of the inside, and once you opened the door, the shops were tiny and stuffed with books from floor to ceiling, with hoards of more books in boxes, piles and stacks on creaky wooden floors. They all seemed to be run by old men who sat in ancient office chairs (that leaked stuffing) and looked benignly on as you rifled through the collections of dusty books. If you were lucky, you could find treasures for next to nothing, books that don't seem to be available anywhere anymore. This was before the flea market opened. The only good thing about buying books at the f...

I have occasionally mentioned that I hate literary snobbery, especially the kind that makes people declare that a whole genre of literature (be it fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, romance or whatever) is no good without having read any of it, or at the most merely sampled it a bit. Romance has especially been reviled as stereotyped and inane, called the female equivalent of porn and its readers dismissed as being entirely female, with little education, a small income, who read it to escape their daily drudgery and dream of marrying a [insert Mediterranean ethnicity of your choice] billionaire prince. I may be exaggerating somewhat, but you get the picture. But, I really do have to ask myself: Is it any wonder people think this way when they see the titles of many of the romances available? I am referring to the type of book known as a category romance. These are short romances written to specific standards and formulas that pertain to sub-genre, setting, time and certain other guid...

I see these questions and variations thereof pop up regularly on the reading forums I visit on the web. Sometimes they’re posted in an attempt to start an earnest discussion about the pros and cons of each, while at other times the asker wants to convince the other forum members that one rules and the other sucks. I’m sure most book lovers know the pros and cons of each, so I’m not going to bother listing them here, but I do want to tell you about my own preferences. I prefer to buy paperbacks when I am new to the author, I’m not sure I will want to keep the book after I have read it, all my other books in a series are paperbacks (e.g. J.D. Robb’s In Death books), or I have little money to spare on books. I prefer hardcovers when I am going to give the book as a present, when I know I am going to want to keep and reread it, when I need to replace a paperback I have read to tatters, and when I can’t wait for the paperback. I don’t give any thought to resell value or collectability or h...