Reading in Reykjavík

I acquired 4 books in the week before last: 3 non-fiction books and one novel, and have already read two of them. The big red book is a richly illustrated history of the Vikings . It was fist published back in the 1960s, so I expect some more stuff has come to light since it was written, but it's a gloriously beautiful book worth owning. Common Grounds is a book on the natural history of a small area of land in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Click on the link to read my review.   Alice is about what might have happened to Alice after her adventures in Wonderland.  Clink the link to read my review.   The Devil in the White City is another history book.I expect I will read it soon, as it has been on my TBR list for several years. Then I acquired 12 books last week and have already read 2 of them and started reading a third. First photo: The book in the top left corner is titled Deutschland , and is a photo book about Germany. It was published in 196...

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Visit the hosting blog to see lots of other lists . Today's topic is a movie freebie, and I chose to list my 10 favourite musicals and music movies.  I love musicals, especially the song and dance kind, but I also love a good music movie. The difference between a music movie and a musical is that while the former contains music that’s integral to the plot, it is presented in a realistic manner, i.e. with musicians performing, while in a musical people are liable to burst into song (and often dance as well) at the drop of a hat and no-one blinks an eye. In fact the spectators often join in. I am only including fiction, i.e. no documentaries or concert movies. I think I’ll start my list with one of my all time favorite movies: The Commitments . Music movie. To me, this is the ultimate “let’s get a band together” movie, and one of the things that makes it so goo...

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 . Books I finished reading last week:  I seem to be out of the reading slump and am reading at full pace. The trick seems to be to not hesitate when choosing the next book, and to get reading right away and read enough to get yourself hooked. (Or maybe I have just been lucky in my choices). I finished and reviewed (links lead to my reviews): Common Ground by Rob Cowen. Natural history and meditation on man's place within nature. Alice by Christina Henry. Fantasy. Dark spin-off of Alice in Wonderland . I finished and haven't reviewed:  The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. I may review this one, but in case I don't get round to it, it is a memoir of sorts about the US ...

Genre : Natural history, memoir Themes : Seasons, births and death, man and nature, animals, history. Books about intimate natural history appeal to me almost as much as travelogues do. These books usually deal with one person's view of a single place, natural phenomenon or animal and can offer one both a very narrow and a wide view of the subject, often delving deep into history, anthropology, zoology, botany and geology. Others skim along the surface and present us with a glittering snapshot of a place frozen at a point in time. My favourites of this sub-genre of both the memoir and of popular science are The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin and Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. This book is not quite at the level of excellence as those three, but it is enjoyable and makes for a nice, slow read. Cowen began gathering material for his intimate study of the natural history of a bit of edgeland in his home-t...

Genre : Fantasy. Themes : Madness, amnesia, power struggles, magic, facing your fears. Warning : Possible triggers and definite spoilers. It was the cover of this book that first caught my eye. With a cover and title like this, I realised it must have something to do with Lewis Carroll's Alice, the girl who went to Wonderland. However, I have on several occasions read or tried to read spin-offs or "takes" on classic literature, and rarely have they been satisfying reads. So, I passed it up. However, I kept thinking about it and when I returned to the charity shop a couple of weeks later, it was still there, and so I bought it. It lay on the floor by my bed, silently screaming "read me!" for the whole time it took me to finish Rob Cowen's Common Ground , and once I was done with that book, I immediately picked up this one. The only reason I didn't pull an overnighter to finish it in one session was that I had a meeting in the morning and needed to b...

The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen describes the adventures of the Elizabeth of the title, on a holiday on the German island of Rügen, which is situated in the north-east corner of Germany and was already a popular holiday destination at the time of her visit. The author visited Rügen near the turn of the 19th century - the publication date is 1904, but in the opening chapter she writes as if this holiday had been taken some years earlier. At first it was to be a walking holiday, but she could not get any of her friends to accompany her, and so ended up taking a small horse carriage and driver, and a maid to serve as a chaperone, as her husband would not let her go alone. They circumambulated the island, following the shore as much as possible. This makes it a road trip story, a genre I love, both in fiction and non-fiction. I decided to read it because I have booked a fare on the Norröna ferry the European mainland and will be taking my car on a journey around Germany ne...

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 . Books I  finished reading last week: On Friday I feared I would have to report that had not finished any books during the week, because I have been book-hopping all week long, reading a chapter here and a chapter there, and never being able to concentrate on any one book for long enough to get really and properly into reading it. The upside of this is that I decided to stop reading one book from my very long list of partially read books and chucked it in the "cull" stack. Then I happened to pick up a shortened, sumptuously illustrated edition of Sir Richard Burton's translation of Sheikh Nefzawi's 15th century Arabic sex manual, The Perfumed Garden . I ended up finishing it i...