Reading in Reykjavík

I came across a second-hand copy of this book in a charity shop in Kew, Richmond on a recent visit to England. (Was there a couple of weeks before the Covid-19 panic started). I love travelogues and one of my favourite authors of such stories is Gerald Durrell. I have nearly all of his travel books that he wrote about his various animal-collecting and, later, filming expeditions to odd corners of the globe, and as a matter of fact, one of my favourites is Three Singles to Adventure , about an animal-collecting expedition to Guiana which was made around the same time as the expedition Attenborough describes in this book. It was therefore interesting to read about Attenborough's adventures in the same country around the same time. It is, unfortunately perhaps, inevitable when one comes across two books about the same place and same kinds of activities written around the same time, to compare the two, especially when one of them is a favourite. I certainly found myself doing this ...

When I came across the "Once and Future King" by T.H. White on Audible (read by Neville Jason, who does a fine job of it), I knew I had to buy it. I already owned a physical copy of the book, but I have found lately that it suits me better to listen to long books rather than to read them, because my hands want to be doing something other than holding a book while I read. This novel, which was originally published as a quadrology of short novels and later collected and revised into one long novel, is a retelling of part of the Arthurian legend and is considered to be one of the finest of the many re-imaginings of that legend. It was disappointing to discover that this is actually an edited version that seems, according to one review on Audible.com, to be not just abridged but actually a bastard version comprised of both the original short novels and the revised one-volume edition. However, another reviewer kindly pointed out some of the missing passages and where to fi...

Like many other legends of the old West, Calamity Jane's legendary status makes her out to be a larger-than-life character, a shining heroine who lived as she pleased and enjoyed more freedom than most women of the era. Considering that she was already a legend in her own lifetime, surprisingly little seems to be known about her real life, which is eclipsed by her legend. I think I first became aware of the legend of Calamity Jane when I watched the 1953 movie starring Doris Day and Howard Keel as a kid, but what I remember best is the Lucky Luke comic about Luke's encounter with her. Both are, of course, purely fictional. I'm not sure I even realised she wasn't a fictional character at that point. I have a mild interest in all things Old West, and when I came across this book, which was, at the time of original publication, touted as the most accurate and exhaustively researched biography of Calamity Jane, I decided to shell out the money to buy it - which w...

-The beginning chapters of this novel make it seem like "Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case" may have been cut from Goldenhand prior to its publication, as it shows how Nick Sayre finally made it back to the Old Kingdom after he went back home after the events of Lirael . However, it wouldn't have added anything except to explain why Nick finally decided to return to the Old Kingdom and to show the meeting between Nick and Lirael from his point of view. It is therefore not necessary to have read the story in order to understand anything that happens in the novel - the events of the story have little bearing on the main plot. -I have started to notice a certain predictability in these books, but it's part of the fun to see how well I am able to predict future events. -I like that Nix isn't afraid to let his characters get seriously hurt. Lirael has already lost an arm and another important character loses a leg. Both losses are used as a device to s...

I read the first three books of Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series last year, after coming across an irresistibly priced boxed set of them in a charity shop. I loved them. I couldn't really say which was my favourite, but I knew I wanted more and the ending of Abhorsen suggested there were more, so I did my research and got my mother to buy a copy of Goldenhand for me on one of her trips abroad. I then came across a second-hand copy of this book, Across the Wall , a collection of short stories by Nix, and knowing it contained a story that takes place between Abhorsen and Goldenhand , I promptly bought it. However, it took me a while to start reading it. The stories are a varied collection and only the first, "Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case" is an Old Kingdom story, so it was a fun introduction to Nix's other writing. Nix seems to be first and foremost a children's and young adult writer, and from what I've read about him, the Old Kingdom ...

I love trivia, which is why I, while I still watched TV on a regular basis, enjoyed watching quiz shows. QI was no exception. For those who don't know what QI is and are loath to click on the link or don't trust Wikipedia, QI is a comedy quiz show on BBC television in which two teams of three comedians each are quizzed by a seventh comedian. Stephen Fry was its first presenter and later Sandi Toksvig, herself a regular panellist in the show, took over. The aim of the game is fun and this spin-off book gets its title from one of the rounds of the show: General Ignorance, which makes fun of the more common general knowledge round of other quiz shows. The questions in that round are ones that seem easy, as most people think they know the answer to them, but those "everybody knows" answers are in fact wrong, so the aim is really to set people straight in an entertaining way. Although it is tempting, I don't think I will say why I no longer enjoy watching QI, b...

-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...