Skip to main content

Progress report for October and tentative reading plan for November

Of the named books I planned to read in October, I finished We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke and Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett. Additionally, I read the planned-for 5 TBR books, plus one more, and one of the new books I mentioned last month: Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie.

I made a bit of headway with Simon Winchester‘s Calcutta , but didn‘t open a single Harry Potter book, which may be blamed on my brother who moved out of my spare bedroom and into his own space at the beginning of the month, taking the books with him. I‘ll need to visit him soon and see if he has unpacked them yet so I can borrow the next book and continue with Project Potter.

I decided to add a new reading challenge: to review one Icelandic book that has been translated into English and German, per month until the 2011 book fair in Frankfurt, starting in November. For this challenge, I may finally tackle Halldór Laxness‘ masterpiece, Independent People, either in November or later in the challenge, or I may start with something a little more contemporary.

In November I again plan to read at least 5 TBR books, of which one will be my next Chunkster challenge read: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. I also plan to read at least two Top Mysteries Challenge books, of which A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin may be one and Innocent Blood by P.D. James another. I borrowed both from the library, and also a one-volume copy of Flora Thompson‘s Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy, which was highly recommended to me by a number of people after I told them I liked Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I would like to finish at least the first book in November, possibly all of them.

I also borrowed Twilight from the library. I try to keep an open mind when I comes to choosing books to read and this novel has received so much praise and been the target of so much abuse that I decided I had to see for myself.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more