Reading report for November 2010

I finished 14 volumes in November. I refer to them as volumes because if you count each novella in the three novella collections separately, I read 19 pieces that could have appeared as separate books. As with the Edward Gorey books I read earlier in the year, it is difficult to decide whether to count each piece as a separate book or not, but in the end I decided to use the same criterion, namely this simple question: Has it been published separately before?

If the answer is ‘Yes’ then it’s a separate book, even if I read it in a collection or anthology. Using that criterion, the Santa, Baby anthology is one book, because although two of the novellas in it have been published before, they both originally appeared in other anthologies. The Debbie Macomber novellas are both still in print as single volumes, and the Nora Roberts volume was originally two books, a novel and two novellas, respectively, so that counts as two as well. That, if my mathematics doen’t deceive me, makes 16 books I read in November.

Out of the 14 volumes, 8 were TBR Challenge reads, one a Top Mystery read and one a Chunkster Challenge read. Of the 5 non-challenge books, one was a re-read and one was supposed to be a Buchmesse Challenge read, but I had faulty information that disqualified it, so I had to review a previously read book to keep my promise of reviewing one translated Icelandic book per month until October 2011.

Here are the books:

Anthology: Santa, Baby. Christmas-themed romance novellas by Jennifer Crusie (Hot Toy), Lori Foster (Christmas Bonus) and Carly Phillips (Naughty under the Mistletoe). TBR challenge.
Anthology: The Midnight Reader. A collection of chilling short stories by various masters of the macabre, including Algernon Blackwood, J.Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and F. Marion Crawford. TBR challenge.
Rhys Bowen: Evans to Betsy. Murder mystery. (TBR challenge.
John Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps. Spy thriller. Top Mysteries Challenge.
Charles Dickens: The Cricket on the Hearth. Sentimental Christmas story. Non-challenge.
Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers. Adventure tale, classic historical novel. TBR challenge, Chunkster Challenge.
Einar Már Guðmundsson: Eftirmáli regndropanna. Literary fiction.Non-challenge.
Jane Langton: The Dante Game. Thriller. TBR challenge.
Debbie Macomber: A Gift to Last. Two Christmas novellas (Can this be Christmas? and Shirley, Goodness and Mercy). TBR challenge.
Ngaio Marsh: When in Rome. Murder mystery. TBR challenge.
Stephanie Meyer: Twilight. YA vampire fantasy. Non-challenge.
Terry Pratchett: Jingo. Fantasy. Reread. Non-challenge.
Nora Roberts: The Gift. Two Christmas romance novellas (Home for Christmas and All I want for Christmas) and one short romance novel (Gabriel‘s Angel). TBR challenge.
Lynn Viehl: Midnight Blues. Urban fantasy, romantic novella. Non-challenge.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-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...

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...

Reading in Reykjavík

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