Reading in Reykjavík

Icelandic title: Brekkukotsannáll (Literally “Annals of Brekkukot”)   Genre : Literary fiction, historical Year of publication : 1957 Setting & time : Reykjavik area, Iceland; beginning of the 20th century. This novel by Iceland's only Nobel prize-winner, the first he published after winning the prize, boasts what is the most memorable opening sentence I have ever read in a novel: "A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father." Álfgrímur (the narrator of the story) is a young boy abandoned by his mother and raised by his foster-grandparents at Brekkukot, a small house in what is now nearly the center of Reykjavik but was, at the time of the story, one of a small cluster of buildings separate from the commercial and administrative center of town. The house is a haven for people who are down on their luck and acts as a sort of social center for the community and a counterpoint for the ...

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Lilian Jackson Braun Year published: 1995 Genre: Mystery Sub-genre(s): Whodunit Where got: Public library Of the Cat Who books I’ve read, this is probably the most mysterious mystery - although in the end it turned out I had guessed correctly the identity of one of the criminals, I did get another one wrong and was uncertain about the other right until the denouement. Unlike the previous books I have read in the series, this one definitely hints at Koko the cat being psychic rather than merely very intelligent, which is fine by me but may detract from the enjoyment by some readers who don’t like cats. Rating: Another great mystery from Lilian Jackson Braun. 4 stars and 5 purrs.

The independent book and stationery shop Bókabúð Máls og menningar has just closed its doors, probably for the last time. This shop had been situated on the corner of Laugavegur and Vegamótastígur, in the heart of Reykjavík's shopping and entertainment district, for as long as I could remember. It had, in fact, been there since the year I was born, but had been in operation elsewhere since 1940. It was a regular stop for book lovers who were taking a stroll up or down the Laugavegur, and for the last 15 or so years you could sit down in a cosy café on the first floor and enjoy your coffee and Danish while reading a book or a magazine from the book shop. The shop suffered a serious injury in 2009, when the operation was taken over by new management, and it had been slowly bleeding to death ever since. When the owners of the shop decided to move to a new location due to the extortionate rent being demanded by the new owners of the building, the building owners decided to continue...

Read part one . Read part two . Read part three . Read part four . Read part five . Read part six . The brothers had noticed it was always colder outside in the winter than in the summer and also that houses were colder the more and bigger windows they had. Therefore they drew the conclusion that all frost and cold was due to houses having windows.  They decided to build themselves a new house, and did not include any windows. Consequently the house was very dark, which they considered to be something of a fault, but it was a consolation for them that it would at least be warm in the winter.  In order to get some light into the house they waited for a bright and sunny day in high summer, took their caps off and started carrying the light into the house in the caps. Others say they used buckets. These they carried inside and overturned them inside and then went back outside for more. The were looking forward to sitting in their brightly lit house that night, but when they c...

Genre : Literary fiction Year of publication : 1980 Setting & time : Yorkshire, UK; 1920 The first of the short novels I have been reading, A Month in the Country , describes a summer the narrator, now approaching retirement, spent in a small Yorkshire village when he was a young man, restoring a medieval church mural. He is a southerner himself and is at first suspicious of the northerners he has been cast among, but soon comes to be friends with a local family and develops a complicated relationship with the local vicar and his wife. Suffering from a nervous stammer and a twitch after his experiences in the war and further traumatised by the behaviour of his unfaithful wife, the idyllic surroundings and gentle people he meets have a curative effect on him and he returns home to London in a much better mental state than when he left. This is an idyllic novel that deals with happiness, which is quite unusual for a literary novel, a genre better known for wallowing in misery a...

I am doing quite well so far in the reading challenges for this year. I have finished 3 Top Mystery Challenge books, which puts me right on schedule. I have finished 4 out of the 6 books in the What’s in a Name challenge and have the remaining two lined up and am already reading one of them. In the Read-a-myth challenge and Gothic Reading challenge I have not yet read any books, but I am reading my first Gothic book and have the two mythology books lined up. It is the TBR challenge I am proudest of. Two weekends ago I met the goal of my TBR reading challenge for 2011: to get the number of TBR books in my stack below 850. This was cause for celebration, because I don't think I have ever finished a reading challenge so quickly. I only did this partially by reading. I have finished 11 TBR books this year, which alone would not have been enough to reach the desired goal. However, the rules were that the reduction of the TBR list could be done by reading or by culling. What I di...

This meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . To see more favourite book-to-movie adaptations, head over there to see which movies the other participants have nominated. I am going to cheat and interpret ‘movie’ as ‘film’, so I can include television adaptations. Oscar and Lucinda , from the book by Peter Carey. Apart from the changed ending it is an incredibly faithful adaptation, with every character perfectly cast. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , from the book by Stieg Larsson. This one actually improves on the book, which is well plotted but badly written. Cold Comfort Farm , from the book by Stella Gibbons. Perfect casting and quite faithful to the original. High Fidelity , from the book by Nick Hornby. Moving the story to America didn’t hurt it one bit. Fried Green Tomatoes (at the Whistle Stop Café), from the book by Fannie Flagg. Perfect casting and faithful to the story. Pride and Prejudice from the book by Jane Austen, the latest BBC adaptation. Incredibly f...

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Lilian Jackson Braun Year published: 1987 Genre: Mystery Sub-genre(s): Whodunit Where got: Public library This is the fifth Cat Who book, and just as enjoyable as the other ones I’ve read in the series. These delightful mysteries are short enough to make a nice diversion for a couple of hours, and they never fail to entertain. The story: Chicago journalist Jim Qwilleran has decided to write a novel and has accepted the offer of a country cabin somewhere “up north” for the summer. The owner is Aunt Fanny, an old friend of his mother’s. Once he arrives with his cats, mysterious events start happening, a neighbour is murdered, Qwilleran may have witnessed another murder, and the locals aren’t about to let an outsider dig any deeper than necessary. Just when the mystery is solved, Qwilleran has to make a choice between going back to Chicago and accepting a job as an investigative journalist (something ...

I am going through one of my reading phases right now, one which is characterised by a short attention span and a need for getting things over with quickly, which translates into only wanting to read short books and short stories. I have also become bumbling and graceless in my movements, always moving too fast and bumping into things and people, dropping and breaking stuff and I am generally in a hurry without quite knowing why. At work, my fingers fly over the keyboard but I can’t concentrate for longer than 20 minutes at a time, so the productivity is the same as when I plod along all day. I suppose I could say my sap is rising with the lengthening of the days and it's making me restless, but the fact is that I feel more like I am plunging into one of my depressions. This means I have a psychological wrestling match ahead of me. It hasn’t ever got bad enough that I have needed medication, but there is a very specific set of things I need to do to pull myself out from under the...

Read part one . Read part two . Read part three . Read part four . Read part five . Once when the bishop of Hólar was riding between farms and visiting his flock he came to Bakki. The brothers were at home and wished to offer the bishop some refreshments, so they asked if he wanted something to drink and he said he did. The very best container the brothers owned was a new chamberpot, so this they filled with cream and offered it to the bishop.  The bishop refused to either touch the container or drink from it, which made the brothers exclaim: “Gísli-Eiríkur-Helgi, he will not drink the cream from Bakki, so let him drink piss instead.” Copyright notice: The wording used to tell this folk-tale is under copyright. The story itself is not copyrighted. If you want to re-tell it, for a collection of folk-tales, incorporate it into fiction, use it in a school essay or any kind of publication, please tell it in your own words or give the proper attribution if you choose to use the wor...

... the following quotation seems like wonderful praise of reading and books: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."  Taken in context, it of course means quite the opposite:  Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same; and Mrs. Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets and rings, joined now and then in her brother's conversation with Miss Bennet. Miss Bingley's attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr. Darcy's progress through his book, as in reading her own; and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her question, and read on. At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, ...

Here is my fourth What’s in a Name Challenge read, the book with a life stage in the title. It is also a TBR challenge read. Genre: Police procedural Year of publication: 1989 No. in series: 1 Series detective: Police Chief Mitchell “Mitch” Bushyhead Type of mystery: Murder Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: Buckskin, a fictional small town in Oklahoma, USA; contemporary A promising Cherokee artist is found murdered in his house with two of his fingers missing, the first murder to take place in Buckskin for 10 years and Chief Bushyhead soon finds himself on the trail of a cold-blooded killer. Pressure for results and information by the town council does not sit well with him and he knows his job may well be on the line, but he still investigates the case methodically, carefully sifting through evidence and clues and questioning witnesses to discover who could have held enough of a grudge to kill the victim. This is a police procedural/murder mystery wi...

Watch and listen to a group of concerned people enumerate all the reasons why libraries should be kept open: My local library has had to face cutbacks, but they responded by trying to increase the turnover by shortening the lending time. It will hopefully allow them to continue buying new books and keep the stock updated.

The Top Ten Tuesdays meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . For more lists of unforgettable love stories, head on over there and visit the other participating blogs. When faced with the challenge of coming up with my 10 favourite love stories from books, I sat down and thought about the love stories that have affected me, that I remember and that I like to read about over and over. To my surprise only two of them are from romance novels, or three if you think Jane Austen's books are first and foremost romances. These are today’s choices - they many change at any time. Robin and Marian from any number of retellings of the Robin Hood myth.Probably because it was among the first love stories I came across in a book. Odysseus and Penelope from the Greek myths. Anne and Gilbert from the Anne of Green Gables books. Classic "enemies become lovers" plot. Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth from Persuasion by Jane Austen.A classic "return to love" p...

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Neil Gaiman Year published: 2002 Genre: Horror, thriller, children’s Where got: Public library The story: One day, Coraline Jones opens a locked door inside her parent’s apartment and enters a world where she has another, oddly different, set of parents waiting for her. At first it’s wonderful, but it quickly becomes apparent that her other mother has no intention of letting her go. Coraline must use all her ingenuity and imagination to free the other children that have been trapped in there and rescue her real parents from this strange world and its evil ruler. Technique and plot: Wonderfully written in the flowing lyrical style that made Stardust such a joy to read. The story is simple but good and everything is very matter-of-fact, which is why the dark subject matter never becomes too scary. Coraline is a very practical child, unlike the very silly Alice from Alice in Wonderland, to which this ...

Continuing from yesterday´s post: Breakdown by genre: This is by dominant genre, so that, for example, the urban fantasy novels I read all go in the romance category, because they are romances first and foremost, although they happen to take place in fantasy/alternative reality setting, whereas the Discworld books go in the fantasy category even if they are all also detective stories, because fantasy is the dominant genre. Crime, mystery and thrillers: 54 (31,2%), down by 10,65% Romance: 49 (28,3%), up by a staggering 21,15% Fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales, myths and supernatural: 20 (11,6%), up by 6,5% Miscellaneous fiction: 32 (18,5%) up by 1,65% Non-fiction: 18 (10,4%), down by 16,6% My reading seems to have been more homogeneous in 2010 than it was in 2009, which I blame on the decrease in my reading of non-fiction, down to 10% from 27%. I did not read enough travelogues and ex-pat memoirs to warrant a separate category in 2010, but I plan to remedy that in 2011, whe...

2010 was a little above average for me considering the number of books I read per year in the last 5 years, or quite a bit higher if I count separately all the little Edward Gorey books collected together in the three Gorey anthologies I read. If they are counted as three volumes, I read 173 books, but if they are counted as separate books, I read 221 books. This makes a weekly average of 3,3 or 4,25 books, respectively. If I continue with two numbers I‘ll have to come up with two sets of most of the numbers, so for the calculations below I have used the lower number. I have no particular plans in terms of either the total number of books or the total number of pages I plan to read in 2011. I have several short novels on my TBR list which could push up the number of books read, but I also have some monster books I plan to read, so it will probably even out. I don‘t remember any unfinished books in 2010, only books put on hold to be finished later. Breakdown: Fiction: 155 (89,...

Read part one . Read part two . Read part three . Read part four . Another time the Bakki-brothers bough a large barrel in Borgarfjörður, which is in southern Iceland, many days travelling from Bakki. They took the barrel apart to make it easier to transport. When they got home they put the barrel back together and started filling it (it doesn’t say with what, but presumably whey or brine for preserving food), but the barrel started leaking. The brothers examined to barrel to find out what was causing the leak. Finally one of them said: “Gísli-Eiríkur-Helgi, no wonder the barrel leaks, the bottom is still in Borgarfjörður!” Copyright notice: The wording used to tell this folk-tale is under copyright. The story itself is not copyrighted. If you want to re-tell it, for a collection of folk-tales, incorporate it into fiction, use it in a school essay or any kind of publication, please tell it in your own words or give the proper attribution if you choose to use the wording unchanged.

Genre: Murder mystery Year of publication: 1937 No. in series: 1 Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: London, UK; contemporary When the lead dancer in the ballet Petrushka is shot dead on cue for the final death scene, everyone thinks it’s a one-time event, but when a second dancer is shot while waiting to go on stage to dance the same role, the police begin to think there must be a madman on the loose who is fixated on this particular ballet and character. The police have to deal with a large number of witnesses and several potential killers, all of whom are so steeped in ballet that they can think of hardly anything else, and none of them seems to have told them the truth when first questioned. This is a wonderfully chaotic and funny mystery, full of eccentric characters and twists and turns. The humour is refreshingly politically incorrect but always affectionately so. The story is full of Russians with strange and funny names, the ballet terms confuse and b...

This is my third What’s in a Name Challenge book, the one with jewelry or a gem in the title. Genre: Romance, contemporary Themes: Big Secret, Big Misunderstanding, Royalty Year of publication: 2002 No. in series: 4 Setting & time: Vermont, USA and Cordina, a fictional kingdom in Europe Explicitness and number of sex/love scenes: Several rather purple ones Princess Camilla de Cordina is teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown and decides to take a break from her duties. Keeping a low profile, she goes on a road trip and enjoys being just another young woman. A mishap with her car brings her into the company of grumpy archaeologist Delaney Caine. Being short on money, she accepts a temporary job from him while she waits for the car to be fixed. Since he lives in a rustic cabin in the woods, they are together in close company and as she cleans his house, cooks him proper meals and types up his notes, they begin to fall in love. But he doesn’t know who she reall...

I came across this lovely description of a budding author's behaviour when writing: Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and 'fall into a vortex', as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her 'scribbling suit' consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard wor...

I made good progress with the challenges in January, finishing 7 TBR books, two Top Mystery Challenge books, and one What‘s in a Name Challenge book, and furthermore I reviewed a Buchmesse Frankfurt challenge book. Of my two rereads, one I read to re-familiarise myself with a story that began in a book I read in 2008 and the other was my final reread in the Discworld Watch sub-series. Now I am ready for Snuff when it comes out in October. Both non-challenge books were what I like to call „memoirs of place“. One is an account of a stay in Marrakesh, Morocco, in the 1950s, and the other is a mixture of a memoir of place and a conventional memoir. The books were: Suzanne Brockmann : Hot Target (reread) and All Through the Night . Romantic thrillers Elias Canetti : The Voices of Marrakesh . Memoir of place. Raymond Chandler : The Big Sleep . Detective novel. Jennifer Crusie : What the Lady Wants . Detective romance. Hugh Greene ed.: More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes . Shor...

Originally published in November 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Alexander McCall Smith Year published: 2000 Where got: Public library Genre: Detective story, literature Had a sleepless night and rather than allow myself to be frustrated over it, I decided to read a book and picked Tears of the Giraffe , the second of Alexander McCall Smith’s books about Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s only lady private detective. The first one was the wonderful The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency . The story: Precious has been handed her most difficult case to date: to find out what happened to a young American who disappeared on the edge of the Kalahari desert 10 years ago. In the meantime, Mr. Matekoni gets talked into taking in a pair of orphans, and his maid plots to get rid of Precious so she can continue to meet her male “friends” at Mr. Matekoni’s house during the day. Last, but not least, Precious’ secretary, Mma Makutsi, gets promoted to assistant detective and gets her ...

I love clever parody songs and novelty music, but this is not just a brilliant parody, but also a pretty catchy tune: On second thoughts I think I'll just embroider it and hang it on my office wall.

Back in 2008 I posted a list of my Desert Island Books , and now I think it’s time to do another one. Just to make sure I do this right, I didn’t look at the old list before drawing up this version. Rules: There can be more than one book in a volume, but I can only choose10 volumes plus a book of national importance to my culture and one religious book. Since there is no electricity on my fictional desert island and I can only take a limited number of batteries with me – all of which I will need to power my flashlight and an emergency radio – I can not take an e-book reader. My culturally important book is the Icelandic Sagas and the religious book is the Koran. If only allowed to take 10 volumes (plus the above two) I would choose: The collected works of William Shakespeare, because I want to finish reading the plays and, frankly, I need seclusion in order to concentrate on the historical plays. Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Mallory. I love Arthurian legends and have on...

Read part one. Read part two Read part three. Once when the Bakki-brothers were out and about they met a man who was carrying an animal inside his shirt, the like of which the brothers had never seen before. They asked what this wondrous beast was called and what it was for and were told it was a cat and that it killed mice and kept them out of the houses. The brothers thought this was a splendid beast and asked if the cat was for sale. The man answered that they would have to offer him a grand price for the cat if he were to sell it to them, and they ended up paying through their noses for the beast. They then took kitty home and were full of joy over their new house pet. When they got home they remembered that had forgotten to ask what the cat ate, so they went to the seller’s home. It was late at night and one of them knocked on a window and woke up the man, calling to him: “What does the cat eat?” The man answered carelessly: “The damn cat eats everything.” Upon hearin...

Finishing this book combines two of my challenges: the TBR and the book with a word meaning “evil” in the title in the What’s in a Name challenge . Genre: Thriller Year of publication: 1958 Type of mystery: Murder Type of investigator: Amateur Setting & time: Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA; contemporary. News commentator Zachary Blake returns to Martha’s Vineyard one year after his wife drowned in the sea off the island’s shore. Ostensibly there for a holiday, he is really investigating whether there is any truth in a letter he has received which claims his wife’s death was not accidental. SPOILERS ahead. This is the first McBain book I read that isn’t part of the 87th Precinct series. In terms of quality it is not on par with those Precinct books I have read, but it’s not bad either. Mediocre is more like it. The writing and characters are, as always in McBain, well done, but I have issues with the story, especially the TSTL behaviour of the hero, and I...

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001)

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...