Reading report for September 2011

You may have noticed that I have been going through a rather bad reviewing slump for the past three or four months, that has gone hand-in-hand with a reading slump. Not that I haven’t been reading, but I have been sticking to re-reads and favourite authors and rejecting one book after another that doesn’t fit into this category.

I think I have finally managed to break out of the reviewing slump - at least I actually find myself interested in reviewing again. I am also clearly in the middle of a turn-around genre-wise. Every few years throughout my reading life I have found myself focusing strongly on a particular genre. For about 6 years now this genre has been that of crime literature, but now I find myself focusing more on romances, adventure and non-fiction. I also find myself longing to re-read old childhood favourites I haven’t thought about in years, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t review them. These include some classic adventure and sea-faring tales, and I also have a couple of non-fiction adventure books I suddenly find myself interested in reading. This goes hand-in hand with my return to school. I am taking a couple of very interesting but demanding university courses in editing and terminology management, which you might think would mean I will have less time to look after my blogs, but as a matter of fact I find that going back to school stimulates my brain and gives me more energy, which in turn means I have more interest in blogging. So that’s a good thing. It’s only personal misfortunes and illness (and I count my periodic descents into depression as illness) that decrease my interest in blogging.

For those of you who mostly come here or originally discovered this blog because of the strong crime literature slant, I hope you will stay even if the content will start to go more in the direction of these other genres. There will always be a few reviews of crime novels - just will not as many - and I will continue to review Icelandic crime novels that are being translated into other languages.

This month’s finished books numbered seven, five of which were rereads. Additionally, I gave up on one brand-new book I was sent for reviewing a couple of months ago, which is a pity because it sounded really interesting and I was all set to enjoy it, but the writing style was not to my liking and so I gave up on it.

The first-time reads were:

Rachel Gibson : Not Another Bad Date . Contemporary romance. The review will post tomorrow.
Georgette Heyer : Sylvester, or The Bad Uncle . Historical romance.

The re-reads:

Georgette Heyer : Lady of Quality , The Corinthian and The Unknown Ajax
J.K. Rowling : Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Audio books, read by Stephen Fry.

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...

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog