Reading Report for January 2012

I read 14 books in January, in a number of genres. Out of those 14, six were e-books and five were books I had started reading before the beginning of the month. I have at least 20 more books I started reading at some point and then either decided to save for later or forgot about, and now I want to try to finish some of them.

Among the books I started and finished within the month was the first book I have read in its entirety on a mobile device. I decided to review that experience and will discuss the device, the software and the overall reading experience in a review within a few days.

The books were divided between fiction and non-fiction as follows:

Of the 6 fiction volumes, two were myth-based fantasies, one was a science fiction novella, one a romance, one a mystery-suspense novel and one a collection of cartoons.

Of the 8 non-fiction volumes, three were about fashion, two were biographies, two history books and one was about the natural sciences.

As I mentioned in my last post I have stopped, for the time being, writing detailed reviews, but I have included a bit of information about the January books in the list below.

The Books:

Shoichi Aoki: Fruits. Fashion photography. Fabulous and wacky photographs of Japanese youngsters showing off their creativity and colourful fashion sense. Originally from a Japanese fashion magazine.
Jaycee Dugard: A Stolen Life. Autobiography/Memoir. Fascinating and sad. It‘s not particularly well written, but it doesn't have to be, not with this kind of story. Dugard gives a clear-headed account of her 18-year captivity and an insight into the mentality of a survivor.
Noël Riley Fitch: Appetite for Life: The biography of Julia Child. Child‘s life was fascinating, especially her years in Asia during World War II and her life in France and the work on her first cookbook, but the whole book gives a detailed (sometimes too much so) account of her life and character.
Richard Fortey: Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum. Popular science. Very interesting, informative and gossipy tour of several departments of London‘s Natural History Museum, by a long-time employee.
Hadley Freeman: The Meaning of Sunglasses, and a guide to almost all things fashionable. Fashion advice, opinion and anecdotes. Freeman is a journalist who writes a fashion advice column for The Guardian. Not afraid of calling a spade a shovel, she takes the reader on an often funny tour of fashion do's and dont's. I didn't agree with all of her advice, but I found it very entertaining.
Neil Gaiman: Odd and the Frost Giants. Fantasy for young readers. This playful book for children about a young boy who helps Odin, Thor and Loki regain control of Asgard will entertain not only kids but also adults who know and enjoy the Norse myths.
Michael Innes: The Daffodil Affair. Suspense mystery. Weird and surreal as usual, this time Inspector Appleby is on the trail of a counting horse, a girl with multiple personalities, a haunted house and a man with a strange and evil plan. All right in the middle of World War II.
Paola Jacobbi: I want those shoes. Fashion advice and opinions. Insubstantial and entertaining, Jacobbi discusses different kinds of shoes and why we love them.
Robin Kaye: Romeo, Romeo. Contemporary romance. A sexy story of two people who just wanted a commitment-free fuck-buddy relationship, but got much more than they bargained for.
Lea Korsgaard & Stéphanie Surugue : Bókaránið mikla - Saga af ótrúlegum glæp (The Great Book Theft. Translated from Danish: Det Store Bogtyveri). True crime. Incredible and detailed account of one of the largest library book thefts in history.
Jan Morris, ed.: The Oxford Book of Oxford. The history of Oxford University in the words of its students, teachers and visitors. Fantastic and informative collection of epigrams, epitaphs, quotations and passages from letters, essays, poems, novels and autobiographies.
Rick Riordan: The Lightning Thief. Young adult fantasy based on the Greek myths. Action-filled adventure, full of characters from and allusions to Greek mythology, but with a modern twist.
Ronald Searle: The Terror of St. Trinian's. Humour, cartoons. Funny classic cartoons about the wicked students of St. Trinian‘s School for Girls.
Connie Willis: All seated on the ground. Christmas sci-fi novella with a romantic flair. A funny and heart-warming story about first contact between humans and extraterrestrials.

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

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