What's in a Name challenge wrap-up

I suddenly realised I forgot to write a wrap-up post for this challenge. Well, here it is:

I finished the first book in the What's in a Name challenge on August 30, and the final one on October 1, so it took me a little over a month to read them all.

The books were:

a topographical feature (land formation): The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger.
something you'd see in the sky: The Raven in the Foregate, by Ellis Peters
a creepy crawly: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elizabeth Tova Bailey
a type of house: Daughters of the House by Michèle Roberts
something you'd carry in your pocket, purse, or backpack: The Motorcycle Diaries, by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
something you'd find on a calendar: The Darling Buds of May, by H.E. Bates

As you can see, the books were quite the mixed bag, half fiction and half non-fiction: some travel, some historical crime, some memoirs mixed with natural history, literary fiction, humorous fiction and some more (completely different) travel.

Of the six books, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating was the hands down favourite and the only one of these books I am likely to reread, although I will be keeping the Brother Cadfael book, just in case I get a hankering for rereading the series at some point. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating has gone back to the friend who lent it to me, but I will be on a lookout for a copy of my own. It was a fun challenge, but I can't say it made me any more eager to continue posting reviews. I will, however, continue to post my reading reports and the occasional review and other stuff, but as for now, I would rather be reading than reviewing or writing posts every day.

Comments

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