Reading report for February 2013

I finished 13 books in February, in a variety of genres: historical novels, romance, crime, trivia, humour, history and biography. I am right on track with the TBR challenge and expect to continue at the same pace in March.

No one author dominated the month like Nora Roberts did in January, although I did read two books by Agatha Christie, neither of which I have read before. At least I don’t remember having read them, but its hard to be sure because I read quite a number of her books when I was a teenager.

There were no fewer than three stand-outs in February, not counting Dodger (on account of being a reread), which is the best Pratchett I have read in several years.

The best of these was Third Class Ticket by Heather Wood, which I brought back with me from India in 2009 after coming across it in the wonderful Blossom book-store in Bangalore. I had heard of it long before, found on a list of ‘must read’ books about India, but had been unable to acquire a copy. This is a lovely tale about a group of Bengali villagers sent on a 7-month journey by train around the sub-continent, made possible by a bequest from their landlady.

The second stand-out was Mauve by Simon Garfield. It is a fascinating blend of history and biography, of the first aniline dye and the man who discovered it, and the wide-ranging consequences of that discovery, both good and bad.

The third stand-out was Federico Andahazi’s The Anatomist. This satirical novel is based on events in the life of 16th century anatomist Matteo Realdo Colombo and his discovery of the clitoris and the consequences of this discovery.

Although these three stood out, most of the month’s books were satisfying reads, except for Agatha Christie’s Easy to Kill, which I found to be full of stereotypes and obvious clues.

Statistically, four books were ‘sweepings’, i.e. books I started reading at some point in the past and then either stopped reading for a time (3) or read very slowly (1); three were rereads, books I sought out for comfort reading; and three of the others were non-fiction. One was in Icelandic.

The Books:

Federico Andahazi : The Anatomist . Historical novel, satire.
Bathroom Readers' Institute : Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader . Trivia, humour.
Guy Browning : Never Hit a Jellyfish With a Spade . Humour, collected newspaper columns.
Agatha Christie : The Murder at Hazelmoor and Easy to Kill . Murder mysteries.
Jennifer Crusie : Tell Me Lies . Romantic thriller. Reread.
George MacDonald Fraser : The General Danced at Dawn . Short stories, humorous, semi-autobiographical.
Simon Garfield : Mauve: How one man invented a colour that changed the world . History/biography.
Dashiell Hammett : The Dain Curse . Thriller, murder mystery.
Georgette Heyer : The Unknown Ajax . Historical novel, romantic. Reread.
Terry Pratchett : Dodger . YA historical novel/alternative reality. Reread.
Sverrir Kristjánsson & Tómas Guðmundsson : Íslenskir örlagaþættir: Konur og kraftaskáld . Biography of three Icelandic poets.
Heather Wood : Third Class Ticket . Travelogue.

I have now started reading a collection of Icelandic folk-tales in 4 volumes which I expect to finish at the end of the coming summer, and am rediscovering my love of that genre. But that's not the only book I am reading: I have gone back to an old arrangement of having several books on the go at once. At the moment I have one each in the bathroom, kitchen, living room and office, three in the bedroom (with very short, short and long chapters, depending on how much I intend to read before I go to sleep) and two to go - one on the phone and another on the Kindle. These days I only read on the phone while waiting in queues, but the Kindle I take with me to work to read during lunch and coffee breaks.

Incidentally, should you want to know what I am reading at any given time, how many books I have finished during the month or year and how the TBR challenge is going, all you have to do is take a look at the 'Monthly statistics' in the left sidebar.

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...

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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