Reading report for April 2013

I read 20 books in April, all but one of which I started and ended within the month. The exception was Tim Moore‘s Nul Points, which I was reading last year but set aside as I found it somewhat bleak. I picked it up again and finally finished it, discovering that either I wasn‘t in the right mood when I first began reading it, or the last three chapters were more upbeat than the previous ones. I even got some laughs out of it. It's not as good as some of his other efforts, but as always very informative. This time around he was digging into the history of the Eurovision Song contest and going around interviewing the people who came last in the contest with zero points.

Of the 20 books, 8 were TBR books, which puts me at 31 TBR books read this year, which is not bad at all. It looks like I may reach the goal of 50 before the end of the summer, and since I am currently reading more of them than I am buying, the purpose of the TBR challenge has been achieved.

I have been spring cleaning and rearranging my living room and got a number of unabridged audio editions of Dorothy L. Sayers‘ Lord Peter Wimsey novels to listen to, since it's impossible to read while dragging around furniture and mopping floors. Three of those were re“reads“ (Whose Body?, Strong Poison and Have his Carcase) and the remaining two were new to me. All were read by actor Ian Carmichael, who did it very well. I am now considering buying (if they are available) the DVDs of the TV series in which he starred as Lord Peter.

The month‘s stand-outs were Can Any Mother Help Me? and Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight. The former gives an insight in the the lives of British women in the 20th century, and the latter a by turns horrific and fascinating look at the lives of a family of white farmers in Africa during the 1970s and 80s in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. I also enjoyed The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo, although I wish they had included more of his fantastic romance novel covers in the collection.

As a modern retelling of a beloved Jane Austen novel, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star was a nice effort, but would have been better if there had been less sex in it. I know there is supposed to be lots of sex in rock star romances, but it's not good when the sex begins to take away from the romance.

The Books:
Jenna Bailey: Can Any Mother Help Me?. Women‘s history.
Alexandra Fuller: Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight. Memoir.
Paul Gallico: Mrs. Harris Goes to Moscow. Humorous novel.
Rachel Gibson: I'm in No Mood for Love, Crazy on You and Rescue Me. Romance, contemporary.
Chris Mattison: Snake. Ophiology.
Tim Moore: Nul Points. Music history.
Heather Lynn Rigaud: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star. Romance, contemporary; Pride and Prejudice retelling (and bonkfest)
Nora Roberts: The Next Always, The Last Boyfriend and The Perfect Hope . Romance, contemporary.
Dorothy L. Sayers: Strong Poison, Whose Body? and Have His Carcase . Murder mysteries. Rereads.
Dorothy L. Sayers :Unnatural Death and Murder Must Advertise . Murder mysteries.
Arthur Upfield: Wings Above the Diamantina. Mystery.
Boris Vallejo & Lester del Rey: The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo. Art. Book covers.
Patricia Wentworth: The Watersplash. Murder mystery.

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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