Reading in Reykjavík

I am experimenting with book blogging on Tumblr. I like the ease with which one can blog - and reblog - on Tumblr and it has, to some extent, revived my interesting in blogging about books. The new blog is wider in scope than this one, and more photo-oriented.  I started out posting some of my photographs of books, and have started adding mini reports of the books I have been reading. The format of the latter is not exactly reviewing and not exactly book journalling, but but a little of both. I post a cover image, a sentence/paragraph from the book (usually the first or last of either, but if neither is interesting I may quote something from within the book) and a paragraph or two about the contents, genre and my impression of it. I'm also considering adding links to other bloggers' more in-depth reviews, but haven't started yet. The Tumblr blog is here , if you want to take a look, and if you're specifically looking for the aforementioned book reports, the hashtag i...

I bought 21 books in January and February, adding, among other things, considerably to my collection of out-of-date guidebooks.  Remarkably, only one of the books in the stack is fiction (guess which one?) While I am not particularly fond of "must read" lists like the one in 1001 Book s..., I do enjoy reading about books others have loved enough to recommend, and it will be fun to go through it and see what it has to say about the books I have read (liking or disliking) and to discover new books to read. However, I have no intention of reading all of the recommendations.  As for the rest, they reflect some of my many interests: pastiche literature, trivia, folkloristics, cooking, history and anthropology.

I started and finished reading more than 60 books in January, which is a personal record. Admittedly, most were in the long novella/short novel range (80-120 pages), with a handful as long as 180 pages, but since they are sold as separate eBooks, they still count as entire books. The page count is probably pretty similar to that of an average month. If I manage to keep this up, I might manage to read an average of a book a day for the year, but I expect I will start to slow down as February progresses. I traded Kindles with a friend and delved into the short romance novels she had collected, mostly series of paranormal-themed novels and one space opera series. This was the reading equivalent of binging on candy - inducing a satisfying rush with lots of calories but little nutrition. But this is just the kind of reading I need at this time of the year: entertaining, with guaranteed happy endings and not much substance. I expect I will probably end up with a massive reading hangover, b...