Weekly Monday Round-up (October 3, 2016)

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week."

Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week.

Books I finished last week:
I hardly read at all during the first half of last week, having had other things on my mind, but then I set out to finish The Hermit of Eyton Forest by Ellis Peters, which became the final book in the What‘s in a Name challenge, and then I went on to read the next book in the series, The Confession of Brother Haluin.

Other books I am reading:

• The Heretic's Apprentice by Ellis Peters, the next book in the Brother Cadfael series;
• Eothen; or Traces of travel brought home from the East by Alexander William Kinglake, a mid-19th century travelogue of Syria, Palestine and Egypt; 
• The Book of General Ignorance by John Mitchinson and John Lloyd, and  
• Be Still the Water by Karen Emilson, a newly published historical novel about Icelandic immigrants in Manitoba, Canada, in the early 1900s.

The Heretic's Apprentice was a natural progression from the previous Cadfael book, and I expect to finish it by tonight. Eothen I came across several years ago at the charity shop where I buy many of my books, and bought it because it was a travelogue, and because of the lovely faux-leather binding. Then I came across it recently in a couple of lists of the best travel books ever written, and so I pulled it out and started reading.
Then the mail arrived, and in it was Be Still the Water. Since I was able to help the author in her research for this book - in fact, she sent it to me as a token of thanks - I cracked it open at once and began reading. It soon became apparent that this is a book to be read at a leisurely pace, or so I find after the first couple of chapters. I may change my mind once I get to the crucial event.
It remains to be seen which ones I finish this week, and indeed if I continue reading any of them.

Reading challenge progress:
What's in a Name is done. I belatedly realised that I could have finished the Nonfiction challenge last week as well, but as I had not felt like doing full reviews of the two non-fiction books I read (It‘s All about Treo and The Darwin Awards II), I‘m not going to go back and enter them into the challenge.

Last week's book haul:
I bought two books last week, and was sent one. More in my upcoming Book Haul post.

Other activities last week:
I spent some quality time with my mother on Wednesday and Thursday, as my dad was up in the north of Iceland, mending fences with my uncle. We are part owners of a farm and the fences needed mending to keep my uncle‘s horses in and everybody else‘s horses, cows and sheep out.

I realised it has now been 4 months since I had my cable service disconnected. The plan had been to do it temporarily so I wouldn‘t be paying for cable TV I wasn‘t watching while I was abroad for 3 weeks in June and at the spa in July. However, I have realised that I don‘t miss it in the least. So I‘m turning in the descrambler so I don‘t have to pay rent for it any longer. I considered buying an antenna so I could watch the state run RUV channel, but they also broadcast all the local stuff online, like news and the debates for the upcoming general elections, and if there is something I want to watch I can always hook up my computer to the TV to watch it on a larger screen.
I have a collection of something like 250 DVS, a third of which I have yet to watch, and that will do me just fine for visual entertainment for a couple of years. I might change my mind about cable if they start offering subscriptions to individual channels, but as things stand, you can only get a bundle of channels and the two I particularly want are only available as part of the most expensive bundle.

DVDs I watched this week:
The third Hobbit movie. Part of my quality time with mom included a home-cooked dinner and a movie, and as she hadn‘t seen this one, we watched it. I thought it was too long in the cinema, but it‘s ridiculously long in the extended version. I have said it before and I‘ll say it again: I want to see the whole trilogy cut down into a single movie. I don‘t mind if it‘s 3 hours long, I just want to get rid of all the overlong scenes and unnecessary additions.

Howl's Moving Castle. I'd seen it before, but this time I was paying attention to the intro and discovered it is based on a book by Diana Wynne Jones. I must get my hands on that book!