Reading in Reykjavík

"Is not Lindos the official beauty-spot of Rhodes? The contrast with Cameirus is remarkable—for where Cameirus is refined, turned in upon itself in sunny contemplation, Lindos is bold, strident. Cameirus has all the stillness of an amphora in a Museum, with its frieze of dancers caught in a timeless dancing; Lindos, under the sweetness of its decoration, is like a trumpet-call, beaten out in gold-leaf and vibrating across the blue airs of time." Novelist Lawrence Durrell was the oldest brother of naturalist Gerald Durrell, and they shared the ability to write beautifully evocative texts about things that interested them. I must admit that I have never read any of Lawrence's serious fiction, but I have enjoyed his humorous works about life in the diplomatic corps, Esprit de Corps and Stiff Upper Lip , and did not have much left of Bitter Lemons , his travelogue about Cyprus, when I had to return it to the library and then somehow never remembered to borrow it ...

This book is the memoir of Maria Grammatico, owner of a famous pastry shop in Erice in Sicily where she uses recipes learned while living as an orphan in a convent in the town. Simeti recorded her story, translated it and organised it for the book, which is the narrative of Grammatico's life, her 15 year stay with the nuns and a little of her impoverished childhood in the Sicilian countryside before that.The loss of her father threw the family into even deeper poverty, and her mother was forced to send her and one of her sisters to live with the nuns, who took in orphans, so she could could feed the rest of the family and ensure the two girls were well looked after. What followed were years of hard work and deprivation, but also of opportunity. Grammatico learned to form and prepare the pastries the nuns sold to supplement the convent's income and, being a clever girl, she was able to learn the recipes - which the nuns guarded from the girls - by simply watching them bei...

As anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time will know, I enjoy reading books about food and books about history, and I love travelogues. This book combines all three. The premise of the book is to hunt down some of the foods that Mark Twain wrote about longing for when months of insipid European hotel food were beginning to wear on him during the journey he describes in his travelogue A Tramp Abroad (I know just how he feels).  Beahrs is an unapologetic foodie and clearly a fan of Twain‘s and he seems to have been tireless in chasing after the foods he chose to discuss in the book. Some of these he makes sound mouth-watering, and the reader can‘t help joining in his lament over how some of these foods have been lost or stopped being as easily available as they were in Twain‘s time, e.g. prairie chicken and terrapin. Others, I must admit, I would give a miss, such as raccoon and possum. Cranberries and maple syrup I am familiar with (when this is written, I am ...

Well, here it is. My first review in several months (not counting reposts). I hadn’t planned to review this novel, but I suddenly felt the urge to do so. As it happens, this is one of the books in the Top Mysteries challenge I abandoned in 2011. I am no longer trying to read all the books on the lists, but it’s nice just the same to be able to cross one off now and then. Another novel I have been able to strike off the list was Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes, an enjoyable old school murder mystery. Than leaves 65 to go, but I doubt I will ever read them all - there are just too many spy novels on it for my taste. Synopsis: Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard arrives in Norfolk to spend some time going over his aunt’s personal effects following her death, and to decide what he is going to do with the holiday home - an old converted windmill - he has inherited from her. He is consulted by a former colleague who is now with the local police and is investigating the case of...

Originally published in July 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is a humorous tribute to that much maligned hairstyle, the mullet (ape drape, mud-flap, neck warmer, etc.). For someone who remembers when it was actually cool to sport one (yep, I was a teenager in the 80’s - I even had a mini-mullet for a couple of weeks until I realised it wasn't a good look for me and had it chopped off), this was a great discovery. The book manages to be both affectionate and mocking, and I had a good laugh at all the pictures of famous people that I once thought were incredibly cool and cutting-edge but now, in retrospect, just had really bad hairstyles and a lousy dress sense. Rating: A funny book for both admirers and enemies of the mullet. 4 stars.

Originally published in July 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is the account of Bill Bryson’s (broken up) journey around Australia, to visit its biggest cities and some interesting sights, natural and man-made. Bryson is obviously an australophile. This book is a virtual love letter to Australia, especially its natural beauty, and in a lesser way to its people. Even though he writes in his usual humorously mocking style, and criticises certain things, especially environmental policies and the less than helpful staff at hotels in a certain city, the book is for the most part a very positive and affectionate, sometimes glowing, account of this interesting country. Besides covering his impressions and travel experiences, Bryson gives some account of Australian history and the country’s attractions, and the book can, in fact, be used as an informal guide to some of the places he visited. He seems to have been very diligent in hunting down and exploring unusual little museums and...

Originally published in June 2005, on my original 52 Books blog . This slim collection of essays by journalist Anne Fadiman was originally published in a literary magazine, but adapted and in some cases rewritten for the book. It was recommended to me by several people who know I love reading, and I would just like to say thanks to them for the recommendation. I have been trying for ages to find the book - according to the library database it was always in, but I couldn’t find it where it was supposed to be shelved. I finally came across it where it had been filed on the wrong shelf, probably by some browsing library patron. The book is basically about several different aspects of reading and owning books and an analysis of the author’s reading habits. She discusses, among other things, the problems of uniting libraries, her addiction to collecting books about doomed polar expeditions, her habit of proofreading everything she reads, those pesky gender pronouns that turn everyone in...

Originally published in June 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. Mary Cassatt: 5 O'clock Tea I am an avid tea drinker and have been ever since I drank my first cup of tea around age six. I enjoy tea in many of its incarnations: the sweet, spicy chai of India and Pakistan, the minty green tea of Morocco, strong and sweet Turkish tea, delicate Darjeelings, robust Kenyans and iced tea with slices of orange and lemon, to name some examples. I have never been much fond of fruit teas or plain green teas - the first I can tolerate iced, but the second tastes to me like freshly mown grass: the smell is nice and refreshing but the flavour is less than pleasing. I guess it’s an acquired taste and no doubt I will learn to drink it if I ever visit Japan or China. I am not what you would call a tea snob - you are just as likely to find me slurping sweet milk tea made with a tea bag (oh, my!), from a chipped and stained old mug (horror of horrors!), as you are to find me sipping milkless FT...

Genre: Travel Area covered: Train journey (by stages) from London to Baghdad, with stops in Italy, various Balkan states, Turkey, Syria and various cities and archaeological sites in Iraq. Published in: 2004 This is an enjoyable read about setting out on a journey with the slimmest of excuses, in this case visiting places Agatha Christie travelled to and through when she set out to make a new life for herself after her divorce from her first husband, and to go to the places where she lived in with her second husband, an archaeologist who spent his working life digging up ancient cities in Iraq. Eames visited various places which one would have travelled through on a train journey between England and Iraq in 1928, which is when Agatha Christie first made the trip aboard the Orient Express , following her traumatic divorce from her first husband. Once the trip could have been made in a few stages (for example directly, without disembarking, from Paris all the way to Istanbul), b...

Original title: Pequnas Infamias Translated from: Spanish Translator: Christopher Andrews Genre: Crime, literary novel Year of publication: 1998 (original); 2003 (translation) Setting & time: Spain, contemporary Chef Nestor Chaffinch (speciality: sweet desserts) finds himself stuck inside a walk-in freezer in the middle of the night after catering a successful private party and is found dead and frozen in the morning. At least four people in the house had reason to want him dead, but who killed him, and was he even murdered at all? After this first, terrifying chapter, the narrative flashes back to the events that lead up to the death, showing how Fate tangled together the lives of several people and finally led them all together in one place for a grand finale. The translation is seamless and according to reviewers who have read it in both languages Andrews has managed to preserve the author’s style, which is, as any good translator knows, a commendable feat. This...

Genre: History Year of publication: 2000 Setting & time: USA and the Pacific Ocean, 1820-21 In 1820 the whale ship Essex , small, old and with a mostly inexperienced crew, set out from Nantucket Island towards the whale-hunting grounds of the Pacific Ocean. Once they were there the crew proceeded to hunt sperm whales and fill the hold with barrels of oil, but on November 20th the ship was attacked by a huge bull sperm whale which rammed it twice and sank it. The crew were able to rescue some navigational charts and equipment and food from the sinking ship, but were left floating aboard three flimsy and old whale boats thousands of miles from the South-American mainland. Ironically, in light of what was to happen later, fear of cannibals kept them from making for the nearest cluster of islands and instead they resolved to head for South America, a mistake that may have cost 12 of the crew of 20 their lives. About 20 years later Herman Melville read about the incident, whic...

Originally published in May 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is a novel about age, ageing, relationships and the ever present Death. The title, Memento Mori , means “a reminder of mortality” and refers to mysterious phone calls that the elderly people in the story keep getting, from someone who sounds different to each of them, but who always tells them the same thing: “Remember you must die”. The calls affect them in different ways - some ignore them, others accept the message, and at least one is driven to minor madness by it. The characters are all interconnected: friends, servants and former servants, their children and caregivers. Their relationships are complicated, full of memories of past illicit love affairs, and the present is fading health, dottiness, blackmail, and an ageing gerontologist who uses his friends as research material. As the calls escalate, so Spark burrows deeper into the lives and minds of her elderly protagonists, revealing their hopes and fears, an...

Originally published in June 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. Warning: Minor SPOILERS Kate Malvern is left alone in the world after the death of her father, and discovers she is too young and too pretty to get work as a governess. Her former nursemaid, Sarah, writes to Kate’s estranged aunt, telling her of Kate’s misfortunes, and the aunt soon arrives and sweeps Kate off to her mansion. It soon becomes clear that aunt Minerva has ulterior motives in bringing Kate to Staplewood, and Kate’s sense of uneasiness is increased by the erratic and often violent temper of her very handsome cousin, Torquil. When Torquil’s cousin Philip appears on the scene, Kate’s feelings are thrown into an oproar: she sees that he despises her, but she still feels attracted to him, and when his misconceptions about her are cleared up, he starts showing interest in her. But her aunt has other plans, Torquil’s behaviour keeps getting stranger and stranger, and it looks as if Kate and Philip may not be able...

I decided it was time I finished at least one challenge. As you may remember, I decided to stop trying to finish the challenges I had signed up for (Gothic novels, mythology and What's in a Name), without actually quitting them. The plan was to stop actively looking for books that fit and just wait and see if something I read fit a particular challenge. Well, I didn't realise it at the time, but I actually finished my last What's in a Name challenge book 2 months ago. That's the one with travel or movement in the title, which this book fits perfectly. So here is the review: Year of publication: 1969 No. in series: 2/3 Genre: Memoir, travel Setting & time: England (London) and Spain, 1934-36 Laurie Lee set out on foot from his home in Slad, in 1934, and ended up in London, working as a labourer for a while, before taking a ship to Spain. Starting out in the northern port of Vigo, he walked across Spain, visiting various cities and towns and ending up in th...

Originally published in May 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This book had been sitting in my TBR pile for nearly a year, so it was about time I read it. I love these old pulp covers! In short, the book tells of the escapades of the narrator’s aunt Mame, his legal guardian. Mame is offbeat, outrageously fashionable, adventurous, and a sucker for a sad story. She is the kind of woman who throws herself wholeheartedly into all she does, including her relationships with men. She becomes a southern belle for the millionaire from Georgia whom she marries, Irish for the Irishman whom she falls for, and so on. She seems unable to recognise when she is being played for a sucker until the facts stare her right in the face, but when realisation dawns, she is quick to act and can extricate herself from all sorts of situations. She also has a knack for getting her nephew involved in her adventures. The book is told like a biography in the form of snapshots, seen from the point of view of ...

Originally published in May 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is a delightful Regency romance from the mother of the genre, Georgette Heyer. It should perhaps rather be classified as a historical novel with a romantic twist, because, like in all the Heyer novels I have read so far, the romantic element doesn’t come in until about 3/4 of the way into the story and takes second place to adventure. All the way through it is a delightful romp with a plot that would not feel out of place in a Shakespearian comedy. Sir Richard Wyndham, dandy and sportsman supreme, is about to give in to family pressure and marry a young woman who only wants him because he’s rich and can get her family out of financial trouble. As he walks from his club one night, slightly the worse for drink (as they would have put it back in those days), he sees a young woman, dressed as a boy, struggling to climb out a window. She turns out to be the Honourable Miss Penelope Creed, an heiress who is attempting to ...

Originally published in May 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is the first of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, written during the Golden Era of crime fiction, an era that produced many authors who are still in print and considered to be classics. They include Sayers, Agatha Christie, S.S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr, to name a few of the biggest. The story tells of how Lord Peter Wimsey gets involved in two criminal cases. The first is the mysterious appearance of a naked corpse in the bathtub of a respectable architect, and the second the disappearance of a rich businessman who had a strong resemblance to the dead man. Aided by his valet, Bunter, and his detective friend, Parker, Wimsey uncovers a clever and diabolical revenge scheme and a very ingenious method of corpse disposal, with a few red herrings thrown in to confuse both Wimsey and the reader. Wimsey has, when the story begins, solved at least one case of theft, and other criminal inv...

Originally published in April 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. Story: The relationship between Min Dobbs and Cal Morrisey begins on a sour note when she overhears her ex-boyfriend, David, make a bet with Cal that he can’t get Min to have dinner with him. A further bet, which Cal does not accept but both Min and David think he has accepted, says that Cal can’t get her into bed with him within a month. Min, upset and slightly drunk, decides to piss David off by going out with Cal, and thus begins a rollercoaster relationship that involves food, friends, families, in-laws, statistics, snow globes, a frantic ex-girlfriend, a jealous ex-boyfriend, and a stray cat with a talent for mischief. I’m fast becoming a fan of Jennifer Crusie. Not only does she write great romance, but her novels (at least those I’ve read) are funny and the characters great. This one is no exception. In the last Crusie novel I read ( Fast Women ) I felt there were too many side characters that drew the attention...

Genre: Science fiction, romantic Year of publication: 1996 Setting & time: Boulder, Colorado, USA; contemporary Sociologist Sandra Foster is deep into a research project studying fads: how they begin, evolve and fade out. HiTek, the company she works for, has high hopes of the results, hoping that they can learn to start and control fads if they can just discover how they begin. Chaos theorist Bennett O’Reilly is reduced to studying monkey group behaviour – that is if he can ever get the corporation to acquire the monkeys. An incompetent office assistant called Flip brings Sandra and Bennett together by misdelivering a package and while she tramps through the company like a colourful, sullen cloud of poison gas or the Plague, leaving chaos and destruction in her wake, Sandra and Ben find their research fields converging and things getting stirred up more and more by Management, fads, the prospect of a large research grant, a flock of sheep and Flip. The book’s title comes f...

Originally published in April 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. I just finished reading this prequel to Sharyn McCrumb’s Zombies of the Gene Pool and I think it’s a really good story. Not only is the mystery strong, with several interesting suspects, a likeable hero and a loathsome and rather tragic murder victim, it is also a very funny description of people one is likely to meet at a sci-fi and fantasy “con” (“convention” to the uninitiated, although “gathering” is perhaps more descriptive). The title itself, just like that of the sequel, is a parody of the kind of titles you’re likely to come across on a pulp sci-fi novel. 4 stars. Warning: slight SPOILERS ahead The story: Jay Omega has written a sci-fi novel, and his girlfriend, Marion, thinks he should do more to promote it, even if he is deeply embarrassed about the title which the publisher gave his novel. So he goes to a local sci-fi and fantasy convention, where he runs into all sorts of weird and weirder members of t...