Reading in Reykjavík

This is perhaps a bit of overload, as this novel is considered a modern classic and has been heavily reviewed, discussed and dissected. There are even study guides. However, I felt I needed to say something about it because it's such a lovely story. This exquisite short novel is about a young anglican priest sent to a native outpost in the wilds of Canada and describes in lovely, elegaic prose how he becomes, with his patience and non-judgmental attitude towards his parishoners, accepted as part of the native community. Because we are told right from the beginning that he is dying and doesn‘t know it, this book could so easily have become a tear-jerker, but it isn‘t (I probably would have cried anyway if I‘d read it as a teenager full of raging hormones). It is open (and dry)-eyed about death and doesn‘t preach religion as books about religious persons have an unfortunate tendency to, but yet gives one a deep sense of faith, fatalism and acceptance. The message is that in or...

Originally published in June 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. I sat down after work on Tuesday and can't say I looked up much until I had finished At home with books: how booklovers live with and care for their libraries . It's a gorgeous coffee-table book with oodles of pictures and chapters on various millionaires, aristocrats, collectors and designers and their libraries, interspersed with advice on how to care for and display books. The libraries range from small and cosy to huge and imposing, but all the owners are real bibliophiles who read their books and obviously love them. The only thing that was missing, in my opinion, were the libraries of some ordinary people. Cool coffee table book. I was inspired by this book. My library only contains about 1200 volumes* at the moment, but I can foresee it getting a lot bigger - maybe even as big as my grandmother’s library which at its biggest contained at least 10 thousand volumes. This means that one day I will have to s...

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Alexander McCall Smith Year published: 2001 Genre: Detective story, literature Where got: Public library It’s easy to imagine you’re in Africa when you’re sweating away - the sun has been shining all day and the temperature inside my apartment is around 28 °C and feels hotter. The story: The detective agency is having financial difficulties and to save money Precious has moved the office to her fiancé’s office. Mr. Matekoni is not feeling well, but refuses to see a doctor, and Precious has to go away for a few days to find out if a client’s sister-in-law is really trying to poison her husband. Meanwhile, her assistant/secretary, Mma Makutsi, takes over both the agency and the garage and runs both with efficiency. While Precious is away, she is handed a case to solve, which relates to the book’s title. Technique and plot: As with the other two books, the prose is beautiful in its simplicity, even po...

Full title: The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favourite Crustacean Genre: Non-fiction, popular science (marine biology, anthropology) Year of publication: 2004 Setting & time: Mostly in Maine, USA; 1970s to 1990s This is a fascinating book, full of weird and wonderful details and discoveries about the life of the Maine lobster. But it isn’t just about lobster biology, it’s also about the people who study the lobsters and the people whose livelihoods depend on catching lobsters. Corson has cleverly woven together these three narrative threads into one very readable and absorbing book. He spent a couple of years working as a lobsterman in Maine and conducted interviews with lobstermen and scientists and thoroughly researched his subject, and it shows. There is a lot of detail, but Corson manages to deliver all those fascinating facts and tit-bits of information in a remarkably readable manner. He also manages to kee...

Originally published in October 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Anthony Bourdain Year published: 2001 Pages: 274 Genre: Travel, food Where got: Public library I’ve wanted to see the TV series ever since I read about it on a cooking website, but for now I will have to make do with the book. This is the story of Bourdain’s round-the-world journey in search of interesting food and eating situations. This was first just supposed to be a travel-foodie book, but then Television got involved, and he ended up traveling around with a TV crew in tow. Some of the visits yielded plenty of delicious food, like the visit to The French Laundry in California, others were nostalgic and unfulfilling like the trip to France, and still others pointless, like the journey to Pailin in Cambodia. The dining experiences were sometimes exotic, often delicious, at other times scary or just horrible. Some brought the intrepid chef face to face with his food, still on the hoof, or swimm...

Originally published in July 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Alexander McCall Smith Year published: 2002 Genre: Literature, detective story Where got: Public library The story: The agency has got some competition and Mma Ramotswe and her assistant/secretary Mma Makutsi are both worried about the future of the business. In order to make some extra money for herself, Mma Makutsi starts the business the book takes its title from, giving evening classes in typing to men, and one of her students falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe takes a case investigating whether a husband is cheating on his wife, and makes a disturbing discovery. Another client asks her to track down some people he hasn’t seen for about 20 years, so he can make restitution for things he did to them. Both cases present their own unique difficulties, but with her common sense and philosophical way of looking at things, Mma Ramotswe solves both cases to the satisfaction of all involved (ex...

Icelandic title: Brekkukotsannáll (Literally “Annals of Brekkukot”)   Genre : Literary fiction, historical Year of publication : 1957 Setting & time : Reykjavik area, Iceland; beginning of the 20th century. This novel by Iceland's only Nobel prize-winner, the first he published after winning the prize, boasts what is the most memorable opening sentence I have ever read in a novel: "A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father." Álfgrímur (the narrator of the story) is a young boy abandoned by his mother and raised by his foster-grandparents at Brekkukot, a small house in what is now nearly the center of Reykjavik but was, at the time of the story, one of a small cluster of buildings separate from the commercial and administrative center of town. The house is a haven for people who are down on their luck and acts as a sort of social center for the community and a counterpoint for the ...

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Neil Gaiman Year published: 2002 Genre: Horror, thriller, children’s Where got: Public library The story: One day, Coraline Jones opens a locked door inside her parent’s apartment and enters a world where she has another, oddly different, set of parents waiting for her. At first it’s wonderful, but it quickly becomes apparent that her other mother has no intention of letting her go. Coraline must use all her ingenuity and imagination to free the other children that have been trapped in there and rescue her real parents from this strange world and its evil ruler. Technique and plot: Wonderfully written in the flowing lyrical style that made Stardust such a joy to read. The story is simple but good and everything is very matter-of-fact, which is why the dark subject matter never becomes too scary. Coraline is a very practical child, unlike the very silly Alice from Alice in Wonderland, to which this ...

I decided to review this book even if I didn’t read it in January because, frankly, I haven’t been to the library all month and it suddenly dawned on me that I only have 3 days left to do a Buchmesse review for January. Genre : Generational novel Year of publication : 1983 Setting and time : Reykjavík, 1940s to 1960s English title, translator and year of publication : Devil's Island ; David MacDuff and Magnus Magnusson; 1999 German title, translator and year of publication : Die Teufelsinsel ; Marita Bergsson; 1997 This story covers, in realistic detail, a couple of decades in the life of an Icelandic working-class family in the years following the Second World War. Shortly after the end of the war they settle in a house in the middle of a neighbourhood of Nissen huts left behind when the American occupation ended. These neighbourhoods were seen as slums, but they were a much-needed solution to a housing problem caused by the hundreds of people who left their homes in the...

This is a triple challenge book for me: A Top Mystery, a TBR book and a What’s in a Name read. I can now strike out the “size” title in the last one. Genre: Hardboiled detective story Year of publication: 1939 Setting & time: The Los Angeles area, USA; contemporary Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by elderly General Sternwood to look into a blackmail attempt, but more may be at stake. The General’s older daughter thinks he has been hired to find her husband, who has been missing for several weeks, and the younger daughter wants to have some fun with him and will not take ‘no’ for an answer. Before long, Marlowe has uncovered some criminal goings-on, including not only blackmail, but also gambling, illegal pornography and murder. Raymond Chandler was a master storyteller, and also had a way with words and poetic and startling turns of phrase pop up from time to time, usually when Marlowe is contemplating things. Characterisations are simple but just escape being...

Originally published in February 2005, in 2 parts. Book 51 in my first 52 books challenge. Slightly edited. Author and illustrator: Maryjo Koch Year published: 1998 Pages: Not numbered Genre: Art, nature study Where got: Bookstore I first came across Maryjo Koch’s nature study books on a visit to the USA. All four books, Bird Egg Feather Nest , Seed Leaf Flower Fruit , Pond Lake River Sea , and Dragonfly Beetle Butterfly Bee were available, but I had already spent all my shopping money on Christmas presents and decided to put them on my whish list and buy them later. Sadly, since then they have all gone out of print, which is why I was happy to find Seed Leaf Flower Fruit and Bird Egg Feather Nest at a second-hand store recently, in near perfect condition and at a great price. I bought them both. I had to flip a coin to decide which one I would review here. I hope I will be able to get my hands on the other two before too long. They come up occasionally in auctions on...

This was my third Chunkster Challenge read, the one for November, but for technical reasons (i.e. it took me 2 days to write the review) I was unable to post it until today. My final book in the challenge will be The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which is incidentally also a Top Mysteries Challenge book. Original French title : Les Trois Mousquetaires Genre : Adventure, historical novel Year of publication : 1844 Setting & time : France and England, 1625-28 Translated into English by : William Barrow (1846) Page count : 576 The edition I read is one of the earliest English translations of this classic story. According to Wikipedia, this edition, which seems to have stayed in print all this time is “fairly faithful to the original” with the exception that “all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality had been removed to conform to 19th-century English standards”. This has made me curious to read a modern, unexpurgated version, but that will hav...

Genre: Fantasy, alternative reality Year of publication: 2004 Setting & time: England (mostly), Spain, Italy; Early 19th century Mr. Norrell, a gentleman magician - the first to do genuine magic is several centuries - proves that magic has not disappeared from England and offers his assistance to the government in the fight against Napoleon. He is a very selfish man and in order to make sure no-one else can compete with him, he buys all the books on magic he can find and collects them in his well-guarded library, and prevents others from trying to do or learn magic. When another gentleman magician, Jonathan Strange, appears on the scene, Norrell is at first hostile, but eventually he accepts the young man as his apprentice. But that is only the beginning … At a whopping 845 pages, this is the longest book I have read in quite a while, but unlike some other long books I have read (e.g. The Historian ) it would have been very difficult to prune anything from it. The narrative...

My thoughts about this book are rather scattered and what I have written below might sound more like notes for an essay, but I want to say something about it, so please excuse the rambling. Genre: Psychological/gothic horror Year of publication: 1962 Setting & time: New England, USA, mid-20th century While I have labelled this a psychological/gothic horror novel, it is not entirely true, but this is a book that is hard to label. It is psychological and it is gothic, but a psychological and gothic What? It’s hardly a thriller because most of the action is internal (although there are some thrilling moments, especially during the climax), and it’s hardly a horror, although after a certain point in the story one is constantly expecting something of the kind, and it isn’t melodramatic enough to be called a sensational novel, although it draws on all of those genres. It is, in a way, a crime novel, and in fact I wouldn’t hesitate to put it on a list of some of the best of that ...

Originally published in October 2004, in 2 parts. Book 33 in my first 52 books challenge. Cover and illustrations by Edward Gorey A lot of people are familiar with Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats only through the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats . Many probably don’t even know these delightful verses existed long before Cats was composed. Ironically enough, the most famous song from the musical is not in the book: “Memory” was apparently based on some notes Eliot had written for more cat verses that were never published. As far as I know, these verses were originally written for the children of some friends of Eliot’s. They are often dismissed as being trivial and simplistic, especially in comparison with the sombre verses of The Wasteland . To tell the truth, I have never much liked The Wasteland , even if I did manage to get an ‘excellent’ for my smarmy essay about it in a modern literature class I took when studying for my B.A. degree in English. I much preferred Th...

Originally published in September 2004, in 2 parts. Book 31 in my first 52 books challenge. Author: Luis Sepúlveda Original title: Un viejo que leía historias de amor Translator: Peter Bush Year published: 1989, 2002 (translation) Pages: 128 Genre: Literature Where got: Any Amount of Books, London (second-hand bookshop) The Story: All Antonio José Bolívar Proaño wants to do is to live his life quietly, read the love stories the itinerant dentist brings him twice a year, and be left alone. Then a hunter is stupid enough to kill some baby ocelots (a protected species) and the enraged mother ocelot begins killing every human she can find. The village is threatened, and the mayor sends out a search party, forcing Antonio to come along. Antonio is saddened by the whole situation, but has no choice but to follow orders and hunt the creature down. Translation, technique and plot: The translation is well done and the story has no translation flavour. The narrative has a...

Originally published in September 2004, in 2 parts. Book 30 in my first 52 books challenge. Slightly edited for clarity. Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery Year published: 1908 Pages: 280 Genre: Literature, classic, coming of age story Where got: Amazon.co.uk I was quite young when I discovered L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books. The first four books were translated into Icelandic a long time ago and my mother had all of them. I loved reading about Anne’s escapades and her growing up on Prince Edward Island. I was only allowed to read the first three books as a child, as my mother considered the subject matter of the fourth book to be too serious and beyond my childish understanding. I only got to read that book when I was in my teens and found it to be rather melodramatic. This will be the first time I read any of the books in the original English, and it will be interesting to see how it compares with the translated text. In the past, some Icelandic translators and/or publishers...

This ended up being my South-American book in the Global Reading Challenge – I seem to have gone off Captain Pantoja for the time being. Certain parts of the review may contain SPOILERS, so consider yourself warned. Genre: Literary novel Year of publication: 1948 Setting & time: Buenos Aires, Argentina; contemporary This book is set up as the first-person confession of a criminal, or perhaps rather a description of the events that led up to the narrator’s murder of his lover. Celebrated painter Juan Pablo Castel spots a woman at an exhibition of his paintings, and it seems to him that by focusing on a minor detail in one of the paintings she has shown herself to understand him in a way that no-one else does. He becomes obsessed with finding her and getting to know her, and when he finally does, they enter into a stormy, obsessive and abusive relationship that ends in murder. The narrator, Castel, gives an account of his development from being a rather lonely misanthro...

Originally published in July 2004, in 2 parts. Book 26 in my first 52 books challenge. Author: Stella Gibbons Year published: 1932 Pages: 240 Genre: Parody Where got: Public library This is a book I have wanted to read for a long time, but it always seemed to be checked out of the library even though the database system said it was available. I was beginning to think it had been stolen from the library and I would have to buy a copy when I finally found it where someone, probably a browsing library patron, had put it on the wrong shelf. The Story: When Flora Poste is orphaned at age 19 and left with only 100 pounds per annum to support herself and objecting to have to work for a living, she decides to go and live with family and sponge off them. Arriving at miserable and gloomy Cold Comfort Farm, the abode of her relatives, the Starkadders, she sees that much needs to be done. The family are living under the autocratic rule of Aunt Ada Doom, who once saw something nas...

Genre: Memoir Year of publication: 1959 No. in series: 1 of 3 Setting & time: The Cotsworlds, England, 1910’s and 20’s In this book, Lee lovingly describes his early life in the small village of Slad, in thematic chapters that cover different aspects of his childhood and upbringing. This memoir had been languishing in one of my TBR bookcases for much too long when I finally decided to read it. It had been repeatedly recommended to me by people who knew I liked to read biographies, and I would like to thank them for it, because in it I have found a new addition to my “perennial reads” list. This is a wonderful and often funny account of a somewhat unconventional upbringing in a small village that in many ways seems to have been like a close-knit family. It is beautifully written and often poetic, but still always remains down to earth. It’s sweetly nostalgic and can with some justification be called a prose-poem in remembrance of a simpler time gone by. It was fortuna...