Reading in Reykjavík

If you read this blog regularly you will know about my TBR challenge. (If you are a casual visitor: it's a challenge to reduce my out-of-control TBR Stack (it’s so big it deserves the capital letter) of books I own but haven’t read. I have now reached the updated 2011 goal of reducing it to 820 unread books, which is very good indeed, especially considering I started out with the goal of reducing it to 850 books. I am now going to raise the bar even further and set myself the goal to reduce the Stack by another 20 books so that by the end of the year I will “only” have 800 books in the TBR. As before, I plan to do this with a combination of culling and reading. In order to make things go a little faster, I am going, whenever I buy books, to read at least one of them right away, followed by an older TBR book. This means that at least one new book from every batch bought never makes it into the Stack and every time I buy books the Stack gets reduced by one older book. I have tried...

I first heard of this useful website through the July issue of the Discworld Monthly e-newsletter. Book Drum offers a way for readers to read or contribute "Profiles" of books. These consist of several features, including a summary, setting information, glossary, author information and reviews. The most exciting feature is the "Bookmarks". This is a collection of multi-media annotations for the book, utilising text, photos, maps, and even music, sounds and videos to explain and clarify the text. As of yet they have fewer than 100 Profiles posted, but thanks to a dedicated group of users you can expect it to grow continuously. Anyone can register and contribute a profile, and once a profile is published, other users can add to it. So, Dear Reader, do pay it a visit. Read it and spread the word, even register and add a profile. I plan to register myself and test how easily the profiles can be posted and added to. Expect a review when I have become fully acquainted w...

I have been a bit haphazard about adding labels to my blog posts and have sometimes been using two or even more similar labels (often one in the singular and another in the plural) where one would do, so I decided to clean up the labels to make them easier to navigate, and to add missing labels to the older posts. In order to not have too many labels, I decided to only put author names as labels when I have posted more than once about a particular author, so I have removed all authors with only a single label, and put "Author:" in front of the others so that they all appear together in the label list, like I did from the start with locations. I am also considering doing this for the type of mystery and the type of detective, to make them easier to find. I also removed all book titles from the labels, so that if you want to find multiple posts for the same book, you must now either use the search function or click the author label. This is a work in progress, so any changes wi...

I read. This is no secret, and I would hardly be running a reading blog if I didn’t, but there’s more to my reading than just reading one book after another. I read multiple books at a time. This may just be pure biblio-gluttony on my behalf, but I like to think it’s simply because for me books are like food, and I like variety in my reading fare just as I do in my culinary diet. When I go to a lunch buffet, I don’t restrict myself to just one dish – I try to sample as many as I can, reject some and go for seconds of others. Since I have a TBR stack of nearly 900 books, a collection of over 1500 possible rereads and a small but beguiling pile of library books by my bedside, I look upon these books much as I do a buffet. A very large buffet, to be sure, but one I know I can make it through with steady effort. I used to be a ‘one book at a time’ girl, but when I started secondary school this became impossible. Besides all the non-literature subjects like history and mathematics, by the t...

I have a project I have been thinking about for some time. Years ago, long before I exchanged my Icelandic food website for a blog, I translated some folk tales about the island of Drangey into English and put them up on an auxiliary website, accompanied by photos. I got some enthusiastic responses, but due to my freelance work I didn’t have the time to develop the idea further, so I filed away the idea. Now I finally have both time and inclination to put this idea into action. Numerous Icelanders have collected folk and fairy tales over the centuries so the resources are basically bottomless, meaning this could become a long-term project. I really don’t want to add yet another blog to my already too large repertoire, so I will post them on one of my existing blogs. To begin with, the format will be one story, either a folk tale or fairy tale (or possibly even an urban legend) per week, accompanied whenever possible by photos or illustrations found in the public domain or licensed as ...

Please, if you can answer me this, I would appreciate it. Is there a Nora Roberts novel in which she uses neither the word "ravage" or the word "plunder" in the context of kissing?

It seems everyone is offering Christmas gift suggestions for those without a clue as what to give their loved ones...and here is another one: The obvious thing to give a book lover for Christmas is a book (or two). However, if you don’t know the person’s reading tastes well enough or are unfamiliar with which books they already own and you feel that book tokens or a book store gift certificate is not personal enough, here are some suggestions. First the practical ones: a reading light, either a clip-on battery-operated travel model or one they can put on a desk or stand on the floor. a book stand or book holder. They come in different shapes and sizes, from big stands made for reading in bed to small travel models designed to hold books open. a reading pillow. The luxury model looks like the back and armrests of a comfy chair, while the cheaper versions look sort of like breastfeeding pillows. book marks. personalised book plates. a book case. removable book covers to protect the book...

This post was inspired by a posting on a reading board I occasionally visit. The original poster called for the members to nominate 10 books they would take with them for a year’s stay on a desert island. All survival necessities would be taken care of, giving you plenty of time to read. In addition to 10 self-chosen books, we could take the collected works of William Shakespeare and the Bible or another religious book. Shakespeare was made mandatory in that particular challenge, which is not surprising as the board is frequented mostly by native speakers of English. Since I am not a native speaker of English and Shakespeare has not had much influence on my native literature, I nominate instead the equivalent in Icelandic literature: The Sagas. As to a religious book, I would choose the Mahabaratha. I chose a blend of old favourites and books I have wanted to read but not got around to. I have changed the list a bit from what I posted to the board, as I have had some time to mull it ov...

Link to part 1 .    How I organise my own library: I am not the kind of person who needs to have everything perfectly organised – just organised enough to be able to find things fairly quickly without having to refer to a catalogue or index, and my system reflects that. This is a system I arrived at after several moves which I used as opportunities to try out different arrangements, since I had to take the books down from the shelves anyway. Books I am reading are strewn all over the house, several in each room. Those I think I have been reading for too long and want to finish soon reside on top of the back of the living-room sofa. Another pile sits on one of the kitchen chairs, well out of splattering range of the stove but within an arm’s reach of the table. Cookbooks and food reference books belong in the kitchen. Food history, food travel books, essay and article collections and foodie memoirs, however, go with the rest of the history, travel and biography books u...