Reading in Reykjavík

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 last week. -- I had to take two sick days in the middle of the week and missed my day hike on the weekend because I didn't want to risk having a relapse, so I had plenty of time to read and finished four books during those two days and one more during the weekend. I was still heartily glad to stop reading and return to work on Friday. Being at home on weekdays is no fun when you can't go out and are feeling miserable. The books were: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L Howard. This book answered a question I asked myself when I first read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes : Where do diabolical carnivals come from in the first place? I liked it so much that I ordered a c...

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 last week . -- I finished three books last week, a travelogue and two novels. While the first two books could hardly be more different in terms of content, they do have two things in common: a poetic quality and a melancholy tone. Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron. The author revisited his old haunts from two previous books and followed one of the many trade routes that are collectively referred to as the Silk Road, following it from Xian in China to Antakya in Turkey. He blends in snippets of history, and imagines conversations with a long-dead Silk Road trader who points out to him the futility of his quest - if he indeed has one, because it is never explicitly stated why he set out to trace ...

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 last week. -- I have only finished one book in the last week: Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch.  I began reading it weeks ago, but something interfered and I set it aside. Then I had a hankering after something funny and fantastical, and so I sat down and finished this humorous urban fantasy. There wasn't nearly as much mayhem and destruction as in the first book in the series, Rivers of London , but the author continues to develop characters from the previous book. The author left one part of the plot unresolved and it looks like it will continue on into the next book. I only hope this doesn't become an endless series in which the villain is always the same Moriarty-like mastermind. I expe...

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 last week. -- I didn't read much last week - didn't feel like making a push to finish any of the books I have been reading - but did finish one I have been steadily reading over the last couple of years: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die . This monster of a book is more than 900 pages long and I have been reading it bit by bit in the loo. It's funny (or perhaps not) that when I started it I was going "I've read that!" almost every time I turned a page, but after the 1920s these silent exclamations got fewer and fewer as I got closer to my own time, and I had only read a handful of the books published after 1990, although I own copies of several more that I plan to read when...

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 last week. -- The weather in Reykjavik has been annoying lately. There have been such temperature swings that I never know how to dress for my walk to work in the mornings. At the beginning of last week it was balmy and sweet for a couple of days, with mildly frosty nights and calm, clear days and warm for the time of year. I could swear I smelled spring in the air on Monday. Then it snowed. And then it rained. Last night it snowed again, but the rain is already washing the snow away and we are expecting three storms to hit during the week, one after the other. I'm getting ready to curl up on the sofa with a good book. I finished three books last week, two new reads and one partial reread....

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 last week. -- As for myself, I reread two books last week, and finished one first time read. The rereads were: Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart & Lani Diane Rich. I needed a bit of zany fantasy and this fit the bill perfectly. Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie. A nice bit of romantic suspense. The first time read was Marco Polo's Silk Road: The Art of the Journey . I'll say nothing about it for now, as I intend to review it. As for other activities, I continued to weight-lift and then went on a long hike yesterday with my hiking group. This was a good 18 km in length, starting out on trails and then going on to trackless, rougher terrain alternating between beaches...

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. --   I didn't do a whole lot of reading in the last week. I decided to focus on crafts and listen to podcasts and was quite productive. Through the week I worked on an adult-sized Call the Midwife blanket . During the weekend I took a break from the monotony of the blanket and made two amigurumi toys. These are all yarn buster projects - I own a lot of yarn and decided it was time I used some of it.   I did finish a couple of books: Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie was a reread. This is a 20th century reimagining of The Turn of the Screw , or perhaps it's about what happened after the house was disassembled and then rebuilt in Ohio. Here's the author's explanation . ...

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. -- I have only finished two books in the last week. The time that would have been spent reading or listening to a couple of other books I instead used to listen to a number of podcasts. In the last few months I have been exploring the BBC website and finding podcasts to listen to and I have discovered some that I like and others I am ready to like but haven't listened to enough to decide if I do. Among the former are iPM , a program where listeners are interviewed, often revealing extraordinary stories; More or Less , where statistics are discussed and sometimes set right; Woman's Hour , a long-running program for women where everything and anything of interest to women is discussed; an...

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. -- The reading year began well for me. I have finished three books so far, which is considerably fewer than the same time last year, but they were good books. First came Thee Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann. I found the idea of the story intriguing: a herd of sheep, a mixed bag of an old Irish heritage breed and some other breeds, some of them rescue animals, find their beloved shepherd dead in their pasture, a spade lodged in his abdomen. The humans around them don't seem too concerned or eager to investigate, so the sheep decide to solve the mystery themselves. There is a sequel, about what happens to the sheep after the case is solved. Then came Maigret and...

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. -- I was in Germany last Monday and didn't have time to finish a reading report before I left, so here's a double doze: The week before last I finished listening to Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie, audiobook read by Hugh Fraser. I'm quite sure I have not read this one before, and I think it's just become one of my favourite Poirots. Fortunately there were no foreign accents in this one, other than Poirot's (refer to my previous comments on the subject in my last reading report if you don't know what I'm talking about). This week I read quite a lot, but only finished two books. The first was Never the Bride by Paul Magrs. This is the first book in a...

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. -- I can hardly believe it's December already. It feels like summer was only yesterday, and now Christmas season is here. I'm caught in a time phenomenon where days pass very slowly, but weeks zip by. Before I know it, it will be April and I'll start preparing my VW mini-motorhome for my trip to Germany.  Plans for the trip itself are ongoing, although I am taking a short break from planning that trip and am instead getting ready to fly to Frankfurt with my mother to visit Christmas markets in Hessen and Baden-Württemberg later this week. We will be staying in Heidelberg. Last week the long-term weather forecast was for rain, but the forecast has changed and now it looks li...

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 reading last week:  Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann. Historical novel. I'm working on a review. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Fantasy police procedural, set in modern London. I'm working on a review. What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem by E.S. Turner. This is an informative account of life in service in England (and America) and a look at the upstairs-downstairs dichotomy.  Books I acquired last week: I will discuss them in more detail later in the week. Weather report:  We had the first frost in the Reykjavík area last week, with a little snow, which then melted and re-froze. The slippery pavemen...

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 reading last week:  I seem to be out of the reading slump and am reading at full pace. The trick seems to be to not hesitate when choosing the next book, and to get reading right away and read enough to get yourself hooked. (Or maybe I have just been lucky in my choices). I finished and reviewed (links lead to my reviews): Common Ground by Rob Cowen. Natural history and meditation on man's place within nature. Alice by Christina Henry. Fantasy. Dark spin-off of Alice in Wonderland . I finished and haven't reviewed:  The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. I may review this one, but in case I don't get round to it, it is a memoir of sorts about the US ...