Reading in Reykjavík

Full title: Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart Genre: Travel Subjects: Africa, the Congo river, Democratic Republic of the Congo, colonialism, history, adventure, exploitation, war. Reading challenge:   The 2016 Nonfiction Reading Challenge , hosted by The Introverted Reader Challenge tally : 3 books. “I was travelling through a country with more past than future, a place where the hands of the clock spin not forwards, but backwards.” This is the realisation that came to author Tim Butcher when he was about halfway through his foolhardy mission to follow the Congo river from it’s source all the way to the sea. Butcher had became fascinated with the Congo, especially the part played by Henry Morton Stanley in opening it up to European exploration and exploitation, and decided to follow Stanley’s route along the river as best he could. On the way he met all sorts of people: officials, both corrupt and otherwise, missionaries, aid workers and thei...

Full title:  Bon Appétit! Travels through France with knife, fork and corkscrew Genres: Food writing; travel writing Subjects: Food and eating, wine and drinking, festivals, France, the French, the Michelin guide  Reading challenge: The 2016 Nonfiction Reading Challenge , hosted by The Introverted Reader  Challenge tally : 2 books. I have previously reviewed two of Peter Mayle books, the ones with „Provence“ in the title, and I thoroughly enjoyed both. In this book, Mayle has abandoned the joys and frustrations of expatriate home-ownership in France and turned his attention to food, a subject that just happens to be quite as close to my heart as travelling.  He writes with skill and humour about food and drink (mostly wine) and about the relationship of the French with it. He pokes affectionate fun at the French tendency to turn into gastronomic know-it-alls in the presence of foreigners and self-confessed novices, and visits food and win...

Genre: Adventure memoir. Subjects:  History, mountain-climbing, self-discovery, fear, friendship, death, survival. Reading challenge: The 2016 Nonfiction Reading Challenge , hosted by The Introverted Reader Challenge tally : 1 book. I read Simpson‘s best-seller, Touching the Void , a couple of years ago and enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps „enjoyed“ is not the right word, rather I found it a thrilling and yes, touching, account of the ability of the human spirit to not give up when all hope seems lost. (There was also a lot of bloodymindedness involved). This book is written with the same stylistic skill as Touching the Void , but suffers somewhat from being more of a series of loosely interconnected accounts of separate climbing expeditions and adventures, ending with an attempt to scale the Eiger that would be end up being tinged with tragedy. The thread that holds the book together is Simpson‘s growing realisation of his mortality, the discovery that he doesn‘t rea...

I came to the realisation some time ago that I was slacking off in my reading. It's not that I have been reading any fewer books than usual, but that, given a choice, I have been going for the less demanding books: short rather than long, easy subjects over hard, entertainment over substance etc., like choosing dessert every time and ignoring the main course. Of course every reader needs the equivalent of dessert every now and then, but such books don't provide the mental nourishment and challenges that can be had from the literary equivalent of a main dish.  For example, I haven't read, or indeed touched, a science book in months, and looking at my reading log I find I have only read three non-fiction books this year. Of those, one is a collection of quotations and another a photography book. This is out of 117 books read so far, when non-fiction has usually been somewhere in the 12-15% range of my overall reading each year. Plus, I haven't read a single book,...