Reading in Reykjavík

I love trivia, which is why I, while I still watched TV on a regular basis, enjoyed watching quiz shows. QI was no exception. For those who don't know what QI is and are loath to click on the link or don't trust Wikipedia, QI is a comedy quiz show on BBC television in which two teams of three comedians each are quizzed by a seventh comedian. Stephen Fry was its first presenter and later Sandi Toksvig, herself a regular panellist in the show, took over. The aim of the game is fun and this spin-off book gets its title from one of the rounds of the show: General Ignorance, which makes fun of the more common general knowledge round of other quiz shows. The questions in that round are ones that seem easy, as most people think they know the answer to them, but those "everybody knows" answers are in fact wrong, so the aim is really to set people straight in an entertaining way. Although it is tempting, I don't think I will say why I no longer enjoy watching QI, b...

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

- My first introduction to the weird and wonderful world of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater , which I read as a teenager and can remember little about. Since Mr. Rosewater is mentioned in Slaughterhouse-Five , I really should go back and read it again, in English this time around. - I have since read Welcome to the Money House , Deadeye Dick and Cat's Cradle , and have Hocus Pocus and The Sirens of Titan on my TBR list. Cat's Cradle is the one that affected me the most and is the best apocalyptic novel I have read. -It was fun coming back to Vonnegut's sometimes biting humour and revisiting places (Ilium) and characters from other books (Eliot Rosewater, Kilgore Trout). - The mixture of realism and fantasy in this novel makes for an interesting and sometimes shocking juxtaposition, as protagonist Billy Pilgrim slides between different eras of his life, from war-torn Germany near the end of World War II, to different parts of his marriage and ...

As the title suggests, this is a collection of erotica - paintings and drawings to be precise. The title is misleading - the imagery is nearly all of European or North American origin and almost exclusively pertains to heterosexual sexual acts by white people. Nothing universal about that. I would also call the "erotica" in the title misleading, as a lot of the imagery is, to my mind, pornographic rather than erotic. I know the two terms are used interchangeably by some and that other's definitions of them differ, but I associate erotica with beauty and sensuality and often also playfulness, being more suggestive than directly, in-your-face sexual. Erotica arouses one's sense of beauty as well as being sexually arousing, while porn has a cruder aesthetic and more directly appeals to the sexual appetite and shows sexual acts directly, leaving little to the imagination instead of giving the viewer leeway to imagine things Now, porn has its place just like erotic...

I'm only counting this as half a book, as it's really a short story (there is also a novel, but I haven't read that). The only reason I'm writing about it at all is that it's such a poignant, though-provoking story. Actually, this isn't going to be a review, let alone a reading journal entry, because I tried to write down some non-spoilery reading thoughts about this story, and ended up with what amounted to a very spoilery summary, so rather than ruin the story for someone, I simply will leave off here with two questions: I remember watching, long ago, a movie or TV show episode about a similar experiment, but one that ends quite differently, with the Charlie-esque character going insane, escaping his body and going digital. If anyone remember such a movie/TV show, I would like to know the title of it. Note that I may be mashing up two different films here, so vague is my memory of this. Secondly, if you have read both the novel and the short story: does ...

Full title: Misadventure in the Middle-East - Travels as Tramp, Artist and Spy I am beginning to notice a pattern in the titles of travelogues. First comes a catchy, preferably playfully humorous and often alliterative main title, preferably punning on the title of a book, song or movie. Some examples include the above, as well as The Wrong Way Home, Vroom With a View, On a Hoof and a P rayer and Around India in 80 Trains . Then comes a sub-title meant to entice the potential reader to pick up the book. this one is actually unusual in being shorter then the main title, but just witness the sub-title of the previous book I wrote about: Cape Town to Cairo by Any Means Possible . Mind you, I'm not complaining, I just think it's funny that I never noticed this before, because when I start thinking about it, I have read so many travelogues with this kind of title. But let's not get lost in asides - these were supposed to be reading notes for Misadventure in the Middle-Ea...

Full title : Swahili for the Broken-Hearted - Cape Town to Cairo by Any Means Possible I read two of Peter Moore's travelogues last year. The first, Vroom With a View: In search of Italy's dolce vita on a '61 Vespa , I read as preparation for a trip I took to Italy in September of that year, and the second, The Wrong Way Home - London to Sidney the Hard Way , I read as a consequence of enjoying the first. Both were fun reads and I gave both the same 3,5 stars in my reading log, although I seem to recall feeling that there was a little bit too much drinking in The Wrong Way Home for my taste. In Swahili for the Broken-Hearted , Moore travels overland up the coast of east Africa from Cape Town to Cairo, mainly on public transport and by catching rides. He visits some of the obligatory tourist places on the way, like Victoria Falls and Zanzibar, and stays in accommodations ranging from fairly luxurious lodges to backpacker hostels to cheap flops; meeting a variety of peo...