Reading in Reykjavík

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...

 What's in a Name challenge category : The letter X in the title. Author : Nick Bantock. Full title : Alexandria: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Unfolds . Genre : Fantasy. Published :2002 Have you read this book? Why not leave a comment to tell me your thoughts about it? This is going to be somewhat of an unusual review, as the book is the middle volume of a trilogy that tells a single story (and links to another trilogy), and I have not read the previous book. However, I enjoyed it anyway and it fits into the What's in a Name challenge category of a book with the letter X in the title. The Griffin and Sabine trilogy garnered critical acclaim and praise for originality of presentation, as well as bestseller status when it first came out, and the author went on to write The Morning Star trilogy, which continued the story with new protagonists, followed by a final, 7th book that was published last year. I got my hands on the first ...

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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...

Originally published in January 2005, in 2 parts. Book 49 in my first 52 books challenge. Story: Neil Gaiman Artwork: P. Craig Russell Year published: 2002 Pages: Not numbered Genre: Graphic novel Where got: Public library Have I mentioned that Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors? The first book I read by him was Stardust , a fairy tale that reminded me of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn . Earlier I had read Good Omens which he wrote in collaboration with Terry Pratchett, and loved it. It is, in fact, one of my perennial reads. Gaiman’s prose is very visual, and translates well into the graphic novel form (I would love to see American Gods made into a graphic novel). This appears to be a stand-alone short story. The Story: Three stories are told simultaneously: the framework story of the storyteller, telling the story of how he was once stuck in L.A. due to bad weather at his destination and met a (possibly) crazy old man who claimed to be and angel and ...

This one is Icelandic, a compilation of several previously published collections of single-panel cartoons by artist and playwright Hugleikur Dagsson . They are sometimes funny, generally shocking and always crude, both in execution and content. The humour is dark and cutting and there are absolutely no taboos. You might not want your kids to look at or read them, but for exposing society's fears and the sick and sordid things people will say and do to each other they are brilliant. The humour mostly comes from the style, which is child-like and crude, and when combined with the often sickening content it can make you smile or even laugh, in the same way that an old, low-tech splatter movie can - not because it's really funny but because it's so outrageously excessive and over the top that you don't know what else to do. Above all else, they should make you stop and think. Here is a h andful of his cartoons if you want to check them out. He has three books out in Engli...

... how one book sometimes leads me to the next. The cover artwork of Sarah Caudwell's The Sibyl in Her Grave reminded me of something, but the name of the cover artist (Virginia Norey) wasn't familiar. A couple of days after I started reading it I had an errand at the National Library, and took some time to browse. The browsing brought me to the aisle of art books, among which I noticed a whimsical spine with the hand-lettered word Amphigorey on it. It turned out to be the Edward Gorey book I mentioned earlier, and once I opened it, I realised that what the cover of The Sibyl in Her Grave reminded me of was Gorey's artwork . So I took it home to read, and have been enjoying Gorey's inky black humour between chapters of The Sibyl in Her Grave . I also brought home another volume of cartoons which are no less dark, although cruder than Gorey's both in execution and humour (more on that later).