Reading in Reykjavík

Here are the final books: Comments: Gnomes : This is a book of lore and natural history and should sit nicely on the shelf with my other illustrated guides to the world of folktales and mythology, e.g. The Flight of Dragons and my bestiary of Icelandic folk-tale monsters. The Norman Rockwell Treasury : I love Rockwell's work but when I first saw this book in a bookshop, I was pretty much broke and couldn't afford to buy it, so finding a copy was lucky. The Far Side Gallery : I have volumes 2, 3 and 4, but I don't think I have this one. The guide book is yet another addition to the guidebook collection. Trees and Fungi are natural history guides.  The Steampunk Gazette is a guide to all things steampunk. As I mentioned in the first post in this series, I have been wanting to delve into this sub-genre of science-fiction, and what better place to start than with a guide? That's it! (for now).

The next batch is even more mixed. These are mostly second-hand, although I suspect some have hardly been read. Comments: The Amulet of Samarkand : I have been a lifelong reader of fantasy and have had my eye on the Bartimaeus books for some time, so finding one second hand was a piece of good fortune.   The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements : I borrowed this from a library and read it a couple of years ago and thought it would be nice to own a copy, and how I do. The 10 Best of Everything : The subtitle, An ultimate Guide for Travelers , should tell you why I bought it. Not that I ever plan my own travels around such guides, but I like to read them.  When You are Engulfed in Flames : David Sedaris is funny. Nuff said. The Ocean at the End of the Lane : This is the token new book. Neil Gaiman's books have been a hit or miss for me, but this one sounds good. I am pretty sure...

It would be easy to think, based on the lack of "look at the books I bought!" posts here lately, that I have finally been able to curb my book-buying mania, but no - I have just been too lazy to photograph my acquisitions. Here are the books I have bought since the last time I posted a Book Haul report: All books were bought second hand. Here we have a mixed bag: A travel book, a biography, a light-hearted popular sociology book, a memoir, a steampunk fantasy and three books about philosophy. Comments: The Weekenders and Jane Austen belong to two genres that have always been favourites of mine: travel and biography. Very British Problems should be an interesting follow-up to the anthropology book I am currently reading, Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox. My Family and Other Animals is a perennial favourite of mine, and it was nice to be able to get a fresh copy of it, since my old trade paperback edition is falling ...

Happy New Year!  These are the rest of my November and December book haul: First photo: I bought the Billy Connolly book because I saw an episode of the TV series some years ago and liked it. The Bro Code is a rescue book. I was never regular watcher of How I Met Your Mother, but have enjoyed the few episodes I have seen, and decided this might be interesting. A Light in the Attic I got because I have enjoyed Shel Silverstein's song lyrics and drawings and have hear good things about his poetry. Feathered Friends is a colouring book my mother gave me. I have a fair number of adult colouring books that I use as inspiration for my own art and this was a nice addition to the collection. Dr. Mütter's Marvels is the kind of intimate history book that I love to read, and   The Science of Discworld IV is the final book I needed to complete my collection of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. It's the only new book among those shown. Second photo: Being...

Here are the books I bought in the last week of November and the first three weeks of December.  I've already posted the books I got for Christmas , but here are the rest - well, part of them anyway. I decided to break this up into two posts because there are so many books. First photo: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer is one I decided I wanted to read when I first heard of it, but then  never got round to doing it.   The Love Child and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter both looked intriguing, for vastly different reasons.   The Second Book of General Ignorance I got because I have the first and I'm a fan of QI.   Seaworthy I got because I love Linda Greenlaw's writing, and   The Complete Stories of Dorothy L. Sayers because I love her writing as well.  Only Greenlaw's book is new. The rest are second hand, although some of them look like they have never been read. Second photo: The books in both photos below are all second hand, a...

I usually get at least one book for Christmas, and this year I got four, so it was a good book Christmas. My brother got me the Terry Pratchett Diary and The Turnip Princess .  I am reading the latter and enjoying it very much. The man who collected these tales, Franz Xavier von Schönwerth, was a contemporary of the Grimm brothers, but unlike them, he seems to have only given the tales he collected a minimal editing. They are therefore raw and feel much more "real" than the tales the Grimms published, which were refined and polished before publication. They therefore remind me very much of the Icelandic "ævintýri" ( märchen ) collected by my favourite folk-tale collectors, Ólafur Davíðsson and Jón Árnason. Der schönster Ort der Welt is a book of essays by German-speaking booksellers. The title translates as "The most beautiful place in the world". It was a Christmas resent from myself to myself. It remains to be seen how do at reading it, since the o...

I acquired four books last week. Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities was written by Ian Stewart, who I am familiar with as one of the co-authors of The Science of Discworld books, and it will be interesting to read this as I have been wanting to study maths again. I had my interest and joy in maths severely maimed by bad teachers when I was a teenager and I have always wanted to go back and study maths without the pressure of having to get passing grades. Rivers of London is an entertaining urban fantasy police procedural. I will post a review tomorrow. I was very happy to get my hands on a lovely, illustrated hardcover edition of Mark Twain's Diaries of Adam & Eve . I've already read both diaries, but it will not hurt to read them again in such a lovely book. Why Not? looks like a nice loo book - I am beginning to see an end to my current toilet book ( 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die ) and need something totally different to ...

I acquired 4 books in the week before last: 3 non-fiction books and one novel, and have already read two of them. The big red book is a richly illustrated history of the Vikings . It was fist published back in the 1960s, so I expect some more stuff has come to light since it was written, but it's a gloriously beautiful book worth owning. Common Grounds is a book on the natural history of a small area of land in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Click on the link to read my review.   Alice is about what might have happened to Alice after her adventures in Wonderland.  Clink the link to read my review.   The Devil in the White City is another history book.I expect I will read it soon, as it has been on my TBR list for several years. Then I acquired 12 books last week and have already read 2 of them and started reading a third. First photo: The book in the top left corner is titled Deutschland , and is a photo book about Germany. It was published in 196...

As I said in my Monday post, I won this book in a prize drawing, or rather, I won 12$ towards buying a book, and I chose this one. The reason for choosing it is simple: I own a VW campervan/motorhome myself, although mine is a 2014 VW Caddy Maxi and not a classic Transporter like the cars celebrated in this book. The classic Transporters are called "rúgbrauð" in Icelandic, which means "rye bread" and probably comes from them being shaped and proportioned like a loaf of said bread. I haven't had a chance to read the book yet - I barely managed to leaf through it before my mother commandeered it, but what I saw looked interesting. The other books I acquired last week were all second hand: The Reader's Digest Book of Handicrafts or something like it exists in at least three editions I know of and I seem to recall they all have different titles but much of the content in common. I have borrowed them from various friends and relatives over the year...

I bought two children's books: Vampireology and  Dragonology by Dugald Steer, in Icelandic translations. These are gorgeous books and I was happy to find them cheap and in good second-hand condition (although the block is beginning to come loose from  the spine on Dragonology , but I can fix that with my bookbinding knowledge). I love books like this: full of images and maps and stuff like envelopes and flaps and hidden text. It's one of the reasons why I'm dithering about culling the Griffin and Sabine books from my collection. Once I have read them they will be going on the shelf where I keep books I draw inspiration from when I'm drawing. Then I got a bunch of guide books and one cultural trivia book: A guide to the Sanssouci palace and gardens in Potsdam, which is one of the stops on my projected tour of Germany next spring. A guide to Bamberg, another stop on that trip. A guide to Hong Kong. A guide to Trier, which is one of my possible stops on t...

I only bought 2 books last week and was sent one brand-spanking new one. Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate by Felicity Lawrence. This looks both interesting and worrying. It was written about the situation in Britain but may well reflect on Iceland as well, as we operate under the same EU food regulations as Britain did at the time the book was written. I have read a couple of chapters and it is interesting and heartbreaking at the same time, as part of the system she investigated included some rather terrible treatment of itinerant workers, some of whom are illegal immigrants. Review from The Guardian . Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by John Fletcher. This is a literary novel that won the Prix Goucourt in 2009. It was the title that caught my attention, and as I had recently read two non-fiction books about Central Africa I had the continent on my mind. This book, when I get round to reading it, will also fill in ...

I already posted a photo of the books I acquired last week, but here I discuss them in more detail. Here is the stack: Nearly half of these are rescue books, i.e. books gleaned from the freebie bin at one of the charity shops I regularly visit. From the bottom they are no. 1, 2, 3, 6 and 12. The rest I got second-hand from two other charity shops. From the top down the books are: Fairies at Work and Play by Geoffrey Hodson. I thought I was picking up a book of fairy tales, but this turned out to be something more remarkable: Descriptions of beings, classed for convenience under the heading of "fairies", observed by the author and published by the Theosophical Publishing House. Wikipedia reveals that the author was a Theosophist who wrote extensively about Theosophy and clairvoyance. Depending on whether you believe in fairies or not, this is either a natural history of fairies and other nature spirits, or a marvellous fantasy. Hope Is the Last to Die: A Coming ...

Note: I did not intend to buy any books last week, but I came across so many interesting ones that I broke the promise and as a result my TBR stack has once again swelled to over 800 books. Oh, well, at least they were cheap. I had read two, or possibly three, of them before. I read a lot af Agatha Christie novels in my teens and I can't be sure if I have read some of them until I reread them, and sometimes not even then. They are Hickory Dickory Dock, The Body in the Library and Postern of Fate . I bought them because it suddenly occurred to me that I would quite like to own all of her mystery novels. I'm pretty sure I haven't read Death in the Clouds before, and I know I haven't read Death Comes as the End , which I intend to remedy soon, since it seems to be on a number of lists of Christie's best novels. As for the rest: I am just about ready to forgive Peter Ackroyd for the bloated mess that was the second half of London: The Biography , and The Cle...

I completely forgot I had intended to post this yesterday, so here it is today. I wanted to say a little bit about these books and why I bought them. In future, I think I might join the Stacking the Shelve s meme, but for now I'm just posting this without any fanfare.   Fables : When you come across the first two volumes of something like this, second hand and at 70% discount from the already low second-hand price, you go for it (even without the discount). I am familiar with Bill Willingham's work from The Sandman Presents (I even have a couple of the books) and am looking forward to reading these. Bone : I have heard a lot of good things about Bone and decided to sample it by reading this book. However, it's volume 8 of 9 and I hope I will not spoil the story for myself by reading it, so maybe I'll get the rest from the library and read them in the right order. Human Disastrophism : I have one other Love and Rockets book, a collection of Locas stories by Jai...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date. Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week . Book I started reading last week but haven't finished: What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem by E. S. Turner. Still reading (was planning to finish on the weekend, but accidentally left it at work): Show Me the Magic: Travels Round Benin by Taxi by Annie Caulfield. Reading challenge progress: Unchanged from last week. DVDs I watched last week: Still watching The Hobbit appendixes. Other things I did last week: Went to a concert on Friday: The Icelandic Symphony Orchestra playing 10 popular classical pieces chosen by vote, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Icelandic State Radio. Last week's book haul: (more about those tomorrow)