Reading in Reykjavík

When I came across the "Once and Future King" by T.H. White on Audible (read by Neville Jason, who does a fine job of it), I knew I had to buy it. I already owned a physical copy of the book, but I have found lately that it suits me better to listen to long books rather than to read them, because my hands want to be doing something other than holding a book while I read. This novel, which was originally published as a quadrology of short novels and later collected and revised into one long novel, is a retelling of part of the Arthurian legend and is considered to be one of the finest of the many re-imaginings of that legend. It was disappointing to discover that this is actually an edited version that seems, according to one review on Audible.com, to be not just abridged but actually a bastard version comprised of both the original short novels and the revised one-volume edition. However, another reviewer kindly pointed out some of the missing passages and where to fi...

- 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 ...

 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 ...