Reading in Reykjavík

This is the 12th and final book I read as part of the Bibliophilic Books Challenge . Year published: 2002 Genre: Literary history; non-fiction Despite the unfortunate error I mentioned in an earlier post, this book gives a great overview of the roots and development of the crime genre. Haining clearly loved the subject and unfolds it in 8 chapters, each of which covers a particular sub-genre and era of crime literature and the authors who developed these genres into what they are today. He begins with the penny bloods , which gave readers in the 19th century cheap chills and thrills, goes on to discuss the stories of crime-fighters and early detective stories which gave rise to Sherlock Holmes and his rivals, which led to the development of the tough Private Eye stories that led to hard-boiled crime stories and the crime noir novels, and ends with spy novels. The book is written in a matter-of-fact informative style without being dry, covers a large number of authors and book...

Originally published in July 2004, in 2 parts Book 25 in my first 52 books challenge. I have edited this review slightly for the sake of clarity. I think it's fitting to post this now, since I am again taking an interest in paranormal literature. Author: Christopher Frayling (author & editor), et al. Year published: 1991 Pages: 429 Genre: Literary theory, literature Sub-genre(s): Vampire stories Where got: Public library I had considerable interest in vampire stories when I was studying English literature at university, and even wrote a final essay on Dracula for an interesting course I took on horror literature. I used this book as one of my sources, but never read it all the way through, only concentrating on the first part, which traces the history of vampires in literature. The contents of the book: The first part of the book is Frayling’s dissertation on the vampire in literature. Although vampire stories owe much to folk-tales they made the jump into l...