Reading in Reykjavík

Disclaimer:  I do realize that many authors do not have control over what title is stuck on their books (by the look of it by bored editors who think readers don’t care about these things), and my heart goes out to them when I see a particularly unoriginal or over-recycled title. So don‘t take this little rant of mine as criticism of authors (like someone did when I originally posted about this subject on my original 52 books blog, nearly 10 years ago). This is what I wrote back then:  I conducted a bit of accidental research into the subject of recycled titles with a book I came across in the library a couple of weeks ago. I had read a favourable review of a novel titled The Devil’s Bargain , but could only remember the title. I found the title in the library and took the book home to read. Just in case, I re-checked the review, but discovered the book in the review was by a different author from the one I had found. So I turned to Amazon UK, where I have often been able...

Here is a marvellous new word I just learned: omphaloskepsis = contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation. I have been involved in a bit introspection lately and one of the the things I have been examining is my reading habits and bookish likes and dislikes. I have come to the conclusion that I have some very fixed, if not positively staid, reading habits. When I originally started this blog, or rather the blog that spawned this one, which was hosted on tblog and titled 52 Books, I did it in order to shake up my almost fossilised reading habits. I used the blog to keep myself on track with the book-a-week challenge I had set myself, with the aim of reading one book a week by an author or in a genre new to me, and getting off the reread carousel I had been on for the last several years leading up to the challenge. Not that rereading is in itself a bad thing, but when nearly half the considerable amount of books (in my case 150+) one reads in a given year is rereads and...

Funny how one can know a story from a book so well that one almost feels as one has read it. I am reading, for the first time in full length, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and it feels like I have read it before. When I was a little girl, I had a series of picture books with retellings of classics works of British and American literature that included not only Little Women , but also Tom Sawyer and Black Beauty and some others. I also had some of the Classics Illustrated comic books, and I loved (and still love) to watch movies with historical settings, many of which were based on novels. All of these books and movies gave me a knowledge of the basic plots of these novels, long before I read any of them. I knew the story of Jane Eyre well long before I read the book, from having seen 2 movies and one TV mini-series based on it, and the same goes for Tom Sawyer , Huckleberry Finn and Little Women . Likewise, I knew The Wind in the Willows , which I read recently for the f...

Originally published on 25 February, 2004. I was thinking about my first 52 books reading reading challenge, which I had recently started. It's funny how my taste in reading has developed in cycles. The first books I really got hooked on were Enid Blyton's Adventure, Famous Five and Adventurous Four series, which means that my first love in literature was detective novels. Then I discovered Jón Árnason's collection of folk tales. Jón Árnason is to Iceland what the Grimm brothers are to Germany, and his collection of folk tales is great reading. My favourite section was the fairy tales, and I could spend hours reading them. This developed into an interest in legends and mythology, especially Nordic and Greek, and in all branches of religion. Then came a period when I read just about everything I could get my hands on, including all kinds of stuff that isn't meant for kids. One memorable book I read during this period was Robert Bloch's Psycho , which gave me nightmar...

Originally published in March 2004. What is it with sci-fi and fantasy authors? Can't they write a story that's contained within one book? Is it greed, is it inability or unwillingness to finish the story, is it a continuation of the tradition of serializing novels in newspapers and magazines, or is it something else altogether? Is Tolkien (or rather his publisher) to blame? You can probably guess by this that I don't particularly like reading an endless series of books that together make up one huge epic. I like it even less when there is no indication of this to be found on the cover and I buy a book thinking it's a stand-alone story and then discover I've bought volume 12 of a 25 volume epic. Gimme a break! Trilogies are OK, unless they run to 1500 pages per volume, but more books than that - no way. If they are collected in one volume later on I may be tempted to invest in it, but I will not spend my money on a series that goes on and on with no end in sight. It...

Originally published in March 2004. Some people have no respect for books. There are readers who don't hesitate to mark their place by folding down a corner or laying the book down open and face down, risking serious damage to the pages and spine. Some like to break the spine before starting to read, which weakens the cover and loosens glued pages. Of course, sometimes you have to, especially when the book is as thick as a brick and fights back when you try to open it. Many, many readers slobber food stains or spill crumbs on the pages, which lowers resell value, hastens decomposition of the paper and encourages insects and bacteria to take up residence. Not to mention it's kind of icky for the next reader to find a collection of stains in the book. Jam, peanut butter, paté and ketchup stains are especially disgusting. (OK, I confess, I am guilty of eating while I read, but I have at least learned to keep the book away from the food by using a book-stand, and I never read when...

Do you hear this on a regular basis? Does it annoy you or do you answer with a smile? I dread the day when my (rapidly growing) reference library starts drawing this question. I think that to ask someone whose library is a work tool (such as a teacher, lawyer or writer or indeed a translator like myself) this question shows both ignorance and bad manners. I’m sure mechanics or dentists don’t often get asked if they really use all their tools, but display a wall of bookcases full of reference books and sooner or later someone will in all earnestness ask you if you have really read them all. I mean, come on, how many people do you know who have read the entire Oxford English Dictionary? As for book collections meant mainly for pleasure reading, what the people who ask this question don’t realise is that for someone whose main hobby is reading, the point of having many books is not that you have read them all and are now proudly displaying your accomplishment, but that you don’t ever want...