Reading in Reykjavík

I crocheted more last year than I have ever done before and finished numerous projects and felt fine.  In November I gathered together all my remnants of thick yarn and knitted myself a colourful, long, chunky scarf, using 10 mm knitting needles. The result was a repetitive strain injury on my left arm that will require lots and lots of rest, and no knitting OR crocheting for several weeks.  I‘ve had to put off the weightlifting programme I was planning to join and I‘m in more or less constant pain.  The worst part is that it‘s hard for me to hold a book or eReader comfortably for any length of time.  People, when it starts to hurt, just stop right away and take a break rather than try to finish the project.  Thank goodness for audiobooks.

I am often reading several books at a time. I call this book-hopping and I got into the habit when I was in college. Thing is: People don't seem to think it's normal. In fact I often get asked how I manage not to get confused and mix up all the plots and characters. Here's a common occurrence chez moi: In the loo I'm currently reading 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die . I started reading it 2014 and expect to finish it in 2017. After than I'll probably read 1.000 Places You must See Before You Die . I usually keep books of articles and essays in the kitchen that I grab to get my reading fix with my breakfast whenever I haven't brought in another book that I'm carrying around between rooms. Currently, however, I'm reading The Boy's Book of Survival (How to Survive Anything, Anywhere) . I might be reading a novel and a travelogue by turns in the bedroom and living room. In addition I always have a book or two loaded into my smartphone fo...

Originally published in December 2004. Book 45 in my first 52 books challenge. Author: Fay Weldon Year published: 1984 Pages : 156 (pocket book) Genre: Literary essays and criticism Where got: Public Library About the book: I came across this book in the literature section of the public library, while browsing for quick reads (I’m slowly reading a long non-fiction book and like to relax between sections with short novels). Although Letters to Alice … is shelved under General Fiction in the Germanic Languages (Dewey class 830), the suggested classification on the book’s publication information page is Dewey class 823.7, which is the classification for Jane Austen studies. At first glance the book seems to be a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction, and therefore rather hard to classify under the clear-cut Dewey system. It’s classifiable as fiction because it is written in the form of an epistolatory novel, as letters to Weldon’s imaginary niece who stands in for the common reader...

I decided to rework this old essay from my original 52 books blog and re-post it, because this subject seems to be on people’s minds right now, at least considering how many of the book bloggers whose blogs I regularly visit have written about it in the last couple of months. Everyone has different criteria for deciding if a book is worth finishing. Some will read any book to the end, slogging through piles of tripe or suffering endless boredom just so they can say they have read it. Several people I know of did this with The DaVinci Code and/or The Name of the Rose . (Please note that I am not belittling either book. It just so happens that many people think the former is tripe and the latter is boring). Others will give it a couple of chapters (or 50 pages or so in the case of “chapterless” books like those of Terry Pratchett) before deciding. Still others will read the reviews, read the blurb, skim the book and read the ending, and then decide they’re not interested. Each met...

I don't know what I was thinking when I packed for my recent holiday. I have a rule - a very good one, in my opinion - of travelling with books: when going abroad, take as many as are needed to take you through the "getting there" stage, i.e. the whole trip from home to hotel. This usually means three books, although for a flight to the US I might take five, or load some audio books into my mp3 player. Then, once I get there, I go shopping for more books. When I travel, it's usually with someone else at the wheel, be it on an aeroplane, ship, train, bus or car, giving me ample time to read while being transported from place to place. When packing for this camping holiday, in a fit of reader's optimism I took something like 15 books with me, forgetting that this time I was driving myself. The plan was to read for 30 minutes or so before bedtime, at mealtimes and whenever the weather was too bad to sight-see or hike. I ended up finishing one book, because at the end...

I’m in a reading rut. After my reading marathon in September I first did not pick up a book for 2 weeks, then went into a rereading cycle which is what I do to jump start myself when I temporarily lose interest in reading, and now I have fallen into an old familiar rut where I start reading one book after another but after the first session I don’t feel like reading any more of the book, put it down somewhere and start reading another book. And another. And another. It’s pathetic, but I can’t help it. In addition to the usual half-dozen or so books I am reading page-by-page or chapter-by-chapter over a long time (3 years in one case, and I’m only halfway through), I have several of these start-stop books scattered around. The book that started the rut, Clive Barker’s Abarat , I put down when I discovered halfway through that it was the first episode in a 5 book series, the last of which is still being written. I think I will shelve it and not read it until the last book is published an...

Rereading may seem like a waste of time when there are hundreds or maybe thousands of books out there you want to read and oodles more that are available and you have yet to learn about. Still, I love to reread certain books and have read some as often as 20 times or more. There are many reasons why I reread. When I have the blues, sometimes just the anticipation of an upcoming joke in a familiar funny book can pull me out of it. When I’m depressed or sad or upset, a comfortable familiar book can soothe my feelings, and when I am sick and unable to concentrate on a new book an old familiar one can make me forget my illness for a while. But I don’t just reread when something is wrong with me, I also do it when I’m happy or feeling lazy or in any other kind of mood. Sometimes I half-remember something I want to remember fully, and it is often easier to just reread the entire book that go looking for the remembered detail by skimming over the text. The books I reread belong to various gen...

(If you’re wondering about the abrupt start to this blog, it’s because I have just moved it from another blogging service. To visit my old blog and see my original reading challenge, essays and book reviews, click here ) I just realised I have a perfect new reading challenge lined up. A while ago I asked the members of my favourite book forum to recommend to me some good mystery authors in the hope that it would yield a good number of “new” authors. The result was a long list of authors, some of whom I was familiar with, some I had only heard mentioned, and many I knew nothing about. I compared the list with the library database and found books by more than half the authors on the list. In addition, I have several books by mystery authors I have not read before in my TBR pile. Since I have this many authors and books lined up, and all in one genre, I decided to make it a challenge to discover new mystery authors (new to me). I am not going to be strict about the time I give myself to r...