Reading in Reykjavík

After I wrote the last entry I picked up the book again and read it more or less in one session. Final thoughts:  All the character descriptions are brilliant. Some characters are summed up in one pithy sentence or one short paragraph, and you know exactly what kind of people they are, and yet none of the primary or secondary characters are stereotypes, because their words and actions then take over and show them to be more than mere cardboard cut-outs. This takes skill. The disapproving Mrs. Yorke, for example, is shown to hate youth and beauty, but is perfectly capable of changing her mind about said youth and beauty when it is suffering (e.g. Mr. Moore), when she turns out to be a mother hen type. There are passages that seem to serve no particular purpose, or which at least could have been shorter, but taken altogether the story does not sag badly at any time. It sails on at its own pace and gets there in the end. I am certain there are readers who would have wished the e...

I'll start with a quo te from Chapter 21 :     'Mutual love! My dear, romances are pernicious. You do not read them, I hope?'     'Sometimes - whenever I can get them, indeed; but romance-writers might know nothing of love, judging by the way in which they treat of it.'     'Nothing whatever, my dear!' assented Mrs. Pryor eagerly; 'nor of marriage; and the false pictures they give of those subjects cannot be too strongly condemned. They are not like reality: they show you only the green tempting surface of the marsh, and give not one faithful or truthful hint of the slough underneath.' So, not a new sentiment, then. -- As you can see I have finally picked up Shirley again, to find lots of things happening: a funny clash between the C of E followers and the other congregations in the neighbourhood and an attempt by the Luddites to storm the mill repelled with lethal force. Emotionally a lot going on as well: Shirley possib...

Shirley has arrived, and she is, as I surmised, the young owner of Fieldhead Hall and therefore Mr. Moore's landlady. So far the narrator has shown her to the reader only from the outside, i.e. her emotions and thoughts are not revealed, and so she is just a little bit mysterious. While Shirley owns the book's title, the protagonist so far has been Caroline Helstone and it looks like an interesting little love triangle is going on between her, Shirley and Mr. Moore, with both ladies in love with him and he wavering between the penniless Caroline, whom he seems to feel some regard for, and Shirley and her money, which he is in dire need of. I only hope it will not lead to the very tiresome trope of one of the ladies dying to make way for the other to marry the gentleman. The death would have to be that of Caroline, because there have been possible foreshadowings of that nature, although there has also been an indication that it will not happen. I hope it doesn't - it'...

Chapter VII and still no sign of Shirley.  The chapter begins with a charming description of what it is like to be eighteen: ...at eighteen the true narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvellous fiction, delightful sometimes and sad sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic, its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dream-scenes; darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters, sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields than are found in nature, over- spread our enchanted globe. What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable beauty! As to our sun, it is a burning heaven - the world of gods. It goes on for two more paragraphs, but I'll let this suffice. You can look it up if you wish to read the whole thing. -- This novel has an omnisc...

I‘m reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë and really feel I need to write something about it at this point. For those who have read it, I am at the point where Gilbert‘s narrative has ended and Helen‘s narrative has just started. I deliberately didn't read about the story before I started reading it and just about the only thing I knew about it before commencing is that it's probably a romance. Such a storm of emotions already, falling occasionally over the verge into highly enjoyable melodrama: Gilbert falling violently in love with Helen (quite believably, I think, people being prone to fall for those they see as unavailable), H repelling him but eventually showing signs of loving him back (not quite as realistic as his feelings for her as it isn't explained why she would love him), and G assaulting the man he believes H is having an affair with, possibly in the belief that the victim has seduced her and is using her, or possibly because G is, when it come...

Before I start I must say that although I have not read the book before, I know the story broadly, from an abbreviated audio book version I once listened to and from a film version seen many years ago. Below you will find minor SPOILERS, so be warned. I found out when I read the Moonstone that Wilkie Collins was a master at creating wonderfully live characters. They might sometimes appear at first sight to be drawn in broad strokes, but then they surprise you by saying or doing something you would never expect that particular stereotype to say or do, and so they stop being stereotypes. Collins was also a master of creating characters it is difficult to be indifferent to. Mr. Fairlie is one such character – one realises almost from the start and certainly from Mr. Gilmore’s narrative onwards, that he is in large measure to blame for the whole disastrous events that follow, because of his indolence and unwillingness to act in the best interests of his niece. I have got to the point o...

I am at the half-way point of this long novel. The titular characters have only just met for the first time, aboard a passenger ship to Australia. Lucinda is returning home after a visit to England and Oscar is leaving England to serve as an Anglican minister in New South Wales. The back-story leading up to each of their embarkations aboard the Leviathan has been unfolded over more than 200 pages and numerous short chapters, but I would be hard put to say exactly when the actual main thread of the story appears. The story is told by an omniscient narrator parading as a descendant of Oscar's. I haven't got far enough in the story to know if Oscar and Lucinda end up having descendants in common, but the narrator refers to Oscar as his ancestor but not Lucinda, so I doubt it. The story, up to the embarkation aboard the ship, is an unfolding of the influences that have made the titular characters as they are. Both are socially awkward and find it difficult to read people, but whe...

This is the second book I finish in the Global Reading Challenge, the North-American one. Guatemala, the author’s home land and setting of the book, is part of Latin America which makes people with a not-too firm grasp of geography sometimes assume it’s in South America. This novel is the first I read that takes place in Guatemala, although I had read about the country in travelogues before. Year originally published: 1963; English translation: 1967 Transleted by: Gregory Rabassa Genre: Literary novel (fantasy, magic realism, surrealism) Setting & time: Guatemala, timeless The story begins with a humorous description of one Celestino Yumí’s disgraceful behaviour at a realistically described village fair, then moves into magic realism territory and from there on to fantasy, finally culminating in a vortex of surrealistic descriptions. The story tells the tale of Yumí, his wife Catalina Zabala, and the Mulatta, a magical, sexual being connected to the moon, who charms Yumí and en...

Cheat ! Tramp ! Pig ! Having fun among the simple people down from the hills and villages to have a good time at the fair, which was less of a fair than a lair of wild delights, now that they had done their duty at church and bought or sold their animals, there was time to gab with friends, and anybody picking a fight would get himself chopped up with a machete or stuck with a knife, and all around there were clusters of eyes glistening at the sight of such pretty, teaty, well-haunched women who were the product of an over-abundant rather than an aberrant nature. Thus begins the tale of Celestino Yumí and his wife, Catalina Zabala, and their picaresque process from peasants to... whatever it is they will become, since I am only on page 207 out of 333. Currently they are in the process of trying to become great sorcerers. I have been reading this book very slowly, because although it is a fun read in some ways, I simply can not connect with the protagonists.

Book 5 in my first 52 books challenge. Originally published in several parts on February 22-22, 2004. Entry 1: Author: Alexander McCall Smith Published: 1998 Where got: public library Genre: Detective novel Reason for choosing: I first read about this book in a book review in one of the daily newspapers in Iceland. The title caught my attention and I decided that such an unusual and humorous name was very promising as to the contents of the book. So far I have not been disappointed (after reading chapter one). Entry 2: I'm quite enjoying the book so far. Here are some links with information about the author and some of his other works: About the series Publisher's website, dedicated to the series Entry 3: "I love all the people whom God made, but I especially know how to love the people who live in this place. They are my people, my brothers and sisters. It is my duty to help them to solve the mysteries in their lives. That is what I am called to do." There is som...

This was the very first book review I posted on my very first blog ( 52 Books: A bibliophile's miscellany ), back in 2004. It was the first book I read as part of a book-a-week reading challenge that aimed at discovering as many new authors and genres as possible. I might not review it in the same way or give it the same rating now, but I am letting the entries stand as they were when I wrote it. All that has changed is that I left out some outside links, left out the cover image and fixed a spelling error or two as well (I hate those). Originally posted in several parts on January 24-31, 2004: Entry 1: I've had this book in my "to be read" pile since sometime last autumn, and have wanted to read it for even longer, which makes it a good choice for the first in my 52 books challenge. Below are a couple of links related to the book. Author : Joseph Heller Published : 1961 Where got : charity shop Genre : Satire, war Entry 2: I've finished several chapters and am be...

I got so caught up in the story that I decided not to stop to write notes about parts 5 and 6 and instead went on to finish the story. Therefore I don’t have any notes or thoughts on future developments, but here are my conclusions: While the main thread of the story is predictable – man commits crime, man tries to avoid suspicion, man breaks down and confesses – the parts that flesh out the narrative are not all so predictable. What really makes this such a brilliant story is not the main story itself but the characters and their interactions and dialogues. Each character is unique and separate and there is no danger of ever getting them confused with each other. Raskolnikov, for example, is brilliantly conceived, and one can easily see how someone with his pride, arrogance and tendency toward depression would be adversely affected by his circumstances and commit a crime. It is equally plausible how he can then be driven to confess by an older man like Petrovits, experienced in applyi...

I’ve taken a long break from the book, but I hope not so long as to affect my memory of what I have already read. I have just a few notes on this part: Svidrigelof is definitely planning something. At first he tells R that he wants to court and marry Dunja, and then when R does not take kindly to that, he changes tack and says he wants to give her some money but will then leave her alone and marry another woman. Then he appears again, listening in on a conversation between Sonja and R. I think he may try to blackmail R, either for money or for help in winning Dunja's hand (he does seem to have honorable intentions towards her now that his wife is dead). As I had guessed (and hoped) Dunja has broken her engagement with Lusjin, and seems to be beginning to fall in love with Rasumikhin, who has proven himself to be a thoroughly decent person. Petrovits has started trying to confuse R into confessing or giving himself away somehow, using psychological methods, and has even described hi...

Things are now getting really interesting. The story is about halfway told and the plot thickens as several turning points are reached one after the other. R seems to be recovering from his fever, but his mind is still in turmoil. The main turning points I have recognised as such are: Sonja appearing on the scene and meeting R’s mother and sister – even though she has done little so far, she is presented in such a way as to suggest that she is an important character; Dunja seems to have decided to break off her engagement with Lusjin, possibly because she has seen that her brother does not condone the marriage, but also possibly because she has realised it would be a kind of prostitution if she did marry him; A second detective, Petrovits, has turned up and like Sametof he seems to be convinced that R is the murderer. It remains to be seen if he “solves” the case, i.e. finds proof and arrests R, or if R’s conscience drives him to confess. Petrovits is clearly a detective of the psychol...

I will make this short, since I don’t have many comments on this part of the book. This part of the novel is an emotional roller-coaster. It starts with Raskolnikov’s wild attempts to destroy all evidence of the crime and his feverish panic when called in to the police station for an interview (over an unrelated matter), descends into pathos when his fever is described, although whether it is caused by real illness or is merely a psychosomatic effect of his shock and guilt after the murder is left up to the reader to decide (probably a mixture of both). Then there is a comic interlude when his prospective brother-in-law Lusjin arrives and both the reader and Raskolnikov discover him to be vain and pompous, both of which Raskolnikov mocks loudly but the man either does not understand or pretends not to. There follows another slip into almost mad despair with suicidal thoughts, followed by a very sad and pathetic scene which nevertheless lifts Raskolnikov’s spirits. Raskolnikov’s despair...

Note that the spellings of the Russian names that I use here are the ones used in the Icelandic translation, and may be different from the way they are transliterated into English. -- Part 1 of the book is about the titular crime and what leads the protagonist, Raskolnikof, to commit it. The leading-up to the decision to commit the crime is the result of a state of mind that seems to be caused in equal measure by hunger, desperation and pride, and possibly also love for his family, that come together in Raskolnikof‘s mind to convince him that what he is planning is the right thing to do. The way Dostojevski describes the reaching of the decision, from the idea (conceived in a nightmare) to the planning to finally making his mind up to go ahead, is nothing short of brilliant. By describing it in a non-linear way, giving it out piecemeal so that the reader has to be on the alert the whole time if they want to fully understand what is going on, he creates tension that feeds into the stre...

Dostojevski’s Преступление и наказание (transliteration: Prestupleniye i Nakazaniye) or Crime and Punishment , was first published in 12 monthly instalments in a Russian literary magazine in 1866. It was almost immediately recognised for its literary value, and has become part of the literary canon, not only in Russia but in the whole of the Western world. This is one of those classics that people who wish to be considered highly literate and well-read will proudly tick off their To Be Read list. I, on the other hand, am reading it because it's part of my mystery-reading challenge. Since it is often mentioned in the same instance as the epic War and Peace I expected it to be much longer than it tuned out to be: only 496 pages in the Icelandic translation, and not with particularly small lettering either. It is divided into six parts and a short epilogue, and I am going to read it in six sessions. I will try to write some thoughts and speculations and possibly analysis after each ...

Some final thoughts on the book: I have rarely read a long mystery or thriller that didn't at least sag just a little bit in the middle, but this one does not. It does take a while for the central story to begin but once it does start rolling it never slows down until the almost disappointingly short climax is reached and the long denouement begins. That he was able to keep the reader's attention through a slow background setting and introduction of characters the length of a short novel and a denouement that is an almost self-contained story the length of a novella, shows that Stieg Larsson was a master of the craft of writing. This is a first novel but it shows no signs of firstbookitis, which isn't really surprising because Larsson was a veteran journalist and therefore an experienced writer. That he was a reader is obvious. Apart from the references to Astrid Lindgren that suffuse the story in the characters of Mikael and Lisbeth (who are his speculations on what Kalle ...

I got so engrossed in the book last night that I didn’t stop until my eyes were stinging from all the reading and it was past one o’clock in the morning. I stopped around page 410, which leaves me the last section of the book, about 120 pages. I hated to stop, as I had got to a very exciting part in the plot, with one protagonist in mortal danger and the other about to head into it. That there should be so much left of the book when the climax appears to be starting tells me that either the climax is going to be drawn-out, there will be a second climax, or the denouement is going to be a long one. Some thoughts about the plot: I really, really hope there is some real purpose to the horrifying abuse Lisbeth has had to suffer at the hands of her legal guardian. I would hate to think it was just a gratuitous addition to the book or a way to have her supply a small and not very important item to the profiling of the killer. It does emphasise that vulnerability that I mentioned earlier, tha...

I did say I was going to start journalling about Crime and Punishment , but as it happens I had to read this one first, because I was on a waiting list for it at the library and got it on “new book loan” which means I only have it for 2 weeks, so must finish it before then, whereas I can keep the other one for 2 months, and then get another copy if that isn’t enough. This is a long book, over 500 pages, so it lands itself well to journalling. I am reading the Icelandic translation. -- So, here are some thoughts about the book so far: The intro chapter is a very good hook which suggests that an intriguing mystery is about to unfold. It’s good that of the two leading characters Carl Mikael Blomkvist is introduced first, because he is the more conventional and less interesting of the two. Even the attempt to make him slightly less conventional by having him be involved in a ménage à trois does not quite work. If he alone had been the leading character, I would have expected this to unfold...