Reading in Reykjavík

No. 22: Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie. Reread. It has the snappy dialogue one has come to expect from Crusie, but I have always felt there was too much going on in it and after finding myself skimming over pages and passages on this reread, I think I will probably cull it. No. 23: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett. Occasional reread. Not one of my favourite Pratchetts, but it's a good read, and funny to boot.

...which is hardly news, except in the last couple of years, around this time of the year, I was somewhere in the mid-to-high 200s. Cutting back on my reading has resulted in more enjoyment of the books I read and I also remember them better. I am also listening to more audio books, and have finished 20 so far.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading ? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week." Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the last week. -- I had to take two sick days in the middle of the week and missed my day hike on the weekend because I didn't want to risk having a relapse, so I had plenty of time to read and finished four books during those two days and one more during the weekend. I was still heartily glad to stop reading and return to work on Friday. Being at home on weekdays is no fun when you can't go out and are feeling miserable. The books were: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L Howard. This book answered a question I asked myself when I first read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes : Where do diabolical carnivals come from in the first place? I liked it so much that I ordered a c...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading ? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week." Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week. -- The reading year began well for me. I have finished three books so far, which is considerably fewer than the same time last year, but they were good books. First came Thee Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann. I found the idea of the story intriguing: a herd of sheep, a mixed bag of an old Irish heritage breed and some other breeds, some of them rescue animals, find their beloved shepherd dead in their pasture, a spade lodged in his abdomen. The humans around them don't seem too concerned or eager to investigate, so the sheep decide to solve the mystery themselves. There is a sequel, about what happens to the sheep after the case is solved. Then came Maigret and...

I have just tallied the books I read in 2016, and they come to 234 (oops, forgot some that were on my Kindle, so  make that 246 ), only including those I finished after a full reading. I also skimmed several more, maybe 20 or so, but they don't count. When you read this many books in one year they tend to blur together into a muddle of indistinguishable plots, characters, pages and covers, even some of the good ones. However, I keep a scoring system for the books I read, and so I can go over them and use the list to jog my memory.  Books were judged memorable by the simple expedient of taking the top-ranking books from my list of read books, removing all rereads and then weeding out the others until I had narrowed the choice down to the 16 books I remember the best from the year's reading. If there had been any memorably terrible reads I would have included them, but I generally stop reading such books as soon as i realise how terrible they are. Note that memorable does ...

I finished 13 books in October, of which 5 were rereads. 8 were fiction in 5 genres and 5 were non-fiction in the same number of genres. The stand-outs were  Not on the Label and Dragonology , the former because it is a very thought-provoking book and the latter because of its gorgeous design. I also enjoyed getting reacquainted with Charlotte MacLeod's writing - I had forgotten how good she is at writing funny characters. The Book of General Ignorance was like having Stephen Fry speaking in my head throughout the reading. The Mystery of Swordfish Reef turned out to be one of Upfield's more far-fetched mysteries and I got the feeling he had got to thoroughly hate his detective by the time this book was written. Rereads:  A Precious Jewel by Mary Balogh. Regency romance.  The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie. Murder mystery. Audiobook. Appleby's End by   Michael Innes. Mystery.  Whose Body? and The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Saye...

I decided to resurrect the monthly reading reports I used to post back when I was last actively blogging. Why, I hear you ask, since I am already publishing weekly reports? Well, they are mostly for me, to make it easier to have an overview of a whole month’s reading in a single post, but if someone else finds them useful, well, so much the better. Here is the first one: I finished 15 books in September, of which 3 were rereads and 12 were first-time reads. That is: I think that's how it goes because I can’t be sure about Agatha Christie as I read a number of her books before I started keeping records of my reading. 11 were fiction in 3 genres and 2 were non-fiction in the same number of genres. Finally 2, The Darwin Awards II and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies , were a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Nearly half the books, 7 in all, were by Agatha Christie, so it can be said I got back into reading mysteries with a vengeance in September. In addition to the seven, there w...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date. Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week. Reading challenge book I finished last week: None. Non challenge book I finished last week: Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie. (Another first-time read). A Hercule Poirot mystery. I have no plans to review it in full. Micro-review: This is far from being Christie's best, but the final twist was interesting and goes against certain narrative conventions. This is possibly not the best book to take as a reading material on a flight, as I did. Currently reading:   Death Comes As The End by Agatha Christie. Standalone historical mystery. Reading challenge progress: I still have 1 book left in What's in a Name, 2 to go in Nonfiction 2016 before I can level up or finish. Last week's book haul: I came across a small second-hand bookshop in Aarhus (more of that below) that was having ...

I started and finished reading more than 60 books in January, which is a personal record. Admittedly, most were in the long novella/short novel range (80-120 pages), with a handful as long as 180 pages, but since they are sold as separate eBooks, they still count as entire books. The page count is probably pretty similar to that of an average month. If I manage to keep this up, I might manage to read an average of a book a day for the year, but I expect I will start to slow down as February progresses. I traded Kindles with a friend and delved into the short romance novels she had collected, mostly series of paranormal-themed novels and one space opera series. This was the reading equivalent of binging on candy - inducing a satisfying rush with lots of calories but little nutrition. But this is just the kind of reading I need at this time of the year: entertaining, with guaranteed happy endings and not much substance. I expect I will probably end up with a massive reading hangover, b...

I went through reading slump in September. For me, this usually does not mean I read fewer books in a given month, but that I read a larger proportion of books I have read before. I finished a total of 16 books – which is actually above my monthly average – but 10 of them were re-reads (of which three were audio books I listened to for the first time). Out of the remaining six, two were books I had started reading long before and then put aside for some reason. For more than half the month I kept picking up never-before read books, opening them, reading a chapter or two, losing interest and grabbing a familiar book to read instead. This coincided with the beginning of my yearly struggle with the winter blues. As I have mentioned before, I suffer from depression. It is usually mild these days and comes in fairly predictable waves throughout the year, but the downswings are always deeper during the winter and the first signs are usually an increased need for sleep and everything...

I read nine books in in August: some travel and romance with a peppering of other genres. One was a reread and one was an audio book I had previously read but was listening to for the first time. The first high point was Slow Boats to China by Gavin Young. It’s one of those travel books that makes an appearance on numerous lists of best travelogues, and for good reason: It’s well written, describes a journey that most of us can only fantasise (and occasionally have nightmares) about, and is undoubtedly romantic. It describes the type of journey that can be found in the top ten wish lists of most hard-core travellers of the type who travel for the journey, not the destination. The second high point was Map of Another Town by M.F.K. Fisher. I found it a little disjointed in places, but that did not detract from the joy of Fisher’s prose and her long love letter to Aix-en-Provence. The Books: Cecil Adams: Return of the Straight Dope . Trivia. Mary Balogh: The Famous Heroine...

I read 12 books in July, most of them fairly quick reads due to either being short or having a lot of pictorial content. None were rereads and 10 were TBR, meaning I am now several books ahead in the TBR challenge, with only 18 books to go. However, I don't plan to go slacking off, and neither am I going to push the number of challenge books up - I am simply going to finish the challenge and by then I will hopefully be in the habit of choosing more of my owned books to read and fewer loan books. If all goes well, I might push the limit higher next year. If you wonder at seeing the same title twice, it‘s because I read two different editions of the same book. I jump at the chance to buy second-hand guide books of places I have visited or plan to visit one day, figuring that although they may be old, the important information, that about the old buildings, monuments, state museums and works of art, remains mostly valid, even if the information about hotels, restaurants, openin...

I read a total of 17 books in June. 6 were rereads and 7 were TBR. The genres included romance, travelogue, history, geology, biography, fantasy, true crime and visual humour. I reached the 100 books mark around mid-month, meaning that if I keep up the current rate of reading I will finish just over 200 books in the course of the year. I also read the 30th TBR book of the year, putting me on course and boding well for the completion of the challenge. The stand-outs of the month were Krakatoa and The Kon-Tiki Expedition , closely followed by The Nonexistent Knight and Medicine Road . I bought all four books on clearance sale at one of the charity shops I sometimes visit. Krakatoa is one of those juicy history/science books that I love to read, and it doesn't hurt that it was written by Simon Winchester, whose writing never fails to please me. The subject of the book is the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, the lead-up to the event and the aftermath. Winchester is...

I read 17 books in May, a mixture of first-time reads and rereads, all but two of which were fiction. The rereads were the Jennifer Crusie books and the YA Terry pratchett novel Nation , which I picked up second hand in May and reread before adding it to my keeper shelf. There was an unusual (for a single month) number of books I rated 4 or more stars (out of a possible 5) so I decided to include the star rating I gave each first-time read. Keep in mind that the enjoyment I got out of the book tends to weigh heavier than the quality of writing, style and narrative, so you might see some ratings that surprise you. Sometimes these components come together into something sublime, which is when I find myself compelled to give more than the top rating of 5 stars. In any given year only a handful of books gets this 5+ rating, but the ones that do always end up – when I own the copy I read – on my keeper shelves, or – when I don‘t – I end up buying a copy, and vigorously recommend the bo...

I sit here watching the Eurovision Song Contest as a write this. The Russian twin sisters are on, singing a typical Eurovision song, not too bad but hardly memorable, but it will be interesting to see how they fare when it comes to the voting because Russia isn‘t exactly popular in Europe right now. But now it‘s time for the books. I read 27 of them in April. I would have loved to make it 30 – a book per day – but that‘s the way it goes. The reason I was able to read so much was a that I took 6 days of vacation time I had left over from last summer and combined them with the Easter holidays and the first day of summer (third Thursday in April and a bank holiday in Iceland). With three weekends included it made 16 days of no work which, however, just happened to coincide with bad weather. I think it rained just about every day, so I mostly stayed in and read. The books were a mixed bag: some romance, some memoirs/biography, crime, a literary novel, travel, articles/essays, cooking...

I read 12 books in March, a mixture of non-fiction and fiction, the former history books of different kinds and the latter mostly romances. There was only one real stand-out in March, but it was the best book I have read so far this year: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. This is a brilliant piece of non-fiction, covering the history of the famous 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London and the consequences that it eventually had for epidemiology, city sanitation and map-making, among other effects. The "best of the rest" was definitely Vintage , a chilly coming-of-age story about a young man who encounters a ghost that cannot rest because it had unfinished business when it died. 7 of the 9 novels were romances and the two that weren’t, Vintage and The Wicca Man , have strong romantic elements. The latter also seems to be the beginning of an intriguing urban fantasy series, although I couldn’t find any sequels listed on the author’s website. 3 of the novels were o...

I read only 10 books in February. One was non-fiction and two were what I like to call half-fiction . The rest were fiction, one murder mystery and six M/M romances. The two half-fictions were collections of short narratives. One was a cute little book of anecdotes about famous and once-famous musicians, composers and conductors. I picked it up years ago in a junk shop in Denmark and only got around to reading recently. The other was the sometimes funny and always amusing Sleeping at the Starlite Motel , a perfect example of the storyteller’s craft. I call them half-fiction because anecdotes are often completely made-up and even when they are true they are more often than not impossible to corroborate, even if they are based on real people and ring true, while some may be true but have had the not-famous people they happened to replaced by famous ones because it makes the story more interesting.   Starlite Motel is supposedly about real people, but one can tell it has lots...

Here it is, finally: the reading report for January. (February‘s report is in the works: I have it entered into Excel and I just need to transfer it into Word, edit the layout and write the preface. It will either take a couple of days or a couple of months). I finished 26 books in January, although admittedly a number of them were novellas. As I mentioned in my previous post, I delved into a new(ish) type of genre: gay (or M/M) romance. I found everything from genuinely sweet romance to hardcore BDSM, in sub-genres like fantasy, suspense and mystery and even a quartet of entertaining (and unlikely) rock star romances. Other books I read in January include the highly enjoyable memoir of cooking doyenne Julia Child, two straight romances, and Jennifer Worth‘s trilogy of memoirs about her experiences as a midwife in a London slum in the 1950s. I also watched the first season of the TV series based on these books and may (I say 'may') write something about this when I have fini...

I finished 18 books in December. Of those, 5 were rereads and the rest were the usual mixed bag: some romances, a literary novel, a book of heraldry, photograph books, and folk tales old and new. Five books had a Christmas theme and I am rather sorry I read two of them. I should have followed my instincts and stopped reading them when it became evident that I was in for unrelenting tweeness. Some years ago I read an enjoyable Christmas novella by Debbie Macomber. It had just the right amount of sentimentality one expects from a good Christmas story, without being actually saccharine. Then I discovered that the lead characters in that story, the angels Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, were featured in full-length books. I got hold of two of those books and read both this December and I can safely say that I have had enough of Shirley, Goodness and Mercy. The stories were pure glurge: hyper-sentimental, saccharine tear-jerkers. A third Christmas book was a volume of two novellas of th...

November was a less than average reading month for me: I finished 8 9 books. (Tsk! I forgot one). Of those, 5 were rereads and 3 were TBR. Unusually, this was not due to one of my fits of depression (reading little and rereading are two of the danger signs), but simply because I have had other things to do. I have been using some of the time I usually spend reading to draw/doodle instead, something I love doing but I haven't had much energy to do for a long time. One of the things I did was to hand-draw all my Christmas cards. I also made a number of paper ornaments, most which can be hung anywhere at any time of year, but of course they also look nice on the Christmas tree. Any time I do less than my usual amount of reading for a while, I begin to feel the difference in my body by the second week or so, especially my neck and shoulders. Having myalgia means I need to take good care of myself and reading unfortunately puts a strain on my muscles. But if I had to choose betwee...