Reading in Reykjavík

Genre: The stated genre is Travel, but Film and Social History could just as well apply Year published: 2003 A glimpse of the Hindi movie industry’s newest heartthrob, Hrithik Roshan, sent Justine Hardy on a year-long exploration of the whole Hindi movie phenomenon. She interviewed people in the movie industry, including a film journalist, a small-time director, actors and actresses and a former movie choreographer, to gain insight into the industry, but it is her interviews and conversations with the ordinary people, the fans, that are the most interesting and illuminating. Always at the centre of the narrative is Roshan and Hardy’s ever more comical attempts to get an interview with him (it took a loooong time). In the end we don’t get a very deep insight into Bollywood, just a look at the surface glamour and glitter, with the occasional deeper glimpses of the dangers involved (organised crime both extorts money from the film-makers and backs their projects) and the dark side ...

Merry Christmas Everyone! Originally published in June 2004, in 2 parts Book 22 in my first 52 books challenge. Author: Candace Bushnell Year published: 1996 Genre: Social life and customs Sub-genre(s): Sex, dating, relationships Where got: Public library Came across this while browsing in the library and decided to give it a go. It will be interesting to see what the book that spawned the hit TV series is like. The Story: There isn’t really a story as such, this being mostly a collection of articles about the mating habits of New Yorkers that appeared in Bushnell’s newspaper column, but some of the same people pop up repeatedly and you get to know something about them and their relationships with each other and others. Sex, dating, marriage and the attendant social rituals are the order of the day, and are sometimes investigated through conversations between people comparing notes on the subject and sometimes as little story vignettes that illustrate the subject. Faithful viewers...

Editor: Yona Zeldis McDonough Year published: 1999 Pages: 240 Genre: social history Like millions of other girls across the world, I had a Barbie when I was little. I think she was a Superstar. She came in a hot pink gown with spaghetti straps, had rigid bent arms with a scary hole through one hand for a huge ring that quickly got lost, and similar huge earrings, the removal of which left gaping holes that obliterated her earlobes. Before long, one arm was broken off at the elbow – I don’t remember how it happened, but I may well have been trying to unbend her unnaturally angled arm. After my brother broke the pin that attached her head to her torso by hitting her hard with his He-Man action figure, she was never the same, and one day she was gone. I never missed her. I certainly never felt I was expected to become a Barbie Superstar. I never even wanted to be blonde, let alone have DD breasts. As an adult I discovered that the pretty doll with the vacant stare and impossibly thic...