Reading in Reykjavík

Today's subject on Booking Through Thursday is an interesting one: Which is better (or preferred) … stories with multiple character points of view? Or stories that stick to just one or two at most? And, why? I can‘t really say I have a preference either way. If it is done well, I enjoy both. One of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett, jumps between several viewpoints in most of his Discworld books, usually with longish blocks of story seen from one (3rd person limited) POW or the POW of several characters at once (3rd person omniscient) before the next one takes over, bringing them together little by little so that as the ending comes closer, they coalesce and become one narrative with several viewpoints. He does it so well that it was kind of a shock to discover that he is equally capable of writing single viewpoint stories like e.g. Dodger or the Tiffany Aching books. Some books, however, are better off with a limited number of viewpoints. Ro...

People who read often talk about life-changing books, books that gave them an inspiration or an understanding that changed the course of their lives. The change can be of any kind, but especially common seems to be the one that made the reader decide to pursue an occupation or a calling that they had not considered up to then, the one that made them rethink an issue and/or take a stand, and the one that awakened a longing or strengthened an idea into the resolve to do something specific. These books are responsible for people veering off the path of least resistance that their lives have taken up to then and cause them to make important life changes, like to go into the church, change college majors or drop out, start charities, run for office, vote differently, move to another country, change their lifestyle, give up high-paying jobs that were killing them in order to pursue their real interests, to travel around the world, to find themselves and a million other things, big and smal...

Apropos of my last post, I decided to post some thoughts about reading challenges. After having done one or more reading challenges per year since 2004, I like to think there are a few lessons I have (finally) learned about making/choosing ones that can be followed with enjoyment and relative (but not too much) ease. There are three principal rules I have found that work for me: Make it simple Make it enjoyable Make it new  The fourth, unwritten, rule is of course to make it challenging. I have noticed that I tend to be somewhat overambitious when I think up a new reading challenge for myself. I often begin by making things too complicated, either with too many rules, overly complex rules, or too many books. Everything goes well for a couple of months and then either my enthusiasm begins flagging or something comes up that puts a spanner in the works and throws me so far off the track that it’s difficult to get back on it. This is why rule no. 1 is to make it simple . Too...

Disclaimer: I don’t think I really need to summarise this one, since it is so widely known. But in case you haven’t read it, be warned that the following discussion is full of SPOILERS and should not be read by persons who wish to be surprised by the book. I don’t want to call this a review, but there are some review elements in there nonetheless. When a book gets as hyped up as Twilight I tend to recoil from it rather than jump on the bandwagon and read it right away. This is not because I don’t like hype, but because I hate buying books at full price and then discovering I don’t like them. I’d much rather wait until I can read a book and then decide if I want to own a copy, which I can, by that time, probably get second hand. Foreign bestsellers don’t arrive immediately in the libraries here, and I don’t know a lot of people who read foreign books, so unless I buy them, I can’t read them right away. I had decided, as much as a couple of years ago, that I wanted to read Twilight ,...