Reading in Reykjavík

Genre: Literary novel Year of publication: 1987 (English translation: 1993) Setting & time: Rural China, mostly in the 1920s and 30s This novel takes place in Shandong Province in eastern China, mostly before and during the second Sino-Japanese war. The narrative jumps back and forth between times and characters, but at the heart of it is a dramatic family story that begins in the 1920s when a greedy father sells his daughter into marriage with a leprous wine distiller and one of the men who escorted her to the wedding falls in love with her. The story is told by a narrator, the grandson of the central couple, who recounts their histories before and after they met, and the consequences of their meeting as they echo down the years. The story is about tough, resilient and passionate peasants who are repeatedly driven to extremes by internal and external situations, during a tumultuous time in Chinese history. The descriptions of the war are often grotesquely and viscerally ...

I went on a reading spree over the weekend and finished three books, all of which I started and read from cover to cover with only short breaks. One was the Katie MacAlister book I quoted from in the previous post, which turned out to be good, mindless fun, full of steamy sex, violence and hot vampires, and another was a Regency romance by Loretta Chase, Viscount Vagabond , which I enjoyed despite, or perhaps because of, the improbable plot. The last was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , which makes it 7 books I have finished in the Bibliophilic Book challenge . Not only is it about a book club, but each member of the club has his or her favourite book or author, which they frequently mention. Year published: 2008 Genre: Novel, epistolatory Setting & time: London and Guernsey, Britain, 1946 Writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, Dawsey Adams, telling her about a book he owns that was once in her possession and sparking her curiosity with a men...

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. A good book to bring the horrors of the Holocaust to the attention of young teenagers - although I still think nothing beats (the non-fiction) Diary of Anne Frank for that purpose. Warning, possible SPOILERS below: I found this to be a good book for the most part and well written, and while it is meant for younger readers, it is still readable to an adult. However, I have some problems with it. I do realise the story is a parable for young teens, and therefore not totally realistic, but this irked me anyway. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood to read a parable – but there was nothing in the blurb that indicated that is was anything but a novel anchored in reality, and therefore I read it as such. The first is that I found hard to believe is that the nine year old protagonist, Bruno, could be so terribly naive to never realise what was really going on inside the Auschwitz fence that was literally a few meters away from his house. For a norma...

Year of publication: 1945 Genre: Mystery Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: A military hospital in rural Kent, England; World War 2 Story: An old man dies on the operating table during what should have been a routine operation to fix a broken bone, and Inspector Cockrill of the Kent police is called in to investigate what most people are sure will turn out to be an unfortunate accident or an unexplained but not malicious death. But then one of the nurses who attended the operation claims that she knows it was murder and that she has proof and knows who the killer is. She is subsequently murdered, and now everyone is convinced the first death was also a murder. Cockrill is sure he knows both the who and the why, but he still needs to find out how, and obtain solid evidence for the identity of the killer. Review: This story has a wonderfully evocative and atmospheric background: a rural military hospital during WW2, with bombs often falling nearby. The cast of suspects...