Reading in Reykjavík

I read 8 books in February. One was an audio book I listened to while doing housework and 4 I read while laid up in bed with the flu. 4 were re-reads, and it will come as no surprise to those who have been stuck in bed sick that three of those were comfort reads I read while I was ill. The books: Jennifer Crusie: Maybe This Time . Reread. Romance/ghost story. Jennifer Crusie: Charlie All Night . Reread. Romance. Michael Innes: Hamlet, Revenge! . Detective story, murder mystery. Mark Leyner & Billy Goldberg : Why do men have nipples? Hundreds of questions you'd only ask a doctor after your third martini . Medical/biological answers and lame humour. J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . Reread. Audio book. YA fantasy. Mary Ann & Annie Barrows Shaffer: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society . Reread. Novel, romantic. Patti Smith: Just Kids . Memoir. Fantastic book, recommended. Ben Yagoda: When you catch an adjective, kill it . Lingu...

I woke up to a small earthquake around 1 a.m. As I lay in bed, waiting to see if there were going to be aftershocks, I realised it was unusually bright outside for the time of night. It was the kind of cold, flat light that tells you it is snowing. Earlier, it had been blowing hard, the wind whistling in the rooftops and occasional flurries of hail beating in salvos against the corrugated iron and window panes, but now I realised the harsh wind had died down. The city was faintly visible through a cover of light, dusty snow that was being blown slowly and thickly back and forth between the apartment buildings, borne on a gentle wind. It was drifting so slowly that it almost seemed to hang in the air like fog. More than that, however, the city was silent. Totally, utterly silent. The usual muted roar you don't hear except when you come back after a few days in the country wasn't there. Even the house seemed to have fallen into silence. No flushing drains, no creaking doo...

We all have our favourite childhood reads. These are some of mine. Note: Many of my childhood favourites were books written in Icelandic by Icelanders and have never been translated into English (although several exist in Scandinavian, Dutch and German translations). I am leaving them out of the list as they can’t possibly be of interest to the majority of my readers. . The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen . I was given his collected fairy tales as a christening present and was familiar with many of the stories before I could read them for myself. My mother used to read from them to me, but it was a proud day when I was able to read them by myself and discover all the dark stories she never did read, like The Red Shoes and The Shadow. The Moomintroll books by Tove Jansson. I first discovered these on the book-shelves of some friends of mine, and later I would borrow them repeatedly from the library. Enid Blyton’s Adventure books (and to a lesser extent, the Five Find-Outers ...

It's Tuesday, and that means the The Broke and the Bookish are accepting contributions to their Top Ten Tuesdays meme. There is a little bit of an anti-Valentine's Day sentiment going on, as they are asking for books that broke the readers' hearts a little. Please visit some of the other participating blogs. If you like books full of emotion, you may find some great reads. Warning: SPOILERS ahead! Anne of Green Gables , Anne’s House of Dreams and Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. All concern deaths. If you have read them, you’ll know which ones. I’m counting them as one, because of the similar themes and because the books all belong to the same series. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The book was fine - but the ending of the story of Arwen and Aragorn in the appendixes was heartbreaking. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Not because of Beth’s death, although that was sad, but because Jo’s dreams never came true. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pul...

I read 14 books in January, in a number of genres. Out of those 14, six were e-books and five were books I had started reading before the beginning of the month. I have at least 20 more books I started reading at some point and then either decided to save for later or forgot about, and now I want to try to finish some of them. Among the books I started and finished within the month was the first book I have read in its entirety on a mobile device. I decided to review that experience and will discuss the device, the software and the overall reading experience in a review within a few days. The books were divided between fiction and non-fiction as follows:  Of the 6 fiction volumes, two were myth-based fantasies, one was a science fiction novella, one a romance, one a mystery-suspense novel and one a collection of cartoons.  Of the 8 non-fiction volumes, three were about fashion, two were biographies, two history books and one was about the natural sciences. As I men...

I have decided to cut down my blogging time considerably until spring, in order to be able to continue to read for fun alongside my studies. I will not be suspending this blog completely, but posting is going to be even more irregular than usual until I have turned in all of my academic assignments. "Dictionaries" Snapped on my cell phone and edited using the PicSay app I am taking two university courses this semester, in Terminology and Literary Translation, both at the master's level, 15 ECTS-credits altogether. In addition, I am taking a course in French for international relations through my workplace. That course amounts to 10 ECTS-credits, meaning that I am doing an almost full academic schedule as well as working full time. Even though I am not studying for a degree, this still needs to be taken seriously and most of the time I have devoted to blogging is now going to be taken up by studying and assignment work. I do have a couple of reviews I'm workin...

Originally published in July 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is the final review repost. In 1886, Edgar Drake, a specialist in tuning Erard pianos, is sent by the British War Office to the wilds of Burma to tune an Erard for Surgeon-Major Carroll, a man who has managed to become perhaps the most important British officer in the whole of Burma by making himself indispensable for the peace negotiations between the British and the Burmese. The piano plays some mysterious part in all this, but has unfortunately reacted badly to the extremes of the climate and is out of tune. Drake, shy, thoughtful and eccentric, finds in himself an unexpected adventurousness as he sets off from England to tune the piano. Once he gets to Carroll’s stronghold in Mae Lwin, he is enchanted by the place, charmed by Carroll, and seduced (not in the physical sense) by a mysterious local woman. All of these unite in holding him there, and he loses all sense of time and sinks into a kind of dream. When r...