Reading in Reykjavík

Original title: Maigret tend un pieg e. Translated by Daphne Woodward (1965).  This is the first Maigret book I have read in ages.  Opening a Maigret novel is like visiting old friends, not just Maigret, Madame Maigret, Janvier and all the rest, but also Paris.  In this book, we jump into the middle of an investigation of serial murders in Montmartre and Maigret is about to set a trap for the killer. It doesn't go quite to plan - he escapes, but does leave behind a piece of evidence that will lead the police to him.  Like most other Maigret books I have read, this isn't a whodunnit. In the Maigret books, the identity of the killer isn't often hidden from the reader until the last chapter, and instead we get to see how Maigret figures it out (although sometimes the killer is known from the beginning). Then the rest of the book is about either proving it or applying so much psychological pressure that the killer gives up and confesses. In this book, there...

Venice: Tales of the City is an anthology of writing about Venice, gathered together, edited and sometimes translated by Michelle Lovric. The book is organised into themed chapters and each chapter begins with some Venetian proverbs, then moves on to short quotations about the city, and then to excerpts from longer works, including  history books and travelogues, poetry and fiction. Many of the quotations are curiosity-inducing and make one want to read more, which is just what an anthology should do. Lovric has taken care to curate this eclectic collection in such a way as to not only include passages about Venice as seen through the eyes of visitors and expats living there, but also through the eyes of Venetians, and its fun to compare the two and see how often one sees allusions or direct statements about the city's decline and its glorious past in the texts written by foreigners and Venice as a vibrant, living city in the texts written by local writers and visitors from ...

I consider myself to be an anglophile and have paid regular visits to England for the last 20 or so years. Every time I go there, I buy books that become my souvenirs of the trip. This is one such book. I am a great lover of both language and popular science, and often when I find books that feature both, I try to buy or borrow them. Natural history, including zoology and its many branches, is also among my favorite non-fiction subjects to read about, so this books was an obvious choice for me. Mrs. Moreau's Warbler mainly deals in etymology - one of my favorite aspects of language studies. But it is not just about etymology - the origins of words - but about and how we use language to define and classify the world around us, combined with taxonomy, ornithology, history and the author's bird-watching activities. The author's approach to the subject is systematic and time/history based, i.e. he begins with the "Origins of Bird Names" and then moves on throu...

Karl Pilkington amuses me. His child-like observations are entertaining and occasionally funny and his persona of ultra-straight man (in the comedic sense) being buffeted around by circumstances that are only made funny by his responses to them (which usually are either bafflement or misery), make for entertaining television.   An Idiot Abroad is possibly the best antidote you can find for an overdose of self-important travel shows, because it shows you that you don't have to enjoy travelling all the time - it's okay to sometimes just endure it. When I first came across the TV series An Idiot Abroad, I couldn't figure whether he was acting or not, but I came to the conclusion that he probably wasn't - he's just never developed a brain-to-mouth filter and so says what he's thinking and doesn't feel he needs to pretend to be sophisticated or profound. Anyhow, this isn't the kind of book that I would ever pay full price for - but I have enjoyed his T...

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.

I first read Bet Me in 2005, and it has been on my list of regular rereads ever since. As I have been moving towards multitasking while I "read", I decided to get the audio version, and I have no regrets. This is actually my second listen - I also listened to it back in 2018 when I first got it. This is just to add some notes on the narration, as I have already reviewed this novel. Read my original review to see what I thought of the book. The narrator, Deanna Hurst, does a good job of the reading, and one never confuses the characters, as she gives them different enough voices that once you get used to them, you never have any problems telling them apart, but she also doesn't exaggerate them, which is good, because while this book has some funny moments, it isn't a comedy in itself and I have occasionally listened to audiobooks where the narrator exaggerated thins so much that it sounded like slapstick. Her voice is well-fitted to the often rapid-fire dialogu...

This isn't a review of the book, as much as of the narrator of the audio book version. Artists in Crime is among of the better of Ngaio Marsh's Chief Inspector Alleyn novels, and one of the ones I occasionally reread - not so much for the murder plot, which is gruesome and more than a little melodramatic, albeit clever - but for the romance. It's not a romance novel per se, but the side plot concerns Alleyn's very tentative courtship of his future wife, artist Agatha Troy. They had met in a previous book, where he was interested in and attracted to her while she was in equal parts intrigued by him and annoyed with herself for being so. In this book we get to see how she begins to accept that she has feelings for him, and he to have some hope that she may reciprocate his feelings for her. It is not the same breathtaking romance arc as in contemporary author Dorothy L. Sayer's detective novels, to which some have drawn parallels, but is quite satisfying even so. ...