tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71057182026-05-28T19:46:49.283+00:00Bookish expressions of a Bibliophile living in ReykjavíkBibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.comBlogger1480125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-79791698939757622192020-06-18T12:23:00.002+00:002020-06-18T12:23:47.705+00:00

Note: This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie.

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No.  27: Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie. Frequent reread. This is my favourite book by Crusie, and one of the books I reach for when I need the comfort of a familiar read. No. 30: A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters (audiobook read by Stephen Thorne). Second reread, first listen. Liked the reader, but am looking forward to listening to the books read by Derek Jacobi, whom I

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Researched and written in 1991, and published in 1992, just before the Rodney King riots, L.A. Lore is a snapshot of Los Angeles at the start of the 1990s as observed by a knowledgeable outsider. Brooks visited the city for three months and traveled to most of its municipalities and neighborhoods (and some neighboring ones), gathering material for his book. He puts a strong focus on architecture

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I am always pretty sceptical when I come across social media spin-off books, and although I have bought a few, I make a point of only buying them second hand, because I tend to just read them and then dispose of them. This one is based on a popular Twitter account and contains a previously tweeted collection of problems that the author considers to be very British, although as a non-Brit I

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Since I have already posted about the audio version of another Marsh detective novel, Artists in Crime, which was read by a different narrator, I figured I would do one for this one as well, just to compare the narrators. There have been a number of different audiobook narrators for the books in this series, but Philip Franks and James Saxon have each narrated more of them than any of the other

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Published in 1931, Police at the Funeral is the fourth of the Albert Campion detective novels by Margery Allingham. As I haven't read the previous novels and it has been along time since I read the only other Campion novel I have read, I don't feel equipped to comment much on Campion as a character, except to say that he's quite superficially developed at this point and he and Lord Peter Wimsey

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-37446682214626493572020-05-17T10:00:00.000+00:002020-05-17T10:00:02.717+00:00

I first became aware of Nick Bantock's illustrated novels when I came across the first edition of Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence when it was published in 1991. I didn't read them, however, until a few years ago, and found them beautiful - and the story rather superficial. This story concerns a young art conservator, Sarah, who is lured away from her safe museum job by a

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-52489975629126216892020-05-15T10:00:00.000+00:002020-05-15T10:00:07.786+00:00

Original title: Maigret tend un piege. 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

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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

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-5484913715719619832020-05-12T09:13:00.001+00:002020-05-12T09:13:42.141+00:00

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

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-91417503044641045082020-05-10T10:00:00.000+00:002020-05-10T10:00:03.781+00:00

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

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-1629999478355514652020-05-09T13:00:00.000+00:002020-05-09T13:00:00.392+00:00

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

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-41333113702003900972020-05-09T10:00:00.000+00:002020-05-09T10:00:05.700+00:00

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

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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

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-75155816778618545272020-04-11T18:05:00.000+00:002020-04-11T18:05:55.683+00:00

I embarked on a reread of Nora Roberts' In the Garden trilogy and Bride Quartet in March and have been reading them at the kitchen table while I eat my breakfast and dinner, and over lunch as well on the weekends. I find some of Robert's books to be good comfort reads, and who doesn't need a good comfort read during times like these? While I usually go to for Roberts' standalone romantic

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I came across a second-hand copy of this book in a charity shop in Kew, Richmond on a recent visit to England. (Was there a couple of weeks before the Covid-19 panic started). I love travelogues and one of my favourite authors of such stories is Gerald Durrell. I have nearly all of his travel books that he wrote about his various animal-collecting and, later, filming expeditions to odd corners

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-78932252477054784992020-03-10T13:17:00.002+00:002020-03-30T10:18:25.469+00:00

When I came across the "Once and Future King" by T.H. White on Audible (read by Neville Jason, who does a fine job of it), I knew I had to buy it. I already owned a physical copy of the book, but I have found lately that it suits me better to listen to long books rather than to read them, because my hands want to be doing something other than holding a book while I read. This novel, which was

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Like many other legends of the old West, Calamity Jane's legendary status makes her out to be a larger-than-life character, a shining heroine who lived as she pleased and enjoyed more freedom than most women of the era. Considering that she was already a legend in her own lifetime, surprisingly little seems to be known about her real life, which is eclipsed by her legend. I think I first

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-20180240185775974002020-02-19T14:15:00.001+00:002020-03-30T10:18:25.442+00:00

-The beginning chapters of this novel make it seem like "Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case" may have been cut from Goldenhand prior to its publication, as it shows how Nick Sayre finally made it back to the Old Kingdom after he went back home after the events of Lirael. However, it wouldn't have added anything except to explain why Nick finally decided to return to the Old Kingdom and

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-43632931530061508032020-02-10T09:31:00.001+00:002020-03-30T10:18:25.452+00:00

I read the first three books of Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series last year, after coming across an irresistibly priced boxed set of them in a charity shop. I loved them. I couldn't really say which was my favourite, but I knew I wanted more and the ending of Abhorsen suggested there were more, so I did my research and got my mother to buy a copy of Goldenhand for me on one of her trips abroad. I

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-76620546303486755552020-02-07T08:16:00.000+00:002020-03-30T10:18:25.466+00:00

I love trivia, which is why I, while I still watched TV on a regular basis, enjoyed watching quiz shows. QI was no exception. For those who don't know what QI is and are loath to click on the link or don't trust Wikipedia, QI is a comedy quiz show on BBC television in which two teams of three comedians each are quizzed by a seventh comedian. Stephen Fry was its first presenter and later Sandi

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-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and

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- My first introduction to the weird and wonderful world of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which I read as a teenager and can remember little about. Since Mr. Rosewater is mentioned in Slaughterhouse-Five, I really should go back and read it again, in English this time around. - I have since read Welcome to the Money House, Deadeye Dick and Cat's Cradle, and have Hocus

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-85214169264672257532020-02-05T10:49:00.002+00:002020-03-30T10:18:25.476+00:00

As the title suggests, this is a collection of erotica - paintings and drawings to be precise. The title is misleading - the imagery is nearly all of European or North American origin and almost exclusively pertains to heterosexual sexual acts by white people. Nothing universal about that. I would also call the "erotica" in the title misleading, as a lot of the imagery is, to my mind,

Bibliophilehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10960676264710788969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7105718.post-10756984223240713262020-02-03T14:33:00.000+00:002020-03-30T10:18:25.425+00:00

I'm only counting this as half a book, as it's really a short story (there is also a novel, but I haven't read that). The only reason I'm writing about it at all is that it's such a poignant, though-provoking story. Actually, this isn't going to be a review, let alone a reading journal entry, because I tried to write down some non-spoilery reading thoughts about this story, and ended up with

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