Stiff is proving to be an interesting read. Roach writes in a matter-of-fact journalistic style that makes the subject seem less grim than it really is, but she does on occasion become a bit too flippant about it, I guess in an attempt to distance herself. Although she uses humour to ease the grimness, the jokes – which, by the way, are never about the dead, only the living, especially Roach herself – often fall flat. Perhaps it’s just me, but this is a serious subject and I’d like to see it handled as such, even in a popular science book like this one.
Roach is careful not to be overly descriptive or overly scientific, which makes the book (at least those chapters I’ve read) accessible to people who want to know about these things, just not in too much detail. Even so, I have been very careful not to read the book just before or during meals, as there are limits even to what my strong stomach can take.
Full title: Stiff – The curious lives of human cadavers Author: Mary Roach Year published: 2003 Pages: 303 Genre: Popular science, biology Where got: amazon.co.uk
Mom, Dad, what happens after we die?
This is a classic question most parents dread having to answer. While this book doesn’t answer the philosophical/theological part of the question – what happens to the soul? - it does claim to contain answers to the biological part, namely: what happens to the body?
Week 41: The Xenophobe’s Guide to the Icelanders - review
This is basically a brief portrait of the Icelandic nation, it’s behaviour, sense of humour, traditions, beliefs, food, drinking habits, etc. Don’t expect a deep analysis of the national psyche – this is purely humorous and on the surface. Apart from a few small errors and atrocious spelling of Icelandic names and words, I would say this is a pretty accurate, if rather exaggerated, description of Icelanders as a group. The outsider often sees things that a member of a group does not, but in this case there is hardly anything in the book that Icelanders have not said about themselves over the years. The edition I read dates back to 1994, and so is somewhat dated, but there is a newer one from 2000.
Rating: A tongue-in-cheek description of Icelanders as a group that is guaranteed to make you smile. 3+ stars.
P.S. Mr. Sale, next time you update the book, you might want to reconsider the turkey joke - it doesn't work in Icelandic.
Full title: A Cook’s Tour in search of the perfect meal Author: Anthony Bourdain Year published: 2001 Pages: 274 Genre: Travel, food Where got: Public library
I’ve wanted to see the TV series ever since I read about it on a cooking website, but for now I will have to make do with the book.
The Story: The story of Bourdain’s round-the-world journey in search of interesting food and eating situations. This was first just supposed to be a travel-foodie book, but then Television got involved, and he ended up traveling around with a TV crew in tow. Some of the visits yielded plenty of delicious food, like the visit to The French Laundry in California, others were nostalgic and unfulfilling like the trip to France, and still others pointless, like the journey to Pailin in Cambodia. The dining experiences were sometimes exotic, often delicious, at other times scary or just horrible. Some brought the intrepid chef face to face with his food, still on the hoof, or swimming, crawling or slithering around, others brought him into situations where he whished he had never ordered the dish in question, and still others where he had to eat something he never wanted to eat in the first place but had to because it made good television. He found several “perfect” meals on the journey, but, as he remarks: “’Perfect’ …. Once you find it… it’s gone.”
Technique: Bourdain is still as profane, self-deprecating, honest and likeable as he was in his previous bestselling book, Kitchen Confidential. The style is somewhere between a hard-boiled detective novel and a regular travel book, full of hyperbole and good humour. Unlike Kitchen… the narrative does not jump from one subject to another, which makes the narrative more structured.
Rating: My two favourite non-fiction genres – food and travel - combined in one great book. 5 stars.
Author: Richard Sale Year published: 1994 Pages: 64 Genre: Humour Sub-genre(s): Travel guide Where got: Public library
I was thinking about reviewing a full-fledged guide book about Iceland, but realized I would never be able to finish one in only a week (actually I could, but it would not be much fun). Instead I picked up this slim volume that contains a humourous profile of the Icelandic nation. It remains to be seen if it’s accurate…
The Story: The life story of one of the greatest warriors in Icelandic history. He is thought to have really existed, although of course by the time the Saga was written everything about him had reached legendary status. I hesitate to call him a hero, because although he did many brave and heroic things, he was also a thief, a highwayman and a murderer who sometimes killed just because he didn’t like someone. Many of his misfortunes are entirely due to his own temperament, although some may be attributed to ongoing feuds or just plain bad luck. Grettir was a hunted man for nearly half of his life. First he was outlawed for 3 years for a killing, and then he was outlawed for life. The second sentence is blamed on his having been cursed by a monster that he fought and overcame. He is described as having been the strongest man who ever lived in Iceland, and could only be overcome and killed by magic. Not only is the Saga about Grettir alone, it begins with some history about his family, and ends with the story of how his brother tracked down his killer all the way to Byzantium to kill him (Icelanders in the Sagas were big on blood feuds and could be extremely tenacious and patient when it came to revenge).
Technique and plot: The story is well plotted, but those who don’t like to read about the “begots” in the Bible may find parts of this (or indeed any) Saga equally uninteresting, as it contains a lot of genealogy and quite complicated family connections, which nevertheless are important to the story, as they explain the ongoing feuds, who gets compensation for whose death and who is bound to avenge whom, and so on. Other than the genealogical information, the structure and plotting of the story is quite similar to a modern novel, albeit one that rambles a bit and takes a while to get to the central plot. Once the central plot (Grettir’s life story) is reached, the story starts to move faster, and also becomes more fantastic, with Grettir coming up against not only human opponents, but also trolls, ghosts and a witch. In his youth, Grettir is not at all a likeable person. He’s lazy, arrogant, impertinent, rude, violent, and cruel to animals. Not a very nice boy at all. As he gets older and his misfortunes start piling up, he becomes slightly more sympathetic, but only a bit. I know there are people who admire him and call him a hero, but I am not one of them. I think he brought his misfortunes upon himself, although he did not deserve to die the way he did.
Rating: A medieval Saga that should appeal to all fans of heroic literature. 4 stars.
"Never read a book through merely because you have begun it." John Witherspoon
Whish I could follow that advice. I have read too many bad or boring books just because I felt that not finishing them would be giving up or because I kept hoping that they would improve. I am trying to implement a rule whereby I will stop reading a bad or uninteresting book after 2 chapters or 50 pages, but it will take some time.
I love travel literature, not guides and such, unless they’re written from a personal point of view, but true (and fictional) tales of travel and exploration. I get equal enjoyment from reading books about extreme adventure like Endurance, about gentle meanderings like Round Ireland with a Fridge, and about living in foreign climes, like A Small Place in Italy. You might say I’m a travel book nut. I was given Michael Palin’s travel book Pole to Pole when it first came out in Icelandic, and enjoyed it very much, so yesterday’s discovery was a pleasing one: Palin’s travel books are available for free reading on the Web, and all completely legal. Palin has a website that’s all about his travels, and all the books he’s written as tie-ins with the TV series are there. The site is promotional, but not overly commercial. If you register, you can chat online with other users and participate in competitions, but the best thing is that the full text of all the books is there for free reading. I may end up buying the rest of the books, if I enjoy them as much as I did Pole to Pole.
All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961))
Author: Unknown Year published: this edition: 1985; original: 14th century Pages: 141 Genre: Saga, medieval literature Where got: Present from my parents
Today we Icelanders celebrate the Day of the Icelandic Language, and therefore I decided to read something in my native language for a change, and what is more Icelandic than a Saga? I chose The Saga of Grettir the Strong because I have special ties to it, having lived in Skagafjörður and visited Drangey, the island where Grettir spent the last years of his life.
The version I am reading is from a controversial modernised spelling edition of the Sagas.
This Saga is available in English for reading online: Saga of Grettir
This is my Drangey page. It contains a short summary of the Saga of Grettir, along with a couple of legends about the island.
The Story: Will and Jim, two teenage friends who live in a town somewhere in the USA, witness the arrival of a mysterious and creepy carnival in the dead of an autumn night, long after the carnival season has ended. They witness something terrifying in the carnival grounds after closing time and one of them accidentally harms one of the carnival directors, and as a result they are hunted through the town by the carnival people, a collection of twisted and tortured freaks who have themselves fallen prey to the dark carnival and become its slaves.
Technique and plot: In this book, Ray Bradbury took something that many people these days find innocuous and perhaps a bit tawdry, but which less than a century ago was indeed quite terrifying to any right-minded person: a side-show carnival. Old-time side-show carnivals were full of people whose appearance made it impossible for them to live ordinary lives, and although some of the side-acts were fakes, many were quite real, a pathetic collection of diseased, disabled and deformed people who were put on show like animals in a zoo. Bradbury is old enough to have seen such side-shows and has taken their more nightmarish aspects and woven them into a fine tale of good versus evil.
The narrative style is poetic and eloquent, rich, full of meaning and laden by turns with menace and hope. It is hardly the kind of language one expects from a horror story, which makes the horror all the more effective. The freaks are both pathetic and scary, the horror is just as much psychological as it is visual, and while the worst of the bad are pure evil, the good and just have a dark side that sometimes makes it hard for them to judge correctly what is right and what is wrong, and which makes them real and believable. The plot moves along slowly at first and then begins rolling along faster and faster, until it reaches a frenzied climax.
Rating: A fine tale of horror and friendship, family ties and things that go ‘bump’ in the night. 4+ stars.
I have added links to my reviews of previous books of the week (those that are still available online). See the right sidebar. I am working on adding links to the bonus reviews as well.
I use a lot of dictionaries and reference books in my work. In addition to the small personal stack of reference books that I keep by my desk, I use books belonging to the institute I work for. It has about 4 shelf meters of books: dictionaries in such diverse languages as English, German, Latin, Russian and Finnish, plus about 10 more; technical, medical, pharmaceutical and geographical glossaries; an encyclopaedia, a dictionary of symbols, and several other specialized reference books.
One specific book, a Norwegian-Icelandic dictionary, is always disappearing. In a shelf full of fat, glossy books, some bound in sumptuous-looking gilded fake leather, others bright and colourful, this tall and plain paperback seems to melt into the background. I have searched for this book for 20 minutes and finally found it right on the shelf, sitting between two of its fatter and more sparkling siblings. It once disappeared for several weeks and when it was found, right were it was supposed to be, no-one would admit to having hoarded it away. There are people here - people who have looked at the book shelves at least once a week for the past 4 years and frequently needed to use some of the books - who don’t know we even have a Norwegian-Icelandic dictionary, so well camouflaged is this book.
I'm thinking about obtaining a patent on the colour combination. I’m sure the armed forces of some country will pay handsomely for the secret of invisibility this book possesses.
It was only in this year that I started keeping a record of the books I read. I have been a bookworm and book collector since I learned to read at age six, and I regret not having started recording my reading much sooner. I kept a movie log for a couple of years when I was a teenager (now I just use IMDb), but somehow it never occurred to me to keep a book log until someone started a discussion about it in an online reading forum I’m a member of.
At first, I was merely going to keep a simple log of all the books I read, with titles, authors and dates, but it soon became obvious that keeping a full reading journal would be much more interesting. That way, I would be able to analyse my reading habits and compile statistical information. Using a computer would not be spontaneous enough, as I intended to jot down my thoughts about the book as I was reading, and therefore the journal would have to be a physical one.
So I went shopping: I bought an A5 folder, a narrow-lined writing block with pre-punched holes, and a good, fade proof pen. I thought about buying A-Z dividers, but then I thought it would be more interesting to classify the books according to genre rather than author. I may yet change my mind about that as it can sometimes be difficult to decide what the main genre of a book is.
When I got home, I had a lot of fun scanning book covers and using Photoshop to make genre-specific montages that I printed out on stiff A5 filing cards and used for dividers. The three biggest genres I was reading at that time were fantasy, crime and romance, and each got it’s own divider in the folder. The other dividers will come as I go along – I made it a rule that I wouldn’t make a decorated divider until I had at least 10 books belonging to the genre in question.
It took a bit of thinking before I decided what information I would include in the journal, and some more items have been added since then. At the top of the page I record the title, author, publisher, original country and year of publication, no. of pages, format, narrative style (person), genre (and sub-genres if applicable), and date read. Additional information for translated books states the original title and translator. Below that, I record where I got the book, new words I learned from reading it, a brief summary of the plot, and a one or two sentence review with stars. If the book is part of a series, I write the series name at the bottom of the page, and when applicable, a reference to a list of other books in the same series. On the back of the file for the first book I read in a series I print a list of the other books and mark in when and if I read them. Sometimes, if the cover is interesting, I scan that and print a miniature version on the back of the record. My plan to record my thoughts as I was reading has evaporated, simply because I enjoy books best when I can read them uninterrupted. I tend to lose the thread if I have to break up the reading too much. This I have been doing since July and it looks like I will fill the folder before next July.
Now I have started a book log as well. At the end of each month I go over the journal entries for the month and arrange them alphabetically under the appropriate genre, but first I record the title, author, date read, year published, no. of pages, genre, and star rating in an Excel file. I plan to print out this simple book log at the end of each year and put it in the folder, along with a statistical summary for that year.
I have also started trying to compile a list of books I read before I started the journal. I know I will never be able to remember every single book I have ever read, but I’m having fun trying and the list grows by a couple of books every day.
I know this probably sounds rather nerdy to some people, but I have never denied being a book nerd and in a few years I will be able to analyse my reading habits and see how they have developed over time, and when I'm old and forgetful I will have a list of books to consult before going to the library to find something new to read.
Author: Ray Bradbury Year published: 1962 Pages: 215 Genre: Horror Where got: Second hand shop
By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. (William Shakespeare: Macbeth, act 4, scene 1)
I was only familiar with Ray Bradbury as a TV scriptwriter until a few years ago when I read a short story by him that appeared in an anthology of funny science fiction stories. Then I found this book while browsing in the Red Cross charity shop in Reykjavik, liked the Shakespearian title, and bought it. It’s been sitting on my TBR shelf for several months and I think it's about time I read it.
Week 38: What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew - review
Apart from the cheesy title this is a good reference book. It covers 19th century English society in several well-laid out chapters. From page 255 onwards there is a glossary of terms people are likely to find in books from or about that century in England, and at the end there is a bibliography for those who want to do more reading on the subject. Now, I am told by connoisseurs of English 19th century literature that they found the book lacking in some areas, but for most readers this is a good guide to English 19th century society as seen in literature.
Rating: A guide to all the things that might puzzle readers when reading about 19th century England. 4 stars.
If you were wondering about the answer to my question from the last posting: It was considered improper for unrelated, unmarried men and women exchange letters unless they were engaged, and if respectable young people openly exchanged letters, it was considered proof of an engagement.
Week 38: What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew
Subtitle: From fox hunting to whist – the facts of daily life in 19th century England Author: Daniel Pool Year published: 1993 Pages: 416 Genre: Social history, reference Where got: Amazon.co.uk
I apologise for posting this week’s book so late, but I’ve been busy. Review tomorrow.
I’ve read quite a number of novels set in 19th century England, and have often asked myself certain questions about the stories. One of those questions was “why did Mr. Darcy hand-deliver his letter to Elizabeth - surely he could have sent a servant with it?”(Pride and Prejudice) and another formulation of the same question was “why did Elinor think Marianne and Mr. Willoughby were engaged just because Marianne sent him letters?”(Sense and Sensibility). I had also wondered about certain social rules, like the order of precedence, which titles belonged to the nobility and which to the gentry, what was the definition of a gentleman, and when was the “season” and the “little season”. In all of these cases I could make educated guesses, based on the text and other books I had read, but I didn’t get my guesses confirmed until I read it in this book. It is an overview of 19th century English society, it’s social rules and costumes, the social and seasonal calendar, money matters, the judicial system, games, government, travel, servants, food, clothing, etc.
The Story: This is Waugh’s journal of his two month’s stay in Africa in 1959. He escaped the English winter, feeling rather decrepit, and returned feeling much better after a sojourn under the African sun. Hating air travel, he took the long route, first by train to Italy and then by ship to Tanganyika (now mainland Tanzania), stopping in Egypt, Kenya and Zanzibar on the way. The land journey took him around Tanganyika and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and he returned by ship from South-Africa.
Technique: This is of course, a travel diary, but it is edited and Waugh has clearly added things afterwards. Like most diaries that are written for others to see, it is impersonal, but Waugh’s sense of humour shines through. On the cover is a Waugh quotation: “As happier men watch birds, I watch men”, and he has, indeed, a good eye for human folly and idiosyncrasies. His take on African history is interesting – he is obviously saddened by the treatment of the natives by outsiders but still manages to see the humour in some situations, like when discussing the theories about the origins of the Great Zimbabwe. At the time, many thought that the natives were simply too primitive to have been able to build such a structure, and Waugh subtly pokes fun at the theories. Although Waugh sometimes makes subtle fun of the people he meets, there is never any meanness in it, and his wit sometimes had me chuckling.
Rating: An interesting view of British Africa with some information on interesting places to visit. 3 stars.
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About me
What this blog is about:
Reading and books.
If you’re wondering about the name 52 books, it stems from a book-a-week reading challenge I set myself. The challenge is over, but I'm still reading, and will continue to blog about the books I read and my reading experiences, and other stuff connected with books and reading.
I rate the books (if I feel like it), giving them stars ranging from zero to 5.
Books I have already read (sporadically updated):Cover gallery
Note: Some of the entries are linked to the months the reviews appeared in, because I made several entries for each book. I have marked those reviews with an asterix (*). If you want to read the whole review from beginning to end, you must scroll down and read from the bottom up (but you probably already knew that ;-) >
