Reading in Reykjavík

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 won this book in a giveaway last year (thanks, Janet!) and have finally got round to reading it. The premise of this anthology is for four modern authors to play with characters, themes and stories from Jane Austen novels. There are two historical stories and two modern ones, each taking inspiration from a different novel. I decided to review each story separately as I finished it and then give an opinion on the book as a whole. Since the review seems set to become somewhat long, I will divide it into two parts. The other part will be posted tomorrow. Genre: Paranormal romance Year of publication: 2010 Almost Persuaded by Mary Balogh Sub-genre: Historical Setting & time: England, Regency era Level of sensuality: Kissing plus one very short (and very flowery) sex scene. Mary Balogh has written some pretty good historical romances set in England during the Regency and Georgian eras. This, however, is her first venture into paranormal territory. The story she chos...

Genre: Non-fiction, portrait of a place Year of publication: 2004 Subject: Calcutta (India) at various times and through various eyes Simon Winchester is one of those authors whose books I love to read. He is a good writer and chooses interesting subjects to write about, whether he is writing about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary and one of its most prolific submitters , or about his own walk through South Korea. Therefore I was pleased to discover that he had edited and partially written a book about Calcutta, a city that brings up various images on one’s mind: of impressive mansions and sprawling slums, wide boulevards and narrow, rambling alleys, of fancy cars and human-powered rikshaws driving down the same roads, of splendid riches and grinding poverty existing side by side. I haven’t been to Bengal yet, and so haven’t had the opportunity to visit Calcutta and form my own opinion of the place, but the viewpoints presented in the articles, essays, poetry and e...

Originally published in July 2004, in 2 parts Book 25 in my first 52 books challenge. I have edited this review slightly for the sake of clarity. I think it's fitting to post this now, since I am again taking an interest in paranormal literature. Author: Christopher Frayling (author & editor), et al. Year published: 1991 Pages: 429 Genre: Literary theory, literature Sub-genre(s): Vampire stories Where got: Public library I had considerable interest in vampire stories when I was studying English literature at university, and even wrote a final essay on Dracula for an interesting course I took on horror literature. I used this book as one of my sources, but never read it all the way through, only concentrating on the first part, which traces the history of vampires in literature. The contents of the book: The first part of the book is Frayling’s dissertation on the vampire in literature. Although vampire stories owe much to folk-tales they made the jump into l...

Editor: Yona Zeldis McDonough Year published: 1999 Pages: 240 Genre: social history Like millions of other girls across the world, I had a Barbie when I was little. I think she was a Superstar. She came in a hot pink gown with spaghetti straps, had rigid bent arms with a scary hole through one hand for a huge ring that quickly got lost, and similar huge earrings, the removal of which left gaping holes that obliterated her earlobes. Before long, one arm was broken off at the elbow – I don’t remember how it happened, but I may well have been trying to unbend her unnaturally angled arm. After my brother broke the pin that attached her head to her torso by hitting her hard with his He-Man action figure, she was never the same, and one day she was gone. I never missed her. I certainly never felt I was expected to become a Barbie Superstar. I never even wanted to be blonde, let alone have DD breasts. As an adult I discovered that the pretty doll with the vacant stare and impossibly thic...