Monthly Archives: May 2015

Links I found interesting for 03-05-2015

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Jar City, Arnaldur Indriðason; The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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These emerged from my recent survey as the best-known books set in Iceland and Spain respectively. They actually have some elements in common – both are about untangling decades-old family secrets, involving sex, violence and intellectual endeavour.

In Jar City, the intellectual endeavour is science, both forensic medicine and the Icelandic national genetic research database; and the mode of the novel is a detective story. The winning factor is the portrayal of this small island society, where almost everyone knows almost everyone, but people still slip between the cracks and the genetic mapping project starts to uncover hidden history. Our detective hero is much more at home with ordinary criminals, and dealing with the fallout of his broken family, than with the scientists who seem an alien culture grafted onto Iceland’s gritty foundations. It also features a character who is not gendered, which takes some linguistic manoeuvring in a society where most people take a gendered patronymic. In fact the plot once entangled is fairly straightforward, and the resolution (dare I say it) a little glib, but it was a jolly good read, and the image of a room full of jars containing various things that forensic scientists might be interested in (the “jar city” of the title) will linger with me longer than I wanted it to.

In The Shadow of the Wind, the intellectual endeavour is literature, and how a writer and his works became erased and maimed by love, religion, the Spanish civil war and the Franco regime. It’s a much better book than Jar City, tracing family histories through generations, with recurrent themes of locked rooms and hidden knowledge, which is not always as good to find as you may think. Ruiz Zafón somehow catches the mood of Barcelona at different times in the twentieth century very well, particularly the stifling ideology of the Franco period. One point that is a little surprising is that the Catalan language is nowhere mentioned, though almost all the characters (one notable exception being the psychopathic police officer) have obviously Catalan names. I wonder if the author felt he needed to finesse that point for his Spanish audience?

Anyway, both recommended, though The Shadow of the Wind more so.

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April books

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Post delayed by a horrible stomach bug which has completely flattened me.

Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 17)
A Slip of the Keyboard, by Terry Pratchett
Here’s One I Wrote Earlier, by Peter Purves
The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

 

Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 4)
Wages of Sin, by Andrew M. Greeley
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett

SF (non-Who): 32 (YTD 63
χ2
η3
λ3
μ4 – 50 pages
ν4 – 50 pages 
ξ4 – 50 pages
ο4 – 50 pages
π4 – 50 pages
ρ4 – 50 pages
σ4 – 60 pages
τ4
υ4 – 50 pages
φ4 – 50 pages 
χ4 – 50 pages
ψ4 – 50 pages
ω4 – 50 pages
Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey
α5 – 50 pages
β5 – 50 pages
γ5 – 50 pages
δ5 – 50 pages
ε5 – 50 pages
ζ5 – 50 pages
η5 – 50 pages
θ5 – 50 pages
ι5 – 50 pages
κ5 – 50 pages
λ5 – 50 pages
μ5 – 50 pages
ν5 – 50 pages
υ5 – 50 pages
φ5 – 50 pages

Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 15)
Burning Heart, by Dave Stone
Timeless by Steve Cole
Ship of Fools, by Dave Stone
Lethbridge-Stewart: Top Secret Files, by Andy Frankham-Allen, Nick Walters, Graeme Harper and David A. McIntee

Comics : 2 (YTD 8)
Ms Marvel vol 1: No Normal, by G.Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
Rat Queens, vol 1: Sass and Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch

~6,500 pages (YTD 25,500)
12/43 by women (YTD 32/107) – Dunnett, χ2, η3, ξ4, π4, σ4, φ4, Carey, κ5, λ5, μ5, Wilson
4/43 by PoC (YTD 8/107) – ω4, γ5, Alphona, Upchurch

Reread: 3/43 (χ2, η3, λ3), YTD 11/107

Reading now:
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Jar City, by Arnaldur Indriðason 

Coming soon (perhaps):
Mating, by Norman Rush
The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari
The Painted Man/The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett
The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov
The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999, by Misha Glenny
Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture: Military Men in England and Ireland, 1558-1594, by Rory Rapple
Een geweer in het water, by Hermann
The seven-per-cent solution; being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D, by Nicholas Meyer
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong
Sculptor’s Daughter, by Tove Jansson
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, by Ursula Le Guin
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Meditations on Middle Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien
City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
Prisoner, by Dave Rogers
The King’s Speech, by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi
Divorcing Jack, by Colin Bateman
The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal
Synthespians™ by Craig Hinton
Emotional Chemistry by Simon A. Forward
Down by Lawrence Miles

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Thursday reading blog

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Current
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (a chapter a day)
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Jar City, by Arnaldur Indriðason 

Last books finished
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

Next books
Stopping for a Spell, by Diana Wynne Jones
Islands In The Stream, by Ernest Hemingway
Synthespians™, by Craig Hinton

Books acquired in last week
The Affirmation, by Christopher Priest
Jar City, by Arnaldur Indriðason 
Saga, Volume 4, by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Amoras, vol 1: Suske, by Willy Vandersteen [Marc Legendre]
Ys: De Legende vol 1: Verraad by Jean-Luc Istin and Dejan Nenadov
Apostata, bundel 1 [De purperen vloek and De heks], by Ken Broeders

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