Reading in Reykjavík

Translated by : Carol Brown Janeway. Genre : Historical novel. Themes : Mathematics, science, travel, human interactions. Kehlmann's novel is about two great men of the 19th century: Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrick Gauss. Von Humboldt is best known as a naturalist, geographer and explorer, and Gauss is considered to have been one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Both were pioneers in their respective fields and what Kehlmann focuses on in his book is that both men measured the known world - one travelling far and wide to do so and the other doing it all inside his own head, rarely leaving his home state. The narrative jumps around with alternating chapters about each man, going back and forth in time a little and showing the reader both men at various ages and stages of their careers. We also get to see parts of the story through the eyes of von Humboldt's long-suffering travel companion and collaborator, the French physician and botanist Aimé Bon...

Originally published in July 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is the final review repost. In 1886, Edgar Drake, a specialist in tuning Erard pianos, is sent by the British War Office to the wilds of Burma to tune an Erard for Surgeon-Major Carroll, a man who has managed to become perhaps the most important British officer in the whole of Burma by making himself indispensable for the peace negotiations between the British and the Burmese. The piano plays some mysterious part in all this, but has unfortunately reacted badly to the extremes of the climate and is out of tune. Drake, shy, thoughtful and eccentric, finds in himself an unexpected adventurousness as he sets off from England to tune the piano. Once he gets to Carroll’s stronghold in Mae Lwin, he is enchanted by the place, charmed by Carroll, and seduced (not in the physical sense) by a mysterious local woman. All of these unite in holding him there, and he loses all sense of time and sinks into a kind of dream. When r...

Such drama! Such romance! I must admit to having gone through a bit of a crisis with Georgette Heyer a couple of years ago. I love her historical novels but I got so thoroughly fed up with a couple that prominently featured silly-beyond-suspended-disbelief young females making trouble that I was filled with dread every time I tried to pick up a Heyer novel I hadn’t already read. You might say I was suffering from a surfeit of farce. This weekend, however, I finally got up the momentum to read The Spanish Bride , which I knew was based on a true story and took place during the Peninsular War and the battle of Waterloo, but beyond that I had no clue. The cover for it is pure romance, but what I discovered was actually a history of certain battles the male protagonist, Harry Smith, took part in, tied together with the story of how he met his wife, Juana, and their first four years of marriage. The military theme may be daunting to some, who like me are not particularly interested ...

This was my third Chunkster Challenge read, the one for November, but for technical reasons (i.e. it took me 2 days to write the review) I was unable to post it until today. My final book in the challenge will be The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which is incidentally also a Top Mysteries Challenge book. Original French title : Les Trois Mousquetaires Genre : Adventure, historical novel Year of publication : 1844 Setting & time : France and England, 1625-28 Translated into English by : William Barrow (1846) Page count : 576 The edition I read is one of the earliest English translations of this classic story. According to Wikipedia, this edition, which seems to have stayed in print all this time is “fairly faithful to the original” with the exception that “all of the explicit and many of the implicit references to sexuality had been removed to conform to 19th-century English standards”. This has made me curious to read a modern, unexpurgated version, but that will hav...

Here is my first Chunkster Challenge read. Genre: Historical novel Year of publication: 1988 Setting & time: England and Australia, 1850s and 60s Page count: 520 In 1865 an English Anglican minister and an Australian heiress, both of them gambling addicts, meet aboard a passenger ship to Australia and this meeting leads to a strange and fateful wager. But before coming to that point, we get to see how they became who they are and how each became addicted to gambling and all the little things that brought them together. This is one of those long, juicy novels that a reader can immerse themselves in without feeling compelled to read it in a single sitting. There is nothing inherently thrilling in it (until towards the end when the wager is made), but the slowly unfolding story and wonderfully realistic characters Carey has created and stocked the book with provide an entertaining and juicy read. 4+ stars. Awards: The Booker Prize, 1988.

A marvellous historical novel, inspired by the story of a real 19th century Brazilian slave dealer who settled in Dahomey (now Benin), befriended its king, sired an army of children with his native wives and mistresses and sent off thousands of slaves to their deaths or lives of misery on the plantations of Brazil. I love the style, which is rich without being cloying, and full of atmospheric descriptions. I found myself riveted and read it slowly, to savour it to the fullest. Tempting as it it to include this book in the Global Reading Challenge as the entry for Africa, I think I will wait and choose a book by an African author for that entry. It did, however, help me cross another country off my list of countries I have visited in books. -- The over-time work is done for now, foreign journalists will be quoting from the translation I was working on, and my friends and family will hopefully stop asking me what is in it because the secrecy has been lifted and they can now read it for t...

Part of Dorte’s Global Reading Challenge that I am participating in was to discover a new author or read a book from a country or state on your own continent that you have not read before. With this book I have done both. I have also managed to kill two birds with one stone by combining both outside challenges I am participating in, the Global challenge and the Bibliophilic Book challenge ). Year published: 1979 (English translation: 1990, by Victoria Holbrook) Genre: Historical novel Setting & time: (mostly) Turkey, 17 century. The former imperial astrologer to the Sultan of Turkey tells the story of two men, one an enslaved Venetian and the other his Turkish master, who, over their long acquaintance, come to know each other almost better than they know themselves. This is an interesting novel, a historical tale of an unhealthy relationship of love and loathing between two men who cannot part from each other, one because he is the other’s slave and fears punishment for trying ...

Originally published in 2 parts, on March 24-26, 2004. Book 9 in my first 52 books challenge. Author: Evelyn Waugh Published: 1948 Where got: second-hand bookshop Genre: Social satire I first saw the movie as a child and again recently on TCM. I had no idea it was based on a book until I started reading about the film on IMDb, and when I found the book I immediately bought it in anticipation of a good read. Here are a couple of links to information about the author and his books: Evelyn Waugh: The best and the worst Evelyn Waugh (includes a bibliography) The novel tells the story of Dennis Barlow, a poet and ex-pat Englishman who has managed to make himself a nuisance to the stiff upper-lipped Englishmen of Hollywood by taking a job at a funeral home for pets - something that "just isn't done" by Englishmen Abroad. When arranging the funeral of a friend at Whispering Glades, a fancy and extremely kitsch funeral home, he meets a young cosmetician by the name of Aimée ...

Year published: 2003 Genre: Historical novel Setting & time: (mostly) North Carolina; mid-19th century and modern times. The book tells two converging stories. One is about the American Civil War as it played out in North Carolina (and Tennessee), seen from the viewpoints of two historical characters: Zebulon Vance , and Malinda Blalock , while the other is about modern-time psychic mountain dwellers and Civil War reenactors in the Appalachians who are on a collision course with some restless ghosts of the war. The book examines how the Civil War tore apart families and made neighbours turn on each other, and how modern people in the area (not just reenactors ) all seem to think that their people were on the Confederate side during the war, when in fact they might have had ancestors on both sides. To add some spice to an already interesting story, McCrumb brings in a theme she has used in several of her other books: ghosts that can or will not rest. An additional dimension bring...

Year of publication: 1960 Genre: Novel Type of mystery: Rape Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Alabama, USA, mid-1930s Story: A presumably grown “Scout” Finch looks back on three years of her childhood, from the ages of six to nine, and tells the story as seen through her childish eyes, but with adult understanding. Part one is concerned with her, her brother and their friend and their lives, introducing the the town were they live and the people who live there, and the children's fascination with a mysterious neighbour who has not been see out of doors for many years. Part two features a criminal trial where the children's father defends a black man accused of raping a white girl, a trial that has unexpected consequences for the family. Review: Although this book is on the CWA's list of the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, I can’t really review it as a crime story or a mystery, because it’s not really either. The crime is never much of a mystery, and ...

Year published: 2001 Genre: Verse fiction Setting & time: London, second century A.D. The second From the Stacks challenge book I finish. The Story: Zuleika, daughter of Sudanese immigrants in Roman London, tells her story, all the way from a carefree childhood, to a marriage to a Roman senator at age 11, her friendships and empty life as a trophy wife, to her passionate and ill-fated romance with emperor Septimus Severus. Her affair with Severus is doomed from the start, but Zuleika regrets nothing and meets her fate with equanimity. Technique and plot: The story is told in first person and written in blank verse. The style is snappy and inventive, mixing together Latin and modern slang, references to Londinium and people and events contemporary to Zuleika with references to modern people, places and events. There is wild humour, especially where her friend Venus is concerned, but also pathos and sorrow and everything inbetween. Whenever she describes intimacies or sex, the...

Year published: 1999 Genre: Literary fiction (if that can be called a genre) Setting & time: India and the USA; 20th century (semi-timeless) Some themes: Tradition, family, unhappiness, gender roles Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. Warning: contains what some may consider to be SPOILERS The Story: The story, such as it is (I will explain later) revolves around an Indian family that is so steeped in tradition that it has tragic consequences for the children, none of whom are happy with their lot. The first half of the book deals with Uma, the eldest girl who is plain and has not been able to get a husband. She lives at home with her parents and is more like an upper servant than one of the family and yearns for a life outside the family home, but she can never realise those dreams because it would be unseemly and disgraceful for the family if she did. In between we see glimpses of family history, the siblings growing up and the younger sister's arranged marriage in...

Author: Georgette Heyer Year published: 1926 Genre: Historical novel Sub-genre(s): Romance The Story: The devilish, rakish Duke of Avon rescues Léonie, a young woman disguised as a boy, from the streets of Paris, thus winning her everlasting love and adoration. His reasons are at first purely selfish, as he recognises in her the tell-tale family appearance of his worst enemy, and he believes he can use her to exact revenge. But before long, he begins to really care for her, and his mission of revenge begins to revolve around getting justice for Léonie, who has been wronged by her family. Review: I really hate it when people dismiss Georgette Heyer as a “mere” writer of romance novels (their wording, not mine). Sure, she did write some that were pure romance (and very good they are too, Venetia for example), but mostly they tended to be humorous historicals about adventures and mishaps where people also happened to fall in love (often apparently as an afterthought by Heyer), whil...

Author: Sándor Márai Original title: A gyertyák csonkig egnék (Hungarian) Translated into English by: Carol Brown Janeway Published: 1942 (original), 2003 (translation) Genre: Literature Excerpt from Embers Story: It’s 1941 and an old general is living alone with his servants in a castle in the Carpathian forest. One day an old friend of his announces his arrival, and old memories bubble to the surface. The friend listens while the general talks about their childhood friendship and the events that led to the friend’s departure 41 years before. Review: This novel is a bit unusual in its set-up in that nearly two-thirds of the story is a monologue by one of the main characters. The interjections by the other main character are so few and short that it can’t really be called a dialogue. The first third of the story is scene setting, descriptions of people, places and situations, told in a conventional style. The story is slow, almost painfully so at times. The language is flowing,...

I recently re-read this brilliant story for the umpteenth time, and I have to say that I still love it however often I read it. Synopsis: In pre-revolutionary 18th century France, Grenouille, pathetic and decidedly unpleasant, is born with a handicap: his body has no smell of it’s own; and a genius: he has a perfect sense of smell. These two remarkable characteristics combine to make him an outcast from human society. Consequently, he grows up a sociopath with no respect for human life. His genius opens him up to exploitation by those who recognise the possibilities of such a brilliant sense of smell, and he becomes a perfumer’s “assistant”, making the perfumes while his master takes the credit for them. Finally, when he has learned all he can about the perfumer’s art and experimented with the different methods of extracting smell from all kinds of things, living and dead, he sets out to produce the most perfect and delectable smell of all: the scent that produces love, and which he wi...