Wednesday reading - sagas, stick figures and stolen art
What I've been reading
I read Him & Me, which is a pretty delightful joint biography shared between Jack Whitehall, actor, comedian and professional young whippersnapper, and his father Michael, retired agent to famous and less-famous actors and professional old curmudgeon. They trade off chapters and scribble marginal notes in each other's chapters. There are photographs and cartoons. It is great.
I read Hyperbole and a Half THE BOOK, or at least the new parts, because the reprinted blog entries I already pretty much knew by heart from rereading them frequently and giggling like a lunatic every time.
I read Blood Wounds, which disappointed me a bit. It felt perfunctory and also too short, although it is right in line with the YA that was published back in the 80s and 90s that I read back when I was an actual young adult.
I read The Goldfinch, because everyone else who was reading it seemed to be adoring it, and I did too, actually-once I started it, I barely put it down. Add me to the chorus of recommendations!
I read Feud in the Icelandic Saga, which does a really fun quasi-syntactical analysis of the sagas in terms of "feudemes", which are, of course, units of feud.
I read Orlando, which happened to be handy in a pile of books I was meaning to read. I really dug it. Also I'm curious to check out the film version starring Tilda Swindon which my copy is a tie-in edition for, because Tilda Swindon.
I read Slaughterhouse-Five because I hadn't happened to before, I had a copy handy, and the protagonist of The Impossible Knife of Memory namechecked it a couple of times in the first few pages and I wasn't going to let the protagonists in my YA novels be more widely read than me. (The Vonnegut book that I had read was Galapágos, because I took hipster classes that assigned hipster books that you probably haven't heard of.)
I read The Impossible Knife of Memory, which I liked a lot, although it's not as good as Wintergirls.
I read Grettir's Saga, which is incredibly entertaining. Here is just one example: Grettir's brother, Atli, receives a fatal stab wound from one of Grettir's many enemies. He looks down at the spear that stabbed him and deadpans, "Broad spears are in fashion these days," before dying.
What I'm reading next
Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas and Power
Also posted on Dreamwidth, where there are
comment(s)
I read Him & Me, which is a pretty delightful joint biography shared between Jack Whitehall, actor, comedian and professional young whippersnapper, and his father Michael, retired agent to famous and less-famous actors and professional old curmudgeon. They trade off chapters and scribble marginal notes in each other's chapters. There are photographs and cartoons. It is great.
I read Hyperbole and a Half THE BOOK, or at least the new parts, because the reprinted blog entries I already pretty much knew by heart from rereading them frequently and giggling like a lunatic every time.
I read Blood Wounds, which disappointed me a bit. It felt perfunctory and also too short, although it is right in line with the YA that was published back in the 80s and 90s that I read back when I was an actual young adult.
I read The Goldfinch, because everyone else who was reading it seemed to be adoring it, and I did too, actually-once I started it, I barely put it down. Add me to the chorus of recommendations!
I read Feud in the Icelandic Saga, which does a really fun quasi-syntactical analysis of the sagas in terms of "feudemes", which are, of course, units of feud.
I read Orlando, which happened to be handy in a pile of books I was meaning to read. I really dug it. Also I'm curious to check out the film version starring Tilda Swindon which my copy is a tie-in edition for, because Tilda Swindon.
I read Slaughterhouse-Five because I hadn't happened to before, I had a copy handy, and the protagonist of The Impossible Knife of Memory namechecked it a couple of times in the first few pages and I wasn't going to let the protagonists in my YA novels be more widely read than me. (The Vonnegut book that I had read was Galapágos, because I took hipster classes that assigned hipster books that you probably haven't heard of.)
I read The Impossible Knife of Memory, which I liked a lot, although it's not as good as Wintergirls.
I read Grettir's Saga, which is incredibly entertaining. Here is just one example: Grettir's brother, Atli, receives a fatal stab wound from one of Grettir's many enemies. He looks down at the spear that stabbed him and deadpans, "Broad spears are in fashion these days," before dying.
What I'm reading next
Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas and Power
Also posted on Dreamwidth, where there are
comment(s)