icelandiclit

bibliothecarivs

Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney | Hermann P�lsson, Paul Geoffrey Edwards

Random book from our personal library.

8 likes

Gleefulreader

The Blue Fox: A Novel | Sj�n

pick

Set in the late nineteenth century, this is a short novella of two intertwining stories. First is a priest who is hunting a blue fox and gets trapped in an avalanche and ends up hallucinating. The second is the story of a herbalist and the girl with Down‘s syndrome that he ends up rescuing and caring for until her death. The two stories come together and while there is darkness there is also goodness in this story.

15 likes

Robotswithpersonality

The Whispering Muse: A Novel | Sj�n

This post contains spoilers

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pan

Mostly mourning the lost potential in the premise.
Despite the extensive amount of the story delivered by an unlikeable narrator, I can see so much here that would have really worked for me if handled differently.
The author writes well, but seems to often choose to write in an attempt to shock the reader, but in ways I've encountered before, that only leave a bad taste in my mouth. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? Opening with post-WW2 tensions: white supremacy and eugenics still viable ideas to some people, so many who have suffered violence and trauma in war, the 'place of women'.
Then the story within the story of a second mate ostensibly transported from a place and time where he had a past serving aboard the Argo with Jason, in recounting his tale focusing on the Lemnos incident, parallels the fact that he and the listening passengers and crew are (edited) 5mo

Robotswithpersonality 3/? aboard a ship in the 1940s unexpectedly paused in its own journey.
One more layer is apparent in a Nordic tale recounted that foreshadows Jason and Medea's own dark endings, told both to the Argonauts and the 40s listeners.
The unlikeable narrator has the potential for farce, because he appears to have a Polonius/Mr. Collins level of clueless chatter that sucks up to his benefactor, and tells people things for their own good and criticizes (edited) 5mo

Robotswithpersonality 4/? everyone in the least tolerant manner possible.
There's also a strong theme of sexual violence against women and seeing women only as insatiable sexual objects, which is disturbing in itself, but also because it never really feels like the author did the work to explain the linkage between the problems with the latter and the perpetration of the former. (edited) 5mo

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Robotswithpersonality 5/? Perhaps the idea was that with such an unlikeable narrator, anything he said you'd understand to be distasteful and not an attitude the reader should take forward, but it's all the messier when Caeneus, the second mate, acting as the narrator for the story within the story is at once catering to the needs of a good portion of the women of Lemnos without valuing them beyond sexual desire, and recounting his own assault at the hands of Poseidon (edited) 5mo

Robotswithpersonality 6/? when he was a woman who wished to become a man after this ordeal.
There's a single page that suggests a sci-fi/fantasy element that might explain why Caeneus from ancient mythic Greece is in the 20th century, but for the most part this is a bizarre mashup of historical and myth-retelling. (edited) 5mo

Robotswithpersonality 7/? It ends much too quickly for my taste plot-wise, with no real resolution, but too slowly considering some of the uglier discussion topics, and worse, the detestable narrator appears in better state than he started. Again, I've read books where these writing choices are made, before, and I remain baffled as to what the point was. I'm afraid my brain is pretty good at dumping the junk when it's in the realm of fiction, so if the idea was to make (edited) 5mo

Robotswithpersonality 7/7 it memorable because it pushed buttons, it failed there too. 🤷🏼‍♂️

⚠️Racism, xenophobia, misogyny, dismemberment, SA, child death 5mo

3 likes7 comments

bibliothecarivs

The Icelandic Saga | Peter Hallberg

Recent acquisition for our personal library.

4 likes

charl08

History. a Mess. | Sigr�n P�lsdott�r

pan

Well, the good thing about Peirene novellas you don't get on with: they are short.

This Icelandic novella (about a researcher having a breakdown over a mistake she's made in the archive) I think would have been a better short story.

This was the author's first fiction though, so wonder what the others are like. Will they also be translated?

I'm not usually a fan of campus novels, so this one had points against it before the start!

35 likes

Jess861

The Blue Fox: A Novel | Sj�n

so-so

I debated between giving this book a pick or a so-so. It is an extremely quick read and I did enjoy the end and how it brought everything together. I also enjoyed the setting of a wintry, 19th century Iceland. I was a bit confused by all the characters but the end wrapped it up nicely and the pieces all fall into place. I'm glad I read this book but just feel a little underwhelmed by it. Probably won't stick with me, but it was worth the read.

43 likes

Jess

Iceland's Bell | Halldor Laxness

I forgot to post a picture of my #jolabokaflodswap box when I sent this out last week. It traveled up the east coast and should be arriving today. Enjoy!

11 likes

Mirazzles

Animal Life | Au�ur Ava �lafsd�ttir

I got this book awhile ago and meant to read it but never got around to it. It takes place in December and it‘s so cold and snowy here so I think it‘s now time.

30 likes

Bookwomble

Poetic Edda | Carolyne Larrington

pick

It was good to tick this one off my TBR, though it was more than just a tick-box exercise as I did enjoy it for itself.
The earlier poems are more mystical and esoteric, being prophecies of the gods and gnomic sayings for good conduct, surprisingly abstemious in respect of alcohol, and sadly misogynistic in parts. The later poems deal more with human heroes and dynastic strife. While some of the women here are marriage pawns, many are warriors ⬇️

Bookwomble ... (shield maidens), and they are fierce and forces to be reckoned with in their own right.
One of the roots of Tolkien's legendarium, so another strand of interest there. 4⭐ 1y

32 likes1 comment

Bookwomble

Poetic Edda | Carolyne Larrington

"With a hell-bent hand she loosed the dogs;
hurled before the hall doors a flaming brand; wakening the house servants,
the bride made them pay for her brothers.

She gave to the fire all who were in there,
who after the death of Gunnar and Hogni had come from Myrkheim;
the ancient timbers fell, the temples went up in smoke,
the estates of Budli's descendants, shield-maids inside
burnt up, their lives stopped, they sank into the hot fire."

Bookwomble Gudrun takes her ape-shittery up a notch and murders everybody! including herself! 🔥💀🔥 At least she seems to have spared the dogs.
Apologies for the spoilers, but it has been over a thousand years since first publication 🙃 1y

Riveted_Reader_Melissa 🔥 1y

The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble I‘m sure the cut off for spoilers is well past a thousand years. Everyone should know who Keyser Söze is by now 1y

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Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja Probably so, just don't tell me how the Epic of Gilgamesh ends! 🙉 1y

The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble Ay! You‘re a well read gentleman, Wombie, I know nothing about the epic of Gilgamesh so, naturally, I went off on a shallow dive. I found this while poking around and found it was interesting, especially in light of our recent use of AI to generate pictures. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/books/booksupdate/ai-ancient-tablets-gilgames... 1y

Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja Not so much well read as old! 😄 The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest piece of literature to have survived, hence my little joke about spoilers. I can't get past the NYT login, but that looks like a fascinating article. I'll try to find it reported elsewhere 🙂 1y

The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble Yes, i sensed the joke and guessed it was an ancient text but I didn‘t know anything about it…The article, in a nut shell, says the tale is 30% unfinished but there‘s tablets spread across museums over the world revealing more of the tale. AI is being used to decipher them 1y

Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja I found a couple of articles I could read. I like this one, explaining that the sequence alignment algorithms used to reconstruct DNA strands have been adapted to identify and reconstruct fragmentary cuneiform texts. What a fabulous meeting of the most ancient and most modern writing technologies! https://theconversation.com/ai-is-helping-us-read-ancient-mesopotamian-literatur... 1y

The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble Those ancient Mesopotamians with their styluses and tablets (edited) 1y

Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja I love Gilgamesh - he's the most ancient human (historical or fictional) we have a detailed account of, and his concerns are the perennial ones of free will, the adventurous spirit, the quest for knowledge, friendship, mortality, and grief. The story of the universal flood given here predates the biblical account by millennia, and the name of the Babylonian flood survivor, Utnapishtim, when transliterated into Hebrew gives Noah! 1y

The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble I guess the bible is just a collection of greatest hits tales, plagiarized and made into a post-ancient self help book. 1y

Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja There's a lot of relevant thought in it, and other religious texts, as long, I think, that you don't get mired in a single, inflexible perspective - dogma is stultifying. 1y

The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble Agreed! Let‘s not wax theological…..on this occasion 🤭 1y

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