The Content Reader

This is the last week of the Nordic FINDS challenge hosted by AnnaBookBel . I have still to read the Finnish book for last week. It is rather thick and I have to continue reading it for February. My intention was to read a classic Icelandic tale, Salka Valka , by Haldór Laxness. He won the Nobel Literary Prize in 1955. However, I could not find a copy of the book, so I have to look for this later. Instead I headed to the library and found two books by Arnaldur Indridason that I have not yet read. Both of them are from his  Reykjavik Wartime Mystery series (Flovent and Thorson); The Shadow District and Petsamo.  As the title of the series indicates, the crimes are set during World War II, with police investigator Flóvent and the American military investigator Thorson. Both books are covering the troublesome times in Iceland during World War II; the foreign forces being placed there and the difficult relations between the Icelandic people and the military forces. Not everyone li...

January has come to an end. Reading was a little bit stressful this month. Apart from my own challenges, I was reading a few books for the interesting Nordic FINDS challenge by AnnaBookBel . On top of that some library books, and several books for two book clubs. The very thick book by Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land, took some time to read as well. Here a summary of what I read this month (my reviews under the links).  Theme this month Nordic writers (inspired by AnnaBookBel' s challenge FINDS  January 3-9 – DENMARK – The Last Good Man by A.J. Kazinski - I read this exciting Danish, international thriller.   January 10-16 – NORWAY – Blå (The End of the Ocean) by Maja Lunde - I read the first instalment of Maja Lunde's Climate Quartet, The History of Bees, and continued with the second one; The End of the Ocean . Fantastic stories about climate change and what might happen.  January 17-23 – SWEDEN – Kapet av Skåne, Stormaktssveriges viktigaste triumf by ...

I finished off 87 books in 2021. I aimed for 100 but somehow the spring/summer left me reading very few books. I am quite happy with all the books I read. If you have read my post for best books for 2021, you know which are my favourites. Since I don't finish books I don't like, most of the books I finish, I find good in one way or the other. Here are my statistics for the different genres I read. This year I divided them into fiction, nonfiction, classics, and crime/thriller/mystery. I read unusually many books of the latter genre. Maybe because the year demanded a little bit of easy, exciting reading. I leave the statistics here as well, since it does not come out too clear in this video.  Fiction  - 52 Nonfiction - 15 Classics - 6 Crime/Thriller/Mystery - 14 Total - 87 book I am currently reading two books (at least more seriously) and that is Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (such an enchanting book so far) and The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (totally suitable sin...

The first challenge of the year is hosted by  AnnaBookBel  and is Nordic FINDS. FINDS stands for Finland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The idea is to read one book from each country during a week (head over to her website for more information). My choices to read during this challenge are:  January 3-9 – DENMARK  – The Last Good Man by A.J. Kazinski January 10-16 – NORWAY  – Blå (The End of the Ocean) by Maja Lunde January 17-23 – SWEDEN  – Spegeln i rummet utanför (The Mirror in the Room Outside; my transl. book not translated as far as I know) by Stina Nilsson Bassell  January 24-30 – FINLAND  – The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm January 31- February 6 – ICELAND  - Salka Valka by Haldor Laxness  ************ Under label Challenges 2022 above, you will find more details about these challenges, briefly mentioned here.  My own Challenge - aiming at diverse reading  The Unread Shelf - aiming at lowering my TBRs The Cl...