I bought a copy ahead of a trip to Iceland in 2018. Thought to start it at home then read on the trip. We had such a whirlwind, jam-packed 6 days there I never had a chance! Still lingers on my TBR pile.

Yeah I read the ending on the wiki and brah.... Whenever I'm feeling self destructive I think I will haha

You should read them! I read all these back in the 90’s when I was in high school. It’s such a trippy story.

Yep. Very worth reading: a grim but evocative encapsulation of a landscape and the people who lived there. It reads like something out of pre-history, but it takes place about 100 years ago.

I’m reading some old letters from the Ottoman Empire for a class and the previous reader’s annotations have been super useful to find interesting details and help me follow along.

All of our regular threads are linked on the sidebar. Here is the link to the most recent Simple Questions thread.

I'm surprised Independent People by Halldor Laxness hasn't been mentioned yet! It's pretty grim, but excellent.

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I’ll annotate sticky notes and put them on the relevant parts.

I do have a three part New Testament commentary my late grandfather had that he annotated. It’s interesting to see how he changed over the years and how different life experiences impacted him. It was also interesting to see his disagreements with the author.

I disagree violently. Writing in books ruins them completely. If you must keep track of anything use a notepad.

Imagine buying a used Blu Ray and a heart emoji appeared on screen every now and again. You wouldn't feel "connected" with the previous owner in any way by seeing what their favorite scenes were. You'd just want to slap them for, objectively, ruining the movie completely and utterly.

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Dont see why you'd get downvoted, you bring up a really good point

My religion growing up was books. Books were sacred and precious in my family. Books let me learn things I never could on my own and go places I couldn't go. For my working class family of mill workers and mariners and shop keepers, they were excited to have a book learner in the family who might be able to earn a living with their mind, and they kept me in books. But it would have been sacrilege to deface a book in any way.

I know intellectually that books are not sacred, but I can't get past my upbringing.

Adding Woman at 1,000 Degrees by Hallgrimur Helgason! It's a fascinating read. Told from the point of view of a spirited, but dying 80 year-old Icelandic woman recounting her exploits across Iceland and Europe through WWII, Iceland's independence, and other major 20th century events.

Oh I love this!

Same. The used bookstore where I sell my books actually won't accept them for resale. Understandably so. I also have zero interest in doing any annotating myself.

I think I’ve only read two books by Icelandic authors.

Butterflies in November by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. Charming road-trip novel, I don’t remember much of the plot but I recall enjoying it. It has a section at the end with recipes for all the food mentioned throughout the story.

Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson. Nordic noir/crime novel set in an isolated northern coast town. First in a series. Didn’t grab me, felt more shallow and less fleshed-out than some of the better works from this subgenre.

I admire anyone who translates novels from Icelandic into English, given how tricky Icelandic is, especially for non native speakers.

I used to annotate books I was reading (using post-its) and pass them along to my sisters when finished. It was our way of having a book club and accommodating very different reading speeds. It's very fun to see what people were thinking while reading.

Pynchon's style and choices as a writer have never worked for me and I am a huge fan of some classics that other people hate. People appreciate different things in books. It doesn't necessarily make them bad readers.

After having a holiday in Iceland a few years ago, we binged on Icelandic detective novels

I can really recommend Yrsa Sigurðardóttir: She has a great series of books, some of them kind of spooky and dark

We also loved Arnaldur Indriðason: We found his Detective Erlendur books compared to Ian Rankin's Rebus series

I also loved reading through all the Sagas. Penguin has a big compendium called Sagas of Icelanders which has a good cross section

How about a weird Icelandic translation of Dracula which is almost akin to a fanfiction?

http://powersofdarkness.com/

"The resulting narrative is one that is shorter, punchier, more erotic, and perhaps even more suspenseful than Stoker's Dracula. Incredibly, Makt Myrkranna has never been translated or even read outside of Iceland until now."

I used to love highlighting my favourite parts and sometimes adding notes. It was so much fun when I’d reread a book to see what younger me thought was so noteworthy. When I met my husband part of what drew us together was that we’re both book lovers. However, he hated that I did this. He likes to buy expensive editions and keep his books in perfect condition. I’ve learned to somewhat do the same. It took awhile for me to get used to not writing in my books but now it’s interestingly something I don’t consider doing at all.

No. I got caught up in highlighting and underlining in bible studies. I didn't realize the mistake until I purchased a new bible. I could read the same passage once and get a understanding concerning it. Then read the same passage two years later, and have a whole different concept in its meaning because of the added understanding of the previous chapters that I had missed the first time reading.

>I really don’t mean this in a humblebrag or “toot my own horn” kind of way.

Cue the downvotes here, but how do you not mean it in this way? Like the entire point of the post just seems to be "Hey, everyone in my book club is struggling with a book, but I'm doing just fine. Does this mean I'm smarter than them?" If not to brag, what's the point of posting this? Like what information were you looking to get?

Everything published after Njála is unnecessary. It is the perfect book.