What I Read on my Summer Vacation
Announcement coming soon about the project I’ve been cooking up over the summer! Look for news right here on Jaycroft within a few weeks, definitely before the end of September. I’m going to be mysterious about it for now, and instead share with you what I read on my “sea days” last month.
Paris, France: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
It was hotter than Yuma, so by late afternoon we’d be back at our hotel that fortunately had excellent A/C (big window unit in a tiny room), reading and napping. The book provides the crunchy science almonds to the movie’s creamy emotional nougat. Kinda eerie to read LeClerc’s warning about tornados in Europe at the same time that a tornado was trashing a music festival 100 kilometers away. R.I.P. B52s’ equipment. (And now I see another tornado ripped through southern France just last Monday. WTF?)
Skagen, Denmark, and points North: Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
Sometimes you just need a good comfort read full of heart and puns, and PTerry always delivers. The Discworld novels absolutely do not need to be read in order (I’m living proof of that); each story provides you with just enough background, at just the right time, to get you up and running.
Lofoton Islands, Norway: Wayfarer by Phoebe Smith
Selected this one from Viking Vela’s shipboard library. Ultimately a travel book is as much about its author as the places the author visits. Still, I’d have liked less of this author’s questionable life choices and more about the many other people who find meaning in walking the British pilgrimage trails today.
Svalbard, Norway: A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness
Newly translated from the Icelandic, a short fictional history of an obscure church in an obscure corner of Iceland, with the usual cast of eccentrics. This is from Laxness’ later years, and presented with a light and humorous touch (compared to classics like Independent People). Reading timed to prepare for our next port of call…
Reykjavik, Iceland: Swanfolk by Kristin Ómarsdóttir
Bought at the big bookstore off Rainbow street. (You know the one.) A woman working for a shadowy government agency in a creepily benevolent autocracy discovers a secret society of people half-swan from the waist down. And then it gets weird. Icelandic authors, the ones I’ve read anyway, have a very strong sense of place, so even though this takes place in an unnamed fantasy city the setting feels very much like the Tjörnin in Reykjavik.
En route to Greenland: Frozen in Time: the Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie & John Geiger
Enjoy reading about cannibalism in anatomical detail while eating breakfast in the World Café! This is the classic book on the lost Franklin Expedition, and the many attempts to discover its fate, some disastrous in their own accord. In present times cruise lines take holiday makers through the same Northwest Passage.
Halifax, Nova Scotia: Moonstone by Sjón
Wouldn’t you know it, my travelling companion hit up the same bookstore. This one is a queer coming of age story set in Reykjavik during the 1918 flu epidemic. Another Icelandic author writing a really strong sense of place and time. The explicit sex scenes were a little off-putting for me.
DNF: Our Moon: A Human History by Rebecca Boyle
Another book picked from the Viking Vela library. Alas, I didn’t finish it before our disembarkation in New York, so it’s now on my Barnes & Noble wishlist.