The Origins (The Olason Chronicles #4)
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A young mother, Mt Askja and an unbreakable love In the harsh landscapes of Iceland in 1850, a...
Historical Romance
Beautiful wreck
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In a bleak future built on virtual reality, Ginn is a romantic who yearns for something real. She...
A Haunting in the Arctic
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Something has walked the floors of the Ormen for almost a century. Something that craves revenge… ...
Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort and Violence
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How do we feel when our friend turns up with a holiday present and we have nothing ready to give in...
ClareR (5721 KP) rated The Sealwoman's Gift in Books
Apr 29, 2019
We follow a Pastors family, Olafur and his wife Asta, as they and their family are kidnapped by corsairs and pirates, and sold off separately to their owners. Olafur is sent back to Denmark to seek a ransom, but he fails. So we follow the life of Asta, how she lives and adapts in the house of Cilleby, and how she copes with the loss of her children and husband.
The Icelandic Sagas are Asta’s Means of escape and comfort, and in telling them she gets Cilleby onside and makes her own life more comfortable. She refuses to give up her Lutheran belief, and believes that she will be reunited with her family - at least in death - because of this.
This was such a touching novel, and the narrator (I listened on Audible) really did the story justice.
Awix (3310 KP) rated War on Everyone (2017) in Movies
Mar 6, 2018
One of those movies which seems to be trying ridiculously hard to go over the top, but with an absolutely straight face: the main characters aren't just corrupt, they're absurdly corrupt, and the plot at times seems to be intentionally provocative and also absurd (the story relocates all the way to Iceland at one point, but only for about five minutes). It's so in-your-face extreme in some of its attitudes and jokes that it's quite hard to engage with as a story for much of the time. But McDonagh is too good a director to make an entirely bad movie and there are some impressive moments and sequences along the way. But still a strange and difficult-to-figure-out movie.
ClareR (5721 KP) rated The Wanderer in Books
Nov 21, 2018 (Updated Nov 21, 2018)
It seems that everyone wants to keep their secrets to themselves in this book, even if they think the information might relate to the murder of an Italian tourist. A camera crew, who are filming a documentary about Gudrid the Wanderer in Iceland, find her body outside a church where they’re filming. Magnus Jonson is in charge of the police investigation.
I really enjoyed the references to the Icelandic Sagas (I’ve now got a book of them on my Christmas list!), and Magnus seems to be a very nice police officer! Everyone else appears to just be looking out for themselves, to the detriment of everyone else.
Great story though! This is the fifth in a series, I haven’t read the others, and I don’t think it actually matters story-wise. I would very much like to read the others though!!
Venetian Navigators: The Mystery of the Voyages of the Zen Brothers
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In the 1380s and 90s, Nicolo and Antonio Zen journeyed from Venice up the North Atlantic,...
Interview with the Boogeyman: A Monster for All Times
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He is every nightmare youve ever had and every fright made flesh. He is the most feared villain in...
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Italian photographer Giuseppe Ripa's 2005 Anima Mundi tracked the artist's 10-year photographic...