A FRIEND CALLED

Posted on February 7, 2008 by colleen

Iceland!? Why books about Iceland?

Because Iceland is part of the North Atlantic, and Tenants Harbor sailors sail the North Atlantic.

You mean the sailors who visit Roseledge Books are on their way to ICELAND?

Well, they might be.

Huh. Pretty thin.

And books about Iceland might have some nugget of information to indicate that the Irish were here before the Vikings because Iceland is a “stepping stone” on the route early sailors took from northern Europe to wherever they were going. Chances of a nugget sighting are remote, I know, but always worth reading a good book to find. The sailors who stop in at Roseledge Books talk sailing and I talk Irish and we have a very good time arguing. Besides, good books sell.

Arghhh. (Which I think means “I almost understand.”) “By the way,” my friend concluded, “I’m reading Silence of the Grave, the later book by Arnaldur Indridason. Let’s talk.”

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TENANTS HARBOR TIES

Posted on February 4, 2008 by colleen

Today is a very good day. I found a tie to Tenants Harbor in the last part of the book, Icelander! (Roseledge Books is part of the village of Tenants Harbor, Maine.) This is very exciting because I am ever alert to ties with degrees of separation between a book and TH.

For example, mysteries by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child set in New York City have forensic work done at the Museum of Natural History, and the first Director of the MNH is Albert Bickmore who lived (or maybe visited relatives) two houses away from Roseledge Books in TH.

In Icelander, on p. 196 I read, “The high wooden walls of [Hrothgar’s Mead Hall] were hung with chalk drawings that depicted the logos of the various available beers. This month’s guest brew was St. George’s Winter Ale, and its logo showed the eponymous saint lounging beneath an apple tree while some sort of dew — presumably Winter Ale — dripped from the fruit and into his yawning mouth. In the background, a white-clad damsel was battling a dragon; she used a hairbrush instead of a sword.” And guess what? Tenants Harbor has an equally unusual St. George and the Dragon, sculpted from discarded metal by former welder, Dan Daniels, and standing very tall on the lawn of the Town Hall! (The village of Tenants Harbor is in the Town of St. George.)

Coincidence, you say? A harsh judgment. Clearly, the book provides, albeit unknowingly, a tie between two places, alike in their harboring unusual St. Georges. Okay, the tie is, well, tenuous, but it’s fun to think about the possibilities as I read the books and live summers in TH. And it usually moves the book’s “buy-rating” up a step, in this case, from “maybe” to “maybe+”. Tie to TH or no, Icelander is one strange book.

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NORTH ATLANTIC BOOKS

Posted on February 2, 2008 by colleen

It’s halfway to summer in Maine and VERY COLD in Minnesota. Errol Flynn’s swashbuckler, Sea Fever, is nowhere on cable and the televised PGA tour site is not near the ocean. So I’m bored with old snow and missing summer and Roseledge Books people. Clearly, this is the perfect time to start figuring out — with your help — what new titles to add to the shelves of Roseledge Books. I’ll tell you about the new books I’ve heard about, seen, or read, and I’d love to hear what you think.

I’m currently reading Icelander by Dustin Long.

Long, Dustin. Icelander. NY:Grove/McSweeney’s, 2006.

Friend, Millie spotted this title. Iceland, as part of the North Atlantic, is popular among the summer sailors who visit Tenants Harbor, so it looks good. And the book is a murder mystery, another plus. But this is one strange book. “A Nabokovian goof on Agatha Christie” the jacket explains. Ties to Iceland are at least remote. It doesn’t keep me up nights, but I am finishing it. I need more on Iceland because I sold both Haldor Laxness’ Iceland’s Bell and Joanna Kavenna’s The Ice Museum, and I usually only have one or two copies of each title.

Laxness, Haldor. Iceland’s Bell. Translated by Philip Roughton. Vintage, October 14, 2003.

Kavenna, Joanna. The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule. Penguin (Non-Classics), January 30, 2007.

The chapter on Iceland in Joanna Kavenna’s The Ice Museum is good, in fact the whole book is good, but I sold my only copy last summer, and often good titles are not available a second summer, unless the author publishes a second book. It’s probably wise to keep looking.

And guess what? Next on my reading stack just happens to be Arnaldur Indridason’s Jar City: A Reykjavik Thriller.

Indridason, Arnaldur. Jar City: A Reykjavik Thriller. Translated by Bernard Scudder. NY:Picador, 2000, 2004.

This title could be good. It’s a murder mystery about an interesting place, both pluses. It introduces Inspector Erlendur, and first novels often have something extra. It was well-reviewed in both The Boston Globe, my summer paper, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. But the reader has to be ready for bleak. Library Journal recommends it especially for fans of Henning Mankell and Karin Fossum, and The Globe review calls it “a dark, haunting novel.” Bleak.

Posted in General Discussion, North Atlantic Books, Roseledge Books | 3 Comments