Greetings from California

[fallenleaf]

Hello to the forum. I'm typing on a quiet night in Northern California. I'm 54-1/2 years old and love to read. A few months ago I canceled Netflix and decided to get away from watching movies, cause if I'm going to sit on a couch like a lump it should be while doing something worthwhile - like reading. My favorites are non-fiction (history, social science), fiction (historical or just plain real good), and a few mysteries (Icelandic). Also like essays, but for some reason just can't get into short stories. Looking forward to discussing books!

fallenleaf, dipping her toe into the forum

[Suzanne]

Hello and welcome fallenleaf!

I hope you jump right in!

[Theomanic]

Nice to meet you, fallenleaf. I'm interested, which Icelandic authors do you read, and what do you find so compelling about them specifically?

[fallenleaf]

Thanks for the welcome.

Theomanic, I've read several by Arnaldur Indridason. They were my first try at mysteries. Also read Independent People by Haldor Laxness (not a mystery). What they all seemed to have in common was emotion. Or lack of emotion. Or maybe the emotion that the lack of it stirred in me. I'm not trying to be cute, I really do think that might describe it. There were some truly heartbreaking scenes in all those books that I doubt I'll ever forget. All were very well written and they have my total respect, but I think I'm done with them.

Made me think that the Icelandic people must be really strong and stoic. I was glad I had read those, when the news came that Iceland had pretty much gone bankrupt. I felt like I knew a little bit about their character, and that's one of the best reasons for reading that I can think of.

[Theomanic]

That's very interesting - I have found when reading Swedish mysteries that there is a distance there that unites very different authors. It sounds like there is a similar vibe to Icelandic mysteries. Maybe it's the Viking ancestry! I wouldn't have guessed there would be a similarity to the two countries. Have you read any Henkel Manning? Or Stieg Larsson? I got that vibe from both their novels, though moreso from Manning.

[Chris OConnor]

Welcome to BookTalk.org.

[fallenleaf]

Theomanic, I had to look up Henkel Manning, and couldn't find a thing. Then Amazon gently corrected me to Henning Mankel. If that was a test, did I pass??

Judging from the blurbs on Amazon about Mankel's stories, his protagonist, Kurt Wallander, sounds a little the detective in Indridason's books, Erlendur Sveinsson, including a strained relationship with a daughter. Maybe it's the genre itself. I've never read any other mysteries, are the detectives always lone wolves with visible damage around their edges?

Haven't read Steig Larsson. I'm resistant, maybe unreasonably, to popular books that take the world by storm. (Can I please pull the covers over my head until the Eat, Pray, Love nonsense dies down?)

Anyway, I thank you and the others for welcoming me. Now I simply have to finish the Confederate Widow book so I'll actually have something to say here!

[Theomanic]

Haha, no, I'm just terrible. Sorry to confuse you! Yes, that sort of protagonist detective does seem prominent in mysteries, but much more so I think in Scandinavian novels. An excellent book for a gritty noir type of mystery but with an interesting edge to it is Martin Amis "Night Train". That book seems simple, but after I finished it, it lingered with me for days. Amis is an amazing writer. The protagonist in that novel is once again a bit of the lone wolf type, but she's a female. Named Mike.

I understand your resistance to popular novels. I only picked up Larsson because he's Swedish and I have loyalty to my people. I thought the first book was alright and the second was better - definitely a higher quality read than the last mega-popular book I read ("Angels and Demons"). I wish I knew what it is in certain novels that seems to capture the imagination of North America... then I would write some myself!