Lovely to be plunged back into the atmosphere of this extraordinary book with your review, Radz - my top read of last year.

Loved your detailed review of this extraordinary book and I am so glad that you liked it! It's not an easy read but it is so rewarding, the characters are so memorable and so real, that I really think it should be better known.

"In every croft, somehow, there lives & persists the dream of something better; for a thousand years they have imagined that they will rise above penury in some mysterious manner and acquire an estate & the title of landed farmers, the eternal dream." readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/i...

"The fiend Kolumkilli, they say, is immortal and the witch Gunnvor lived on this croft and made a pact with him and murdered folk, there are many stories about it, endless stories..."

"A solitary, thick grove of leafy trees. And the loveliest weather. Warm rain that has a quality of great gentleness, a quality of deep peace." #CurrentlyReading

My new post on Haldór Laxness's remarkable INDEPENDENT PEOPLE, about a poor farmer's obsession with independence at the cost of his family. By turns comic & tragic, and filled with sheep, ghosts & blizzards, this is an atmospheric & riveting novel. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/i...

My new blog post on one of the best books I've read this year - INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Haldór Laxness. Translated from the Icelandic by J.A. Thompson. 🐑❄️👻 readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/i...

New on my blog - The Wax Child by Olga Ravn (transl. Martin Aitken): ‘I am not a child, only something that looks like one’ alifeinbooks.co.uk/2025/11/the-... #BookSky

"The fiend Kolumkilli, they say, is immortal and the witch Gunnvor lived on this croft and made a pact with him and murdered folk, there are many stories about it, endless stories..."

My new post on Haldór Laxness's remarkable INDEPENDENT PEOPLE, about a poor farmer's obsession with independence at the cost of his family. By turns comic & tragic, and filled with sheep, ghosts & blizzards, this is an atmospheric & riveting novel. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/i...

My new blog post on one of the best books I've read this year - INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Haldór Laxness. Translated from the Icelandic by J.A. Thompson. 🐑❄️👻 readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/i...

So thrilled to find this locally. I’ve known about Persephone Books for years but didn’t know how to access their titles in Canada. Thanks to @radzpandit.bsky.social for writing about this book on her blog!

Slowly building my Haldór Laxness collection.

Posing in style.

"I said, 'All right, boy, all right. Keep it down.' It is not nice for a beginner to do his nut when he is standing on a terrace full of gamblers, the real sweat-blood brigade, who are losing their week's wages in an atmosphere of grim, respectable quietness."

#CurrentlyReading Both very good so far.

"Leaning out over the water and the mirrors...The face is deformed now, distorted and unlike itself, the result of misfortunes that have come like avalanches - there behind him, where he has left his half-lived life. What has really happened? He meets his own shocked eyes down below."

"A man feels good with money in his wallet...The waiter stands against the wall, a glance from me & he swoops, to bow at my table & ask respectfully what I will have next. This is the ointment that soothes away all the bruises on my pride, closes the wounds of humiliation, heals my self-respect."

My first review for #GermanLitMonth is the latest novel from one of my favourite contemporary German writers - Daniel Kehlmann - The Director (translated by Ross Benjamin) about the film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst: 1streading.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/t...

"Of course the snow is settling on me, she thought when she noticed this. Why shouldn’t it? I mustn’t move, she thought. I want it like this. Not to be snowed under, but I’ll look different, and that’s what I want. Everything’s different this evening." Quite taken with this strange, hypnotic novel!

"None of them knows what a gambler is. The gambler is the one who goes on with no peace, no release, till he has annihilated himself. I am a gambler."

Starting this today.

I've now read two books by Haldór Laxness (SALKA VALKA and INDEPENDENT PEOPLE) and both were brilliant, immersive reading experiences. What do you recommend I read next by him?

What I read in October (Babitz is ongoing). Turtle Diary, Crooked Cross, and Independent People are strong contenders for year-end list.

New #bookmail, a day after Halloween!

I've now read two books by Haldór Laxness (SALKA VALKA and INDEPENDENT PEOPLE) and both were brilliant, immersive reading experiences. What do you recommend I read next by him?

If you're thinking of doing #NovellasInNovember, you're in luck - here is an A-Z of brilliant novella suggestions! www.stuckinabook.com/an-a-z-of-br...

I’ve talked a little bit about these books individually but here are four books by women (recently read) that I think would make the perfect combination for Halloween:

"It was an incredible blizzard. It was one of those peculiar gales when the mountain sang above the croft as if the trolls that inhabited it had gone demented and taken out their drums..."

A strange, sinister, spooky recommendation for #Halloween. GREAT FEAR ON THE MOUNTAIN by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. Translated by Bill Johnston. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/07/21/g... #BlogArchives

"There is nothing so merciless as mankind. How can we justify ourselves, especially to the dumb animals around us? But the first days are always the worst, and there is much comfort in the thought that time effaces everything, crime and sorrow no less than love."

"All her days and nights were now spent neither at home nor at the office, but in a kind of new world – in line."

The sharp, dark, dazzling fiction of Beryl Bainbridge is being reissued by @dauntbookspub.bsky.social, starting next year with ‘The Bottle Factory Outing’ and ‘An Awfully Big Adventure’ with new introductions by Yiyun Li and A.K. Blakemore.

"When life is a weariness and escape impossible it is wonderful to have a friend who can bring us peace with the touch of a hand. After this Finna decided to tend the cow herself."

Irish artist, based in New York, Katie Holten created a New York City Tree Alphabet, each letter of the Latin alphabet is assigned a drawing of a tree from the NYC Parks #womensart

A late addition to the #1925Club with a book that may or may not have been published in 1925: 1streading.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/t...

In this month’s newsletter, after bragging about eating a great dessert, I recommend Barbara Comyns’ WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD; Magda Szabó’s ABIGAIL, trans. Len Rix; and Halldór Laxness’ UNDER THE GLACIER, trans. Magnus Magnusson. 📚💙 Read it here: www.marisagrizenko.com/campaigns/vi...

Wonderful episode as ever! I read Wuthering Heights way back in my teens, and now quite tempted to read it again.

"It’s not for me to judge its artistic value, but the value of accurate testimony is indisputable. To this day (1974), I know of no volume of prose about 1937 written in this country and at that time.” - Lydia Chukovskaya

Want!

My new blog post on Lydia Chukovskaya's brilliant, chilling, tragic novella, SOFIA PETROVNA. Translated from the Russian by Aline Werth. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/s...

This is my 2nd Celia Fremlin book after the riveting The Hours Before Dawn. She reminds me of du Maurier, her eye for weakness deliciously, almost predatorily precise. It’s as if each page draws back the bow and arrow, strings tightening until the final release. Only 2 stories in and it’s a banger.

"I had heard that yoga was supposed to be relaxing, but Ivan had been a devout student of B. K. S. Iyengar, who didn't think yoga should be relaxing at all. He thought it should be perfect. Iyengar's idea was that unless I held poses until my nose fell off, I was a straggler." #NYRBWomen25

My new blog post on Lydia Chukovskaya's brilliant, chilling, tragic novella, SOFIA PETROVNA. Translated from the Russian by Aline Werth. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/s...

More Celia Fremlin, and a gently spooky collection of stories perfect for the Halloween season, yet ironically supplied by my Secret Santa!! ahsweetmystery.com/2025/10/27/t...

Another first-time read of a brilliant author: Celia Fremlin's The Jealous One is incisive, suspenseful, and very funny. ahsweetmystery.com/2025/09/15/a...

I have been unwell but these books are giving me good company.

"Presently the smell of coffee began to fill the room. This was morning’s hallowed moment. In such a fragrance the perversity of the world is forgotten, and the soul is inspired with faith in the future..." - INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Haldór Laxness.

Life is more worth living, when you are likely to lose it. When you're young & life stretches ahead of you, living isn't really important at all. It's young people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from anxiety. But old people know how valuable life is & how interesting.

Widowed, Ettie moves from the village to Iza's Budapest apartment; she struggles to find her place amid a modern lifestyle. Mother daughter tension; a subtly observed decline, hastened by modernity, having it all and losing purpose. Iza's Ballad by #MagdaSzabo clairemcalpine.com/2025/10/23/i...