Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Bruce Rutledge on a book about sheep I recently read: “Independent People is an incredibly moving and humorous book that puts you deep into the Icelandic landscape and culture from beginning to end, mining the rich details of the country to find the universal. If you've never read Laxness, you're in for a treat. The main character of this novel, Bjartur of Summerhouses, is one of the most frustrating characters you'll ever meet on the printed page. I wanted to throttle him repeatedly for being so stubborn, but I also found myself slowly drawn into his world.”

Matt Mullenweg posted his end-of year tasks. Right now the only tasks I have are making lists of stuff to do in the new year, one of which is reading the unread books in my personal library. First up (but not necessarily in this order) are the following:

• Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (already started)
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
• Stanley Park, which was the 2003 selection for One Book One Vancouver, and which I picked up at the local library's annual book sale for a couple of bucks.
• The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which I bought at the end of a date (yeah, I know) and which will go against my effort stop caring about politics in the coming year.
• Magritte by Jacques Meuris, about the Belgian painter, because I'm all about the René Magritte references.
• Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation by Chris Turner. Heard about it through Joey DeVilla, saw the book discounted at 40% off, and since I have a weblog about things in real life that remind me of episodes of The Simpsons, I figured the $20 it cost me was better off in the grocery store's hands and the book better off in mine. Evidently I missed the book tour as it rolled through Vancouver, but the Planet Simpson weblog is regularly updated, so I shouldn't miss too much news about it while I'm waiting to read it. Or, more likely, keep it as a reference book for when The Simpsons Archive doesn't have the quote I'm looking for, which is surprisingly often.

See also: my other stack of unread books, which I may or may not get to in the new year, though one of them I recently finished reading, finally.

Some links to quotes from the book and the author are below:

• Independent and Free, a quote from the book about how Asta Sollilja felt about her father, Bjartur of Summerhouses, the principle character of the book
• The Scandalous Tyranny Of Mankind, about Asta Sollilja talking to herself in the fields
• Her Keen Eyes Reminded Him Both of the Sky and of Its Hawks, a quote about a boy seeing an incredibly beautiful girl
• A Drunken, Despairing, Loafish Lot, which features a quote by Brad Leithauser, who wrote the introduction to Independent People, though the quote is about Laxness and his book, Iceland's Bell.

Halldór Laxness: “She was wearing high boots and breeches that were close-fitting at the knees but full above, and she was leading two spirited young thoroughbreds whose coats glistened with good feeding, glossy as silk. The sunshine and the breeze played in her golden hair, in its waves and its curls; her young bosom rose cupped above her slender waist, her arms were naked to the shoulder, her eyebrows curved in a high care-free bow. Her keen eyes reminded him both of the sky and of its hawks; her skin, radiant with the fresh bloom of youth, colour incomparable, made him think of wholesome new milk in May. She was altogether free. She was beauty itself. He had never seen anyone or anything in any way like her. She had a slight trace of a nasal pronunciation, her voice slipped into low, singing notes at the end of every sentence, and she laughed in fun and earnest. He was completely lost.”

Bill Stillwell posts photos of the books he has read partially and put down, and, since I'm a follower, not a leader, here is a photo of the books that are either completely-unread or partially-read that were sitting on my bookshelf:

I've read half of Independent People by Halldór Laxness (I've quoted from the book book about the scandalous tyranny of mankind and being independent and free), about a third of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and about 100 pages of The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (it was one of the books I brought to China in 2000, and that's about as much as I got read during the trip, and the bookmark is a page from an article about the book from the the Japan Air inflight magazine). I picked up The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts by George F. Will at a library book sale (hence the call number on the spine), and same with Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger and The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (the library evidently already had copies of those books so they sold them right after they were donated). I picked up A Completely and Utterly Unauthorised Guide to Hitchhiker's Guide by M J Simpson at the best book store in the world (or at least the Northwest) last year.

The other books I'm sure have stories about them, but I forget what they are.

Brad Leithauser: “[Halldór] Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize in 1955, often disconcerted his countrymen by the harshness with which he portrayed them in their struggles, and ''Iceland's Bell'' may well offer his bleakest depiction of his homeland. Iceland at the time of the novel is essentially a place administered by crooks -- the colonial Danish masters who monopolize its trade and plunder its few resources -- and populated by a drunken, despairing, loafish lot only fitfully energized by the pleasure of watching some act of public cruelty. More than any other novel I know, ''Iceland's Bell'' recreates a world where Pieter Bruegel would have felt right at home, not merely in its fascination with bumblers (petty thieves, purblind watchmen) and grotesques (faceless lepers, hanging corpses), but also in its unearthly ability to find beauty in a landscape of destitution, wisdom in a congress of fools.”

I've been reading Independent People by Halldór Laxness lately, and have stopped halfway to start reading another book. Leithauser wrote the introduction to Independent People (I don't read introductions of books written by someone other than the author of the book until after reading the book), but makes no mention of that in the article above.

There are two lengthy quotes of Independent People so far on my weblog: one about the tyranny of men and another about Asta Sollilja's awe for her father Bjartur. The book was a gift from the Icelandic branch of my family, and has sit unread until now. I'm setting it aside like I set Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian aside, but just like Soul Mountain, because reading half of a book is a solemn promise to finishing it, I shall return to it too.

Halldór Laxness: “Suddenly the pauper's irresistible flood of talk engulfed the great independent household where everybody stood on his own feet. Talking she came across the marshes with her bundle on her back, and she talked ceaselessly all that day long till naked she climbed talking into bed beside the grandmother and little Nonni. Her talk dripped through the days like a leak that nothing can stop. She talked to herself as she raked the hay together in the meadow, and the boys closed slyly in upon her and listened: she discussed parish affairs, parish affairs, agriculture, and private matters, inquired into paternities and adulteries, flayed even the landed farmers for starving their sheep, branded respectable parishioners as thieves, and attacked the Bailiff, the minister, and even the Sherriff, reviling the authorities where others could see nothing but wet marshes, and always getting the better of the issue because her opponents were many miles awy. She poured out a continual stream of curses, complaining most of all over what she called the scandalous tyranny of mankind. This tyranny of mankind was such a thorn in her flesh that, regardless of whether she was talking to herself, to the others, to the bitch, to the sheep that chanced to cross the mowing, or to the ignorant song-birds of the air, all her discourse, waking and sleeping, revolved about this one hub. She lived in continual and altogether hopeless revolt against this loathsome oppression, and for that reason there was something rash, insolent, and vindictive in her eyes, something reminiscent of the eyes of an evil but indeterminate animal that one had seen in dreams; formless, but terrifying in its proximity.”

Halldór Laxness, as translated from the Icelandic by J.A. Thompson, describing how Asta Sollilja saw her father, Bjartur of Summerhouses: “She peeped out from under the blanket, and there he was, still sitting on the edge of his bed, when all the others had gone to sleep, mending some implement or other. No one stirred any longer, the living-room fast asleep; he alone was awake, alone was chanting, sitting there in his shirt, thickset and high-shouldered, with strong arms and tangled hair. His eyebrows were shaggy, steep and beetling like the crags in the mountain, but on his thick throat there was a soft place under the roots of his beard. She watched him awhile without his knowing: the strongest man in the world and the greatest poet, knew the answer to everything, understood all ballads, was afraid of nothing and nobody, fought all of them on a distant strand, independent and free, one against all.”