What Are People In Reykjavík Reading?

Iceland is often referred to as a book-reading nation, yet finding a person on the street with a book in hand turned out to be more difficult than we had expected. Here are a few people we’ve met that were not glued to their phones.

Ísak

I’ve just finished reading The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. It’s about gospels that are not in the New Testament. It was very interesting. Now I’m reading a book called Nightmare Alley [by William Lindsay Gresham] which was made into a movie recently. This one is a nightmarish noir. I don’t read just for entertainment, although it has to be entertaining, I really delve into a book. I can read a few books simultaneously, but I’ll read them cover to cover.

Annette

I’m from Berlin, but my daughter is living and working here. She works right here [we’re talking at the Penninn Eymundsson bookstore], so I’m visiting her at work. I’m reading Die Ausgewanderten [The Emigrants] by W. G. Sebald, which is a collection of memories of different people who had to leave their homeland, mostly to go to the United States. I’ve only read the first two stories so far. It’s very well written, and in many situations, you feel like you’re inside the book.

Jarred

I’m reading The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, which is the second book in the trilogy called Remembrance of Earth’s Past. The first one was The Three-Body Problem, which is now a Netflix series. I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s definitely hard sci-fi, a mix of cosmology and philosophy. It’s one of the more thought-provoking science fiction novels I’ve read. I actually just read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy before I started this one, so it’s kind of good to have those back-to-back. I like coming to Babalu or Rosenberg to read.