Literary Round-up
Rapid-fire! Are these reviews? Are these just disparate thoughts? They are whatever you want them to be. From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón This book is...what? Less than 300 pages? Anyways, I started reading this book at the same time I started college. Long story short, my sleep schedule got fucked, and what would normally take a couple weeks to read took 4 months to read. This is very much not a book to be read in that fashion, because what Sjón is writing is a coherent narrative, yes, but one punctuated by historical allusion, and which pauses occasionally to make room for passages of creation myth and encyclopedic description of flora and fauna. It's a slew of parts which are at first disparate, but given time, will stew together and subconsciously combine after the actual reading of a chapter or more... It takes place in 17th century Iceland, and follows this sort of physician/poet/scientist figure. Though I don't think he is ever called an alchemist, that is probab