Books like Landings

In this book, Jules Verne takes readers on an extraordinary journey deep beneath the Earth’s surface, exploring uncharted realms and encountering strange and wondrous phenomena.

Through the intrepid expedition led by Professor Lidenbrock, the novel captures the human fascination with the unknown and continues a rich literary tradition dedicated to imagining what wonders might be concealed under the surface of our world.

As the characters navigate through subterranean landscapes filled with peril and discovery, Verne masterfully explores themes of exploration, adventure, and the limits of human knowledge. This timeless classic continues to captivate readers with its imaginative portrayal of a forbidden world hidden beneath our feet.

Another slightly left-field pick, but the atmosphere in this author’s books is just as compelling as in Without Fail as mentioned above. In a snowy, cold Iceland, a beleaguered detective investigates the murder of a local man who was once a shining light as a child. 

Lost potential, old vendettas, and evil preying on the weak are all elements here, in a very unique setting, with a dogged lead who refuses to give up. Slower and colder but just as gripping.

Poetry remains very important for Icelanders, also as an everyday practise. There are farmers in the country today who compose poetry based on the landscape of their home and the sagas that played here hundreds of years ago, and about 40% of all published books in Iceland each year are poetry collections. Gerður is a highly successful poet and playwright, and her long poem Bloodhoof is an outstanding example of how contemporary Icelandic writing is still firmly rooted in the literary heritage of the country. The poem retells the classic Norse tale of the abduction of beautiful giantess Gerdur by the god Freyr, but from the perspective of the giantess in a distinctly feminist voice.  

In this genre-bending novel the author weaves Norse myth with a tale set in the very real world of early medieval Iceland. Her descriptions of the landscape are wondrous, and her portrayal of the lives and culture of the early settlers of Iceland ring true. I loved how she quite successfully brought the Norse gods and one particular goddess down to earth. I am not as knowledgeable about the Nordic gods and their stories as I would like to be. This novel was a terrific way to begin a journey of discovery taking me in that direction.

Stumbling on the fishing hut of Thuridor Einarsdottir, 1777 – 1863, ’one of Iceland’s greatest fishing captains’ set Margaret Willson off on a quest to find out more about the women who flourished in this traditionally male industry. She found a number of them, not just historical women like Thuridor’s contemporaries Kristin and Ingibjorg, farmhands who were expected by the farmer to go to sea, but also their modern counterpart, Vally the farmer/seawoman, along with Hulda the housewife, Jonina, Gudrun, Bylgja and Vigdis. Grey pages spread through the book are short interviews with them; the rest is a lyrically written account of the fishing and social history of Iceland through the experiences of women. A delight to read.

I’ve only been to Iceland once but I fell in love with the country almost immediately – the landscape, the hot pools, the wildlife, all of it!

I’m a cold weather animal at heart and a cold climate always makes me want to snuggle under a blanket and read something heart-warming. This book is a big dose of that ‘cosy inside on a cold winter’s night’ feeling in fiction form. We meet Anna and Ned when they’re both going through difficult times and watching the sparks fly as they find themselves and maybe find love is utterly joyous.

This book is essentially an anthology of some of the best stories ever told.

It includes sagas as well as several tales, shorter anecdotes the Icelanders told. I love the Icelandic landscape, and it comes startlingly alive in the pages of this book.

One of the best is Egil’s Saga. In terms of fantastic events, it exceeds most fantasy written today. Others are realistic and give a feel for what life was like for ordinary people in early medieval Iceland. 

I love literature that is elaborate, strange, and profound. I love books that don’t give their secrets away right on the surface. This taste has been nurtured by the stories in this book. I try to understand what the Icelanders for whom these stories were written thought of them: these were the themes of their quotidian existence.

The sagas were being written at the same time as Chaucer and Dante… show more.

Reykjavik Police Inspector Erlendur and his associate, Sigurdur Oli, are sent to investigate the murder of an old man bashed with an ashtray. They soon uncover his sordid past, in which he was accused of rape. Traipsing from clue to clue, interviewing tangential witnesses, they learn more about why he was killed and eventually discover the perpetrator, whose life was tragically altered by the actions of the murdered man. Erlendur and Oli are like the Odd Couple but complement each other in their work. The title refers to the practice of keeping organs in jars for medical research, which figures into the investigation. The journey to the solution of the case is very satisfying. 

I love this book for many reasons. The Sealwoman is a passenger on the slave ship that takes our protagonist form her beloved homeland, and the ‘gift’ of the title is the story she tells of her shapeshifting roots. The voyage is hellish, and contains a terrifying birth scene among other unspeakable, unimaginable, only just survivable events. It’s based on a true story, which makes it all the more powerful, and it makes me wonder about the hidden truths in the folklore contained within it, especially the sealwoman’s story. 

Tory Bilski hooked me with her first line. I searched riding trips sites by the end of the paragraph. Wild Horses of the Summer Sun is a crafted odyssey. The book gifts us with Icelandic horses, foreign travel exploration, and the human (and herd) dynamic of a group of women who crave to “be Iceland.”

Tory is a writer in all that the craft implies. Her storytelling speaks to the explorer in us. She guides us around each mystical curve and through a physical (and emotional) blinding fog. She swims us across a (gulp) deep lake. We encounter “Tippi Hedren-esk” killer birds and truculent bulls. We hunger for the “gifts of the earth” meals and well-earned, decadent desserts. Ancient Nordic Sagas of trolls, ghosts and a fatal love affair spice the travelogue.