7 august - The Reykjavik Grapevine

BOOK REVIEWS
Shelved Books Worth a Second Look
By Bart Cameron
Páll Ásgeir Ásgeirsson.
Adventure in Iceland.
(2005)
The curiously dated front cover
looking like something from a 1980s
bowling alley, and an odd title are
misnomers. Look at the small print
and you’ll see this book includes
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
Things to Fear
04
03
Jaws Unleashed. Picture this: a sunny
day, a beautiful yacht, a scuba diver, then
the blood-curdling scream. Okay, you’re
used to the shark attack idea. But Universal
Entertainment and Majesco have put
together a new video game that allows you to
BE THE SHARK. Yes, as the shark you eat
and maim divers, swimmers, etc. The most
depressing realization: absolutely everyone
I’ve told about this video game wants to own
it. One friend declared he now wants to buy
a TV and a Playstation just so that he could
experience this game.
“Driving routes, hiking trails and
stopping places in the highland [sic]
of Iceland.”
From the cover on you get an
interesting dynamic: the book is
full of essential information that
you really can’t get anywhere else
if you’re an English-speaker. Want
to know how to get to the large hot
springs in the highlands, all there.
What about basic advice: translations
of all the signs, suggestions on how
to find good work roads (if you
see powerlines, there is usually a
workroad underneath that you can
follow), and back history. The care,
dedication, and sheer knowledge
catalogued in Mr. Ásgeirsson’s book
should be commended.
For me, as more of a hiker than
a driver, this book was especially
helpful, as it allowed for pleasant
reading at night, after the hikes.
Eccentricities like the design, photo
layout, and some of the purple prose
inside, somehow make the book a
more interesting keepsake.
Marshall Brement.
Three Modern Icelandic
Poets: Steinn Steinarr,
Jón Úr Vör and Matthías
Johannessen. (1985)
An inexpensive and relatively brief
hardcover, the translations of the
works of Steinn Steinnarr alone
02
Ray Guns. Duh. Of course you should
fear ray guns. In July, New Scientist
Magazine reported that a 95 GHz
microwave ray gun was being tested in New
Mexico. In fact, according to Reuters, the
Active Denial System, a massive ray gun,
is set for deployment in Iraq in 2006 where
it will be considered a “less lethal” weapon.
What is “less lethal”: the machine apparently
is aimed into rioting crowds and causes
“heating and intolerable pain” in less than
five seconds.
justify a purchase. Brement, a muchloved
ambassador from the US, was
not a poet himself, but his tranlations
are modest—which works especially
well with the bold but understated
Icelandic master Steinn Steinnarr,
maybe the Tomas Tranströmer of
Iceland. A translation of Time and
the Water displays some of the effect
of Steinarr’s voice:
The sun,
The sun was with me,
like a thin woman,
in yellow shoes.
At twenty fathoms
my belief and love slept
like a two-colored flower.
And the sun walked
over the unsuspecting flower
in yellow shoes.
Translations of Vör and Johannessen
are good to have, but may not be
as attractive to a contemporary
audience.
By Bart Cameron
Laptop entertainment centres. Apple
always understood it, but now HP and Toshiba
have caught up, and you can watch TV and rip
DVDs—actually, you can produce Titanic—on your
lap. Which is nice. Now you can go on a plane and
say “Hey, look at my lap, I’m making Titanic in my
lap.” The over-the-top new-to-Iceland Qosmio by
Toshiba has so many gigahertz, you can make Titanic
and Wonder Boys at once. Good for minutes of look-
01
The Podcast. Steve Jobs of Apple has
released his five-hundredth society-altering
idea and copyright. Bearing the catchy
name Podcast, the new broadcasting option
allows senders to listen to poorly produced
radio programming. At present, this is the
most over-hyped piece of useless technology
since the MP3... just before the MP3 took
off and found an audience and completely
transformed the world.
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