Welcome to Book Talk, where we help you find new fuel for your bookish obsession. While you might not find these authors while scrolling short-form content online, you will find their work to be significant, impactful, and, hopefully, something you reach for time and again. Happy reading!
Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir is the kind of author I strive to be: mildly reclusive and surprisingly offline. While she has written three autobiographical novels, she has also organized community-focused visual arts events across several continents and worked as a translator and editor of literary writing. Eir also runs a publishing company, Apaflasa, with her brother, Uggi Ævarsson, an archaeologist and researcher. Her own writing has been nominated for three awards, with Jarðnæði (2011) winning the 2012 Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize.
In 2018, I travelled to Iceland with a friend, during which time I promptly fell in love with the country. There was black sand, driving wind, cobblestone streets (in the city, at least), and long stretches of road where you didn’t meet another person for miles — perfect for someone like me. So naturally, upon arriving home, I took every book on Iceland out of the library that I could find to prolong the feeling of belonging I felt there.
Land of Love and Ruins (2011) was one of the books I found, and of course I fell in love with it. It has everything I love: diary-like entries, short and to the point writing that bares the depths of the writer’s heart. Beyond this, ties to ecology, archaeology, and the land itself made me feel like I was back there, on a black sand beach, watching sneaker waves come a little too close for comfort.
It’s unsurprising then that one of the main themes of the book — to find a place to belong — still strikes such a cord with me. Years later and through many iterations of life, I continually find myself drawn back to Iceland and to Land of Love and Ruins. I read the book at least once a year, and dream of moving to Iceland — or at least visiting again — multiple times a month.
Of course, this circles back to a problem I seem to keep encountering: the desire to be somewhere else, as though my problems won’t find me in that cold corner of the world. But I think Land of Love and Ruins can be an answer to this, too — a way I can live out the lives I want to while still being present in the one I have now.
The problem with this book is that I want to quote it all, paste the entire book’s text right here so you can experience it too. In lieu of copyright infringement — and with a strong encouragement to pick up a copy for yourself — I’ll leave you with this quote:
“You mustn’t bury yourself alive, forget to rise up, or bind yourself to the dust in melancholy surrender.”
Happy reading!
