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Actual Books
Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics,
Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™
“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
-- Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
-- New York Observer
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING.”
-- John Hodgman,
author, The Areas of My Expertise and correspondent for The Daily Show
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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Because you can never have enough Iceland.
And now, here's pretty much the entire Reykjavik skyline:
That's the Hallgrimskirkje (Hallgrim's Church), a sort of Lutheran-meets-Batman thing. And this really is much larger than anything else in town. Reykjavik is teeny; its population is only about half that of Akron. All of Iceland, in fact, apparently has only half as many people as the Akron metro area, on an island as big as Ohio.
Downtown was hardly deserted, though -- this was the annual Culture Night, Reykjavik's biggest event of the year, a joyous city-wide evening of singing, dancing, museum-visiting, and alcoholism.
The local brand, Viking, is fresh and delicious and usually delivered with Scandinavian precision to an actual fill-line, almost as if it were medicine. Which, during the long winters, it probably is.
The highlight of Culture Night for me was a demonstration of an Icelandic violin. (By Santa!) This sounded just like a regular violin, only if it were pleading for its life while being submerged in cold water by its neck.
St. Nick here actually rocked, even with the medieval design. And he seemed truly passionate about the subject. Given a choice, I'm sure he probably wouldn't have designed a violin by basically putting strings on a french bread. (If you think my nicknames for the man are silly, he actually goes by Diddi Fiðla, "Fiddle Daddy." So. Your call.)
Strangely, the titles of Icelandic multilanguage dictionaries were just as musical.
Islansk, ensk, islansk, densk! Islansk, spansk, islansk, fransk! Lemme hear you now! Catchy as hell, the reference section.
Pleasant surprise: the modesty of the president's official residence, which is just an 18th-century schoolhouse behind an old church by the water, with no gates or visible security of any kind.
This is Iceland's White House. But this sort of blissful non-security was only beginning. Wait until you see the domestic air terminal.
More shortly.
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