12/08 Selected this book because I heard some nice excerpts in a recent movie (Away From Her). Majority turned out to be a travelog of iceland from the 30's - not very interesteing. Remainder was verse that referred to people and places I'm unfamiliar with - very educated british references. Wouldn't recommend to anyone. ( )

Why read Auden's Letters from Iceland?

"Having put up the tents we ate a large meal... smoked mutton. Smoked...you put your teeth in a hunk and then haul away the hunk in both fists."

"The people themselves are not nearly so foreign...You can't imagine any of them behaving like the people in the sagas, saying 'That was an ill word' and shooting the other man dead. Disappointing, still one needn't travel if one wants to see odd behaviour. You are wonderfully situated, of course, in Cambridge."

"All we could think of was getting somewhere else. But we didn't. We went on and on and the landscape remained the same. It was like walking the wrong way on a moving staircase."

"Finally the remoteness of Iceland, coupled with its literary and political history, make it a country which, if visited at all, is visited by people with strong, and usually romantic, preconceptions. Few...people take an interest in Iceland, but in these few the interest is passionate."

W.H. Auden Rocks! ( )