{"id":76966,"date":"2017-10-31T10:39:01","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T23:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=76966"},"modified":"2017-10-31T10:39:01","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T23:39:01","slug":"saga-land-book-im-giving-dad-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2017\/10\/31\/saga-land-book-im-giving-dad-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Saga Land: The book I’m giving my Dad this Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saga<\/a>Saga Land by Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason<\/strong>
\nReview by Ben Hunter<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m always looking for Christmas books for my dad to read that can safely carry him outside of his safe Rankin\/Patterson\/Connelly\/Robotham zone. Now there\u2019s nothing wrong with gobbling up a Bosch or a Rebus, I love crime and suspense, particularly over the holidays, but when it comes to literary gobbling my dad approaches the task as an amnesic sleep-eater would. It’s not uncommon for him to have finished a full novel in a night’s reading. <\/span><\/p>\n

When quizzed about opinions and takeaways from his reading, he’s often at a loss to remember what these lightning reads are even about. It\u2019s not that he\u2019s a fool, he just reads this stuff at such a pace that committing events or ideas from the novels to memory is too much of an ask. Reading crime for Dad, I think, is like going for an evening stroll or a drive across town to clear one\u2019s head. It\u2019s a refreshing pursuit, but rarely a memorable one. He either likes the book or he doesn\u2019t and often when he doesn\u2019t it\u2019s because he’s forgotten that he’s already read the thing.<\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s parents, now octogenarians, are similar, if not as voracious as Dad in their reading. Now overwhelmed by this prose amnesia and it’s subsequent deja vu, they consult an alphabetised notebook of all their previously read books before checking anything out of Penrith library. The notebook sits beside the TV guide on the side table between their armchairs and if often picked up, consulted and waved at me for emphasis in the course of a Saturday Afternoon visit. Buying for them is another kettle of fish.<\/p>\n

This Christmas, I\u2019m giving Dad Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason\u2019s <\/span>Saga Land<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a book I\u2019ve just read and loved. I remember passing on a well-worn copy of <\/span>Ghost Empire<\/span><\/i><\/a>, Fidler\u2019s travel memoir and history of Byzantium, to Dad and seeing him delight in the thing. Dad doesn\u2019t read a lot of non-fiction (unless you count car magazines) but when he does, he raves about his findings for weeks. In <\/span>Saga Land<\/span><\/i>, I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll find more than enough to rave about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fidler\u2019s new book pairs him with Kari Gislason, a close friend and academic who shares with him a passion for the Icelandic sagas but also has a whole family in Iceland with which he’s recently been reunited. Together, the two friends travel right across the far-away volcanic island retelling the great sagas from where they were first began – tales of legendary settlers and the Nordic pantheon in blood feuds and violent rivalries set against an unforgiving landscape. But it’s also a journey into the modern history of an island nation and into Kari Gislason’s own great family mystery.<\/p>\n

In short, this thing will get my dad talking for a long time to come.<\/p>\n

The book is also beautiful. Look at it!<\/p>\n\n\t\t