From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

Smilla's Sense of Snow

Peter Høeg

Start date: March 15, 2017

Finish date: April 15, 2017

Discussion: Group Reads Discussions

Why we're reading this: Mostly set in Denmark
[close] Mostly set in Denmark

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Group Reads Discussions

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last updated Jan 18, 2013 07:12PM

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What Members Thought

Jan 05, 2014 Rebekah rated it really liked it

Shelves: genre-book-club, genre-literature, genre-novels, rating-4, genre-mystery-crime, genre-mystery, genre-thriller-mystery-thriller, 1001-import, genre-suspense, setting-denmark

Well this was a fascinating and unusual read. It took me about a month to get through it. The book concerns a 30-something-year-old woman named Smilla. She is of Greenland Inuit descent & a Denmark citizen. These are two countries I knew literally nothing about & it was very interesting to learn about the histories and cultures of both. She lived a nomadic existence as a hunter in Greenland throughout her childhood, then lost her mother & brother tragically, then was sent to various boarding sch ...more

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Sep 16, 2009 Joy rated it liked it

I don't know, I went between loving this book SO hard to lukewarm 2/3 through. It was pretty shocking. The narrative just got... long. The last third of the book takes place entirely on an ice barge, and I don't really know or (and here's the key part) care about ice barges, so I had a lot of trouble trudging through the various boat architecture descriptions, which were extremely boring and hard to visualize but entirely necessary because once again, I don't know about ice barges. :o/ Part of m ...more

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May 11, 2013 Karen rated it liked it

I liked this book, but it was about a hundred pages too long. Hoeg is definitely a good writer and the translation was excellent. I will be reading more of Hoeg.

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