Vikings Raid, Find God, and Search for Treasure

Gosh, this book is fun.  I mean, I knew it was going to be fun but I didn't expect it to be nearly as much as it was.  As usual, the New York Review Books team did a fantastic job of finding a truly fitting cover image as well - I could see Red Orm, the main character, standing on the prow (is that the front of a ship?  I don't know my terminology) and leading his team forth to battle or pillaging or finding treasure in a manner very like the man on the front of this book.

What's this book?  It's The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson, written in the 1940s about life in the 10th century.  I've had it on my radar for a while and then Eva reviewed it at the end of 2011 and reminded me about it and confirmed its awesomeness.  And then recently Amazon had it on Kindle Daily Deal, so I snatched it up (figuratively, not literally, of course, as it is an e-book) and then I started reading it in India and on my flight back from India.

While I enjoy reading, and often read on planes, I do think that a book needs to be fast-paced for me to enjoy reading it on a plane.  I am not sure why this is so - perhaps because if I am hurtling through the air at 700 miles per hour, I feel that the book I am reading should also be moving super-fast?  The Long Ships does move really fast, for the entirety of its nearly 500 pages.  And it's great fun the whole way through.