A perfect Sunday with...Snorri Kristjansson
The importance of slathering, Asterix and a Kind of Blue
Every week, a top writer, artist or creator reveals how they’d fill their perfect Sunday, sharing their favourite comfort reads, movies, food… anything that would make their weekend great.
Today, it’s the turn of The Hidden Legion author, Snorri Kristjansson.
Snorri's perfect Sunday… brunch
I have never been one for being abstemious. For some, less may be more – I argue that more is also more. So give me two thumb-thick slabs of toasted sourdough. Mash up some avocado and lime, and slather. There are few words in the English language more evocative than ‘slather’. Now, I trust that while you’ve been mashing up the avocado, the bacon has been grilling in the oven. We want it crispy. We want it to crunch gently in the mouth. Layer it on. Two strips? Four strips? Depends on the size of dragon you want to slay. Poach two eggs, one for each slice. For our final flourish, we are going to take a sensible amount of feta and crumble it over. Cup of tea on the side, black like my soul and weak like my enemies, et voila.
Snorri's perfect Sunday… read
There is a book for every purpose and every mood, and there are many different types of mastery. Cormac McCarthy is a king of the sparse. Stuart Turton is a master mechanic. But for a Sunday? Armchair. Window. The day’s second cup of tea on the side table – and Terry Pratchett or PG Wodehouse. There is a bounce to their writing that I one day hope to emulate.
Snorri's perfect Sunday… comic
Violence solves very few problems and creates a fair few more, and I am currently busy ignoring this very important life lesson with my 4-and-a-half-year-old son as we read, over and over again, the collected and highly pugilistic works of Asterix. Going on 60 years old, the Gauls are still reliably amusing. My only problem is that I am simultaneously writing historical fiction set in the Roman Empire, and on more than one occasion I have had to edit out a Bigswordicus and a Veryscarymonsterix.
Snorri's perfect Sunday… movie
This predates the aforementioned son – Despicable Me and all its resulting spin-offs. The little yellow guys in denim dungarees deliver every time. Honorary mention to The Princess Bride (for I am a man of a very specific and certain age) and early Marvel films (before seeing a Marvel film required homework).
Snorri's perfect Sunday... TV binge
At the moment the household is ploughing through Monk. Flip phones. Early internet. Muted colours. It’s simple, formulaic, soothing and grand. In the absence of that, I am a sucker for gentle British talent shows where a carpenter bakes an interior design made of pottery. (Hazy on the details – I was playing chess on my phone at the time)
Snorri's perfect Sunday… podcast
No Such Thing As A Fish. Reliably funny, reliably (quite) interesting.
Snorri's perfect Sunday… album
Toss-up between Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and Tom Waits' Small Change. If Sunday involves writing, there might be some Snarky Puppy thrown in there for a change of tempo.
Snorri's perfect Sunday… treat
Firing up the barbecue. I am almost comically inept at every single aspect of barbecuing, improving torturously slowly and not even near the stage of logistically planning a meal around it yet, but it makes me think of my Dad and lovely, relaxed times followed by excessive consumption of burnt meat. And just like a book is not just the promise of a story but of hours of time available to read it, the barbecue symbolises that it is time to slow down and just poke at some stuff for a bit.
The Hidden Legion by Snorri Kristjansson is out now from Solaris.
We do not exist. Our task is to hunt monsters that threaten the Empire. We are the Hidden Legion.
Aemilius thought he would die heroically in battle like his forefathers, not gutted by a creature out of myth on a lonely mountain pass. But death came for him on terrible wings and claws… and at the last moment, he was saved.
And now, somehow, he’s the newest member of the so-called “Hidden Legion,” tagging along with a squabbling crew of heathens, vagabonds, killers, wizards, disgraced nobles and former soldiers, hunting monsters to keep the world safe from chaos.
It is the twentieth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus, and a darkness is growing across the Empire. And an unknown enemy is setting traps for the Legion itself…
SNORRI KRISTJANSSON is a teacher, a stand-up comic, former cement packing factory worker and graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Snorri Kristjánsson also writes things. Sometimes they are books (mainly about Vikings), sometimes they are films (mainly not about Vikings) or silly stage plays (you probably don't want to know, to be honest). He now spends his days working with words, eating cakes and teaching Drama.