Category Archives: Reading

Guilty Pleasures: James Lee Burke

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Creole Belle CoverI generally do not like violent mystery stories where psychopaths practice their evil and tormented detectives struggle to bring them down. But, I got hooked on James Lee Burke in my commuting days when Will Patton‘s gentle southern voice made the violence less stark and the introspection more riveting. Burke’s thick prose rolled from his tongue like molasses from a spoon, and there were moments at the end of a paragraph when I just had to hit pause and even rewind.

I don’t listen to audio books much anymore, and I managed to miss two additions to the Dave Robicheaux series: The Glass Rainbow and Creole Belle. My public library had both of them and I managed to breeze through them in just a couple days. Just in time for the latest book–Light of the World–that will be coming out in July.

Here’s just one example of his prose from Creole Belle:

The winter was not really winter at all, and therein may lie Key West’s greatest charm. If one does not have to brood upon the coming of winter and the shortening of the days and the fading of the light, then perhaps one does not have to brood upon the coming of death. When the season is gentle and untreatening and seems to renew itself daily, we come to believe that spring and the long days of summer may be eternal after all. When we see the light trapped high in the sky on a summer evening, is it possible we are looking through an aperture at our future rather than at a seasonal phenomenon? Is it possible that the big party is just beginning?

And I discovered that you can view all the Kindle highlights as well.*

Rich, luscious, sometimes over the top…but riveting and really just fun even in its violence and introspection.

And, I also noticed that it’s written in a mix of first and third person although we understand that Dave is telling us the story. But sometimes he is getting us caught up on what other characters were doing and tells that in the third person. It helps relieve some of the stream of consciousness that happens with all first person books. Sometimes, I just need a break from the thoughts of one character.

Here’s my biggest question: just how old is Dave Robicheaux? He made a comment in one of the books I just read that he was entering his 8th decade. Really? According to wiki answers, he is 72. Seems a bit improbable. And Clete Purcel, his buddy, is always on the edge of dying but somehow continues to survive.

Now that I’ve gotten caught up with Burke, I’m moving on to Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles series and Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs. I’ve checked them out from my local library who has an amazing interlibrary loan system. If they don’t have it, I get it within 24 hours. I’ve saved almost $50 in the past week! It’s meant a few trips to the library, but it’s only a few minutes away and I get to know more people each time I make the trip.

*One downside of library books: I had dog-eared a few pages with juicy quotes to share (I know, I know, I’m a criminal) but I would have had to type the quotes from the book and I wanted to get to the library before the worst of the storm hit. Maybe there’s an app for that.

 

The Potential Problem with First Person

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I seem have to stumbled into a mystery series cycle lately. I read the first two books in the Josiah Reynolds series, set in Lexington, Kentucky. The main character is a middle age beekeeper whose sleuthing begins after a body is found in her beehive. I also read the first book in the Jesse Watson series, set in Stanardsville, Virginia. Jesse is a single 30-something who moves to the mountains with her parents and takes up work with a private investigator.

Both are written in the first person so we hear both the thoughts and the voices of the women. In both cases, we learn a lot about the women, including their past and their relationships with the other characters as both of them are part of ensembles. While the mysteries form the centerpieces of the stories, they are enhanced by these other relationships.

Neither character is all that happy: Josiah’s late husband had had an affair with a younger woman before he died, and she struggles with finances as she tries to keep up her house and farm. Jesse ends up in the mountains because there seems nothing to tie her down in Newport News. No boyfriend and no real work prospects.

Jesse is a bit more dramatic and immature than Josiah that makes her seem younger than 31. She sometimes seems like a middle schooler mooning over boys. But Josiah is also somewhat abrupt and often rude even with those who are her close friends. She only seems happy with her bees.

And, there’s my problem…I just don’t really like these characters. I don’t care which main Jesse ends up with but am mostly just bored with the obsession. And while I identify with Josiah a bit better, I still find myself feeling frustrated with her stubbornness. I’m wondering if this feeling comes from the use of first person…just too much of their presence as part of the mystery and their personal problems since the stories themselves were interesting and kept my attention. In the case of Josiah Reynolds, I immediately bought and read the second book since the first ends with a real cliff hanger that I didn’t see coming.

Meanwhile, I am almost done with Book Eight of the Maisie Dobbs’ series by Jacqueline Winspear and may read the rest of them in a Maisie binge since my library has all of them. The series has some similarities with the other two: a female detective, a small entourage, mystery interwoven with personal. Granted, it has the added interest of being set in England in between the wars so there is an historical aspect that appeals to me. And the main character is much more reflective and serious than the other two. Not much screaming or crying going on.

It also uses third person narration: we are told the story by a narrator rather than hearing from Maisie herself. While the omniscient narrator lets us into her thoughts and we mostly see the world from her perspective, we aren’t hearing her stream of consciousness the way we are with the other two.

Finally, it may just be writing style that influences my opinion here*. There is an elegance to Winspear’s prose that seems to match the elegance of the main character and the world in which she lives. The third person narration helps to add to that elegance. The other two books are less precisely crafted. And, their style matches that of their characters, seemingly always just on the edge of losing control of themselves, their lives and, in the case of the authors, their stories.

*I realize the next mystery on my list dispels this theory. I love Dave Robicheaux  and just dive into the thick language of James Lee Burke with all its slow southern description. And, it’s written in first person.

Binge Reading

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No matter how busy I am, I find time to read…last night, after many hours in the garden, I carried a drink out to the front porch and read well past sunset. And the book list grows: I’m a James Lee Burke fan and realized yesterday that I missed a couple Dave Robicheaux books. I’m getting caught up on Maisie Dobbs and really want to move forward with Bernard Cornwell’s Alfred series. These last three really cry out to be borrowed from the library and my public library has all of them in their catalog. Unfortunately, my library card has expired. I love the IDEA of the public library but have never been a very good patron. I like owning books and the digital age has only enhanced that desire. But, I’m not going to reread the above books so being able to get them for free makes a lot of sense. So, I shall make the trek this week.

Meanwhile, I have three books going right now. The literary book is Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. It was a natural follow up to Ivan Doig and tells the story of Lyman Ward, who from the view of his own mortality, explores the life of his grandparents, particularly his grandmother who made the journey to the West in the name of love. It is beautiful in so many ways: lyrical prose, engaging story, deeply developed characters. I’m reading it slowly, a chapter each night before I fall asleep.

Then there’s the fluff…both came by way of Kindle daily deals. At least Death By A Honey Bee provides some insight into my latest hobby of beekeeping. It’s the first in a series by Abigail Keam. I share some similarities with the main character in terms of age and interests but I am hoping that she is wrong about the murderer since the mystery seems solved with more than half the book to go.

The second one is borrowed from the Kindle lending library and is set in Stanardsville, Virginia. Also the start of a mystery series by Ann Mullen, it’s called What You See. It has its moments and it’s always fun to read something regional.

These two are easy to pick up and put down so they are perfect for summer days when I need a coffee or tea break from gardening.

But now…it’s time to tend my own hives.

Craving A Book…The Real Kind

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I am taking a break from A Song of Ice and Fire and dove back into the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. Just finished An Incomplete Revenge. Excellent…a solid, well told mystery with well developed characters and a bit of history and psychology woven throughout. I bought a two-book bundle from Amazon so I have the next one, Among the Mad, ready to go when I need a gardening break today.

Or…I might read something else. The last five books I’ve read have been on the Kindle. I mostly read them on my iPad but I am finding that increasingly distracting. I’ll read a chapter and then check Facebook or Twitter or try to beat that last level on My Kingdom for a Princess. At night, I read from the real Kindle, and I do like the way it syncs between devices. But I think I am mostly craving a real book, one with pages that feeds the tactile senses. One that doesn’t have other content loaded on it, calling to me.

I practiced bookstore tourism this week, stopping at Blue Whale Books in Charlottesville to browse and buy a few books. I fed my nature and books collections and was charmed by the discovery of Sixpence House: Lost In a Town of Books by Paul Collins. It describes Collins’ move to Hay-on-Wye, the bookstore town in Wales. I made the pilgrimage to Hay when I was in Wales and have often imagined what it would be like to live in a place where you could slip into a bookstore every day just to browse.  Maybe I’ll dig into what the Boston Globe called “the bookworm’s answer to A Year in Provence.” (I know I have read that book but it must have been pre-Library Thing as it’s not in my reading list.)

On a side note: one of my favorite children’s authors died yesterday. I must have read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler 25 times when I was a kid in a small country village imagining life in New York City. I reread it when I started teaching middle school and was delighted all over again. E.L. Konigsburg had a wonderful sense of mystery, magic and wonder.

When A Book Breaks Your Heart

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First, a confession…I immediately started the third book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. In A Storm of Swords, everything is in chaos. And, yesterday afternoon it broke my heart. All that hope I thought I saw in the second book evaporated in the space of three pages. Favorite characters were killed violently with little warning. (I know, I know, there was lots of foreshadowing but I guess I just didn’t want to believe it.)

Now, in despair, I continue to read just waiting for the glimmer of hope to return. But, I’m not trusting that I will find it. Lovers are torn apart, horrible dead things stalk the land, women and child are murdered…and the evil people are really winning now. I may definitely have to take a break after book 3 for something a bit more upbeat.

I did have a good laugh related to Game of Thrones. I stumbled on this music video by comedy group Axis of Awesome. It is, as they say, explicit: there’s bad language and a bit of nudity at the end. But, if you have reached the depths of despair along with me, it provides a little pick-me-up:

Your imagination is a fun place to explore…

 

 

Love & Hate & Game of Thrones

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I just finished the second book in the series, and I find myself drawn to the series the way people are drawn to a train wreck. Unlike Cornwell’s novels, the good guys don’t always win. In fact, it seems like the really evil people are winning. Yet, there are glimmers of hope and that’s what keeps me going, along with Martin’s terrific writing. He captures the richness of the world he has created from the descriptions of the frozen North to the waterfront of Quarth to the beauty of the godswood. While many of the characters seem flat, those who headline the various chapters offer complex personalities, with even the most evil having occasional glimmers of empathy.

I’m not ready to start the third book yet, and I’m not sure I want to watch the television series. But, I have been enjoying the wiki that follows the television show but also describes how it differs from the book.

Finally…

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I have been reading a bit in this new year, but it seems to take me a long time to finish a book with just a few minutes here and there. Work has kept me busy, and we filled the last three Saturdays with beekeeping classes. And, truth be told, the books I have read were good but not the kind of page turners that seem to keep me glued to the chair, swearing that I would stop at the end of the chapter and go do something productive.

Until now, that is. I finally started Game of Thrones, a five-book series that came highly recommended by a reading friend. I bought all five books in a Kindle bundle but wasn't sure I would like them as they seemed more violent than I liked. Finally, last week, I decided to get started. And, I'm hooked. I finished the first one early this morning and am already part of the way through the second one. I keep saying I'm going upstairs to do some cleaning but then the next chapter pulls me in.

The books are reminiscent of Bernard Cornwell and JRR Tolkien, mixing fantasy with royal feuding to create a compelling story. I always think of Cornwell as a man's writer with great swashbuckling heroes who are never happier than on the battlefield with its clashing swords and swarming hosts. But, Martin also finds a place for the women: conniving mothers of young kings but also brave women who face their fears and take their places among the men in battles and castle halls.

I recommend them with the warning that you won't get much else done…now, really, I'm going upstairs to clean.

 

Past and Future

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2012 has been a year of change: we settled into the  farm, and I took on new work that led to lots of travel. I read, but not as much as usual, and I clearly took a hiatus from this blog. One of my commitments for the new year is to make regular updates as this is a record of my personal journey from reading to cooking to creating.

Here’s the reading list for 2012. 58 books. Mostly fiction. I went through a Maeve Binchy binge, a Mormon binge, a David Baldacci binge, and an Elm Creeks Quilt binge. I think the most compelling book was Little Bee. I would still say that The Family Fang and The Night Circus were favorites.

I begin 2013 in the middle of two books: The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards and Winter of the World by Ken Follett. I almost never read two books at once but I think this may become the trend. The Lake of Dreams is a print book and it stays upstairs on the nightstand. I read a chapter before bed. Winter of the World is on the iPad and that stays downstairs. I bought a treadmill and I prefer reading on the iPad while I’m walking. Thus, two books. It should help me work through both piles of books, both the analog and digital.

The Lake of Dreams was a serendipitous discovery: I had just finished The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and loved it. I was looking for the next read and discovered this book tucked on the shelf, part of a buying spree at the Island Bookstore in Corolla, North Carolina. It is a much different book although there is a veiled reference to her other novel.

The digital pile has been getting bigger by the day. I bought the George Martin Game of Thrones five-book bundle and am waiting for a snow storm to settle in and read. It comes highly recommended from a reader I respect. I subscribe to several ebook lists that share discounted and free digital books. This week, it was Truman by David McCullough for $3.99.  And two fluffy books that were free: The Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society about a group of Southern women and Mai Tai One On, a mystery set in Kauai whose main character runs the Tiki Goddess bar.

My Favorite Books So Far in 2012

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I’ve read two books in the past week that I would declare to be my favorites so far…The Night Circus and The Family Fang.

Interestingly enough, both deal with the complicated relationship between parents and children as the latter attempt to extricate themselves from the situations in which they have been put by their parents.

In The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern creates a magical world based on a deadly compettion. In The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson describes a family where the parents put their children at the center of their art in the hopes that they won’t kill it. And, at the end of each, it is love that saves the children and allows them to live beyond their parents’ machinations.

Reading Roundup

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Despite being busy with travel, workshops and the farm, I have managed to get some reading done in the past month.  I’ve been working along the shelf of English history.  Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey by Alison Weir was a good story and demonstrated how the death of a monarch led to power struggles. We tend to think of there being a perfectly orderly succession but a book like this reminds us that many nobles in England could claim at least some amount of royal blood and may have a pretty good claim to the throne.  Jane Grey was caught in one of these webs of intrigue, and letting her live, even if she really didn’t want to be queen, became too dangerous for Mary Tudor.

I moved into nonfiction with The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser.  After a slow start, I found myself really enjoying Fraser’s ironic tone and style.  She brought the unique qualities of each of the women to light, getting beyond the simply stereotypes that we’ve come to know.

Now, I’m about halfway through The Lady in the Tower, nonfiction by Alison Weir, about Anne Boleyn’s last days.  It is well researched and Weir is clearly working to dispel some of the standards beliefs about Boleyn, her various relationships and her influence on the Reformation, and I am imagining the Tudor scholars with whom she takes issue to be shaking their fists.  For the average reader like me, however, it is a bit long…I’ve still got more than 100 pages to go and we are mere days away from Anne’s death. There are interesting bits and I will finish it, but I can’t recommend it unless you want something of a minute-by-minute understanding of Anne Boleyn’s downfall.

The most compelling part of this book for me is the way is shows the bias of primary sources. Often, teachers are encouraged to move students away from the textbook to examine these primary sources as though they somehow have the lock on the “truth” of history. In the case of Anne Boleyn, truth is very much in the eye and the pen of the beholder. So, while Chapuys seems like an eye-witness to history, it is important to remember that he was a supporter of Catherine of Aragon who hated Anne Boleyn. Thus, he is more willing to believe that Boleyn would deceive the king and is only too happy when she is arrested. George Wyatt, on the other hand, was the grandson of Thomas Wyatt, often thought to be one of Boleyn’s lovers who was imprisoned but released as part of Boleyn’s downfall.  His biography can hardly be considered unbiased.

I did take a break from all this English history to read Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo.  I picked it up at Bay Books during my visit to Coronado and bought it simply because at one point, the narrator and his traveling companion stay at the General Sutter Inn in Lititz, Pennsylvania, near my own home town.  I suppose it would be considered “pop” spirituality: by the end, the narrator, something of an average Joe with a good job and happy family, learns how to make spirituality part of his life. It isn’t about being perfect, but about finding the sense of spirituality in the every day.  That and a bit of meditation seem to be the answer.

I am also reading a book for a summer book study I’m leading: Reality Is Broken by Jane McGonigal.  The author is a gamer and game creator who believes that gaming can save the world.  The book is a bit overwritten and sometimes borders on the fanatical, which provides good fodder for book group discussions.  We’re meeting in Second Life as well as in an online community if you’re interested in joining in.