It's a Mystery!

You may have noticed that my lists have changed.  What you are going to be getting here is my reading diary, both as I am reading and as I wish I was reading.  Let's be honest, the "Books I am Reading" list that most people post is for public consumption -- the true list is the books we all have started and put down.

Usually every January one of my resolutions is to finish as many books as I can that I abandoned reading earlier.  Some years I actually get through 4 or 5 of them -- I did last year.  This year I didn't even make that resolution because the pile is too big and I have too much to read for the store.  I really try to get through some of the "buzziest" books that are coming up but there is not enough time.

My default list is always my reliable historical murder mystery writers.  That's why I immediately picked up "Death Comes to Pemberly" by PD James, English murder mystery writer extraordinaire. James has written this book in an imitation of Austen's style, which means, unfortunately for one who wants a fast paced book, that there are many digressions into the life and manners of an English manor house and much preoccupation with appropriate behavior for the upper class characters involved.  I enjoyed this as a mise-en-scene of 19th century British country life, but the essential mystery seemed so uncompelling that several weeks later I had actually forgotten who the victim was.  There is much convoluted postponement of plot points, and red herrings abound.  However, one is very tempted to believe that that is how life was actually lived at that time, because the wealth of detail is so well written.  PD James is never a waste of time.

I also just finished two Michael Jecks books from his Knights Templar series - "The Oath" and "The King's Gold."  These books featuring Sir Baldwin Furnshill and Simon Puddock, the bailiff, are set in the early 1300's in and around Exeter, with side trips to the Devon moors, London, Bristol, and sometimes France.  Sir Baldwin is the king's appointed justice of the peace, and a man of integrity, honor, charity and compassion who believes in keeping his sworn oath.  (I wish these characteristics were more present in current day politics.)  Besides writing rip-roaring plot lines, along the way Jecks gives us all kinds of detail on daily life among all classes of Englishmen, allowing us to look at some of history's more notorious events from a different viewpoint.  These two books have gotten us through the flight and arrest of the inept King Edward II and his infamously corrupt adviser (and companion) Hugh Despenser.  They are a wonderful study in how a man of honor, sworn to his king, adapts to a time of divided loyalties, transition of authority and general lawlessness.

A Confession

My reading diary keeps getting interrupted by demands from my book business.  I have a great list of book I want to read but my actual reading is determined either by impulse or by business.  So I thought I was going to read Stephen King's new book 11/24/63 and Geoffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot but decided to read another Robertson Davies - What's Bred in the Bone since it had to do with the art world and RD is now my new favorite author.  Then I started a lot of books because I thought I should read them and they're now in a stack on my bedside table (see my new list).  Then I picked up The Paris Wife because I was very curious about the mixed  reaction people have to this novel.  It's been on every bestseller list for months and months.  It's been getting enthusiastic blurbs from reader blogs and the trade press.  Real life readers who come in to the store, however, say it is "poorly written" or "not true to the facts" and seem to express disappointment and frustration.  I found it, on the contrary, to be very evocative of the time period both of early 20th century Paris, Chicago and St. Louis.  I thought the writing insightful and the descriptions lucid.  I particularly liked hearing the whole "Hemingway in Paris" legend from the wife's point of view.  I had to put it down halfway through, though, because I had forgotten what a tortured soul Hemingway was and how he cut such a bloody swathe through the lives of those around him.  He was tremendously talented and everyone around him suffered for it.  It was fun to read about Paris until it wasn't fun anymore.

Now I am going to reread Wolf Hall for a presentation to my book club next month.  This will be a challenge -- I am pairing with a retired English professor.  She will do the literary analysis and I, former history major, Anglophile and Tudor buff, will do the historical context.  Then everyone can watch Showtime's "The Tudors" and compare and contrast!

Also, we are getting ready for the celebration of Dickens' 200th birthday in February with a month long to-do over his life and works so I want to refresh myself and study up on that.

Beginning Book Talk

I was going to start out this book blog by presenting a lucid, sweeping introduction and laying out the important books to read this fall.  Instead I got sidetracked by reading The Deptford Trilogy. (I know I'm late.) this work by Canadian author Robinson Davies had long been on my list but put off for far too many years.

The trilogy -- consisting of The Fifth Man, The Manticore, and World of Wonders -- is a perfect example of why I love contemporary fiction.  The storytelling is gripping, the writing is lucid and natural, the characters are appropriately talented, flawed, conflicted and inspired.  There is magic and mythology thrown in to boot.  These novels are dense with allegory, symbolism, history, and philosophy.  They contain vivid word pictures of lives and professions in all their confusing busyness.  Along the way we also are provoked into contemplating the nature of human experience, life on this earth, spirituality -- in other words, all the big questions.

This is why I love to read and why I have books in my art gallery.