Sunday, May 4, 2014

Books I've Recently Read or Am Currently Reading

     I had planned to write more about books, but I've discovered that I don't like reviewing books and I  don't like reading detailed reviews.  I don't want to know every plot line or character.  I want to read the book (or not) and find out for myself.

     I just finished reading The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri.  When I read the first book in this series of detective novels set in Sicily, I wasn't enchanted.  But I kept thinking about the book and found myself looking for the others.  Inspector Montalbano is a strange guy.  He loves good food and never seems to miss a meal.  He has a long-distance, long-suffering girlfriend.  I'm happy to be an armchair traveller these days, so I love being taken to Sicily.

     The Count of Monte Cristo has me in its thrall, but it is a long, long, long, long, long book.  I've been reading it on my Kindle for months.  I don't read it every day.  I read it in chunks.  I'm a mood and place reader (I only read paperbacks in the bath), so unless I can read a book in a short time, like a day or two, I read several books at a time and jump back and forth between them.  The Count of Monte Cristo is full of adventures and excitement, almost on every page.  I think I can see where it's going, but I like the trip.

     I also just finished One Writer's Garden, recommended by another blogger.  I'm a former gardener and I enjoy reading gardening narratives.  This book is about the garden created by Eudora Welty's mother, Chestina.  As Eudora grew, she helped her mother in the garden and took over its care when her mother became unable to.  As Eudora aged, she wasn't able to tend the garden either and it fell into disarray.  She arranged for her house to be given to the state of Mississippi and a restoration of the  garden began.  The books is a biography of the garden, of Ms. Welty and her mother, and of the gardening trends of the early to mid 1900s.  With lots of gorgeous photographs.

     My husband and I are renting a condo in Boston for the month of May.  We're running back and forth between Boston and Philadelphia, where we live, because we had to leave our old cat in Philly in the care of a pet / house sitter and because we can't leave our business for an entire month.  We used to live in Boston and miss it very much.  But my family is closer to Philadelphia, so that's where we've chosen to live.  While in Boston, I thought it would be fun to read a Boston-based book.  So I just finished the second of Dennis Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro detective books, Darkness, Take My Hand.  It's full of actions and evil.  The author grew up in Dorchester, a part of Boston I don't know well, and sets his books there.  There are forays into the parts of Boston I do know well and that's always fun.  I don't particularly like Robert B. Parker's Spencer books, but I love the local detail in them (I know exactly where that ship-shaped restaurant is on Route 1!).

     There are several other books that are partly read, but I'm writing this in Boston and don't have them in front of me.  It seems unfair to tell you that I'm reading a biography of Ngaio Marsh without telling you which one.

     I'd love to know if you've read any of these books and what you thought of them.  If you have any recommendations for me, please share.










6 comments:

  1. I haven't read any of the Inspector Montalbano books but I have seen the TV programmes, we got them in the UK last year and they are subtitled but I enjoyed them and it was good to see Sicily. I've read a few Eudora Welty books and of course I enjoy gardening so that one sounds good to me and I also enjoy books which are set in places that I know and love well. I also don't like blow by blow accounts of books so this blogpost hit the spot for me!

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Katrina. I don't especially like Welty's writing. I've read that she go angry when people pegged her writing as 'Southern' and sort of dismissed it. But what I've read of hers is in a very distinctly Southern dialect, often hard to follow, I think. Maybe I just haven't read enough of her. I enjoy other Southern writers, though. But reading about her garden and her life was enjoyable and interesting.

      I'd like to see the Montalbano programs but I think I looked for them and couldn't find them available on Netflix or Apple TV.

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  2. Isn't One Writer's Garden a lovely book? I read it ages ago but recall enjoying it very much. My husband read Count of Monte Cristo a few years ago and loved it and I've meant to read it since too but it is so long. I'll get to it one of these days!

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    1. Yes, I really enjoyed One Writer's Garden. Since I no longer have a garden, I enjoy narrative gardening books even more.

      I recommend The Count of Monte Cristo, but it does seem to be taking me forever to read it. I need to read it on my Kindle because unless I found a spine-broken print copy, I could never hold the book open with my arthritic thumbs. At least with the print copy, I could judge my progress better as my bookmark moved farther into the book and I might be more encouraged to continue.

      I want to be cremated when I die, but I just had a funny (to me) picture of me lying in my coffin with The Count of Monte Cristo lying face down, open on my stomach and someone remarking that I had almost finished it!

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  3. I agree about reviewing. Sometimes I do like a well written long review but its just not in me to write that way. I like looking at the book cover and reading the back of the book so I always try to include that and then just if I liked it and try to cause a little interest in the book. What I like and what someone else likes though is relative that's why I like to see the back of the book description for myself. Sounds like you have a lot of books going at once! I've not read any of these but like Katrina have seen the Montalbano series and it was very good although it was in Italian and you have to read sub-titles

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    1. It's funny, I do like to talk about books, but I don't like to write about them. I also do not have a very retentive memory, so I can't quote dialog and often forget the names of characters. But I usually have a sense of whether or not I enjoyed a book, even if I can't remember much about it.

      I'll have to look harder for that Montalbano series. I like mysteries set in foreign countries. We're in Boston right now and we brought Jack's lap top, not mine, so I don't have access to my Netflix account and some of the other things on my computer.

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