Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life - Amy Krouse Rosenthal

I read this book on my Kindle, so there's no photo.  Sorry.  Belle, over at Bell, Book, and Candle, reviewed this one on her web site, and her review made me want to read it.  Like her, I had many 'I do that, too!' moments.

Ms. Rosenthal, as the book title suggests, writes about everyday things.  She organizes her essays, some as short as a word or two, in alphabetical order, like a dictionary or an encyclopedia.  I started liking her with her Acknowledgments:  I would like to thank you for reading this book.  You're welcome, Amy.

Interspersed among the encyclopedia-like entries are tables and lists and a few illustrations.  It's all entertaining.  Near the beginning, there's a run down of her life up to 2004, when the book was published.  Parts of that I found a bit dull, especially some of the childhood incidents.

But then I found we shared many things.  I, too, look at train schedules a million times to make sure I have the right train and the right time (and the right station).  She writes about broken things.  My obsession is that all of my appliances will betray me, usually at some crucial time, like when we're getting ready to go away or when someone's in the hospital.  If they leaked once, they will again, so I check the washer every single time I use it.  Once, there were baby mice in the dryer at our last house, so even though I've never seen a mouse in this house, I check before using the dryer.  Every time.

It was funny to read that her brother, who grew up with three sisters, was fairly old before he realized that he didn't have to wrap the towel around his chest when he got out of the shower!  Poor guy!  Reading words wrong?  Yeah, I do that, too.  A celebrity whose cheeks bounced or whose checks bounced?

Then there's a long part about 'important' events in Amy's life.  Again, not so interesting to me.  It's not that I don't care about the lives of other people, but these seemed very, very ordinary to me.  Oh, and she writes these in the third person, which I found annoying.

'Completion', however, hit the mark.  That's me.  'When I'm out, I'm usually thinking about going home.  When I'm home, I'm usually thinking about the next time I'm going out.'  'I have not experienced the full pleasure of an act or task until I've crossed it off my list.'  It's the feeling of unease until I've done something that I want to or need to do.  And you know there's no end to that.  I've never gotten the hang of living in the moment.  It's supposed to be so peaceful and relaxing.  Sigh.

Under 'Compliments', she says that the nurse taking blood at her physical told her she had great veins.  A weird compliment for which she thanked the nurse.  A radiologist once told me I had a beautiful gall bladder and called in another nurse to look.  I guess beauty is truly on the inside, at least for some of us.

Like Amy, I sort of jog across the street when a car motions me to cross.  I'm grateful and don't want to delay the driver.  Old photos make me feel I'm in a time machine, looking at my young parents and grandparents, who, of course, I never knew as young people with young lives.

I bet we can all share her feelings about rainy days:  they come as a relief, a pass to stay inside, to retreat.  'It's cozy and safe hanging out on this side of gray.'  When the sun comes out you feel a little disappointed because then life goes on as usual and you have to do things.  We readers understand that very well.

So, aside from the boring parts, I enjoyed this light and quirky book.  Thanks again, Belle!

Summer in the City

Once again, we've gone from winter to summer with little in between.  Spring and fall are my two favorite seasons, but they seem to have disappeared.  However, the little tree we planted two years ago is now in bloom, so I thought I'd share that with you.  It's a Winter King hawthorn.  Lovely white flowers now, berries and colorful leaves in the fall, and interesting exfoliating bark.  We love this little tree we planted with our neighbors.

Two for the Show - Boats and Ghosts

Maybe I'm just old.  I can't remember where I read about this book.  I do remember the author as a television newsman.  Do you?  I also keep my eyes open for books about the sea and sailing, always hoping to turn my husband of forty years into a reader.  So I bought this and read it and now it's in the bag of books to take to The Book Trader.

Douglas Kiker was a newspaper and television reporter.  He worked for NBC for quite a while.  He looks oldish to me in his book photo, so I was shocked to learn that he'd died of a heart attack at the age of 61 (a bit younger than I am right now).  This was in Chatham, MA, on Cape Cod.  The location of this book was also the Cape, another attraction for me.

In this mystery, an old friend and ex-lover of newspaperman Mac McFarland invites him to her family estate on the Cape for drinks.  He's living on the Cape and his girlfriend has just broken up with him because his wife has reappeared.  Seems he can't quite get a divorce and his girlfriend has run out of patience.  He goes to his friend's house and she leads him down to the boat at the dock and shows him the dead body of her son-in-law.  It appears that he's committed suicide.  Mac's not quite so sure.

Before the killer is revealed, several people have confessed to the murder.  There's also another murder and a suicide.  Good grief!  I'd hardly consider this a quiet Cape Cod summer!

When I was a teenager, I decided I wanted to be an archeologist or a parapsychologist - a ghost hunter.  This from a kid who got homesick after spending a night away from home!  Did I think the ancient treasures and ghosts were going to come to me?  I even looked into attending Duke University, which had a parapsychology department.  As it was, I enrolled at a local college to major in what was then called Library Science, but I dropped out after three boring and inane weeks to experience 'real life'.

But before then, I read everything I could get my hands on about parapsychology and haunted houses.  Tops on my list was Borley Rectory, The Most Haunted House in England.  What a place!  If only I could have gone there!  Or maybe I'm glad I didn't.

The Ghost Hunters is a fictionalized version of the story of Borley Rectory and Harry Price, who was a famous English ghost hunter in the 1920s and 1930s.  The book certainly put a different slant on poor old Harry than what I had picked up by reading about him and reading his books.  Even so, the thrill was still there.  I was on the edge of my seat at several points.  I mean, what's better than a good ghost story?

Falling in Love - Donna Leon

Donna Leon is back!  I love the Commissario Brunetti series, but I haven't really enjoyed the last few books.  I think it's because they dealt with political or social issues that don't particularly interest me. I did admire Beastly Things because Leon showcased slaughterhouses, and animal welfare is something I fight for.

Anyway, Falling in Love is a good, authentic mystery.  Flavia Petrelli, opera star and an acquaintance of Brunetti's, is singing in Tosca at La Fenice.  A mysterious fan is frightening her, sending her hundreds of yellow roses, to opera houses in different cities and, in Venice, to her apartment door.  She doesn't want to make a big thing of it, but she's unnerved.  At dinner one night, she tells Brunetti what has happened.  Although he doesn't feel that it's a police matter, he agrees to investigate a bit.

Things step up a notch when a young singer Petrelli complimented is pushed down a flight of stairs and Petrelli's ex-lover, whose house she's staying at while in Venice, is attacked.  This makes things more serious and definitely a police matter, so Brunetti digs deeper.  A very valuable necklace points him in the right direction.

The ending is dramatic.  I saw it coming, as you will, but it's a good one anyway.  I can almost hear the music.

Washington Avenue Green, Philadelphia, PA

There's a fairly new park in my neighborhood.  It's only been open for a year or so.  Jack and I walked down to see it last fall and decided we liked the relative peace there.  It's sandwiched between busy Columbus Boulevard and the equally commercial Delaware River, so 'relative' is the operative word.

The park is attractively designed, with a nice new pier walk and a few informational signs.  From 1870 until 1915, Pier 53 was an immigration station, primarily for immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.  The station was demolished in 1915.  So, like many places in Philadelphia, we have the ruins of what once was.

For us, the big draw is the opportunity to see some birds that we don't see much of anymore.  When we lived in the country in Massachusetts, on the banks of a stream and with wetlands and woodlands, we saw anything and everything.  Around our current house and in the city, we see mostly pigeons, starlings, sparrows, robins, a few mourning doves (which I adore), and the occasional hawk.  I hear a cardinal every now and then, but I almost never see one.  This winter, we had a pair of Slate-colored (Dark-eyed) juncoes that we fed on our tiny patio.  So we were delighted to see cormorants and ruddy ducks and a pair of tree swallows.  We also saw a downy woodpecker, but he / she flew off before I could get a photo.  And you'll just have to take my word that those dots in the water are ruddy ducks, lovely small ducks with white on their heads and perky little tails.

As we were entering the park, I noticed this strange object hanging in the branches.  What do you think?  Voodoo?

The Dance of the Seagull - Andrea Camilleri

I'm rather rapidly working my way through the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri.  I think I've only missed one between the first book and this one and there are several more after The Dance of the Seagull.

Montalbano, rising early, watches a seagull die on the beach in front of his house.  The bird does an odd sort of circling dance before expiring.  Later, another death reminds Montalbano of the bird's death.

He then discovers that one of his detectives, Fazio, is missing.  As Montalbano investigates his disappearance, he finds that Fazio had been off on a secret investigation.  He'd been trying to find out if something was being smuggled into or out of the town port.  They eventually find Fazio, dazed and without his memory.  Montalbano thinks Fazio may still be in danger from the men who tried to kill him.

As Montalbano takes up the investigation, he uncovers several romantic or sexual relationships that are out of the ordinary and that, one way or another, have an effect on the occurrence of the crimes committed.  The bodies start piling up, including one of the Mafia's men, found at the bottom of a deep, dry well out in the country.  This is what was supposed to happen to Fazio before he chucked one of the Mafioso into a well, ran off, and got shot.

Montalbano, with his unusual methods of police work, ties it all up and gets the bad guys.

I like Montalbano.  I like that he's getting older and suffers the aches and indignities that many of us  suffer as we age.  It makes him human and sympathetic.  I've never gotten a clear picture in my mind of what Montalbano or his fiancee Livia look like.  I haven't seen the TV series based on the books, but there's a sticker on this copy of The Dance of the Seagull that shows the actor who plays Montalbano.  He looks nothing as I had imagined, so now I'm confused and Montalbano has become hazier.

There is usually some humor in the Montalbano books, as there is in this one.  Although there are descriptions of the meals Montalbano eats, I think there are fewer in this book than in some of the earlier books.  I miss that.  I think Camilleri and Donne Leon, in her Inspector Brunetti series, have slacked off on the food descriptions.  I enjoy reading about pastas and veggies and beer and grappa.

Camilleri took me to Sicily and Montalbano entertained me for a few days.  I enjoyed the book and look forward to the rest in the series.

In Big Trouble by Laura Lippman and Mercy Falls by William Kent Krueger

I do not understand why my photos don't look as sharp on this blog as they do on iPhoto.  If I weren't so lazy, maybe I'd take the time to figure it out.  But I'd rather be reading.

Last week I made the mistake of taking a walk on a very nice day.  I need destinations for my walks, so I chose The Book Trader.  I hadn't been there in a while.  In fact, I'd been purposely avoiding it.  Lately, I've been very bad about reading my own books.  I've been using the library and that keeps books out of the house, but it doesn't decrease the stacks of books already here.

I used my store credit for several books, one of them being In Big Trouble, a Tess Monaghan book by Laura Lippman.  I like Tess.  Usually, she's in Baltimore, where she lives.  In In Big Trouble, she goes to Texas to look for her ex-boyfriend, Crow, who has disappeared.  She gets a newspaper clipping with a photo of him and In Big Trouble as part of a headline.  That turns out to be the name of a band he's in with a very messed up but charismatic young woman.

There have been a lot of murders in the young woman's past.  Her mother was murdered, her mother's best friend's husband was murdered, the family's cook was murdered.  When Tess arrives, she follows a lead to a house where she thinks Crow might be staying and she finds a body.  Then she finds another body.  The local police are suspicious of her but can't tie her to any of the murders.  They want her gone.  She finally finds Crow, but someone is trying to frame him.  Tess almost figures it all out, but even she's surprised when all is finally clear.  It's an exciting book, but I prefer Tess back in Baltimore.

My friend Jenny stopped overnight last week on her way back to Massachusetts.  She left me a book she'd read on vacation.  It's an author I don't think I've ever heard of.  Or my memory is just getting that much worse.  I know I haven't read anything by him, of that, I'm sure.  William Kent Krueger is the author and the book is Mercy Falls.  I turned Jenny on to Nevada Barr and she's done me a favor by introducing this author.  I think.

This is one of a series of mysteries about Cork O'Connor, a sheriff in Aurora, Minnesota, who is part Ojibwe.  Sometimes his work takes him onto the reservation near the town, in the Great Northern woods area of the state, near Canada.  The book starts with a bang, literally, when Cork and his deputy are ambushed and the deputy is shot.  After thinking about it, it's decided that Cork was the target, not the deputy.

There are a couple of investigations going on at once.  Right after the shooting, a man who's been trying to get the Indian gaming commission to sign a contract to allow his company to manage their casino is found dead and sexually mutilated at Mercy Falls.  Was his murder connected to the casino deal or was there a more personal aspect to it?  Shortly after that, a young woman from the reservation disappears and Cork has to try to find her.  Maybe they're all connected.

I have to say that I was angry at the ending, which isn't really an ending at all.  I will have to eventually read the next book in the series to find out what happens after the last page of Mercy Falls.  I like my books self-contained, thank you.

This isn't the first book in the series.  I liked Mercy Falls well enough that I've just put the first one, Iron Lake, on hold at the library.  Maybe The Book Trader has some of his books.  Excuse me while I take a walk!