Arrow's Flight by Mercedes Lackey

I suppose that we all knew that once I started the reread I would reread all three, didn't we? I've read this enough times that I feel no deep compulsion to comment on it at great length. That number says more about the book than anything I could add. It may not be one of THE books for everyone, but it is for me.

Death and Judgment by Donna Leon

I had not read this one before (there are two copies on the shelf, though). I don't know why - obviously I intended to, but somehow never got around to it. This is one of the dark ones, not that any of them are exactly cheerful, but this is one where the bad guys don't get what's coming to them. And these are very, very bad guys. It's about white slavery and snuff films and people who operate above the law. And we are left at the end with the sure and certain knowledge that everything will be back to business as usual even before Brunetti manages to get home from the Questura.

I have every intention of reading something else before going on with these, even though they are somewhat addictive. I have the book club book. And I have several that have been recommended to me that are sitting in my queue. Besides, the summer session starts a week from today - so much for personal reading.

Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey

I know -- this is just on the top end of YA and I have read it more times than I can remember. In spite of all that, it remains one of the books that I return to when I am tired or depressed. I always think that I will just read my favorite parts - like Talia's meeting with Rolan and subsequent trip to the capital - and then get back to something else, but it never seems to work that way. I've read it all the way through - again - and will go look for the second book before I go to bed tonight. That's okay. I have another Donna Leon book begun, and it is one that I haven't read before! And I'm reading the new book club book - Predictably Irrational. But with two classes on the schedule for June, I probably won't be doing much reading for its own sake for a while.

Dressed for Death by Donna Leon

I am reading two other books, and have several informative texts in the queue as well, but I'm not sure I want to post the text for the class I am going to take starting on the sixth. I have almost finished reading it. And the books for the lit class I will definitely post; in fact, two of them are already posted - the two Bronte books.

I will probably reread another one of these before the summer session begins, though, because I am enjoying them very much.

Again, Brunetti is forced out of his beloved Venice to investigate a crime - this time in Mestre. At least the initial crime takes place in Mestre. Mestre is the industrial city that is on the mainland opposite Venice, La Serenissima, in the lagoon. It is also set in the season of the year when the entire population of Italy (including Brunetti's family) seems to decamp for cooler climates - and the entire population of Germany seems to settle on the beaches of the Adriatic. Perhaps having lived in a desert climate as long as I have and in addition having spent eight years in the deep south, August in northern Italy never seemed that desperately hot to me - but then I have heard that people in England die of heat stroke when the temperature goes over 80, so maybe the horror of the heat isn't as exaggerated as it seems.

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon

It is going to be slow going here for a while. I am trying to get through the basic textbooks for the courses I am taking this summer - and even just underlining or highlighting slows me down quite a bit. Interesting stuff though.

This was another reread. A new book of hers came up somewhere or other and I decided to go back and read some of the earlier ones. I love reading about Venice and these are very well researched. This particular one involves soldiers from the American army post Caserma Ederle in Vicenza. It is actually a NATO installation, but it was fun reading because Commissario Brunetti must go to Vicenza and the main area of interest to him is the base hospital. Leon describes it quite accurately - and I would know, having spent over a month there waiting for daughter two to be born. We lived a little over two hours away at Aviano Air Base - which is also mentioned in the story.

Venice is the most amazing place and Leon conveys that through her detective Brunetti who was born and raised there. I find it charming that he is aware of his attachment to the city and almost seems to feel sorry for anyone who isn't a Venetian. "It would have been easy for Brunetti to grow indifferent to the beauty of the city, to walk in the midst of it, looking and not really seeing. But then it always happened: a window he had never noticed before would swim into his ken, or the sun would gleam in an archway, and he would actually feel his heart tighten in response to something infinitely more complex than beauty." For five years I visited Venice any time I had an opportunity to do so, and never failed to see things that I had never seen before. I am guessing that Leon felt the same, and I like it that she made her native Venetian cop feel that as well.

Incidentally, the mystery itself is well crafted and the bad guy gets taken care of in the end. However, the crime which leads to the murders in this story exists at a level that is beyond the scope of any one police officer to deal with - even with connections in publishing and the aristocracy. Definitely not a "and they all lived happily ever after" finish.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Read this several years ago, I think it was recommended by one of my swimming friends. It was a wonderful read then and now. Maybe a little more difficult to read now because I know what is going to happen. I had forgotten some of the minor characters and they were definitely worth remembering.

This is the current read for the online book club, the possible misinterpretations by the young members who are sure there is a political agenda in everything make me nervous. At least there have been neither bursts of adoration nor sulky "I don't get it"s.

The title plays at many levels, something that I missed (or have forgotten) the first time I read it. We have the obvious: the soprano, Roxane, who was the bait to get all of the others together in the remote location. Her "beautiful song" changes every one of them. The romances are songs of their own. The affection that grows between the child terrorists and the hostages who recognize them as human beings in ways that their commanders do not. The Frenchman who discovers that he is desperately in love with his wife, and that he can operate as a chef. The Russian who (along with all of the other hostages) is in love with Roxane, but wants only to confess it to her, not to possess her. The Japanese businessman who creates a new identity for himself as a pianist and accompanist. And the list goes on.

I was intrigued by the fact that Patchett based the novel on an actual incident, which I had never heard of - the taking of several hundred people at the Japanese embassy in Peru (I think). It reminds me of the way that Brooks creates a host of characters and events over five centuries based on the existence of a book.

June 6
The online book club almost unanimously (well, of the three or four members who had anything to say) hated the book. Discussion just flat didn't happen. So, just to satisfy myself, I am posting here a list of reasons that I made for liking the book (may be a little redundant):

I liked the way that Patchett created a "lab" setting for a collection of vastly different characters.

I liked the parallels between the two central characters, Roxane and Gen. The others all rotated around the two of them. Gen because he was the only one who could communicate directly with almost everyone with and Roxane's music touched and changed all of them.

I suppose you could call it Stockholm Syndrome, but I liked the way that the child guerrillas found new role models and a different way of thinking from observing and interacting with the hostages and the way that the hostages "adopted" the children.

I liked the passionate Russian, whose passion required only verbal expression, not possession.

I liked the Frenchman who fell in love with his own wife when he thought that he had lost her - and who became his own national stereotype by becoming the chef for the group.

I liked the Japanese businessman who became a different person by becoming Roxane's accompanist.

There are frequent references to the almost surreal nature of the situation, and on first reading I wondered how Patchett would handle the inevitable transition back to reality and the few truly intense relationships: the boy that the Vice President planned to adopt, the young singer that Roxane was going to train, Gen and the guerrilla girl, Roxane and the Japanese businessman and opera aficionado. The last two at least were utterly impossible in the "real" world. Perhaps her settlement was a little "pat" but the bonding of the survivors definitely plays.

Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold

I quite enjoyed this. I am inclined to call it YA, but I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it is like the distinction between Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies - in the tragedies, everyone is dead at the end; in the comedies, everyone gets married. In that way it has a feel of the comedies - lots of pairing off of the young people, but that is by no means the whole of the story. On the other hand, it is rather long for a YA novel.

This book finishes conclusively, but there are any number of lines that need to be resolved. We, the readers, know who the wolf-reared survivor of the lost colony really is, but only the elderly king knows in the story - and the young man assigned to watch and teach her, who was sworn to secrecy by the king. The potential romance between Lady Elise and Sir Jared must be resolved. And there is the mystery of the "voices" which directed the wolves to care for the human child in the first place - we have been told of their actions, but we don't know who or what they are.

Lindskold set up plenty of story lines for a series. And I expect I will read them. This book was not as compelling as Child of a Rainless Year, but it was good fun in a much more conventional direction.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

I really didn't have time to discover a book this good at this moment: it is finals week!! I have the distinct feeling that sometime in the recent past I read another book that unexpectedly left me thinking, "Wow, that was a good book." I'm not finding it in the last couple of months of this blog - unless it was the way I felt after rereading People of the Book.

This was remarkable. Depressing, but remarkable. And not without redemption in the end. The narrator is a young girl whose mother is totally single-minded in her insistence on having her own way at all costs. When that way leads her to obsession, murder, and life in prison, we find the daughter, whose name we don't even know for some time, thrust into the foster care system and imprinting on a series of "mothers" on her journey.

It is a fascinating view of the diversity which can exist within a small area, because, except for Astrid's memories of places around the world, the action is in Los Angeles. The oleander itself becomes in some sense a metaphor for LA - embodying, as it does, both incredible beauty and deadly poison - as it does for Astrid's mother who uses it as a murder weapon.

Astrid does survive and does eventually face life on her own terms, once she discovers that she is permitted - even required - to do so. In the process, she learns the hard truth that while our pasts are part of us and unchangeable, what we make of them is our own call.

Real Murders by Charlaine Harris

It was definitely time for some fluff here at the end of term. I am impressed with the way that Harris can write fluff mysteries without cats, knitting, or cooking, also that she can write light entertaining prose in a fundamentally grim and gruesome genre.

Aurora Teagarden came highly recommended and I did enjoy her and her murders very much. Let's see: Lily Bard is a housecleaner and body builder. Harper Connelly is a professional psychic. Aurora (Roe) is a librarian. Like at least one of the others, she has two boyfriends and that surely will be resolved. Charlaine's characters seem to play the field only for a bit then settle down to monogamous relationships.

The mystery centers around a true crime club, a group which meets monthly to discuss actual mysteries and murderers. The first of a seriously nasty string of murders opens with a murder at their meeting. They, especially Roe, continue to investigate in spite of the police, because it seems that the murderer is determined to implicate various members of the club in the crimes.

As for how it plays out - I'm sure you have guessed, but it still would be telling.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

This was just as good as I remembered - and I'm glad that I was on hand to remember the title when a member of the book club was unable to decide what to choose for her turn.

Multiple stories blend together into a remarkable whole. As the present day researcher and conservator studies a five hundred year old Haggadah in a Sarajevo museum, Brooks opens windows into the history of the book. A fragment of a butterfly's wing from a species which only lives in the high alps, a wine stain mixed with blood, a single fine white hair - each sends the reader to another time and place with equally compelling characters. The researcher herself, of course, doesn't know the stories - only the reader knows.

The contemporary story alone has sufficient drama and mystery to warrant a complete novel. There we have a woman at odds with herself without actually knowing it. She is forced to confront herself on a number of planes and discover who and what she truly is.

The book of the title is the Sarajevo Haggadah, which actually exists and the rough outlines of its story are the framework for this one. Perhaps part of which makes this work so fascinating is the knowledge that the book actually is in that museum in Sarajevo. The story itself is fiction, but the book is real.

The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

Don't bother.

I suppose I could quit with that, but while definitive, it isn't very explanatory.

In his afterword to this thing, Scalzi talks about the difficulty about writing a sequel. This apparently surprised him, because, after all, the universe already existed. Unfortunately, he couldn't leave it at that. This time he felt compelled to explain everything. The slogan for writers of fiction should be "Show, don't tell." And in this book there were pages and endless pages of telling.

I expect writers to improve on second effort: this was a great disappointment. I was told that the other books are better and that he has another series that is pretty good, but I'm not paying full price for anything of his any time soon.