Easter Parade

Easter Sunday. I have very mixed emotions about Easter Sunday. First of all, there's the fact that my mother died on an Easter Sunday. Also, I'm not terribly religious, and M and I don't generally go to church on Easter anymore. And these days we live far away from all our families, so we no longer get to indulge in the ritual of dressing up for church and then spending the day visiting relatives and stuffing ourselves with Easter goodies.

And even though this year Easter comes right at the beginning of Spring, and all the flowers and trees are blooming again, I'm feeling very nostalgic. So I'm putting up a photo of myself and my cousin on Easter Sunday, circa 1952, I believe. She'll probably murder me for doing this.

But weren't we cute?



I was the oldest (still am!), so that's me on the left, and my cousin MLB on the right. As usual, I had my eyes closed. Notice the white gloves - even on my 2-year-old cuz (although it's hard to see). Well, we were always quite a fashionable pair. I wonder if our mothers ever got the grass stains out of all that organdy.

Happy Easter, everybody. And Happy Spring.

Random Notes

If you haven't yet found Blogtations, you might want to check it out. It's a new web site maintained by "Musing Woman" (aka Jeannette), that's a collection of funny, pithy, and downright weird quotations from blogs all over the Internet. Thoroughly entertaining (and I'm not saying that just because I got quoted there). One of my favorites is a quote by "Amalah":

If you have not yet dropped your iPhone in the toilet, consider NOT dropping your iPhone in the toilet.

Good advice, even if your cell phone is not of the "i" variety.

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And speaking of interesting quotes, especially about blogging, here's something from a recent edition of The London Review of Books:

A blogger can have an unedited post up on the web and available to readers within minutes of the idea popping into his head. A blog is non-linear, always unfinished, ever open. It can be indefinitely added to, rewritten, cut from, commented on. But more than that, a blog should be dense with hyperlinks, sending the reader off into the blogosphere and the rest of the internet along a chain of endlessly forking paths. That may well sound like your idea of a nightmare, which is just one of the many reasons the internet isn’t going to make books obsolete anytime soon. – Thomas Jones, "Short Cuts," London Review of Books, 1/24/2008 [Read the entire article here]

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And since I seem to have become one of those dreaded book bloggers, I was interested to read what Richard Schickel and Michael Rogers think of all this book and film reviewing being done by all of us non-experts. Basically, they think we shouldn't be trying it at home, folks. Richard Schickel's article is titled "Not everybody's a critic," and appeared in the L.A. Times. The Michael Rogers article, "Bloggers vs. Reviewers" is at LibraryJournal.com. For the record, I may be a book nerd, but I do not own a single cat – at the moment, anyway.

Winter Reading Challenge 2008: Recap

When I decided to take part in InkSplasher's Winter Reading Challenge, I really had some doubts that I'd be able to finish the five books I'd chosen in the set amount of time. I'm a slow reader, and really didn't do all that well last year, in the number-of-books-read department. But that was the main reason I wanted to try the challenge – to force myself to read more. And in that, the challenge was a huge success for me.

It also nudged me into reading a couple of books that I wouldn't normally have chosen (especially the Garcia Marquez), and it gave me a reason finally to tackle one or two titles that had been on my "to read" list for a number of years.

The challenge also introduced me to a huge number of interesting books and blogs (and bloggers) that I hadn't known existed. I want to thank Karlene for hosting, and all the other challenge members for taking part – I've really enjoyed reading all the wonderful reviews and I've picked up quite a few titles that I want to check out for my future reading adventures.

Here's a list of the books I read for the challenge, with links to my reviews:

1. Civil To Strangers (Barbara Pym) [See Review]
2. The Concord Quartet (Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr.) [See Review]
3. The Flanders Panel (Arturo Perez-Reverte) [See Review]
4. The Grand Complication (Allen Kurzweil) [See Review]
5. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) [See Review]

If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be Civil To Strangers; but then I'm a terrible Pym fanatic. However, I enjoyed all the books and don't regret choosing any of them.

So the challenge of winter is over, spring is here, and now it's time to start a new book! Happy reading, everyone.

Booking Through Thursday: The End

This week's BTT topic:
You've just reached the end of a book . . . what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one? Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the next book you’re going to read? What?
(Obviously, there can be more than one answer, here–a book with a cliff-hanger is going to engender different reactions than a serene, stand-alone, but you get the idea!)

Well, since I'm almost never reading just one book at a time, I guess I'm a diver – finish one book, and I've already got the next one started. Especially since I've gotten myself involved in all these darn reading challenges!

But I usually do try to take the time to go back over each book as I finish it, see if I've made any notes or marked any passages I want to remember, and maybe write down a few quotes. And if it's a book that I've really enjoyed, I like to go back and read the opening chapter or first few pages again – just to make sure it's stuck in my memory.

Of course, if I had a dog to take for a walk, or kids to take to the park, I'd definitely take a book along.

Review: Deadly Nightshade - A Martha's Vineyard Mystery

Written by Cynthia Riggs
Published by Signet Books, 2003

She stood up to see better, holding the back of the deck chair. She could feel the same thrill she'd felt as a girl. She hadn't been here for more than a half century. Surely it wasn't three-quarters of a century? A century had once seemed an eternity. Now she'd almost lived through that eternity. How short a time it had been! . . . She could see the tree line beyond the big house, stunted scrub oak and pine. It looked exactly like the tree line of her childhood. She recalled two large trees that rose above the other trees, their configuration looking like an elephant. . . . The elephant was still there, unchanged. The island was enchanted. Time had stopped for it, while she continued to pass through days and months and years. [p. 108]

Cynthia Riggs's Deadly Nightshade is the first book in her series of mystery novels centered around Victoria Trumbull, a 92-year-old poet who lives with her 30-something granddaughter Elizabeth, on Martha's Vineyard. The book begins with Victoria hearing a scream and a splash in the water. She investigates, along with Elizabeth and the harbormaster (Elizabeth's boss), and discovers a dead body floating in the harbor. Of course, she has to get involved and eventually manages to help solve the mystery, trap the killer, and see that everyone gets his or her comeuppance. And all the while, she still manages to take in the sunsets, work on her poetry, and cook her traditional Saturday night baked bean suppers for guests. What a gal!

Seriously, Victoria is a wonderful creation – intelligent and fun-loving and feisty (do you have to be over 80 to be "feisty"?), she's very believable and (as the blurb says) "unforgettable." Unfortunately, I can't say that about the rest of the characters or the plot. Not a terrible book, just not very remarkable.

The story seemed a bit trite (local fiscal corruption with a little drug trafficking thrown in), and didn't really make much use of the Martha's Vineyard locale – as far as I could tell, it could have been set in Corpus Christie or Nags Head or any other beach community. The characters, aside from Victoria, were mostly just unattractive and annoying. I'm not sure what we were supposed to make of Victoria's admiration for Domingo, the harbormaster – she seemed to think his manner was "courtly" even though he treated her granddaughter like a lackey and addressed all women as "sweetheart" or "you." And, aside from curiosity, there really wasn't any compelling reason for Victoria to get involved in solving the murder in the first place.

I suppose I was expecting the book to be more of a "cozy" – that's how it's advertised. But I think a lot of elements kept it from qualifying as a traditional cozy mystery. For one thing, some of the violence was a little too gruesome for a cozy. And some characters who turn out to be important to the plot aren't introduced until midway through the book. Also, I found the presence of the harbormaster character a little off-putting. Domingo is an ex-NYC police detective, and therefore about as hard-boiled as you can get. He's definitely not cozy material, and his prominence brings aspects of police procedural to the story that aren't very appropriate to the cozy genre.

OK – I guess I've made my point that the book didn't live up to my expectations. Even so, it wasn't one of those books I dislike so much I can't finish them. It was a nice fast, relaxing read – probably would be perfect for the beach. And, while I've never been to the Vineyard, I love Cape Cod, so a mystery series set in that part of the world is a welcome discovery. Although I might not try another book in this series right away, I can't say I'll never return to it – the character of Victoria is so attractive, I think it would be only right to give her a second chance. After all, aside from Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books, how many mystery novels are likely to feature heroines older than I am?

Random Photo Monday: Kayla

OK, I know this is weird. But I have a travel doll, who goes with me on most of the trips I take. She's tiny, so she fits in any purse or suitcase quite easily. And she's always a very enthusiastic traveler, as you can see. Her name is Kayla, and she's a member of the Barbie family.

She always wears the same outfit, whether she's at the beach or in the mountains, or relaxing in a big city hotel room. Sort of like Waldo in the "Where's Waldo" books. She has a tiny pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses, too, but she's always losing them.

I think here she was on her way to or from Chicago, a few years back. Wasn't it nice of Amtrak to provide a cup that was just her size?

The Sunday Salon: Reading Jane Austen's "Emma"

I'm happy to say that I got a bit more reading done today than I did last Sunday – even though the day was beautiful and sunny, and the outdoors beckoned. However, once I got out there, a wintry wind came screaming through the parking lot and nearly whipped me off my feet. So as soon as all the grocery-buying was done with, it was back home to curl up with a good book (locked away from the front room where M was scarfing down popcorn and watching Houston cream the Lakers).

Must confess I haven't done any reading for the last day or two – since plowing through Love in the Time of Cholera the other night. I needed a bit of a break after that marathon. But finishing that one marked the conclusion of my first online reading challenge (the Winter Reading Challenge, hosted by Karlene over at InkSplasher), and I was determined to get all my chosen books read on time. I'm nothing if not obsessive-compulsive.

So it was nice to be able to devote a little time to Emma Woodhouse this afternoon. I've started Emma several times in the past, and always given up on it before I got too far along. It's not that I find the book boring or too difficult. No, it's the character of Emma herself that's always stopped me. I just get too irritated with her to keep reading. By the time she's "taken up" Harriet Smith, I'm usually saying "that's enough of that." Obviously, I've never gotten very far into the story.

But I've made up my mind to finish the book this time, irritating heroine or no. Besides, in my reading today I found something that made me realize Emma and I have a lot more in common than just being irritating types. She was a list-maker! This is Mr. Knightley complaining about Emma to Mrs. Weston when Mrs. W. tells him Emma means to use her new friendship with Harriet to induce them both to read more:

Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through – and very good lists they were – very well chosen, and very neatly arranged – sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen – I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. . . .

Yes, I know all about making lists of to-be-read books that somehow never get read. And my lists are always wonderfully elaborate masterpieces of enumeration – sometimes even alphabetical!

I'm so glad to have found this common bond. And although I don't really know much about Jane herself yet, I'm hoping to find out that Miss Austen was a keen list-maker, too.