Booking Through Thursday: Bedside

This week's BTT topic is about bedside reading: "What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?"

Well, my answer to that first question would have to be none. Our bedroom isn't really set up for reading in bed. Yes, it's a real failing on the part of our decorating scheme, but there you are. We don't have nightstands, or reading lights by the bed, or a comfy seating/reading area in the bedroom. So if I want to read at bedtime (and I always do), it has to be done in some other part of the apartment. I've recently acquired an iPad that has a Kindle app, and I'm going to try using that for bedtime reading, if I ever manage to decide on which books I want to download.

And in other rooms? The answer to that one is simple, too – we have books everywhere. In bookcases, piled on tables, hidden in cabinets and boxes, stacked on the floor. Even in the bedroom, where reading isn't easy to do, there are books. We have books in every room except the bathrooms, and that's only because our bathrooms are barely big enough to turn around in – no room for any book accumulation. If you want to read in any of our bathrooms, you have to take your book in there with you.

Aside: There's an interesting question – are you a bathroom reader? If yes, what's your preferred reading material for a bathroom session? Or maybe that's just too much info.

And I digress.

OK, last question. What am I reading? Well, at the moment, I'm reading M.J. Rose's The Hypnotist. That's been my bedtime reading for the last few days. Hoping to finish that one up tonight or tomorrow. I'm also slowly making my way through The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton (and enjoying it – but it's a really long book and I keep getting tempted by other, shorter works). I've got several more books started, although I'm not really actively reading them at the moment (my "back burner books"). And I have several ARCs that I need to read in the next few weeks. Of those, I think Alex Kava's Damaged is probably next on my list.

So, what about you? What's your bedtime reading situation? Or are you one of those lucky types who hit the pillow and float instantly off to dreamland?

A-Z Wednesday: "P"

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Vicki at Reading At The Beach. To join in, just visit her blog for the guidelines and leave your link in a comment.

This week's letter is "P." So I went to my shelves, and this is what I pulled out.

Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon
Written by Garrison Keillor
Published 2007

Description of the book from the publisher:

In Lake Wobegon lives a good Lutheran lady who is quite prepared to die and wishes to be cremated and her ashes placed inside a bowling ball and dropped into the lake, no prayers, no hymns, thank you very much. Meanwhile, the Detmer girl returns from California, where she has made a killing in veterinary aromatherapy, to marry her boyfriend Brent aboard Wally's pontoon boat, presided over by her minister, Misty Naylor of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Spirit. Brent arrives on Thursday. On Saturday, a delegation of renegade Lutheran pastors from Denmark come to town on their tour of America, their punishment for having denied the divinity of Jesus. And Barbara Peterson, whose mother, Evelyn, left the startling note about cremation and the bowling ball, is in love with a lovely fat man who slips around town in dim light and reconnoiters with her at the Romeo Motel.

And then there is Raoul of the cigars and tinted shades and rainbow sportcoat and his long phone message ("Hey, Precious") after the angel of death has already come and gone.

All is in readiness for the wedding – the giant shrimp shish kebabs, the French champagne, the wheels of imported cheese, the pate with whole peppercorns, the hot-air balloon, the flying Elvis, the pontoon boat, and the giant duck decoys – and then something else happens.

It is Lake Wobegon as you've imagined it – good loving people who drive each other slightly crazy.

See the book's page at Amazon.com.

And a photo of the author:

I read this one a couple of years ago, and loved it. It's really laugh-out-loud funny, and pokes fun at just about everybody and everything (including some gentle jabbing at religion, so if you're squeamish about that sort of thing, this might not be your cuppa). It also includes one of the greatest opening lines in all literature (IMHO): "Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that."

Teaser Tuesdays: The Hypnotist

This week my teaser lines come from The Hypnotist by M.J. Rose, the third novel in her Reincarnationist series. I'm enjoying the book quite a lot (more than I expected to, actually), even though I haven't read either of the earlier books. It reminds me just a teensy bit of the Aloysius Diogenes series by Preston and Child - although it's quite different from those books, it does have some of the same flavor.

This excerpt (more than two lines again - sorry) comes from page 93, and has the protagonist, Lucian Glass, remembering his lost love Solange, back when they were two young aspiring artists twenty-some years ago:

She had been self-conscious about the scar and made up different stories about how she'd gotten it. From a vicious babysitter with a knife when she was five. From a French poodle that had leaped up and taken a bite out of her when she was still a baby. . . . From the devil, signaling she'd sold him her soul so she could paint better.

The scar mentioned in the quote was a "strange, pale crescent-moon shaped mark above her right eyebrow," and I have a feeling it's going to become significant later in the book. Something connected with a past life? Or maybe not. Just have to wait and see.


How about you? Got a great teaser from a book you're reading right now? Want to play along? Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at One Persons Journey Through a World of Books. If you want to let the world know what books you're going to be reading this week, head on over to her blog and leave your link.

Once again, I've been getting quite a bit of reading done lately, but still not as much as I'd like. Been trying to get over a very stubborn cold recently, so I've had lots of time to read, but haven't felt much like blogging about it. Feeling better now, though, and hope to get back on track (or at least figure out where the track went to). Here's what's up lately:

• Finished recently:
  Innocent, by Scott Turow
  The Last Child, by John Hart
  Tinkers, by Paul Harding
  
  
• Reviews posted recently:
  Innocent, by Scott Turow
  Tinkers, by Paul Harding
  The Map of True Places, by Brunonia Barry
  
  
• Reading this week:
  The Hypnotist, by M.J. Rose
  The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton (Still reading this one and enjoying it, but it's a bit of a chunkster.)
  
  
• Next up:
  The Sculptor, by Gregory Funaro (Won this in a Good Reads giveaway. Looks interesting.)
  Damaged. Alex Kava (ARC - book is due out in July)
  
  
• In the works:
  Still at least half a dozen or so reviews to be finished up and posted (as usual).
  

Review: The Map of True Places

Written by Brunonia Barry
William Morrow, 2010; 416 pages

Zee Finch is a young therapist still recovering from the suicide of her mother fifteen years ago. Maureen Finch had been a beautiful but disturbed woman, whose emotional problems had forced the thirteen-year-old Zee into the role of caretaker when she was much too young to be prepared for it. The experience deeply traumatized Zee, and influenced her choice of career. When Zee takes on a new patient, Lilly Braedon, who reminds her very strongly of Maureen, she allows herself to become much too involved with Lilly and her problems. And when Lilly also commits suicide, Zee is once more badly shaken and begins questioning her own part in Lilly’s death, as well as her overall professional abilities.

Taking some time away from the job (and fiance William), Zee travels back to her home in Salem, Massachusetts, intending to visit her father (called Finch), and his partner, Melville. But when she arrives in Salem she finds that Melville seems to have disappeared, and Finch’s Parkinson’s disease has advanced alarmingly: He's hallucinating about Nathaniel Hawthorne, has set up a "cent-shop" like the one in House of the Seven Gables, and is selling Melville's belongings to the neighbors. Once again, Zee is forced into the role of caregiver, and also has to deal with childhood memories, and the secrets and buried truths involved in her relationship with her father. At the same time, she begins a romance with an attractive stranger who may have dangerous connections to Lilly Braedon’s suicide.

I'm very sorry to have to say I was disappointed with Barry's second novel. Now maybe my expectations were just too high, as I absolutely loved her debut novel, The Lace Reader – it's become one of my all-time favorite reads. So I was hoping to enjoy The Map of True Places just as much, and I was very excited to get an ARC of the book from the publisher. But in the end, it was really mostly that "free book" obligation that kept me reading.

I thought the plot, with so many different story lines, was annoyingly convoluted. All that jumping around in time occasionally even seemed confusing for the author, forcing her to repeat herself in several places throughout the book (almost as if she were saying, “Oh, did I tell you this already?”). And while a few of the many characters were very finely drawn, some just felt like stock footage.

Like The Lace Reader, this novel is set in Salem and the atmosphere and local color is well portrayed. And Barry is still very adept at adding little details that make the story and characters seem very real and familiar. And she's still wonderful with descriptive images (like the children playing at the beach, wearing "so much 45 SPF that the blowing sand began to coat their pale bodies, making them look like sugar cookies.") But in general, I thought the writing was uneven – brilliantly luminous in parts (like the Brunonia I love), but strangely sloppy and repetitive in others: as if she'd worked very hard on polishing some passages, and just used her rough drafts at other times. And the ending, though it had some interesting plot twists and did tie up all the various threads (perhaps a little too perfectly) – well, I'll just say I found it unsatisfying and strangely inappropriate to the tone of the rest of the book.

Ultimately, I think Barry was just trying to weave too many plots together. I would have been happier if she’d concentrated more on the story that I found really intriguing, which was the saga of Finch and Maureen and Melville (the old folks), and hadn't spent quite so much time on young Zee and her various traumas and neuroses. Possibly what the book needed wasn't better writing, but tougher editing. I'm still a Brunonia Barry fan, and still hoping for that amazing follow-up novel, but this just wasn't it.

[Note: This review refers to an advance reader's edition of the novel, provided free of charge by the publisher. I received no other compensation for reading the book, no one tried to influence my review, and the opinions expressed here are entirely my own.]

Review: Innocent

Written by Scott Turow
Grand Central Publishing, 2010; 407 pages

Twenty years after being tried for the murder of his colleague and lover, Carolyn Polhemus, attorney Rusty Sabich is back – still looking for love in the wrong places, and making all the wrong moves. And Scott Turow is in fine form once again, delivering another sure-fire page turner. If, like me, you loved Turow’s bestselling Presumed Innocent back in the 1980s, then I think you’re in for a treat: twenty years later, here comes the sequel – Innocent, published this month and already climbing the charts. Well, actually, there have been several “sequels” to Presumed Innocent, over the years – each one following a different character from the fictional Kindle County legal world Turow introduced in that first novel. But in Innocent, we get to find out what happened to the major players from that earlier book, and follow them into new adventures.

Innocent works just fine as a stand-alone novel, although I imagine it helps to know a bit about the earlier story. The bare bones plot was this: Rusty Sabich was accused of the rape and murder of a female attorney he worked with – Carolyn Polhemus. He was tried for the crime and acquitted, but the experience was almost fatally traumatic for him and his wife and young son. Tommy Molto, the prosecutor in that earlier case, was also badly scarred by the trial and its aftermath: accused of unethical conduct and mishandling evidence, he eventually lost his job. And although Rusty helped him get it back, there’s still animosity there – and Tommy still believes, deep down, that Rusty got away with murder.

Flash forward twenty-odd years, and Tommy is now the acting chief prosecutor in Kindle County. Rusty, now a chief judge of the appellate court, is getting ready to run for a spot on the state supreme court. And just weeks before the election, Rusty wakes up one morning to find his wife Barbara lying in bed beside him, dead. Not only has she died under mysterious circumstances, but when it’s learned that Rusty waited twenty-four hours before notifying anyone of her death, that he “tidied up” the bedroom while he was waiting and “thinking,” and that he’d recently been having another affair with another female colleague, Tommy and his staff immediately assume it’s happening all over again – Rusty Sabich has once again gotten away with murder. In fact, this time, no one can even be completely sure that there was any “foul play” involved.

Eventually, of course, Tommy overcomes those doubts and hauls Rusty into court to stand trial for yet another murder. I won’t say much more about the plot, except that there are a lot of surprises to come, especially after the trial gets going – trials, after all, being what Turow does best.

When I first heard about Innocent, I was a little wary – I had enjoyed Presumed Innocent so much, I was prepared for a let-down with this one. But I was very pleasantly surprised – I really enjoyed this book, too. Well, maybe not quite as much as the earlier novel. That one really hit me hard, but this one has a lot going for it, too. Rusty is still an appealing, though frustrating character, and his opponent, prosecutor Tommy Molto seems a little more human and well-rounded here. It’s interesting to see what’s happened to several of the characters from the earlier book as they make their appearances in this new one – especially Rusty’s son Nat, who’s now twenty-eight and beginning a legal career of his own. Once again, it’s the women characters who seem to cause all the grief. And once again, the actual mystery of the book isn’t all that hard to figure out, and the conclusion becomes fairly obvious (even inevitable) pretty early on. But none of that diminishes any of the fun. Innocent is a really terrific read.

[Note: My copy of Innocent was provided, free of charge, by the publisher, through Library Thing's Early Reviewer program. I received no other compensation. No one attempted to influence my review, and the opinions stated here are my own.]

Let Us Now Praise Older Women Readers

Found this very interesting quote in today's edition of the Shelf Awareness newsletter. It's by Canadian writer Katherine Govier (whose latest novel is The Ghost Brush), and the full National Post article can be found here.

"You do hear, in publishing circles, the occasional complaint that the audience is 'graying.' Yep, it is. It is also loyal, intelligent, informed...opinionated, and not going anywhere. These women have years of reading ahead of them. They will not be switching their allegiance to video games or social media. They will read, and discuss what they read, as long as they have eyes in their head. Anyway, they’re not all gray.... The audience is a bigger mix than it first appears to be. But yes, it is mainly older women. These are the buyers, the ones who get the ball rolling. Let’s face it, they are the mainstay and the lifeblood of books in our country. Maybe in most countries.... So let’s hear it for older women who read. Without their wisdom, curiosity and lust for life, their humour, loyalty and pride of place, we would be nowhere."

Nice that somebody has noticed.