What BOOK are you reading right now?

Answering a long time later, as I'm rereading - the connection is the mother, as the girl was seventeen, swapping her face and name quite entirely.

Hey, maybe they were thugs.. (no).

Oh okay, thanks for letting me know... :-)

Writing from Italy, at last. Not Rome yet but getting there by ferragosto.

Smiles, glad to hear. Probably less tourists around by then, eh? Or maybe not..

I got Gianrico Carofiglio's The Past is a Foreign Country in the mail today..
First of all, it is probably in the best shape of any book I've ever ordered (always cheap, as I don't mind ratty paperbacks) on Amazon. I may have to sit up in a chair to read it. It's a small pristine hardback, in beautiful condition. The price was one cent with postage. Geez, he is a good writer, whatever I may later decide about this one. Of the three procedurals I read, the first one took time to get into but was well worth it, and the next two were right there.

I assume it's not out in paperback yet, it's also not part of that series. Some of his legal procedurals aren't translated to english yet either (she pants breathlessly).

I may need to sit up in a chair to read it.

Some novels

These are great recommendations. Are they metafiction?

I see I was intent on not messing up that hardback Carofiglio book..

I ended up liking it for the writing and story development, as usual with him, but I only liked one character. That was enough.

Today I got Almost Blue in the mail, a crime novel set in Bologna, a city I've been to a couple of times but don't know well, a city with quite a history, also famous for food, thus called Bologna the Fat. The thing about the book , which I haven't started yet, is that the english translation is produced by City Lights Books. That's a famous bookstore in San Francisco - the editors being Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy Peters, translator being Donagh Stransky. Why do I describe all this? because back in 2004 a bunch of a2k people met in San Francisco for a few days, and one of those days, after a great lunch, several of us walked up to City Lights Books. JJorge, Dys and Diane, Bernie Latham and Lola, and me. Great fun. I did buy a book there, but I now forget which it was. I'll see if I can jog my memory.

"Pour Your Heart Into It" Howard Schultz Starbucks

Homer & Langley by E. L. Doctorow. This is a novel about the Collyer brothers, both eccentrics. Their claim to fame is their hoarded Fifth Avenue mansion. This book is beautifully written about two unfathomable characters.

Fascinating. He is such a loss.

They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?
~Patrick F. McManus

Courtesy of CowDoc

Rereading Old Man's War by John Scalzi.

I just finished reading Tina Fey's Bossypants. Had to read it for my book group. Reading this book was like eating a potato chip: a little crunch, a little salt, but not much there in the way of nutrition.

I can't imagine what we'll find to talk about at the group.

The people who aren't at the group?

George, Your suggestion might apply in other groups, but not this one. I am by far the youngest person there--the only one born after WWII. There's a chance that we'd notice if someone were missing, but the thought wouldn't be in our consciousness long enough for an entire catty discussion.

It's fun being the kid. And an adventure in generations gaps.

I'll bet it is! Alas, I'm seldom on that side of the gap. Enjoy, young'un.

So, I read the Almost Blue book fast.

His writing is very different from Carofiglio.
It started out with a lurch for me, a gory scene, but probably 90% of procedurals do. The book quieted down, in time, and got interesting.

The pulsing of gore is one of my problems re american police procedural best sellers (not that I hate all of them), thus my interest in european or asian crime series, plus that I get to learn about new places.

The killer in this one was worthy of psychological study, but so were some of the other characters. A key character is a blind man, who doesn't leave his room and spends a lot of time as a listener and we learn how he absorbs information.. He blooms as a character, fascinating how much he apprehends without seeing.

I also learned a lot more about Bologna, bringing back memories. We stayed at just the wrong hotel, and waved Bye Bye Bologna happily, but I also liked aspects about it. The book brought back memories.
There was the piazza Maggiore, filled with old men in grey coats one morning. We were headed to a Bar (Mexico, the name) for coffee but I wanted to hurry over and see the church. Oddness to me, only woman there as I crossed the huge piazza, guy-ville.

Well, that blind guy knew a lot more about Bologna than I do.

Onward by Howard Schultz

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmener who is a member of the Potawatami Nation, a mother and a distinguished professor of botany. She is one of the most lyrical writers I have ever encountered. The book is part memoir, part examination of native cultures, part plea for the environment and part spiritual meditation. It is one of the most moving things I have ever read.

Reading some books can be an odd progression. Take the one I've got at the computer desk now, since I'm reading it while waiting for some US football results, for the a2k pick-um game. It's by one of the two italian crime authors that got my interest relatively recently, mentioned here before, this one, Carlo Lucarella. I glommed onto the first one of his that I read in english translation, Almost Blue, after beginning to understand it. Now on the desk is the sequel, Day after Day.

The first batch of pages were on the vaporous side to me, from a writer who I know to be able to be concise. Various people were shown to be doing stuff and their thoughts described, sometimes roaming into the poetic or the depressive.
Uh, well, we'll see. Then I started to get it, and then I got interested, and then I got very interested.
Don't know the end yet...........

I should probably explain that it isn't crime I'm so interested in, but different cultures, including in my own country. Reading procedurals by authors around the world can be a trip.