Robb, J.D.:  Witness in Death

This is probably my favorite J.D. Robb so far.  I might even read this one again.  It starts with a murder that happens on stage during a performance of Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie.  Eve is at the performance so actually witnesses the crime.  However, in this case the “dead” that she is standing as justice for is actually the villain and a lot of good people get hurt in the process of finding the solution. This was not a simple good against bad story with easy answers; this actually gave the reader a chance to ponder “what is justice.”  Robb also worked in some parallels between the plot of Witness for the Prosecution and her plot that as an Agatha Christie fan I found interesting. I shed a lot of tears in this book and even though I did figure out the perpetrator before the end of the book (as did Eve) I still had a few surprises in the dénouement.  This was a terrific read.

Winspear, Jacqueline:  Pardonable Lies

Another interesting outing for Maisie Dobbs in which her search to find out if the son of a peer of the realm actually died in WWI because his dying wife made him promise to find him as she didn’t believe he was dead.  The father wished it to be proved he was dead.  The search leads her to also find out about the brother of her college friend, Pricilla Everden.  The third Maisie Dobbs book is a well written and historically researched novel which adds to the pleasure of a good story.

Christie, Agatha:  A Pocket Full of Rye

This was an audio edition of an enjoyable Miss Marple mystery, well read.  The patriarch of a dysfunctional family dies suddenly under suspicious circumstances at his place of business.  When he is examined it is discovered that there is a handful of rye grain in his pocket.  As the story unfolds it is discovered that the son who has stayed home to help run the business has had a major rift with his father and the prodigal brother has been invited to return home.  Blackbirds figure in the plot, also.  Even though I didn’t remember the story I’m sure I must have read this many years ago so it’s possible I figured out the villain so early based of half remembered information.  However, there were still some surprises for me at the end and I had a good time using this as a “walking book.”

Saroyan, William:  Essential Saroyan

This is an anthology of some of Saroyan’s best writing.  This year is the centennial of Saroyan’s birth and Fresno, California having been his home there have a flurry of activities celebrating his life and works which includes movies (”The Human Comedy” starring Andy Rooney is one of the best known) as well as novels, short stories and other writings.  Since I now live in this area I was able to take part in some of these events.  I don’t remember ever reading Saroyan before and I really loved this book.  He has a different style-often in his shorter works it’s more like he is talking to the reader rather than trying to write a formal essay or story.  He has a feel for the “common man” (whatever that is supposed to mean-I doubt if Saroyan thought of anyone as “common”).  He also writes with a great deal of humor and frequently with a touch of fantasy.  Often the reader feels that under the humor there is pain.  This book was given to me by my local library for the book discussion they sponsored.  Unfortunately I didn’t get word of the discussion until I had missed two of its meetings.  See the April General Reading section for my discussion of this book. My biggest complaint about this book is that some of the selections are excerpts from longer works and I find it disconcerting not to be able the read the entire work.  I would prefer to have more short stories and let the longer works be published separately.

Bohjalian, Chris:  The Double Bind

This was interesting, with a real twist at the end. Laura Esta Brook is a young social worker who works at a homeless shelter.  She is struggling with the after shock of an attempted rape attack on her when she finds a box of photos taken by a homeless man who has dies.  Many are pictures of celebrities and Laura becomes obsessed with trying to find out why a man who was obviously a successful professional photographer and spent time with celebrities became homeless. I don’t want to reveal much more because part of the fun is how we keep peeling away layers of the story as we read.  I will just say that I was glad I had recently reread The Great Gatsby because it was fascinating how Bohjalian used those characters in this book. I had a few questions at the end–I may have to read it again to see if the answers to my unanswered questions were just too buried for me to catch.  (The photos in the book were actual photos taken by a homeless man that Bohjalian.  You will recognize some of the people in them..  Of course that homeless man was not part of the novel.)

Saroyan, William:  My Name Is Aram

This is a collection of short stories about a young Armenian boy in Fresno, California in the 1930’s named Aram Garoghlanian.  They are deceptively simple and could be easily read by a student in middle school.  However, for the more mature reader there is a quality in Saroyan’s observations about people and about the simple situations he portrays that gives depth to the stories and helps us to a better understanding of humanity.  This book has been described as the Armenian Tom Sawyer, but the humor is gentler and sometimes masks hidden pain.  Saroyan’s love of his fellow man, and his tolerance, shine through these stories as much as in his more sophisticated writing.  He really thought man was basically good.

Frost, Robert: Versed in Country Things

This is a beautiful collection of several lesser known of Frost’s poems combined with wonderful black and white photographs of the New England countryside that Frost portrayed in his poems.  Although no attempt was made to have the photographs illustrate particular poems,  the pictures enhanced the power of the words and were also enjoyable to view on their own.  I purchased this for $1.00 at the friends of the library sale; it is a hardcover in mint condition including the dust jacket.  I couldn’t pass it up!

Hoving, Thomas:  King of the Confessors

Hoving describes his long  process to “win” the ivory cross, the most important medieval object of art so far discovered, for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (actually for The Cloisters, the Medieval branch of the Met that is in a separate location).  This was a fascinating account that read almost like a novel-much better than Dan Brown novels.  Not only was the story exciting but the reader is treated to a revealing look at the chicanery that often goes on behind the scenes for a museum to acquire a significant work.  But the “star” of the book was the magnificent cross.  The history of the cross was fascinating and the descriptions let the reader visualize the cross even more clearly than the wonderful photographs at the beginning of the book.  Hoving obviously became very intimate with the object to be able to describe its intricacy in such detail. If you like mystery and suspense with an added bonus of beautiful art this book fits the bill.

April 5-Saturday

Marty asked me to slow down on Silmarillion so he can catch up so I’ll put that on the back burner for awhile.  Hope I don’t forget too much to be able to pick it up again.  It is interesting that Tucker won’t read War and Peace because of the difficulty with all the names of characters and yet can’t understand why Marty and I have trouble with Silmarillion!

We have a meeting at the library on Thursday to discuss Essential Saroyan, a selection of William Saroyan’s best writings. I have about a hundred pages to complete this week’s assignment so that will keep me busy this weekend.   This year is the celebration of Saroyan’s hundredth birthday which is why the Fresno library system is scheduling many events about him.  His writing tends to be quirky but he really captivates the reader with his great love of humanity-all of it in its individual components of one life at a time.  This is one I should read with a notebook at my side to copy down appealing passages.

My two favorite selections so far, “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” and “Seventy Thousand Assyrians” reminded me of Down and Out in Paris and London as all of these bring to life the lives of the “anonymous poor.”  Although none of these are religious writings (and the authors would probably be appalled if someone suggested they were) they should be appealing to Christians because both writers seem to see humanity as Jesus did-as individuals rather than definable groups.  I got the Saroyan book for free from the library so it is legal to consider it a BC book for this month.  I need to be more aggressive this month because I read only 3 BC books in March which was much less than a third of the quarterly total of 16.

April 10-Thursday

I went to the library book discussion about Essential Saroyan this evening.  I was a Johnny-come-lately because I didn’t realize it was happening until 2 meetings had already taken place.  This was the next to last meeting-the last will be April 24.  I read the entire book this past week because I was enjoying it so much, so I was rather disappointed that so many in the group were not enjoying Saroyan-including Ernst, the librarian.  Saroyan was a quirky writer and leaves much up to the reader as far as trying to figure out what “he means” but that is part of the charm.  It is almost like having a dialogue with the writer as you react to what he says.  Most of the discussion tonight was about “Tracy’s Tiger” which was one of my favorites.  The discussion was pretty lively and some of the teenagers who attended contributed quite a bit.  Ernst didn’t care for the story because there was no definite resolution to whether the tiger was real or imaginary.  Others couldn’t figure out what the “meaning” of either the tiger or the story was.  Surprisingly, one of the teenage boys seemed to like the story as much as I did even though there seems to be no definite answer to many of the questions that were raised.  It’s nice to know that there are still young readers who don’t mind working at their reading and don’t need a definitive answer to what it all means.  Maybe he doesn’t watch much television-where all the answers are revealed in either 30 minutes or an hour!  Thinking about the story in retrospect and as a result of the ideas I got from the discussion, I am struck how much the tone and development of the story reminds me of the novel Going after Cacciato. Both stories leave you wondering about what is real and what isn’t in the story.  I wonder if Tim O’Brien ever read Saroyan?

April 26-Saturday

I spent the day playing with librarything.com instead of reading my book.  But I did have a good time adding comments to some of my entries and submitting a couple of reviews.  Now I just have to find time to finish King of the Confessors and The Silmarillion before the end of the month.

Exploring a book by David Whyte called Crossing the Unknown Sea makes me think maybe I could justify using my time off next week after the recital is over to do the reading.  I need to get that book by Whyte.  I loved The Heart Aroused, the book by him that that I bought and read because our friend and former pastor Lowery recommended it to me. (see comments below)

Whyte, David:  The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America (read 2004; recommended by Lowery Brantley)

David Whyte is a fine writer and this book is a noteworthy contribution to the       literature on how to bring creativity and soul not only into the corporate world, but into each of our lives. The book grew out of work he did as a consultant for many corporations presenting seminars to their personnel to help them become more successful and personally satisfied in their jobs.  In this book he works hard at underscoring the symbolic importance of his literary references to Beowulf, Coleridge and Eliot, among others as he assumes many of his readers might not otherwise be poetically inclined. A Heart Aroused argues very simply that each of us owes it to ourselves to bring courage and passion into our work and into our lives. If we cannot embrace the job with passion, perhaps we are in the wrong job.

I need to reread this book as I face the changes that Jim’s retirement (and mine?) will bring.  How do we make retirement as fulfilling as work?  Another of his books, Crossing the Unknown Sea, is especially recommended for reading when life changing events such as retirement occur.