Red Mist, by Patricia Cornwell (review)

The Kay Scarpetta series is my guilty pleasure. My book candy. It has no seriously redeeming value, but I have always enjoyed the characters. As it seems to be with all series, the first books were the best, and her 2010 release left much to be desired, so I was a little apprehensive about the newest book, Red Mist, which came out on Tuesday. Actually, though, this newest additon to the series was a return to many of the things I loved in her earlier books. Scarpetta is in South Carolina for this one, looking further into the death of her deputy chief Fielding. There is plenty in this episode that harks back to the previous one, but our old Scarpetta is back—clear thinking and organized. All our usual characters are here as well, and we get our triumphant ending. There are some slow parts, and the book seems to take a while to get started, but Cornwell's writing is familiar once again, and the story is enjoyable.

Book 49 on my way to 52.

Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay

I picked this one up because I received de Rosnay's newest novel as a review book from Book List and I figured I'd better brush up a bit on the author's previous work. In Sarah's Key, a woman in current Paris seeks information about the round-up of the Jews during the WWII occupation, specifically about a Jewish girl and her family who once lived in the same apartment. Throughout her search she is faced with the dark facts about the round-up while also dealing with problems in her own life.

I think book was warmly received, and it's hard to speak against it because of the subject matter—the roundup of Jews in Paris, France, is not a well known piece of history and deserves some highlighting, but I found this book tedious and depressing. Granted, the subject matter is depressing, but tackling it from the view point of a repressed woman in current times just added to the heaviness of the story. I see that parallels are being drawn between the time periods—repression then, repression now, and de Rosnay does a fine job of drawing the character of the French citizens, both now and then, but I expected something that felt uplifting, and never really found it. What I did find was florid and overly dramatic writing, and my attention waned about half way through.

Book 48 on my way to 53.

The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides

I really enjoyed The Virgin Suicides, and loved Middlesex, both by Jeffrey Eugenides, so when I caught wind of this release I preordered the book. I'm shameless that way. Unfortunately I found it not as good as Middlesex, but that isn't actually saying a whole lot because I was such a big fan of Middlesex. The Marriage Plot is almost a modern (eighties anyway) version of The Portrait of a Lady, an intelligent young college senior torn between worldliness and two different men makes a difficult decision, and finds herself wrong and trapped in the end. Told from three different view points, the young lady's and each of the young men in turn, the story is engaging and enjoyable. Being set in the eighties, this will be especially enjoyabe for anyone who lived through that decade. Eek. So I didn't find it as good as Middlesex, it was still a fantastic read.

Book 46 on my way to 52.

Weekly book shelf, 5/14

We are on vacation this week, soaking up sun and surprising warmth that we didn't even have to leave Michigan to find. For years I have packed for vacations with the idea that, being a vacation, I'd have lots of extra reading time, but have yet to see those plans fulfilled. I have been known to stow extra books away in odd parts of my luggage only to unpack them, untouched and almost forgotten, upon our return home. The same was not quite true for Calvin—he seemed to squeeze in plenty of reading time, even though he spent all of his beach time flirting with the incredibly frigid water—but he mostly re-read favorites, like Nate the Great and some of the Magic Tree House.

 Here's some of what Calvin was reading this week:.

Berkeley Breathed is the Bloom County cartoonist and we enjoy both his art and his story telling in Pete & Pickles. The book is a little dark—there's references made to death and loss (Pete's wife has died in the past), to depression (Pete, again), and to mistreatment of animals (Pickles in the circus). There is also allusion to modern art and geographic locations, and the tale of friendship and its happy ending is very uplifting. The illustrations in the book actually start out dark and gloomy, then end full of color and life, mirroring the movement of the story itself. We got this book for Calvin two years ago for Christmas and it has been a favorite ever since.

We still have exactly two chapters left in Glinda of Oz, at this point, but are really making headway with the Aeneid, and now he's asking to read the Iliad and the Odyssey. I was thinking I'd track down copies of the "For Boys and Girls" versions of these, also by Church.

And on my bookshelf this week... in fiction I finished Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin. In non-fiction I finished with The Monk in the Garden, by Robin Marantz Henig, and am waiting for my copy of Beasts in the Garden, the brand new Erik Larson, to arrive on Tuesday before I get started on a new one.

Egyptian volcanoes

It has been a really long time since I shared any of Calvin's art, or really anything at all in this space other than book reviews. I wish I could say that was just a matter of not posting, but actually we haven't done much art as of late—we've been reading a lot of and playing make-believe, but other than that we've been outside and most of our activities have just been general day to day things that I've written about in the journal. I've been trying to sort out how I'll use this space on the site now that I use the journal space so much more, and so much more inclusively. Right now it's becoming mostly a book review site, and we're even in a transition on that front. Now that Calvin reads so much more on his own we are going through our read alouds more slowly and in the past I've only asked him to write reviews on the read alouds. Though we usually talk about the books he's read after he finishes them, and sometimes he still reads to me, he's not excessively fond of writing reviews so I haven't asked him to do so more often than before. So that leaves us with the weekly bookshelf post, lots of my own book reviews, and a handful of Calvin's for right now. But I have other plans in the works. I think we just go in spurts, that's all.

And today Calvin has some art to share. He specifically asked for these to be posted here. These drawings are a result of a rediscovery of the Egyptian hieroglyph stamps and a still active fascination with volcanoes. Note his creation of hieroglyphs for "volcano" and "dangerous lava", or so he tells me they mean.