Lest you think I haven't been reading........

I have been reading, honest. But...it's so hard to work all day, get some semblance of exercise - not that it seems to work anymore - keep up with the news (2 papers on the weekend is too much!) - AND have a life. It's the newspapers that are killing me. So much bad news that it's unbearable. So many lies, inuendo, scams, short-sighted, nasty letters to the editor, that I just want to stay in bed some days and play Scarlett O'Hara.

To fend off the depression that's always so close at hand I've turned to some old favorites. Michael Connelly's The Brass Verdict is in my car's cd slot and moves along at a great clip. I never read The Lincoln Lawyer so I hadn't gotten to meet Micky Haller, the pain killer addicted lawyer who lives out of his Continentals - get it? - and has gotten his act together for the love of his daughter. Now, he's sharing top billing with Harry Bosch, a wonderful literary character with whom Mick will end up, I'm sure, finding more in common than not. At this point in the legal thriller, Bosch and Haller have yet to figure out how much they have in common but they're both in pursuit of a killer. Someone has done in attorney Jerry Vincent just a few days before he's about to try the biggest case of his career. Based on a long ago friendship, Vincent has bequeathed his entire law practice and all the pending cases to down -on -his-luck Micky Haller.
And the plot thickens. I just LOVE legal thrillers and Connelly knows all the ins and outs of the procedures. Just the psychology of jury selection is enough to keep a listener running errands up and down Route 41 all night!

Another old standby who never fails me is Minette Walters. I used to recommend her all the time to customers in the mood for a psychological thriller and regret that I've rather put her on the back burner. The one I'm walking to right now is called The Chameleon. Once a reader knows Walters, he or she is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I try to outsmart her but the walking can often be a distraction as I try to avoid the macho pickup truck drivers who get a kick out of coming just a tad too close, too fast. They invariably sport a rebel flag or an NRA sticker and I get depressed all over again.

This particular novel has it all. An Iraq War veteran, horribly disfigured and emotionally scarred, is the hero or anti-hero as the case may be. There is an underlying insinuation that his relationship with his parents, especially his mother, may have had some sinister - sexual? - overtones with the potential for abuse. Is this man in turmoil because of the war or because of what happened before? There is a series of brutal beatings and murders of closeted gay men and there's a heroine - at least I hope she is - who's a dyke and a physician. Fabulous characters abound in this "who dun it" that I'm three quarters of the way through and can't for the life of me figure it out. I know one thing though, Minette Walters will surprise me, so the most outrageous conclusion may, in fact, be the right one.

Thursday I have my last book discussion of the "season." This gets me down as well since, where I work, book discussions are considered a big time waster - NOT - and are not encouraged. Where I used to host 7 ot 8 a season, I and my friend Andrea are now down to three each. The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears is the title I chose based on the sheer beauty of that title and the fact that Nancy Pearl's hometown made this their One Book, One Community Reads book. Written by an Ethiopian emigrant, Denaw Mengestu, this book is placed at Logan Circle in the District of Columbia, an area that Maryellen and I traipsed through often on our first sojourn in DC for the Book Expo several years ago. Homeless people fill every bench and sleep under the trees in these gorgeous parks of DC in clear view of the nation's capitol. One must ask, "what's wrong with this picture?"

The novel is written in such a lovely, understated use of the language that my heart breaks at the ability of such a young man - Mengestu - to put his thoughts to paper in this way when English is not even his first language. How inadequate I feel! I hope that my reading group will feel as I do for the language even if they can't relate to the story. They seldom let me down. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. No more for tonight as I'm anxious to get to bed and dig into the book I started last night, The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
I'm also totally stressed out from the writing of the review I did today for my latest gift from Library Journal, a first novel by Ali Sethi, a journalist whose work in The Nation, The Guardian, The New York Times and others had me totally enthralled. His novel? Not so much.

Hey, I've never said this before but please, pass along the link to my blog to anyone you think would be interested. Don gave me some lovely business cards for Christmas and we're hoping that I can get the blog out there in the world. Who knows, maybe I can parlay this writing gig into a post-retirement income. The way things look now, that may be a long way into the future!