Anne Tyler

Noah's Compass. I thought I'd write that first since by the end of the post I will probably have forgotten the name. This was Anne Tyler's very forgettable new novel which is perfectly fine but nothing new in the land of Tyler. I did notice they even put in bigger than usual margins and spaces to bulk this little thing out. The usual dysfunctional characters trying to function. Now what was the name of that book I just read? hmmm.....can't recall.

Kurt Wallander

I got a little over excited about the Kurt Wallander mysteries. I saw the series with Kenneth Branagh and they were great with stunning photography and this very moody glum sort of atmosphere. I read Firewall which is about a very large plot to bring down the world's financial system from a tiny little Swedish town. I'm not used to reading thrillers and it went to my head a little and when they were looking for a navy blue Mercedes van in the book, the murderer's get away car, I was driving to work, saw a navy blue van and almost went off the road with excitement "Kurt! He's here in Swampscott!" I wanted to yell into my cell phone. 

Henning Mankell is a very spare writer, nothing extra, I'm not sure if that is due to the fact that it is a translation or to his style. But this is typical: "Linda didn't call back. Wallander went to bed around eleven o'clock.

It took him a long time to fall asleep."  That's two paragraphs! He's the Hemingway of Swedish mysteries.

In Firewall there were some murders but offstage, with not too much goriness and I was planning to dedicate my life to reading all of them. I loaded up on all the library copies, told all my friends and bought the chronologically first one, Faceless Killers,  read a chapter and realized my life would have to take another direction. A elderly couple on a farm murdered in a very grisly fashion, impossible to read further. I am too much of a coward but maybe someone else can take up this quest for me. They are probably very good.

Help Me Feel Clean Again

Ok I feel dirty. I, along with everyone else in America, succumbed to Kathryn Stockett's The Help. It is actually quite hard to put down. It's a story of African American maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's told through their voices and then the voice of a young white woman who writes a book of their stories.
The voices of the maids are very engaging but  the author's intentions are less so. She panders to the liberal white readers, you're allowed to feel comfortably superior to the white Southern women who employ 'the help'. It skims over any real danger involved in these women's lives and then has the effrontery to try to make the white woman character in some way noble because she doesn't have a boyfriend, has literary ambitions and has bad hair. It never challenges or provokes us, just flatters.

Lit

I read Mary Karr's Lit a little reluctantly since it's described as somewhat spiritual and after a run-in with Annie LaMott's "spirituality" I am wary of anything with that word attached. It's Karr's memoir of her struggle with alcoholism which craving for "shadowed (her) every waking instant". It's as you can imagine a sad story but she has a slangy loose writing style that reads easily and she can be very honest at times. She writes about alcohol in such luminous prose that you can feel the seduction. The drinks sound great! I must confess I was a little bored when she got sober and "spiritual" which happens inevitably. Coffee and eating canned frosting straight with a bunch of AA'ers is somehow not as appetizing. Oh well.

When You Reach Me

Almost forgot I read this. It's a a "middle reader "novel that everyone is raving about. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.  It was well done. I think Olivia will like it a year or so from now and  if the Kindle is not in a dump in New Jersey I can lend it to her. If she ever finishes Harry Potter 5-6-7 that is.

Bachelor Brother' Bed and Breakfast

Bachelor Brothers' is one of those cozy books you sometimes read in between other things. I had read it a long time ago and found it in a pile and decided to read it again. I read it again. Nothing has changed. It's about two brothers who own a Bed and Breakfast somewhere in Canada which caters to readers. It's a bit cute but fine in-between Proust and War and Peace. Or whatever it was I just read and was about to read.