For now, visit our photo gallery; there's a new album with New Mexico pics. For those of you who don't know the password (which we'd be happy to email to you), here's a photo mosaic:
Sunday, May 31, 2009
We Are Back (and Five Pounds Heavier)
If we haven't posted anything lately, it's 'cause we vacationed in New Mexico and were offline for most of the past two weeks. We returned last night, have tons of laundry to do and an even larger (virtual) pile of emails to attend to, but we will write again soon: we saw great art and architecture, and we stuffed our faces with terrific food, and we need to tell you all about it. (Sounds like a threat, doesn't it?)
For now, visit our photo gallery; there's a new album with New Mexico pics. For those of you who don't know the password (which we'd be happy to email to you), here's a photo mosaic:
For now, visit our photo gallery; there's a new album with New Mexico pics. For those of you who don't know the password (which we'd be happy to email to you), here's a photo mosaic:
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Mystery Women
I agree with Norah; mystery is the fluff I read when I need something light that doesn't require much thinking. Usually, I read mysteries when I'm sick. And while sick in bed the last time around, in January, I discovered three woman crime writers: the queen of mystery writers, Elizabeth George; the relatively new-to-crime-but-otherwise-tenured writer Kate Atkinson; and the brand-new writer Tana French. George is American; Atkinson is British; and French is a bit of everything (her bio states Irish-Italian-American; she lives in Ireland). George has written God-knows-how-many books featuring Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Tommy Lynley and his side-kick, the unattractive, frumpy Detective Sergeant Barb Havers; Atkinson has three crime novels under her belt, telling the tale of private eye Jackson Brodie and, increasingly so, his friend (and, presumably, future lover), Detective Inspector Louise Monroe; French just published her second book, in which a murder case is led by Dublin murder squad Detective Cassie Maddox, the ex-partner of Rob Ryan, the first novel's detective. Shaking the illness in January, I wasn't quite ready to shake crime fiction, and I've read a lot of George/Atkinson/French the past couple of months.
Here my two cents' worth of wisdom:
George obviously knows what she's doing. She crafts her plots well enough that each book remains a whodunnit up to the last page. Her writing is fun to read. Both these points make her books good, readable, and enjoyable crime fiction. The big "but" is the books' flirtation with the romance genre: Lynley doesn't just represent New Scotland Yard, he's also the Earl of Asherton, who doesn't need to work but chooses to do so. Havers, on the other hand, is at the opposite end of the class spectrum. Lynley has everything (the manners & money, looks & ladies); Havers has only her dementia-ridden and smelly parents to look after, and a really bad temper because of it. It's not that Lynley and Havers ever get together--it's not that bad--but the story of Lynley and his love interest, Lady Helen Clyde, and the little love triangle between Lynley, his best friend (and forensic investigator) Simon and his wife, Deborah (Lynley's ex), seem tedious at times, especially because George uses romance fiction language. If you're a frequent Masterpiece Mystery! watcher (turn to your public television station on Sunday evening) or stay up after Tatort, chances are you're familiar with the BBC production of the Inspector Lynley series. One of the best mystery series on public TV, if you ask me.
I read Atkinson's novel in a weird order, starting not with her first, but second book, One Good Turn. This was a very fun read; even though the solution of the crime puzzle isn't as rewarding ('cause disappointing, in as far as the story promises a bigger bang than it delivers), reading the intertwining narratives of the different characters is quiet entertaining. This is also true for her third novel, When Will There Be Good News?, but not so much for her first, Case Histories. It appears that Atkinson gets better with time. Her books center around ex-soldier and ex-cop Jackson Brodie who, as private eye and divorcee, stumbles into crime scenes as accidentally as into relationships, but he does so convincingly. The romance doesn't take over the crime, as it occasionally does in George.
French writes long books, books that take a long time to read, which, depending on the illness you're sick in bed with, can be quite good. What distinguishes French from Atkinson or George is her literary ambition. French obviously wants to write a novel with a mystery in it, not mystery fiction. Her ambition is, at times, her downfall, in particular in her new book, The Likeness. It was impossible for me to take the leap of faith required to follow her story: that undercover agent Cassie, who looks precisely like the murdered victim, gets away with living among the victims' roommates without being found out. Once you can accept this basic frame of reference, you're off to a good read. However, if you're constantly doubting how any of this is possible, it's a bit of a pain to make it through almost 500 pages. I picked up her second novel after having enjoyed her first one quite a bit: although In the Woods also requires you to accept certain unlikely facts, it's easier to do so. Her first book is driven as much by the crime as by the relationship between the two detectives, Cassie and Rob. Once this relationship turns sour (by the end of the first novel), French runs out of ideas for a second novel, and I wonder if she's personally more invested in her detectives' relationship than the crimes they're supposed to solve.
All in all, I think it's noteworthy that woman mystery writers seem to add a love narrative to their crime fiction, as if crime alone won't do the trick. It's not bothersome at all in Atkinson, and I'd also highly recommend George, but I don't extend my recommendations to French.
Here my two cents' worth of wisdom:
George obviously knows what she's doing. She crafts her plots well enough that each book remains a whodunnit up to the last page. Her writing is fun to read. Both these points make her books good, readable, and enjoyable crime fiction. The big "but" is the books' flirtation with the romance genre: Lynley doesn't just represent New Scotland Yard, he's also the Earl of Asherton, who doesn't need to work but chooses to do so. Havers, on the other hand, is at the opposite end of the class spectrum. Lynley has everything (the manners & money, looks & ladies); Havers has only her dementia-ridden and smelly parents to look after, and a really bad temper because of it. It's not that Lynley and Havers ever get together--it's not that bad--but the story of Lynley and his love interest, Lady Helen Clyde, and the little love triangle between Lynley, his best friend (and forensic investigator) Simon and his wife, Deborah (Lynley's ex), seem tedious at times, especially because George uses romance fiction language. If you're a frequent Masterpiece Mystery! watcher (turn to your public television station on Sunday evening) or stay up after Tatort, chances are you're familiar with the BBC production of the Inspector Lynley series. One of the best mystery series on public TV, if you ask me.
I read Atkinson's novel in a weird order, starting not with her first, but second book, One Good Turn. This was a very fun read; even though the solution of the crime puzzle isn't as rewarding ('cause disappointing, in as far as the story promises a bigger bang than it delivers), reading the intertwining narratives of the different characters is quiet entertaining. This is also true for her third novel, When Will There Be Good News?, but not so much for her first, Case Histories. It appears that Atkinson gets better with time. Her books center around ex-soldier and ex-cop Jackson Brodie who, as private eye and divorcee, stumbles into crime scenes as accidentally as into relationships, but he does so convincingly. The romance doesn't take over the crime, as it occasionally does in George.
French writes long books, books that take a long time to read, which, depending on the illness you're sick in bed with, can be quite good. What distinguishes French from Atkinson or George is her literary ambition. French obviously wants to write a novel with a mystery in it, not mystery fiction. Her ambition is, at times, her downfall, in particular in her new book, The Likeness. It was impossible for me to take the leap of faith required to follow her story: that undercover agent Cassie, who looks precisely like the murdered victim, gets away with living among the victims' roommates without being found out. Once you can accept this basic frame of reference, you're off to a good read. However, if you're constantly doubting how any of this is possible, it's a bit of a pain to make it through almost 500 pages. I picked up her second novel after having enjoyed her first one quite a bit: although In the Woods also requires you to accept certain unlikely facts, it's easier to do so. Her first book is driven as much by the crime as by the relationship between the two detectives, Cassie and Rob. Once this relationship turns sour (by the end of the first novel), French runs out of ideas for a second novel, and I wonder if she's personally more invested in her detectives' relationship than the crimes they're supposed to solve.
All in all, I think it's noteworthy that woman mystery writers seem to add a love narrative to their crime fiction, as if crime alone won't do the trick. It's not bothersome at all in Atkinson, and I'd also highly recommend George, but I don't extend my recommendations to French.
Mysteries
Grafton isn't my favorite writer in the female-protagonist popular mystery genre, but she certainly paved the way for dozens of variations to spring up. I do think she was the first author to do quite what she does, at least in recent times, and I'm glad for that. I followed her series through about R, but by then I think she was just continuing to finish out the alphabet rather than because she had that many more good ideas. If you want to try Grafton in her prime, I recommend something earlier on. The Kinsey sequence is pretty fun along about D and E, if I recall.
Then, I should add that I do quite like a lot of mystery series (although there are piles I dislike, too, usually ones with overly complicated plots, although I made an exception for Lawrence Block burglar series, as the rest of his writing is funny enough to make up for it). Mysteries are the fluff I read when I want something light and thought-free, so I'm much less critical of them when it comes to writing/plot holes/etc.
If I were recommending mystery series or authors, I would also recommend:
Dick Francis: lovely, and very British, but in a good way. He writes mysteries based in some way around the world of horse-racing, having been the Queen's jockey for a while. There are three or four of his that I dislike, and on the order of 30 I like. Also, they can be read in any order.
Dana Stabenow: the Kate Shugak series. Set in Alaska, these feature a female Aleut protagonist, without getting all hokey about American Indians (something that, growing up in Montana, I got plenty of to last me). They're funny in spots, and the stories are about the right complication. You can often guess the who or the why but because the story is often more about how to prove it, or how to confirm it, than who did it. I like that, as it means she doesn't have to write ridiculous curve-ball plots to keep you stumped. These ought to be read in order.
Tony Hillerman: oddly, more Indian mysteries. These are set on the Big Res, the huge Indian reservation that sits at the four corners where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet. These do get a bit hokey at times, but only when it informs the plot (you have to deal with Navajo beliefs about ghosts, for instance, if you're investigating a murder on a res.) The reason these are interesting, to me, is that they delve into the cultures of the Indians who live there (not just Navajo, but also the Hopi and some Lakota and others), and they also examine the way our law enforcement system works there. The Indians govern themselves, to a point, and have their own local cops, but the feds can also come in in some cases--it's a mess. These should be read in approximate order, although they aren't so intertwined that if you miss one or two you'll kill the story.
(Upon reflection, I like mysteries as much for the light they shed on their setting as the stories themselves.)
Charlene Harris also wrote a set of mysteries that all start out "Shakespeare's something-or-other," which I thought were good, but somewhat grim. Her female protagonist is not in a light-and-fluffy place.
And of course, there's Janet Evanovitch, so fluffy they're barely novels. I enjoyed the first few, and found them funny, and am not so interested anymore. But they're a favorite of lots of people.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
T is for Tedious
A little over a week ago, M. and I drove to Ithaca. Being in Ithaca is wonderful, but getting there is another matter altogether. Before Melanie was fatally bitten by the knitting bug, the trip could be an intolerable bore. Now that she has something to keep her hands busy (mine are on the steering wheel), we had to find something to keep our minds occupied for the six hour drive. Commercial mass market radio is obviously insufficient, and NPR fades out past Worcester. Given six extra hours, both of us would choose to read, so we chose to have the CD player read to us.
M. surveyed the Boston Public Library's audiobooks section and found that it is predominantly populated by Bibles and Bible spinoffs, self-help, and mystery. We went for the last: Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass. Twelve hours, ten CDs, plenty enough to get us there and back.
The best I can say for the book is that it was not the worst audiobook I've ever heard. (That would be Nobelist Jose Saramago's Blindness, which is pretentious crap, not even well written at the technical or stylistic level. It's shallow moralizing dressed up as sci-fi by a writer who has probably never read a sci-fi novel, let alone developed an appreciation of it. The best sci-fi takes technological and scientific speculation and lets it lead the way towards social criticism; the worst gets it the wrong way round.)
T is for Trespass was our introduction to PI Kinsey Milhone of Santa Teresa, CA, and for me, the acquaintance will remain brief. This particular yarn (identity thief posing as a nurse loots the elderly man, Kinsey's neighbor, for whom she's supposed to be providing home care) wasn't bad, but neither was it good. The story dragged on for ten CDs when it could have been told in six. If plot twists and clues couldn't be seen a mile away with the naked eye, the author put a telescope or ten in the reader's hands. There were lots of short, declarative sentences and a revolting action scene, so Grafton has certainly been reading the standard mystery how-to books, but the unfolding of the climax and denouement was sloppy and incredible. That being said, we did listen all the way to the end, so there must be something to the books. As I'm now three-quarters of the way through Susan Jacoby's indictment of American dumbness, I'm more inclined to credit my declining taste than some je ne sais quoi of Grafton's writing.
M. surveyed the Boston Public Library's audiobooks section and found that it is predominantly populated by Bibles and Bible spinoffs, self-help, and mystery. We went for the last: Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass. Twelve hours, ten CDs, plenty enough to get us there and back.
The best I can say for the book is that it was not the worst audiobook I've ever heard. (That would be Nobelist Jose Saramago's Blindness, which is pretentious crap, not even well written at the technical or stylistic level. It's shallow moralizing dressed up as sci-fi by a writer who has probably never read a sci-fi novel, let alone developed an appreciation of it. The best sci-fi takes technological and scientific speculation and lets it lead the way towards social criticism; the worst gets it the wrong way round.)
T is for Trespass was our introduction to PI Kinsey Milhone of Santa Teresa, CA, and for me, the acquaintance will remain brief. This particular yarn (identity thief posing as a nurse loots the elderly man, Kinsey's neighbor, for whom she's supposed to be providing home care) wasn't bad, but neither was it good. The story dragged on for ten CDs when it could have been told in six. If plot twists and clues couldn't be seen a mile away with the naked eye, the author put a telescope or ten in the reader's hands. There were lots of short, declarative sentences and a revolting action scene, so Grafton has certainly been reading the standard mystery how-to books, but the unfolding of the climax and denouement was sloppy and incredible. That being said, we did listen all the way to the end, so there must be something to the books. As I'm now three-quarters of the way through Susan Jacoby's indictment of American dumbness, I'm more inclined to credit my declining taste than some je ne sais quoi of Grafton's writing.
A Chorus to Listen to This Weekend
If you live in Boston, go to Sunday's Coro Allegro concert. Coro Allegro is the fabulous chorus Erik and I have been following since we met two of its members this past fall while canvassing for Obama. I'm a huge fan of Coro Allegro not just 'cause Tom and John have become such dear friends of mine, but because it is a really, really fantastic chorus with an amazing classical music repertoire performed by outstanding voices. The singers are, for a large part, professional musicians or have been singing choral music for a long time. The discovery of this group has certainly been one of our Boston highlights, and I'm very much looking forward to this week's performance of contemporary composer Ronald Perera's Why I Wake Early. See you there!
Stuff (White) Parisians Like
I was very happy to come across this little blog: Stuff Parisians Like. I haven't read very many entries yet, but surely appreciated the one on Wearing Black. Those of you who've known me 3+ years: do you remember the days when all I wore was black? Last weekend I cleaned out my closet, and I noticed I hardly have any black left. Does this make me less of a potential Parisian? Mon Dieu!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Burger of the Month Club
Inre: my previous post, the New York Times has an article out today about the Burger of the Month Club in NYC.
And the money quote:
The club's top ten are listed at the end of the article. Their culinary focus is a bit too single-minded for my taste, but I admire the work they do.
One Monday a month for the last four years, they have sampled a burger — bacon-cheddar whenever available — at a different New York restaurant.
They do not just eat the burgers, they rank them, compiling the averages on a Web site, burgerrankings.com, and competing through the year to see whose restaurant choice will wind up as the best-loved burger (winner gets ... nothing).
At first, each member rated each place -2 to +4 on each of 13 factors, including cheese, bun, manageability, fries, shake, service and décor. That got replaced by an A-F report card-style scale in eight categories, including taste, value and returnability. By the end of the first year, the group had scratched all that and just ranked each burger against all the other burgers, constantly refining their individual and collective lists, which Brett Weiss meticulously compiles.
“We came down to the point, why are we ranking service, why are we ranking décor, why are we ranking the bun and the fries when they really have nothing to do with the burger?” Mr. Weiss explained. “I think at this point if you put us on a picnic table in the middle of Central Park and brought us the burger, I think we’d all be happy.”
And the money quote:
“Vegetables are to be eaten by rabbits and liberals,” wrote Mr. Weiss, a lawyer who lives on the Upper West Side, “and the only form they should take is the fourth ingredient in a condiment.”
The club's top ten are listed at the end of the article. Their culinary focus is a bit too single-minded for my taste, but I admire the work they do.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Blog Debts
The weekend before last we were culturally and socially so active I meant to write several short blog posts. Since I had Grad School Doom hanging over my head (in form of a colloquium on May Day), I never got around writing them. Now that I aced the colloquium (yessssssss), it's time to deliver at least a short summary of the weekend.
Thursday: We went to see the recording of This American Life (episode 379, which aired this past weekend. If you didn't catch it, download the podcast, and do it this week, while it's free!). We weren't actually in NYC, where host Ira Glass and his guests performed, but saw a live screening/streaming (whatchamacallit?) of the event here in a movie theater in Boston (in Revere, to be precise), together with our friends Minh and Jerrel. The show was great. I was particularly excited to see sex columnist Dan Savage again.
Friday: We went to the BLO to see Don Giovanni--one of my all-time favorite operas. (Another one being Carmen, which happens to be on the BLO's calendar next season.) Erik first had his reservations about the stage setting that evoked the 1950s rather than the late 18th century, but I think the production was overall a great success. I'm not going to say much about the performers (who were great, period. The singers, the musicians, the conductor--everyone was great. Susanna Phillips, Heather Johnson, Christopher Schaldenbrand--great great great), but instead complain about the audience and their lack of appropriate attire. I'd love for the BLO to enforce a dress code: I just don't think jeans and tennis shoes are acceptable! Argh.
Sunday: Erik's friends from the golden CAM days happened to be in Boston for the day, and we had brunch with Lisa and Jesus, Eve and Johnny, and Marcel at Aquitaine (really good food and worth the long wait). We really like the Back Bay area, and our little group spent all afternoon exploring it as well as walking to and around the Commons, which was extra-lovely because it was the first warm day we've had this year.
Thursday: We went to see the recording of This American Life (episode 379, which aired this past weekend. If you didn't catch it, download the podcast, and do it this week, while it's free!). We weren't actually in NYC, where host Ira Glass and his guests performed, but saw a live screening/streaming (whatchamacallit?) of the event here in a movie theater in Boston (in Revere, to be precise), together with our friends Minh and Jerrel. The show was great. I was particularly excited to see sex columnist Dan Savage again.
Friday: We went to the BLO to see Don Giovanni--one of my all-time favorite operas. (Another one being Carmen, which happens to be on the BLO's calendar next season.) Erik first had his reservations about the stage setting that evoked the 1950s rather than the late 18th century, but I think the production was overall a great success. I'm not going to say much about the performers (who were great, period. The singers, the musicians, the conductor--everyone was great. Susanna Phillips, Heather Johnson, Christopher Schaldenbrand--great great great), but instead complain about the audience and their lack of appropriate attire. I'd love for the BLO to enforce a dress code: I just don't think jeans and tennis shoes are acceptable! Argh.
Sunday: Erik's friends from the golden CAM days happened to be in Boston for the day, and we had brunch with Lisa and Jesus, Eve and Johnny, and Marcel at Aquitaine (really good food and worth the long wait). We really like the Back Bay area, and our little group spent all afternoon exploring it as well as walking to and around the Commons, which was extra-lovely because it was the first warm day we've had this year.
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