Where's the rest of the story?

I asked myself that question as I finished Blind Man With a Pistol. This detective story had no resolution. You don't find out who the killer was. Instead, more killings take place in the last chapter.

The unresolved nature of the story is difficult for me to like. It reminded me of the game where one person starts a story, then another person picks it up from there, and so on. Fun, but not how I like my novels. This book is set in Harlem and it is one of those books where the author's goal is not necessarily to tell a story but get a message across. The message about the struggle the residents of the book face came through very clearly. I just would rather read a story, thanks.

Not a good bedtime story.

You know when you are so thoroughly freaked out by something that every little noise in the night wakes you up and you are freaked out that the BOOGEYMAN is going to come in your room and GET YOU that very night? Yes, that was me last night. And yes, I am 32 and stuff still scares the crap out of me. I'm a big scaredy-cat.

What was freaking me out so much last night, you ask? Well, I finished The Black Dahlia last night before I went to bed. This book was so good, so absorbing, that I couldn't put it down and I was reading it at pretty much every available second. This book is very violent and disturbing, dealing with a LA cop's search for the killer of a young woman dubbed "The Black Dahlia" in 1947. (According to Wikipedia, the murder is still unsolved.) The murder itself was horrific and, in addition to that, the whole book is just really gritty and violent. It even scared me more than American Psycho because it is based on a true event and there wasn't the "oh, phew" ending.

Don't get me wrong though. I really, really thought this was an excellent book and I enjoyed reading it very much. Just not great bedtime reading for a scaredy-cat like me!

By and by, I got to reading Huckleberry Finn

I actually got to listening Huckleberry Finn as I drove to and from my class in Northampton and to and from work. Like Emily, I never had to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in high school or college, and I don't know why. Well by and by, I got to it. I am so glad I finally did-- what a fun story! It was a really good book to listen to because the reader had the dialect and voices down perfect. I think if I physically had to read all the dialect bits with "We would learn Jim how to write on the shirt" instead of "We would teach Jim to write on the shirt" I might get really irritated. Listening to it made those parts blend in. I found the story really funny, especially how Tom is dead set on making everything so hard in order to be "right" and Huck thinks that's ridiculous. I agree with Emily that everything ties up a little too neatly in the end, but I'm glad Jim was freed.

Regarding Twain's use of the word "nigger"-- 60 Minutes did a brilliant segment earlier this year about a publisher replacing every instance of the word with "slave" instead. I linked to the transcript of the show because I found it really interesting. If I were black, I may feel differently, but I find Twain's usage a sign of the times and to change the text in such a way makes it a shadow of the great story it is.

Marissa

She's a Bleak...House!

I mentioned last entry that Bleak House was next on my list and that I hadn't enjoyed the Dickens I read in the past. Maybe it is growing up a bit, or maybe it is the setting (being on vacation would put anyone in a good mood), but I was amazed by this book. There were so many interconnected subplots, a detective story, social commentary, all set against the backdrop of this criticism of the English legal system: Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the longest-running Chancery case ever.

I'm sure this book has been analyzed very thoughtfully, better than I ever could, so I won't get into all of that. Just a couple of things struck me. A lot of the themes of this book are still relevant 150 years later, no small feat. However, there are major cultural shifts at work also. The female narrator, Esther, stands out as a culturally ideal woman of her time. She never has a negative word to say and is always happy to do whatever people ask of her. While I like Esther (she is impossible not to like) I am glad that society has developed such that women are valued for their thoughts and opinions as well as their appearance and acquiescence to the ideas of the gentlemen around them.

As I write this, I am watching my husband and daughter play in the pool. The book I thought would be a boring, slow vacation read turned out to be anything but!

Summertime...but the livin's not easy when you're trapped in a sinking car.

It seems like I'm reading a whole bunch of summer related books all in a row. Which is nice. I love summer. Of course right now the heat index is 113 so I am enjoying summer from inside the comfort of my home and the air conditioning. I still love it though.

I really was interested to read Black Water, which is kind of a novel loosely based on the Chappaquiddick incident. And I think the book is good. I was slightly disappointed that the book was more like a series of short essays or streams of consciousness from the woman stuck in the car, rather than a novel that held all together. I did enjoy it though, just a little more "English class" and less "interesting novel" than I expected.

I think Bleak House is next. Is that a summer book too? Something tells me it won't be a quick beach read. Dickens and I have not gotten along very well in the past.

Happy Summer!

Mike and I agree that June is one of our favorite months of the year. Weather is great, and there is the promise of the whole summer ahead. Vacations are on the horizon and everything seems a little more relaxed, a little more fun.

We celebrated the first weekend in June this year by spending some time at the pool. The large pool was pretty cold, but the kiddie pool was just the right temperature to splash around with Peanut. It was fantastic.

Eilis Dillon's book The Bitter Glass is also about the beginning of summer. The MacAuley kids head to their summer place ahead of their parents, but the civil war in Ireland causes them to be separated from their parents in Connemara. I liked this book a lot. It was an easy, quick read but managed to raise some questions about the historical context of the novel, the motivations of the characters, and what Ireland was like at that time of history. It isn't necessarily a fun summer beach read (definitely sad) but enjoyable nonetheless.

Not the Black Dog that I am used to.

The Black Dog that I am familiar with is a very touristy restaurant and shop that is fun to visit when on the Cape. We buy T-shirts and various other items there. I try to get a T-shirt of a different color each year. Peanut really likes them - so much that if I am wearing a Black Dog shirt, she asks to wear a "doggie shirt" too.

Ian McEwan's Black Dogs is a lot more sinister, suspenseful, and scary. It is the story about how a young woman's run-in with these huge animals (she thought they were donkeys initially) changed her life and her outlook on the world. The story is told kind of back and forth, so you don't actually get to find out what actually happened when she encountered the dogs until the very end of the book. There is a lot in here about Communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nazi Germany, and other important events affecting Europe in the 20th century as well.

I really enjoy Ian McEwan's writing. Good stories that also really make me think.