the pyramid

I've read the final Wallander.

When a person - me - spends so much time and emotional investment put into a book series, it is difficult to trust a prequel. And when that prequel is the final book in the series? It makes me never want to read it...because what if I don't like it? What if I love it, but then it is over?

So. Much. Book. Pressure.

It took me six months and a positive review from the madre to pick up The Pyramid.

In the book - through shorter vignettes - we travel way back to the beginning of Wallander's career.

We see his first case (where he gets stabbed!).

We see his doomed marriage begin..and end.

We see how he hones his unique - and sometimes dangerous - case solving skills.

We see the volatile nature of his relationship with his father.

We see him begin to question what is happening to Swedish society.

Basically it was everything I wanted in a final book/prequel. Thank you Henning Mankell.

"You have to know when it's time to quit. That may be the most important thing of all."
Henning Mankell

Do you have a reservation

Our camping weekend began with me forgetting my wallet, and nearly all the camping sites being full.

So much for lonely cold camping.

After setting up camp and enjoying some McDonald's Dollar Coke we settled in for bed time reading.


That night I finished another Wallander mystery, One Step Behind. This time, a group of young people is missing. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until one of Wallander's coworkers is murdered for investigating the missing young adults. People continue to be murdered and no motive comes to light. Solving a growing number of murders gets added to the list of Wallander's worries (including denial about having diabetes). Wallander's usual questions concerning Sweden's decline bundle together with questions about how well we know our coworkers.

Per usual, Wallander had me up late because I can't put him down.


Saturday I read my latest guilty pleasure series. I read fantasy, but I don't usually delve into urban fantasy. However, when a fellow fantasy reading coworker brought me Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series, I had to try it.

Many times, reading books people lend you is a burden. What if you don't like it? Will you have to stop talking to them?

I was wary. The cover art includes a lion, a sexy (but tough) woman, and a giant sword. Don't stop reading.

The books are 100 percent entertainment. Kate Daniels is a mercenary with some powerfully magic blood. She goes around Atlanta kicking butt and taking names. The city goes in (no magic) and out (magic) of "tech" all the time, so sometimes she rides a donkey, others a car. There are vampires and shapeshifters and deities...oh my. Kate always gets her man, or beast, or demon. Oh, and she has a flirtatious thing with the king of the shapeshifters. Ooo la la.

Basically it is everything an overworked girl could want.

Sunday I was able to start the Witcher series (One Last Wish), which begins with scary vignettes. This morning I was reading in my tent and as the Witcher is about to battle some type of beast, Face was staring off into the woods like something was about to come kill us. He is not allowed to do that.

I never got to my final selection: Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (or as I like to call it: 1930's intellectual erotica). I have a crush on Anais Nin. I read her diaries. I think she's great. She thought Henry Miller was great. They were so influential to each other that I feel like I can't know Anais without knowing Henry. If you haven't read Miller, think of him like Kerouac but way earlier and deeper thinking and better writing and less hating of women.

Overall, I kept my reading like my mood this weekend: light.

And when I wasn't reading? I was jumping the sun:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
Anais Nin

The summer of Mankell

After the hottest (and then thunder-iest) Notre Dame football game I've ever been to, Mother Nature decided to do my non-AC apartment a solid and turn cool. I'm currently sitting in my new apartment (which is officially unpacked) with a sweatshirt on, thinking about making cocoa.

Today it feels like summer is over. Which - like everything else - makes me think of reading. This summer I took on Henning Mankell and his Kurt Wallander series.

On the way to Notre Dame I finished Mankell's The Fifth Woman. The last section of the novel was so engrossing I missed my favorite landmark on the way (the Square Bridge). When I asked Ams and Face if we had passed it yet they said, "Umm, yeah, 30 minutes ago."

Wallander #6, The Fifth Woman, concerns the gruesome and escalating murders of men who have mistreated women. It is like a Law and Order episode. Only it is up to Wallander - not Benson and Stabler - to find the murderer and save the long list of not so innocent men.

The most interesting part of the novel is the undercurrent of gender issues which pervade the storyline. Is the killer a woman? Could a woman have committed this crime? Perhaps an American woman, but certainly not a Swedish one.

As with the previous novel, Sidetracked, when dealing with a serial killer, the Swedes turn to American shores for info on serious murderers. Oh, data on how serial killers act? Totally from America.

Go USA?

Since each Wallander can be distilled down to a few words to remember them by, here's a recap of those I've read so far:

Faceless Killers - old people
The Dogs of Riga - Latvia
The White Lioness - Africa
The Man Who Smiled - creepy creepy villain
Sidetracked - scalping murderer
The Fifth Woman - man killer
Firewall - computer hacking

I have three Wallanders and 17 days of summer left.

"Things are as they are."
Henning Mankell

When reading is work

People say do what you love. And I agree, but I keep teacher-ing up my reading.

I have almost no time to read for myself and instead I am doing things like reading about teaching reading or reading with an eye out for how to teach the text or falling asleep when I could be reading.

Step off teaching, you are halting my reading flow!

I've been reading a Wallander novel for over a week: The Fifth Woman. All I know so far is that a guy has been impaled on bamboo spikes in Sweden and it has something to do with mercenaries in Africa...

In other news, I just moved and I'm in love with my new apartment. Even with the stacks of boxes it is already home. It has fancy things like a tiny porch and exposed brick and a full size refrigerator and a bedroom. It is like I am a real live adult.

And isn't it funny how crossing dream job and awesome apartment off my life-list makes me want to go on a date??

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."
Austin Phelps

The age of failure

What is happening to the world? A serial killer in Sweden? Kurt Wallander can't catch a break.

My latest Mankell mystery is full of pain and sadness and rumination and - oh yeah - ax murdering, but also family and dating and love. People are dying, but they kind of deserved it but no one should be murdered and back and forth. Wallander is busy trying to save more people from the serial killer, which inadvertently means he keeps putting off calling his foreign lady friend to say "Oh by the way, ax murderer on the loose so we might have to postpone our vacation."

At one point Wallander contemplates having a coworker tell her. Nothing like romantic shenanigans to take the dire away from ritualistic murder.

"People lived to forget, not to remember."
Henning Mankell

We're always being made promises

Rocious is ready to move:


Meanwhile, I'm reading every Henning Mankell book I can find. I'm not even going in order. I'm savoring each book, but in that give me more more more kind of way. Hasty savoring.

Since I last mentioned my obsession, I've read The Man Who Smiled and Firewall. I think we can surmise that the smiling man is incredibly creepy and evil and that the firewalls we are talking about concern computers.

Both a charismatic villain and older-detective-struggling-with-technology are cliche murder mystery fair, but I don't even care. The brush Mankell writes with is so delicate, so knowledgeable, so real that you remember the capital T truth from which cliches come.

I'm currently underway on Sidetracked. And I know people can only translate so fast. But I just don't care. Wild abandon reading.

"Things are as they are."
Henning Mankell

The monolith: Drood

I'm back reading books with my favorite Canadian, Jabba.

We have a problem though. We only read massive books together. Our last undertaking was Byatt's Possession.

This time: Dan Simmons' Drood.


This massive book could protect you against intruders, be used instead of hand weights while exercising, and maybe even turn into a table. At nearly 800 pages one wonders: does it have to be so long simply because it concerns Charles Dickens (writer of lengthy sentences and books)?

Drood examines the last five years of Dickens' life through the eyes of his opium addict frenemy Wilkie Collins.

I knew the book was going to be something about the making of Dickens' last and unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which Jabba and I will also be reading), but I didn't expect Wilkie. Reading the first page I was like: Wilkie...like The Wilkie...like The Woman in White Wilkie...really? We're doing this?

At it's worst, Drood is fan fiction for Victorian Lit nerds.

At it's best, Drood is a rousing tale of mystery and manipulation.

The question remains: Would I have liked it as much as I did if it wasn't based on real people that I have background knowledge of? The answer: I don't think so.

I think a non-Vic Lit person reading Drood would feel like I felt when I read Vivaldi and the Number 3: like you're missing all of the inside jokes. You're not in the club of esoteric knowledge and so the story is entertaining but missing a key piece.

Having said that, as an English Lit (and specifically Victorian Lit) person, reading Drood was like watching: Dickens and Wilkie, the E! True Hollywood Story.

Not only does the reader get an unreliable narrator (yay!) in Wilkie Collins, but there is also insight into the creative process (and all the manipulation and competition that goes into it) of one of history's favorite writers.

And don't forget mesmerism. What is the Victorian period without rich people engaging in dark magic?

Overall, Drood was fun...but. BUT.

As the madre would say, Simmons is no Dickens. True. But does he need to be?

I will say the first 400 pages are better than the second. Which would be the opposite of reading Dickens.

And when I finally got to the 4th anniversary of Dickens' meeting the spooky Drood (you know Dickens will die on an anniversary of meeting the death/ghost/Egyptian/spirit/phantom) and Dickens doesn't die...I had to walk away from the book for a minute because: I HAVE TO READ ABOUT ANOTHER ENTIRE YEAR.

And Wilkie's unreliable narrator gets downright whiny and annoying by the end.

And then there's the issue of the killing of three dogs.

Mixed. My feelings are mixed.

I do, however, thank Drood for making me want to go back and read Wilkie's The Moonstone and The Woman in White, and Dickens' Little Dorrit and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

To conclude my waffling opinion: if only for the traipsing through the Victorian period looking over the shoulders of great writers, Drood was worth reading.

"His gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet - or seem likely to do it, in this state of existence - and few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered."
Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Murder in the marais

I don't often read books by French authors (except Flaubert, who TOTALLY gets me) or books that take place in France. Even though France is a great location for a story. And even though my name is French, and I - on occasion - dress in a French style. And I love movies that take place in Paris, like The Tango Lesson or Before Sunset. There is something about France that is mysterious and glamorous and dangerous and elegant and classic.

So why don't I read more French stuff?

I have no idea, but after Murder in the Marais (which I don't even know how to pronounce), I might have to start.


Reading Marais was like dipping my toe in French-iness because the author is American and the protagonist is an American (who has lived in Paris most of her life).

As the title subtly hints, there is a murder, but not before a Rabbi gets private investigator Aimee on the case. The more Aimee investigates, the more she realizes that this murder has to do with another murder which took place during the WWII German occupation of France. And no one wants to talk about that.

Aimee doesn't care though.

She sneaks all over Paris, Jason Bourne style, figuring things out.

I like books that deal with mysteries of the past because you get two sides to every character. It's like the movie Now and Then, but with murder. In Marais, you get the German SS agent who fell in love with a Jewish girl back in the day, and who is now a big diplomat. You get the young Jewish girl who lost her family and then grew up to be a sad woman because...THERE WAS A BABY. There is always a baby.

And you get the murderer, then and now. But I won't say who he or she is...

And then there is the computer hacking and party crashing and news story leaking and clashing with the police and croissant eating and designer wearing.

It was a fast read - as murder mysteries usually are. I had a library return deadline and I made it. I was even almost late to book club because oh my! so exciting.

But most of all, Paris:

dancing along the Seine. le sigh.

Crime mysteries solidifying their place in my heart and my bookshelf

Before the world became obsessed with all things dragon tattoo, I too had fallen in love with Nordic Literature. I was drawn to the mix of nonchalant depression and crime fighting - with a side of what-has-our-society-come-to.

Considering my obsessive watching of Law and Order (and cheering on of detective Stabler), I don't know how I didn't start reading crime fiction a long time ago.

Thanks to a karmic choosing of Peter Hoeg's The Quiet Girl, I was hooked (except for his book that has bestiality...). Then there was the Stieg Larsson madness.

But now things have calmed-ish, it's time for new Swedish love. I give you: Henning Mankell.



OK, so a lot of you probably already know him. Especially since Mankell's detective protagonist - Kurt Wallander - is currently being played by my boyfriend Kenneth Branagh (thank you BBC).

I sped through the first book - Faceless Killers (eek).

The plot centers around the gruesome murder of two seemingly innocuous elderly farming couple. The boss is on vacation and Wallander has to take charge of a volatile case (and subsequent murder). But don't worry, he still has time to try to patch things up with his daughter, stop missing his ex-wife, and start liking a new woman.

Overall, Wallander series - so far - is made up of quality crime mystery writing that keeps you turning the page even if you aren't happy because SERIOUSLY why would someone murder old people??

Wallander is a protagonist of the best kind: charismatic, on the verge of alcoholism, not afraid to get beat up, gets beat up a lot, and finally saves the day through brains and hard work.

Reading Mankell is like drinking a comfy cup of hot cocoa...if the cocoa was laced with crime and violence.

"Society had grown cruel. People who felt they were unwanted or unwelcome in their own country, reacted with aggression. There was no such thing as meaningless violence. Every violent act had a meaning for the person who committed it. Only when you dared accept this truth could you hope to turn society in another direction."
Henning Mankell

THE LONG AWAITED BOOK POST

O.M.G. I am actually going to marinate on some books I have been reading. Amazing.


First up, I just finished M.C. Beaton's Death of a Gentle Lady (A Hamish Macbeth Mystery). It is fair to say that I super love Hamish Macbeth. When I'm not on my death bed, I finish these books in one sitting. They are like delicious dessert reading. Some might think they are fluffy, but I keep coming back and always look forward to the next time. Hamish is a local bobby in the Highlands of Scotland. He is amazingly adept at solving the large about of murders which seem to pervade his rural area, however has no inclination to move up the police ladder. Hilarity ensues in the form of disaster every time he has to come up with a plan to stay is his demoted, but loved position. Oh yeah, and he loves two women. And might I say that both he and the ladies are worthy of all the love and miscommunication swirling around. I highly recommend the entire series.
Next, is a book which shows what happens when one browses at the Merlo Library. I have made it known that I only ever pick up held materials at Merlo. However, lately I have started to feel guilty. Like maybe if I gave the books a chance...I did this with Elizabeth Berg's The Handmaid and the Carpenter. I know Berg's name, and I thought I had read her...but looking back, I haven't...tricky Berg, tricky. And reading the title I thought, hmmm, something historical maybe? Historical indeed. Try Joseph, Mary and JESUS. I don't know how I didn't anticipate it, but I didn't. Historical fiction is one thing (that I love), but when you are messing around with the Jesus story? There are just so many ways to mess it up.


Next up: Ellen Gilchrist's In the Land of Dreamy Dreams. I will disclose that these are short stories, however, characters meander in an out. I loved loved loved the stories. Obviously, the motif of dreams, reality and the thin line between works its way in to the majority. It was kind of like when I read Alice Munroe (also short stories). I came away both times with immense respect for the author. Kind of like how I write my blog and it is fine and good, but these women are writing stories. Real stories. If you usually stay away from short stories because perhaps you finish the story wanting more of the characters, don't worry, Gilchrist has written other books of short stories with these same characters (Victory Over Japan). Also, the majority take place in the South.


P.S. read Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. Face lent it to me from his library and it is an amazing page turner about growing up, love, loss, family, wealth, power...everything. Let's just say this: any book that makes me almost miss my bus stop because I am so engrossed gets my stamp of approval.

Happy reading!

"A stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are."
Carlos Ruiz Zafon