I'm afraid my recent posts have been somewhat rambling this past week and will likely continue for a while until I get back into a nice reading routine now that I am back at work. I do look on this blog as a reading journal, however, so I imagine if I was keeping this in a physical journal rather than online it would just be snippets about books I'm reading or want to read, or passages I find provoking or interesting, so perhaps I'm not too far off my mark?
I've settled on two new books to read. For a mystery I chose Alicia Giménez-Bartlett's Death Rites. I wanted something completely different than my usual fare of mysteries. It is set in contemporary Barcelona, and while I had hoped for sunshine and warmth it would figure that the story is set in winter during an unusual snowfall (as it rarely snows in Barcelona). Detective Inspector Petra Delicado is twice divorced and an intellectual. I think I'm going to like reading about Petra.
"...despite my brilliant training as a lawyer and my police studies at the Academy, I had never been assigned a significant case. I was labelled 'an intellectual.' I was also a woman. All I needed was black or Gypsy blood in my veins to complete the picture of exclusion. From the beginning I was posted to the Department of Documentation, where I looked after general affairs: archives, publications and the library, which ended up according me a purely theoretical status in the eyes of my colleagues."
This is a Europa Editions title. I am going to have to check their backlist out for more ideas of books in translation. It's a nicely presented paperback by the way--the kind with the front and back covers with turned in flaps (I'm sure there is a proper word for this). Apparently Giménez-Bartlett is one of Spain's most popular and best-loved crime writes and Europa Editions publishes two other titles by her.
I stuck to the very comfortable (and appealing) Victorian era for my library choice. I've read Emma Donoghue before, so I know I like her style--which is a well written and generally captivating tale. I'm giving her recently published The Sealed Letter a try (came very close to starting Engleby, so will read that next). I think this novel is going to require a little close attention when reading, which I have come to expect from Victorian period pieces. The story appears to be about the friendship of two women--one a spinster, unattractive but independent and the other beautiful but unhappily married. Miss Emily "Fido" Faithfull, our spinster, is a business woman who owns her own press. She seems like quite a character and I think I am going to like her as well.
"Fido puts the tray outside her door for Johnson. She returns Friendless Girls to the pile of pamphlets on the bedside cabinet, and unlocks the lower drawer in which she keeps her fiction. Not that she has anything indecent; the spines all bear the Pegasus motif of Mudie's Library. Ridiculous things are said of Miss Braddon's novels, or Mr. Collins's--that they harrow the nervous system and drive readers to drink or insanity, Fido finds them enlightening, in the small doses she allows herself; as with any stimulous, it's a matter of moderate use. Appalling secrets, deaths, bigamies, doppelgangers: there's nothing like a taste of the sensational at the end of a hard day. She takes out The Notting Hill Mystery now, and finds her place."
I find the Victorian period so addicting, though I would have hated to have lived then! There has been a lot of discussion in the Dovegreybook group I belong to (lurk in is a really better description lately) there has been a lot of discussion about the author (another Victorian) Charlotte Yonge. I believe they're going to be reading The Daisy Chain, which sounds like something I would like, but I have to draw the line before I get in over my head with books. I'll be adding herto my list. I have to keep in mind that Jeannette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry needs to be started soon for this month's Slaves discussion (feel free to join along if you're interested!). I have also heard that my next Postal Reading Group book is in the mail to me, so I am looking forward to finding out what is in that package (it's always a surprise). Something good to look forward to in the mail next week.