I had planned to write my first short story Sunday post today, but here it is midway through the afternoon and I've not finished reading the short story I selected, as a matter of fact I've not done much this weekend I had hoped to do. How about I read on Sunday and tell you about it Monday (or maybe Tuesday)? By the way I am reading a story called "The Floating Forest" by Natsuo Kirino from the collection Digital Geishas and Talking Frogs. The blurb for the story in the table of contents gives this description of the story: "struggling with her famous father's legacy as a writer, a daughter learns to put the past behind her". So, more about this in a day or so.
I'm afraid I've been suffering from severe inertia lately. The hot weather zaps every ounce of energy I have. That combined with needing to go to the library has thrown me off today. I've been reading a lot of library books this year (good thing, right?), but I've not been very good about returning my books on time. I just finished Grace Brophy's The Last Enemy, which was due on Friday. I'm sorry to whoever was in line next for it, as I just returned it a while ago (two days late means a fine on top of the fine for the book I returned late last weekend...oops). I enjoyed it and hope to write about it sometime this week. Next up on my tour of Italy is Carlo Lucarelli's Almost Blue. I started in Sicily, moved on to Florence, then to Assisi and now I'll be in Bologna. And finally a female detective--rookie detective Grazia Negro. It also sounds a bit darker than the other stories I've read so far.
Since I'm on a roll with crime novels, I'll mention that the Crime Writer's Association announced a few Dagger winners and a few more longlists. They give out about ten awards each year. The International Dagger winner is Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström. I had checked this one out from the library but it was one I wasn't quite in the mood for so it went back unread. I still am reading a few titles from their longlist and expect I'll get to this one at some point as well. I was also interested to see which books made their Gold Dagger (best crime novel of the year) and Steel Dagger (spy novel/adventure/or action story) lists. By chance I had just ordered Villa Triste by Lucretia Grindle (Italian setting!) and have The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Edgar winner) on my reading pile--both made the Gold Dagger list. I'm looking forward to reading them sooner rather than later.
And tonight I'll be watching the next episode of Zen on PBS. I've yet to read any of the Aurelio Zen novels by Michael Dibdin, but I will definitely be doing so now after getting a sense of what Zen is like. Of course it doesn't hurt that Rufus Sewell happens to be playing the character or that the setting is Rome! It's only a pity that a mere three episodes were filmed and no more are planned.
And now I'm off to shower (my walk to the library was in 91F, but feels like 107F with humidity, sunshine) and finish reading my short story. And if anyone has an in with Mother Nature, tell her please to send cooler weather. 75F would be nice, but that might be asking too much. I'm contemplating finding a book to read set in somewhere snowy and exceedingly cold. Somehow that sounds sort of refreshing at the moment.