Cleaning house - Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders

I didn't totally love Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (Gyles Brandreth), but I'm going to probably end up reading the other books in the series. I think I actually picked up the fourth or fifth in the series, but it was a totally random grab. I saw the title while browsing for something else at the BPL (Swamplandia!, I think?), and it caught my eye, and I liked the idea of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde running around solving crimes in Rome.

The problem is, I think the author may have also really liked the conceit, maybe a little too much. He just can NOT let go of this whole thing with Wilde being, basically, Holmes, and Doyle being, more or less, Watson. I swear to God, I wanted to start a drinking game - a shot every time Doyle declares he is a man of regular habits, or refers to the crisp/cool white sheets of the hotel. The former is almost every other page in the second half of the book!

But Wilde is a good character, poking at Doyle with humor and affection, and stands in as a good Holmes.

Catch-up: The Imperfectionists

The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman

As I recall, got great press when it came out. Definitely enjoyed this tale of an English-language newspaper in Italy...although by the time I got around to reading it, I thought it was about editors...possibly at a publishing house? In any case, I did really enjoy it. It was a while ago, though, so I don't totally remember why. Good writing, basically. Wasn't totally in love with all of the stories (wasn't expecting a series of somewhat interlocking stories) or all the characters (I don't mean that I didn't like them all - wasn't supposed to - just that I wasn't captivated by all of them), but still really liked some aspects. I flagged some passages, although I will be guessing, at this long remove, as to just why...

"Initially, the paper suffered under the suspicion that it was an international mouthpiece for Ott's business empire, but this was unfounded. The greatest influence over content was necessity - they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office" (50).

Funny! On two counts! And quite reminiscent of a lot of academic writing, too.

In a lengthy - and delightful! - description of an editor's "Bible," a super idiosyncratic style guide, we read:

GWOT: No one knows what this means, above all those who use the term. Nominally, it stands for Global War on Terror. But since conflict against an abstraction is, to be polite, tough to execute, the term should be understood as marketing gibberish. Our reporters adore this sort of humbug; it is the copy editor's job to exclude it. See also: OBL, Acronyms; and Nitwits.  (78)

Ha. There's more about the Bible. This may have been my favorite cycle in the book. The same editor also produces an internal newsletter he calls Why?, collecting his "favorite" mistakes and errors and bad ideas from the newspaper (79).

There is one character, so interesting, and so well drawn - Ornella, who we see, in some old family pictures, "when she was dashing, too thin and too young. (She was only sixteen at the time of her marriage to Cosimo.) She has a different face today, matted with peach foundation, orange lipstick, liner around her eyes, green mascara so thick that when she blinks one sees frog's fingers clasping. Her hair is yellow, dyed at great expense and pulled back in a bun so tight that the canvas of her face appears to be held fast by the knot at the back of her head' (209).

I would have said "frogs' fingers" but minor quibble - that line, right there, just that fragment of a line, is the kind of thing I will remember about a book for years. Creative, unique, but still totally understandable and evocative; lovely.

I also love that when unexpectedly faced with caring for a small child, her immediate - slightly nervous - reaction is not just to feed the boy, but to make him "pastina in brodo." Of course! That's my fall-back for sick or hungover peers, but I would give it to babies and children too :)

January 7, 2011 post

Normally I love a good snowstorm - so peaceful and pretty! Plus, I don't drive/park, and Boston's d**m good at keeping up with snow removal, which helps. Tonight, however, since NY and CT apparently can NOT handle snow, my dear friend S has been stuck on a bus from NYC for hours (I think we're approaching 7, as I type this), and may never make it to Boston - last update, they were still in CT, and the bus driver has taken to walking up and down the aisle of the bus, cursing the CT governor...because why sit behind the wheel when you're at a dead stop, I suppose...

So, to kill some time, and kill the pile of books by my bed, here's what I've been plowing through (no pun intended) recently:

Emma Brown by Clare Boylan, based on an unfinished (20 pages, I think?) manuscript by Charlotte Bronte {how do I do accents in this thing?}. Entertaining, but nothing super special. It was a little hard to really sink into the story because it seemed so anachronistic - I'm using that word wrong, but I can't think of a better way to say it at the moment; basically, there are a lot of references to sex, prostitution, child exploitation, etc. They're handled well, and more or less subtly, but they're still more present than they would have been if the book were really written in Bronte's time. Boylan's handle on the language - words, structure - is nice, though. I had read this before (it's one of the ones I took from home to try and sell), but I didn't remember it at all, so it was like reading it for the first time, so that was good! Forget now exactly when I read it (this time), but I think it was the day before and day of New Year's Eve, and maybe after.
Definitely read What Remains of Heaven, the 5th (?) Sebastian St. Cyr mystery by C. S. Harris on the second of January. Was out until 10 a.m. on the first, then came home and pretty much passed out for the rest of the day, so I can't remember if I started the book on the first or not. But I definitely read it when I was recuperating on the second, and it was perfect for that! The new heroine is really growing on me; I like her, and the hero with her, SO much better than the last one. I think I might be all caught up with the series now, which is actually making me kind of sad; considering at first I would only read the books if I could get them from the library or used & cheap, and if I were really bored, that's saying something. AH - the next is due out March 1, 2011, apparently. Good to know.
Next came yet another Tracy Chevalier book (I have GOT to be caught up on these by now - but d*mn, that woman is prolific!) - this one, The Lady and the Unicorn, like Girl with a Pearl Earring, is inspired by a piece of art, in this case the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. I really liked this book - totally different from the last Chevalier I read (I picked it up at the same time, because I liked the cover [the tapestries], but had no idea what it was about, although I kind of guessed from the title), about the fossil hunter, but it was engaging and interesting. It made me want to go learn more about the time and skills, as well as the people, described in the book, which is always a good thing. The chapters switching back and forth between several different character points of view could have been distracting, or interrupt the flow of the narrative, but it didn't. One issue I did have, though, and it's one I have with a lot of books set in the Middle Ages (late 1400s is the Middle Ages, right?): I hate when the liturgical season is used instead of normal dates. I mean, maybe I should just learn it, to be a more generally well-educated and -read person or something, but while Easter is a useful reference point for me, or Lent, "Septuagesima" means nothing to me...
A couple hundred years later a band of misfit, enraging and endearing players were wandering Italy and France in Francine Prose' The Glorious Ones. A quick, easy read with familiar nods to lots of classics, Dante most prominently, I had fun with it, but it didn't make much of an impression. I think I am just not really a short story kind of person, and I thought the links between these stories/chapters were too tenuous for my tastes, but there is no denying Prose does a masterful job with the writing here. The voices were distinct and evocative, and she suggests a vital setting without painting it in too much detail.