Randoms

Today I read, in its entirety, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. It was fine. Mostly I just had to power through it because I remembered this morning that I had signed up for a book club on it tomorrow evening... The story, about a young woman in the late thirties in New York, was interesting, and the main character and her friend were engaging. Interestingly, the male characters, in this book written by a man, all come across as pretty two dimensional. It's clear the author has a real interest in the culture (literature, art, and music) of the time, and took an interest in working it into the book in a significant but not obtrusive way. He never really explains enough about the protagonist's background, though, to account for her knowledge of the same. At one point near the end of the book a character explicitly says what much of the rest of the tale has been saying, that the main character, a bright, thoughtful, intellectually curious and informed young woman, is unusual in not being a drudge or housewife but pursuing a career instead. It's true, but I'm not sure that the life the author has mapped out for her can come about just through force of character and personality - I wanted to know, at least a little, or even just have acknowledged, how the daughter of a singe, Russian immigrant father is so familiar with some of the cultural aspects she translates into a better life...

The writing was quite good, though; there were some fantastic lines, and overall it was a very clean, bright, sharp prose, if not particularly lean.

I also finished Susan Hill's The Betrayal of Trust, which I read over the weekend. I do love a good English mystery, and this was one; well-written, anyway, for sure, and a decent plot although I did start too feel like there were too many story lines that were twisting around one another but not actually tying together. The "who dunnit" part was also pretty obvious. I picked it up at the Overlook Press table at the AWP on the recommendation of the two guys that were working there, and they said it was their favorite in the series. I am wondering if maybe the author is really just writing a long series about one man, and the people around him, and he just happens to be a policeman who solves crimes...

Grabbed a bunch of books at their table, though, because the guys were friendly and helpful, and the books seemed interesting and for the most part I really liked the covers. This is the first one I've read, and while I do think there were some sad copy-editing mistakes (including one on the back cover - that must EAT at them), I have high hopes.

Speaking of expectations AND English policemen who solve mysteries in series just as much concerned with their personal lives, last weekend I read Elizabeth George's The Edge of Nowhere. Unlike her other books - and what I thought I was picking up from the library - this was not an Inspector Lynley mystery. It was, I guess, a mystery of sorts, but it's also a somewhat paranormal teen romance adventure story? The story is set in the Pacific Northwest, and George does a fantastic job of describing the setting, but she doesn't know how to replicate teenagers' words. I may still read the next ones in teh series whenever they come out, but I hope she gets back to Lynley - and Havers!