Reading list for July 2005

I'm so mad at Martha Grimes. (Spoiler warning: if you haven't read The Blue Last, skip down to the next visible bit of text. To read the spoiler, highlight the rest of this paragraph with the cursor.) The damned woman seems to have killed off Richard Jury! It isn't explicitly stated that he dies, but he is clearly in the process of dying as the book ends. How dare she. I suppose he is her creation to do with as she pleases, and perhaps she got bored of him, as Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes; but still, I was upset and quite annoyed.

Savtadotty commented a while back: "I had just finished Atonement by Ian McEwan, which I recommend highly. The book treats most artistically and cleverly the issue of literature and its affect on and effect of justice." Indeed. I loved the multiple layering of authors and times in the story. MacEwan is a fine observer of human frailties and foolishness, the tricks we play on ourselves and others. An excellent novel, which I too would highly recommend.

I was irritated by Paul Auster's The Music of Chance, I found it just a bit too random. I expect novels to have a purpose and that the story should develop towards this, and was offended by the abrupt non-sequitur ending. Is there more that one can say to this ending than "so what?" I felt cheated, that Auster had presumed upon my time and attention under false pretenses. Can this really be the man who wrote Timbuktoo and Smoke?

Currently reading
Michel de Montaigne, Essaies - still!
John Updike, Licks of Love

Recently read
Paul Aster, The Music of Chance
G.K. Chesterton, The Best of Father Brown
Martha Grimes, The Blue Last
Donna Leon, Endstation Venedig ("Death in a Strange Country")
Ian MacEwan, Atonement

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