Just finished reading...

Knitting: a novel by Anne Bartlett

Knitting as an analogy for life....


This book was on my Amazon recommended list, and it sounded intriguing (plus it was on the library shelves) so I picked it up. I'm not sure if it was what I expected or not.

It's the story of Sandra Fildes and Martha McKenzie. Sandra is a recent widow, and Martha has been one for many years. Sandra is a professor who focusses on textiles in history. Martha is a knitter. They meet when they both stop to help a man who has collapsed in the mall.

Martha has been hired as the janitor of a church that Sandra sometimes attends, their paths just keep crossing, and they slowly become friends.

This is a quiet, gentle novel, which reminds me very much of Mary Wesley's work.

Just finished reading...

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Wow! Literally just finished reading this book. Diane Setterfield has written what I'm sure many will be calling a future classic. I love reading it. Whilst I was reading, I was transported into the world of Margaret's ... no, Vida Winter's story. But there were definite points where I felt I'd had enough; that I needed to put the book down and take a break.

I didn't pick it up at all over the weekend, but I didn't feel badly about it, just eager to pick it up and go on. I have seldom had this feeling about a book, though Anne of Green Gables and Pride and Prejudice affected me similarly, I think. It's been compared a lot to Jane Eyre, but to me it feels much more like Wuthering Heights.

I realize I'm not saying much about the book. That's deliberate. I'd read reviews that gave the basic plot outline, like I did in my last entry, but didn't really rush to read it. When I finally got a copy from the library, I managed to read the first chapter or two just before it was due. That was enough to make me realize that this was a book I wanted to own. The weird thing about it is that even though I rushed out to buy it, I didn't read it right away, but finished all the library books I had first, so that nothing would distract me from it. And even then, I haven't rushed through it, the way I do with a lot of mystery and suspense stories. The most accurate way I can describe it is that I savoured the book.

The title at the top of this essay is linked to the book's website. It's very cool.

Just started reading...

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

The chapters have names rather than numbers, but I'm just starting the fourth one, Arrivals. I'm on page 36.

What a marvelously written book. I'm torn between rushing through it and reading slowly so that I can savour Setterfield's marvelous use of language.

The story (so far, anyway) is about Margaret Lea, who works in her father's antiquarian bookstore. She's grown up in the store, and has become skilled in the analysis of manuscripts.

Margaret receives a letter from one Vida Winter, a very popular author, "our century's Dickens" requesting that Margaret visit her with the purpose of being her biographer.

Although Margaret has written a few biographies, she says about herself, "..I am hardly a biographer at all. For my own pleasure, mainly, I have written a number of short biographical studies of insignificant personages from literary history."

However, it is on the strength of these (or at least one of them) that Winter contacts her.

That's about as far as I've gone in the book, and it's a very poor summary of what I've read. I'm going back to it now....

Just finished reading...

Clea Simon's Mew is for Murder and Cattery Row

I was spurred to read Cattery Row by some reviews on DorothyL. It wasn't until I was halfway through it that I realized it was the second in a series, so of course I immediately checked Mew out of the library. Theda (short for Theodosia) Krakow is a freelance writer. It's been a rough few months for her: her boyfriend Rick took a job in another state, and her longtime cat companion James died.

She is just starting to come out of her mourning period (mostly for her cat), and see her friends again. A fan of alt rock, she loves to check out the many underground clubs in the Boston/Cambridge area where she lives.

Happening upon what she thinks is a stray kitten one day, she follows it to a house inhabited by an elderly woman who, it turns out, has many, many cats, which gives her the idea that she might do a story about cat hoarders. But later, when she goes over to the woman's house, she finds her dead in her kitchen.

Although the police seem convinced that the woman fell and hit her head, Theda and her friend Violet are convinced that it was murder.

Theda is a sympathetic protagonist, independent and smart. I look forward to more books about her.