Sunday Thoughts

I've finished a few more mysteries and have one review scheduled, one in draft form, and one that I haven't even started:

The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay.  The protagonist is a PI who is also a former monk.  I really liked this one.

Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason.  One of Indridason's early stand-alone novels (originally published in 1999);  I was not impressed.  It is not one of his Detective Erlendur novels--this one features evil, sadistic Americans.

Cambridge Blue by Alison Bruce.  A British police procedural with interesting characters in DC Gary Goodhew and his superior DI Marks.

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I've also recently finished two excellent YA fantasies, but the publishers want  the reviews scheduled for shortly before their release dates.  I can add them to my Once Upon a Time reads, but not to the Once Upon a Time review site because of delayed reviews.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas - to be released in August (my review is scheduled for July)

Shadowfell by Juliet Marillier - to be released in September  (review scheduled for August)

It is a bit frustrating to want to share these now and not be able to do so, because both are engrossing reads with great characters.

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I've been having one of those manic reading cycles, often starting and finishing a book in one evening.  This is fairly easy to do when reading most mysteries, but then I think of how long it took me to read IQ84 and Cryptonomicon.  And reading most non-fiction is also a slower process.

As Sir Francis Bacon noted:

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.



I think most fiction falls in the second category--swallowed,  read for entertainment and escape.  They are interesting, but may or may not require much thought, effort, or diligence.
This is where I place the above books.  They provide entertainment, a glimpse into another world, although a fictional one, an offer of vicarious adventure.

Not Cryptonomicon, however; that one demanded not just time, but effort, and sent me researching in a half-dozen directions.  Nor do the classics fall into that second category, the classics give us insight into ourselves, our neighbors, and the world beyond our doorstep.  They are to be read wholly and require digesting.  Definitely the third category.

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I was reading this post about building communities and found #6 a great idea!

6. Put up a Book Lending Cupboard. Take a book, lend a book. Collect your old reads and share them with passersby in a book-lending cupboard mounted next to the sidewalk out front. Give it a roof, a door with glass panes, and paint it to match the flowers below.

Or, change the story: read a poem, write a poem. Create a poetry cupboard with poems to share.

Now wouldn't a little lending cupboard be a nice place to visit on a walk?