A few notes

After a good start to the year, my reading pace slowed considerably -- but I wanted to make a few notes. 1) I just finished "Quiet, Please" by Scott Douglas, which I'll be reviewing very soon for Solares Hill. I found the book an enjoyable read, though my expectations were raised a little too high because I so like the author's blog, Speak Quietly. Still, good to see young librarians out there telling stories. I'm about halfway through The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt, which I like a lot so far despite the fact that the author seems to be the hot new thing, went to my high school, is a couple years younger than me AND lives in Brooklyn. (Also, check out her website from the link on her name -- it's very cool.) And last weekend, I accompanied a bunch of birders to the Tortugas (for more on that trip, you can read my husband's column in the Citizen) -- the trip reminded me of a book I liked a lot and reviewed for Solares Hill a few years back: "Assassination Vacation" by the multi-talented Sarah Vowell. Vowell writes about being seasick on the trip to see Dr. Mudd's cell at the Tortugas but the really good parts of the book, to me, were about lesser-known assassins, namely the guys who shot McKinley and Garfield.

Yep, he really is good

I've now read the entire published works of John Wray -- in other words, I finished his other book, "The Right Hand of Sleep." Like "Canaan's Tongue," it's a historical novel but set in a very different time and place -- this time, it's an Austrian mountain village in 1938, aka the time of the Anschluss. Wray's mother is Austrian and he spent a lot of time there growing up and it's astonishingly surehanded and mature for a first novel. This guy is that good.

A great read

A recommended read from Maggie Nelson, one of the New Voices at this year's Key West Literary Seminar, was John Wray and over the weekend I finished his second and most recent novel, Canaan's Tongue. Thank you, Maggie! Wow. The book is one of those written in multiple voices, set during the Civil War, about a gang of criminals engaged in an abhorrent enterprise known as the Trade -- stealing slaves for re-sale; the slaves co-operate because they think they will eventually be rewarded with freedom. Instead, they're murdered. Wray's first novel, "The Right Hand of Sleep," is also historical, this one set in Austria in the 1930s. And he seems to be an interesting fellow -- according to this interview, he wrote that first novel under some interesting living conditions.

Link o' the Day

From the National Book Critics Circle Blog, Critical Mass, a very interesting guest post from Molly Giles on judging the PEN Faulkner Awards. I can't imagine. Her comments at the end of the post are especially interesting, given the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar topic, historical fiction.

Getting graphic

I've always been an admirer of graphic novels -- but, I must confess, mostly in concept. I've read some shorter pieces, like the ones published in the New York Times Magazine on Sundays, but never an entire book. Until last weekend, when I got hold of A Thousand Ships, the first volume in Eric Shanower's projected seven volume Age of Bronze, a history of the Trojan War. I'm on a historical fiction kick anyway, because that's the theme of the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar, and the latest in this series, the third volume, got a boffo review on Salon, one of my favorite sources for new titles. So I tracked down the first volume through interlibrary loan and it really is that good.

Reading this way is, naturally enough, different from reading a text-only narrative and there are some conventions from the comic books that seem kind of funny or cheesy. But it's also an intense experience in a couple ways: one is that you have a visual image for the characters, place and action provided and that helps bring them to life. Another is that it reconnects you to some of your earliest reading experiences, the illustrated books and comics of childhood.

Now maybe I'll finally get around to reading the other well-regarded graphic novels that are sitting on the shelf at home, including Persepolis, which has been adapted into a film now showing at the Tropic.