What We're Reading

As we've said Ducksters love to read. Since the first of the year I've finished three books and am half way through my fourth. Two are mystery novels which I must confess I love. My taste leans toward British mysteries but three of my favs Martha Grimes, Elizabeth George, and Deborah Crombie are actually Americans. In authors in general there are some genres and geographic areas I tend to favor. I like southern women novelist both the serious and those who write what I call confections. The two mystery novels are Crombie's Necessary As Blood and Margaret Maron's Sand Sharks. I've liked Maron since Bootlegger's Daughter ,her first, maybe because we are on the fringe of bootleg country and know alot about how they get caught. Several years ago a local store was selling tons of sugar and plastic containers. Duh. You didn't have to be TAF to know what THAT meant. Both novels were very satisfying for a light read. The two main characters in both novels are love interests now married and the novels advance their relationships. Crombie's novel was sad making because you very much like the victims of the murders. Maron's novel has a surprise ending. However, the people you don't like get their just desserts so all is well. You'll like both.

More difficult to address is Kingsolver's The Lacuna. I loved the ending to this novel which makes sense as well. The problem is getting there. Partly its the style for the first half of the novel which is the supposed rendering of notebooks from the 1920s of a young man half Mexican (mother) and half American (father). He speaks of himself in the third person and it feels like there is no plot. As all the reviews and the cover tell us,he lives with Diego Rivera and Frida as well as Trotsky. Although sort of interesting, if you know anything about them, there is nothing new here. What's really happening is the creation of the backdrop for what I read as the parable of the novel: the US is a nation that set its feet on a certain course and that in our founding is both our greatness and our tragic flaw. It also suggests we make the same errors over and over again because we can not question our rightness. Some will love this novel and some hate it.

Talked with The Great HB last night. Over an hour. Topics: film, novels, the blog (he hadn't seen it) and the issue of retirement. Re retirement, bottom line, I need to feel useful, as in of use to society. HB totally got that I was not talking about fear of being bored but something more profound. What would I be retiring from? I'm the founder of a nonprofit that works with low to moderate income families. I've been the Executive Director of it since 1997 and I work for free. I can do this because I'm a retire professor and have a pension. OK, more disclosure CDuckser was my student many years ago.