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I'm going to look for Amy's book at the library....entertaining is what she was talking about on Fresh Air, plus her collection of uniforms...Dairy Queen, Winn Dixie, etc. She's a hoot.

Stephen King writes not knowing where the story will go. Or so he claims.

It appears the first review of 2008 will be falling way, way short of a rave. Yesterday afternoon, four-ish, I finished reading Run by Ann Patchett. Now a few years ago I read her Bel Canto. I liked it, events at its end blew me away, and its impact continued to haunt, so much so that I took it out of the books-to-the-library box and may someday read it again. With Bel Canto in mind, I was really looking forward to Run. Sad to say but now, less than twenty-four hours later, I'm having trouble remembering what it was about. Oh, yes. Characters include an ex-mayor of Boston, his two adopted African-Americans, their birth mother, an eleven-year-old girl the birth mother raised, the ex-major's firstborn son whose behavior caused a scandal bad enough to force the major to resign, and several others. Damn! Those characters sound interesting just in a list. Shame the book isn't.

I did dog-ear one page that appealed to the once-upon-a-time speech professor in me. A lecture by Jesse Jackson is about to start and one of the many point-of-view characters is thinking: "You never got everyone's attention, not if you were the Pope saying mass in St. Peter's square or Renee Fleming* in recital at Carnegie Hall or Czeslaw Milosz* reading his poetry in Polish for the first time. The only way to make everyone listen was to start a fire in the middle of the room and then identify the location of all emergency exits. And even then, if you took the time to notice, there would always be someone running frantically in the opposite directions." (page 33) Sure sounds like something I should have passed on to my students. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

*Nope. I have no idea who they are. Maybe if I have the time and interest this afternoon, I'll google them.

Renee Fleming is an opera singer - soprano -- I've heard her (oddly enough) on Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion!"

Thanks. Now I only have to summon enough energy to google the other one.

I really enjoyed Laura Moriarty's The Rest of Her Life. As I've said before, I don't experience the I-can't-put-it-down syndrome when reading, but I happily read The Rest of Her Life in 50 and 100 page hunks.

The story begins with a traffic accident where a teenage, driving while on the phone and further distracted by a dog she and her passenger have "rescued," kills a girl a few years younger than herself. The plot then looks at a myriad of relationships—the girl and her mother, the mother and her sister, the mother and her mother, and—believe it or not—others. Nothing in the writing reached out and grabbed me, but the characters themselves are well drawn and multi-faceted.

It's not a mystery, it's not grippingly suspenseful, and it's not a commentary on our political life—although one character is connected to the war in Iraq. It's simply a good story with characters both understandable and believable. IMHO.

Love in the Time of Cholera might have been an Oprah's Book Club pick and have garnered a ton of good reviews. Its author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, might have been a winner of the Nobel Prize. The book still irritated me. Irritated? Yes! It was just interesting enough, in spots, not to put it down. And I disliked the whiney, overly romantic and wimpy characters. I'd have been happier with a lot more cholera and a lot less love.

Jenny Downham's Before I Die is built around a pretty simple premise. Tessa, the sixteen-year-old narrator, has cancer and has run out of treatments that work. She makes a list of things she wants/has to do before she died, works her way through the items, and dies. The book skips back and forth in time from when treatments worked to its present, shows Tessa's continually changing relationship with her family and friends, and is not as much of a downer as it might have been.

I guess that's a positive recommendation.

A new mystery for the mystery lovers, if you are looking for a new flavor.

I don't know why Miyuki Miyabe's "The Devil's Whisper" caught my eye at the library, but I'm glad it did.

Miyabe is a best-seller in Japan, and I plan to look for his other two novels.

Unlike American mysteries, which I often find either too violent or too psyochopathic for my taste, "The Devil's Whisper" is more about atmosphere and innuendo, with the occasional trace of old-fashioned Japanese horror (I'm firmly convinced the Japanese do better horror than anyone.)

In this story, three young women have committed suicide in different parts of Tokyo - one leaps from a building, one throws herself in front of a train, another runs in front of a car. Only three people know that they were linked together, or how - or that there is a fourth girl, still alive - but for how long?

This was a suspense story with a strange effect - as I got closer to the end, I started putting it down and walking away, because I didn't want it to end. My instincts were good; the book as a whole is much better than its ending. But the ending isn't actually bad, especially if you think about it for a few minutes.

A fairly quick read, and the differences in manners and mores add a nice sauce to a pretty good story.

I've been right busy lately, which means I have time for reading—always!—but not necessarily for reviewing. However I'm about to finish a second book that will need to be reviewed, and the idea of a backlog terrifies me. So …

I'm happy to report that Jasper Fforde has returned to his series featuring literary detective Thursday Next. First Among Sequels skips a few years since the last Next (boy, that sounds weird) offering. Thursday is now married and has three children: Friday, the eldest and a boy, Tuesday, his younger sister, and Jenny, the youngest of the group. I mention the children specifically because they're involved in a plot twist that, IMHO, illustrates what Fforde does best—he creates a world where absolutely anything can take place and be believable. I can't say more because the twist is by far the best moment in the book, and I sure wouldn't want to ruin the surprise for anyone who might choose to read it.

As always, I admire a writer who can express some thought where either the thought itself or its expression can make me stop and go "oh, wow." First Among Sequels had several such moments.

1) Thursday ruminates. "Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work—the writer might have died long ago." (page 52) Interesting. Do I agree? Dunno. But it is making me think.

2) Thursday considers the achievements of a linguist she knows. "But his hits were greater than the sum of his misses, and such is the way with greatness." (page 97) Okay, I'll buy that.

3) "'A phantom,' said my uncle Mycroft, who had just materialized, 'is essentially a heteromorphic wave pattern that gains solidity when the apparition converts thermal energy from the surroundings to visible light.'" (page 110) I'm amazed. I think I understand that. Now I'll run it past my physicist husband.

4) Time travel, used frequently in all the Next novels, has yet to be invented. Thursday tries to clarify the position. "'Let me get this straight,' I said slowly. 'You're using technology you don't have—like me overspending on my credit card.'" (page 123) Cleared things up for me.

5) First Among Sequels frequently moves into satire. Discussion of a national problem occurs. "The stupidity surplus had been beaten into second place by the news that the militant wing of the no-choice movement had been causing trouble in Manchester. Windows were broken, cars overturned, and there were at least a dozen arrests. With a nation driven by the concept of choice, a growing faction of citizens who thought life was simpler when options were limited had banded themselves together into what they called the 'no-choicers' and demanded the choice to have no choice." (page 233) Remember how simple life used to be? And many leaders tell us it can be so again.

6) Reading is down; watching TV is up, particularly the ratings of reality shows. A television producer who has decided to capitalize on the trend explains how the first literary classic will be used. "'Pride and Prejudice,' announced Yogert proudly. 'It will be renamed The Bennets and will be serialized live in your household copy the day after tomorrow. Set in starchy early-nineteenth-century England, the series will feature Mr. And Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters being given tasks and then being voted out of the house one by one, …'" (pages 272-3) I can see it happening next fall on ABC. Can't you?

Bottom line: check out the world of Thursday Next. I think you'll like being there.