The Lusty Month of May

Or so they sang in Camelot. If not lusty, full of sunshine, flowers, strawberries and friends.Isn't that a pretty shot from my local farmers' market? The colors and smells still catch me every Saturday morning. The onion guy asked me if I wanted anything as I was standing there smelling the fresh, clean scent of young onions. It would be a great diet just to take in all these good smells.

This is pretty much how my needlepoint looked mid-April. I almost posted this picture, but somehow got busy. My life is so unbusy that surprises even me. I think I'd identified where the bottom of the picture was at that point, but still working mightily on the middle ground. What do you read while needlepointing? Cranford. Women in that era were always working on a piece of something. Look at the picture. She has knitting next to her. This book is a good antidote to raucous thrillers. Slow moving and sweet. Now I may be able to see the Masterpiece Theater shows based on the book that are saved on my DVR.
Another book to intersperse between mysteries is Villette by Charlotte Bronte. When Karen and I were at the FOB a couple of weekends ago we wrote what we were reading on a huge wall set up for just that purpose. As I was half way through Villette, I didn't feel too dishonest writing that as opposed to one of the mysteries I was reading. Not too. Villette is about the classic orphan girl managing in the world. I really liked it. I was not aware that the Bronte girls were not that prolific. Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, this book and two others. You can get the Kindle edition of a book with all four books for just $1.00. Amazing.
And then begins my spat mysteries that deal with other genders. Other genders? Well, I've noticed that most mysteries are written from the male perspective. Women are often there to have horrible stuff done to them. The "other gender" in Dressed for Death is transvestites. Not that Venice is rampant with transvestites, but Donna Leon (whose name is much bigger than the title; hum, so are all the other names on this page; never mind) likes to write about issues affecting Venice. They are still mentioned here - huge pollution problem, corrupt politicians, oversexed Italian men. I loved that part where the protagonist's wife asks if he's ever noticed how often the men of Venice fondle themselves. Good story, despite the fondling. Darker Domain has a female Cold Case detective and a female journalist working what appear to be wildly divergent stories. This was nominated for a Times Book Prize for mysteries. The ending is a little contrived, but I liked it pretty much. Glad it didn't win the prize. Can't wait to read the one that did.
Gallow's View is about a Peeping Tom. Hum, why did I think this was from a different gender perspective? I'm not sure. It was well written. This was from the batch of books that were first books in a series. There are many more Inspector Banks books. Even though this was a classic mystery of the slow moving variety, I liked it.
Pirate is not a classic mystery of the slow moving type. It's actually pretty funny in its high testosterone, thrill a minute plot devices. Manly men, gorgeous women, unkillable heroes. Karen read a review that said it was Bond-like. Yes. Poorly plotted, yet moves like a runaway train. Can't put my iPod down. :) I must recommend this one to my brothers. I think both of them would love this. I know I'm enjoying it.

Do you think that the pace of that book is why my needlepoint has moved on so rapidly? I've also found the right side of the picture.

What a Weekend!

Karen drove down from Albany on Friday night. I don't have overnight visitors because I have no place for them to lie down. She is very resourceful and brought a mat and a futon etc. etc. etc. Good she drove. We needed to be up early so we could visit my farmers' market before going to UCLA for the beginning of the LAT extravaganza of books. I noticed that Google has a listing of all blogs that include the full and complete name of the event. I'm not usually shy, but those other guys write really well. So I'll just drop parts of the name as I type. The Times does have its own blog of the event.

Our first panel at the Festival was called Pageturners. It had four mystery writers that neither of us had heard about. I made a mistake getting these tickets. It should have been Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and T. Jefferson Parker, but I goofed. We decided this was a good thing because we would learn about new authors. In this case David Ellis, Andrew Gross, Gregg Hurwitz, and Karin Slaughter. Thoroughly enjoyable. We were both not impressed with Ellis' latest book that we crammed into our pre-event reading, but it was fun to find that he is a Chicago lawyer who helped prosecute Illinois' old governor. Andrew Gross used to write for James Patterson and seemed to have left out of dismay at the formulaic plotting. So that was a plus. Karin Slaughter writes about children in peril, something neither of us care much for, but I may try one of her series to see if it can be read. Gregg Hurwitz told of a plot twist that he just had to include in a book - man drinking coffee on a quiet morning when he is snatched from his balcony by a Black Hawk helicopter crew. In other words, totally believable plotting.

The second and third panels of the day were held in Korn Convocation Center. The room had flags from all over the world on one wall. Neither of us knew what country was represented by the one above. Any ideas?

We saw Dave Eggers who had just won a Book Prize for Zeitoun the night before. You may recall that I read almost the whole thing. He is a very interesting man. He founded McSweeney which publishes a quarterly magazine of the unusual. And he is involved with an organization that tutors reading in school. Must check that out.

Finally, we saw Yann Martel who has a new book coming out about the holocaust. The story is retold through a fable about two dead animals, Beatrice and Virgil. He also wrote Life of Pi. The reviews in the New York Times and the Washington Post are scathing. Karen and I were considering that this might be worth a try. We'll see. Anything is possible.

Did you know it? Saudi Arabia.

Sunday we just had two panels. Karen selected both of them and they were great. First was Does the American Economy have a Future? This was with Jon Wiener, Joyce Appleby, Roger Farmer, Steven Hill and Matt Miller. I know, I'd never heard of any of them either. But it was fascinating. There is hope, but we must stop doing the same thing over and over. After seeing how hard it is to get change in health care, I'm not too sure how successful we will be in changing our financial practices. Keep your fingers crossed. Each of these folks have written books that sound interesting. I've passed the list on to Adrian, because he loves to read about the economy. I may actually buy a couple of these.

The final panel of the weekend was called Unstoppable Voices. We had five women for a change. That was very refreshing. They talked about how they find the voice for their books. The women were Jane Smiley, Marianne Wiggins, Susan Straight, Mona Simpson and Maile Meloy. I've read books by the first two and will keep an eye out of the last two. As for Ms. Straight. I now own a book with a short story of hers in it.

Karen met a guy in line for the Eggers panel who showed her a great book he'd just bought, Los Angeles Noir. The Noir books take place in cities all over the world and include short mystery stories. We looked it up Saturday night and learned that there are three books - LA Noir, L.A. Noir and Los Angeles Noir. I drove Karen crazy that night saying "remember Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, not LA in any form." Then we both forgot. So now we have L.A. Noir, a book that Adrian had heard about and would like to read, AND Los Angeles Noir. One of the stories in the latter book is by Susan Straight. Small city.

After the last panel we rushed down the hill so we could hear John's band playing. Murphy's Flaw has played at the FOB for several years. You may recall that I went to a coffee house to hear them a couple of months back. They are still good.

We ended the day at Tanino's in Westwood Village. Not very good overpriced food. Is it overpriced if it is really good? The company was good - John, Tom, Jim, and Karen.

A Tree Falls in South Pasadena

Wow, she does exaggerate. What happened was a delivery van clipped the low hanging branch of our pine tree. This was bound to happen. Why our landlord or the city doesn't do preventive cutting on these trees, I'll never know. I goofed on this picture. Adrian's car was right under that branch. It wasn't hurt. The branch is so long that it hung over his tall Jeep. Kinda slowed down traffic, which was great.

The city responded so quickly. We had a cop out front within half an hour. He closed the street. The saw truck arrived about ten minutes later. The tree branch is still out there, cut up, lying at the curb. We'll see how long that takes.

I met the neighbor from apartment 2. Yes, I've lived here 9 years. Your point is what? He's Gordon, just retired from Sears. Has lived in that apartment for 40 years. Wow. He also confirmed that the apartment complex was built in 1949. I was thinking '50's. Pretty close. I just had one art deco element to go on. I also found out that our loud neighbor, Manuel, bugs him too. His car radio drives me crazy. Gordon told me that he does the same thing with his house music. I am so lucky to have very quiet next door neighbors.

I've started a new needlepoint. This one is a picture of a Parisian Bistro. You can see that after a few days I've almost completed a window. There is a lot more to do. This means that I've been doing a lot of listening. I've finished 2.5 books since I started.

I re-read Six Days of the Condor. Yes, six days. They shortened the story to three days when they made the movie to fit better with Robert Redford's image. Why leave him hanging out in the cold for six days? I remembered really liking this story thirty years ago. It's less complex than I like now, but was still pretty exciting. The author does a short segment at the beginning, telling about writing the book and the transition to the movie.

I also read Deadheads by Reginald Hill. This was very good. It's part of a mystery series set in Yorkshire. I like the detectives, Daziel (pronounced DL) and Pasco, and the plot is really good. You sort of know what's happening, but not really and the ending is very good.

I'm currently listening to The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin. This is the follow up to Mistress of the Art of Death, set in the time of Richard II. The heroine is sort of a one woman CSI for the Middle Ages. Fun. Audible had a half price sale on books or I'd be dead in the water. This needlepoint is going to take a long time. See how little it looks on that big piece of fabric?

Just remember how it was hard to see a cat when I started my last needlepoint. He eventually grew into a real cat surrounded by a library of books. It just takes time.

Maybe it will be done before I fly back to Virginia for two months, starting mid-June. I decided to do some summer temp work at Booz Allen. Let's hope it all works out as planned.

Poppy Fields Forever

I went back to the Poppy Reserve this morning. This time I left earlier. And I took bug spray. And the fields were full of poppies. And I learned the names of the yellow and blue flowers - Fiddlenecks and Blue Dicks. No, I didn't make up that last one. I would never be that rude. . . on my blog.

These poppies are so pretty. I met a man who flew in from Colorado just to see them. I guess he must sell his photos because he kept mentioning his website and getting the perfect picture. I was there too early for the perfect picture. He says they would open more perfectly in about an hour. But I wanted to get the car back to Adrian and my camera is not going to know the difference between partly opened and fully opened flowers.

I also met a man who has been going to the Poppy Reserve for 40 years to take pictures. It was like a match made in heaven. Once this guy helped me down from the steep shoulder that lead to the road, I left the two photographers comparing cameras and best angles. Mom would have been in heaven. Flower pictures with hard-core photographers, sigh.