Mysteries

I love a good mystery. Of course, I have my own idea of what a good mystery is. I like a complex puzzle, but I also like interesting and, at times, surprising characters. I like some suspense but not so much it completely overshadows the story. Too much horror or graphic gore can turn me off. And while I can enjoy some humor as part of a mystery, too flip a tone also puts me off. (I tried those "cat" mysteries a while back, and they were not my cup of tea.)

I am always looking for a new series I would enjoy. I find there is some comfort in the familiar detective around whom a new story and new characters develop. I use the term detective broadly, as some are professionals and some are not. Some of my favorites: Miss Marple, Adam Dalgleish & Kate Miskin, Alan Banks, Spencer Arrowood, Kate Martinelli, Inspector Wexford, Richard Jury, Jim Chee & Joe Leaphorn, and Kate Fansler (in not too large a dose.) So there are often mysteries on my shelf. Some are recent reads waiting for a home on one of the bookshelves throughout our house. Some are waiting to be read. What a delight to have a lineup of promising books calling out to be read. Too little time!

Eat, Pray, Love- Finale (possible spoilers)

I finished Eat, Pray, Love recently. Overall I enjoyed the book and found things in it worth considering. The last section on her time in Indonesia was involving. I was looking forward to it especially after reading the title for that section: "36 Tales about the Pursuit of Balance." Balance is something that I am focusing on in my own life: balance between school life and personal life, balance in where I put my energies at school, balance in terms of being centered and thoughtful in my life. The balance the author is seeking is between pleasure and spirit, or as she put it "what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God." While she seems to find some sense of this by the end of the book, I found a sense of let down as I finished it. In part I found the focus of her quest distracted by romantic developments (will she or won't she), though that is certainly one form of enjoying the world's delights. I also would have enjoyed more at the end about her return to her "regular" life. Pursuing pleasure in Italy and God in an ashram in India are one thing (or two?), but bringing what she learns back to modern day life in our culture would be quite another.

Eat, Pray, Love-Italy & India

I'm two-thirds through the book now. The first section was enjoyable as it was centered on her time in Italy. It also was the part in which she outlined the struggles she was having before she began her quest/journey. That part was more painful. Her tales of Italy spoke of incredibly delicious food prepared with love and deep care. It made my mouth water.

For a fiction book to work for me, I have to buy into it through the often referred to "suspension of disbelief." If you can't suspend the disbelief, you keep pulling yourself out of the story and thus the story does not really work. It loses its power, it casts no spell. With memoirs it seems something else has to suspended. Cynicism and/or being judgemental perhaps? To embrace a memoir fully I have to be open to how the author is experiencing things. I mention this as I process the section about India in the book. Her experiences in the ashram are different in many ways from my life, just as she, as a person, is different in many ways from me. Yet as the book progresses, I find myself noticing more and more the connections between the author and me rather than the differences that I focused on earlier in the book. While her journey is not mine, I am drawn into her experiences and her revelations. I use them as a lens through which to view my own experiences.

'Tis a puzzlement

I love crossword puzzles and double-crostics. I inherited this love from my mother (though I have not yet mastered the cryptic crosswords that she also loved.) So on my bookshelf is a clipboard where I keep several puzzles to work on. I subscribe to the NY Times puzzles which I can get online. I've tried working them on my computer, but I much prefer to work them with pencil and paper, so I usually print them out. I know this is less "green," but I do print them on the back of paper I have already used for something else. I always do the Sunday puzzle and it remains my favorite. I often do Wednesday through Friday or Saturday. The last two days can sometimes give me fits. For the most part I try to work them without resorting to looking up things, but if I still have gaping holes after a few days, I'll pick up a reference book. Last resort for me is googling.

The NY Times site also has acrostics a couple of times a month. I also like to do the Los Angeles Times puzzles. The News & Observer, which we have delivered, has the LA Times puzzle on Sunday. If I do it other times, I get it from the LA Times website. It carries some nostalgia for me, as the Louisville Courier-Journal carries it and that is the puzzle my mother used to do regularly. On the whole it is almost up there with the NY Times puzzle in terms of cleverness and difficulty, but every now and then it will surpass the NY Times. I occasionally get puzzles from the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal online. I also have an email subscription to 2 puzzles that Ben Tausig sends out weekly through Google Groups "Weekly xword" group. These tend to be a little more modern in topic and sensibility (a touch of potty humor at times and sexual humor, as opposed to the more indirect sexual innuendo that may appear in the more "prim and proper" puzzles.)

What to Eat

In addition to the book I am currently reading in a start to finish way, I like to keep some books at hand that I occasionally pick up and read from. A lot of these are non-fiction. It takes non-fiction with a strong narrative thread to get me to read it cover to cover (like the book I am currently reading Eat, Pray, Love.) Other non-fiction is more for dipping into now and then. What to Eat by Marion Nestle is a book that often sits on my bookshelf. It is not a book to read straight through (at least for me,) but it has a lot of encyclopedic information about the food we eat. I recently read the section on eggs which gave me food for thought, so to speak. I feel fortunate (especially after reading the section on eggs in this book) in having good sources for local eggs. The book organizes foods both by type and by the area of the supermarket where they are usually found. There's a lot of information about food and nutrition as well as explorations of how food is produced in our country, how it is marketed, etc. At times it offers more info than I really want to know, but it is a great reference.

Eat, Pray, Love

At the top of the pile on my bookshelf is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, subtitled One Woman's search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia. I intercepted it as it was being passed from one person to another. My daughter-in-law finished it while we were spending the holidays in the Smoky Mountains together. She offered it to my husband, knowing that he regularly meditates. It is a book I have been wanting to read. I heard the author interviewed a couple of years ago on NPR and on one of my favorite podcasts, KCRW's Good Food. So I took temporary charge of the book.

So far I am in the Italy section of the book where she explores the pleasure of food, the Italian language, and a culture that values pleasure. Her overall desire voiced early in the book is "what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God." That seems an interesting challenge. After Italy I will follow her to an ashram in India and to a medicine man in Indonesia. It promises to be an interesting journey.