Is It Friday Yet?

Actually, it sort of is Friday as we are taking tomorrow off. I think Rachel and I are going to make fresh pasta.

And hurrah! We have running water in the bathroom! And a working toilet and sink. (We have a working shower, as well, but with no shower doors it isn’t really useable.) The white white white of the fixtures against the dark blue-y green walls looks really sharp, if I say so myself. Still need shower doors, medicine cabinet, light….oh, and window. But the end is in sight and that’s pretty neat. I think the downstairs room is pretty much finished…oh, I forgot to check to see if the can lights are all done. They were up but didn’t have their…what to call them?...frames? done. I can’t wait to put up pictures.

Current Reading

I’ve read a couple of mysteries. The first was Laura Lippman’s In Big Trouble, a Tess Monaghan mystery that was…fine. It was set, for the most part, in San Antonio, a town Lippman says is very similar in some ways to Baltimore. There was one amusing part when Tess, checking out an old apartment house, sees that one of the tenants’ name on the doorbell is Linthicum. A little shout out to Baltimore and the surrounding area. But then later, thinking about it, I realized that Tess should have been all “Hey, weird. That’s the name of a suburb outside of Baltimore.” In fact, a detective looking for someone who was from Baltimore who might have been using an assumed name should have thought, “I wonder if X is using Linthicum as his name.” Oh well, a small niggle. I find the Tess Monaghan mysteries pretty good workmanlike mysteries. I enjoy the Tess books but I think Lippman’s stand alones are better books.

Then I read a mystery set in Iceland – Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriđason. This was a really good mystery…kept me guessing up to the end. I think I had, while I read it, about five different theories about how the skeleton found at the beginning of the book was killed and about as many ideas about who the skeleton was.) I can’t say you get a real sense of being in Iceland as compared to being in any other sort of country. But the mystery is a good one.

And last night I started Haven Kimmel’s newest book, Iodine. I love Haven Kimmel's books and have high hopes for this one, though I think it's is going to be a good bit different from her others. I started it just before bedtime and I didn’t want to turn my light out. If I hadn’t had to come to work this morning, I think I would have stayed up all night reading it. If it keeps up to the promise offered by the first 48 pages, I think it’s going to be an incredible book. Or at least, a book I really like. Whether or not critics would like it? I dunno. I don’t know what makes one book seem so much better than another to me. I mean, I can say that so far I really like the main character here (a somewhat psychotic young woman named Tracy Pennington) but I can’t tell you what it is about the writing that makes her come so alive for me…and whether she would come alive so well for anyone else reading the book. Maybe I should get Rachel to give me a quick course in literary criticism. “How To Intelligently Talk About A Book 101” But a lot of it is all so subjective, isn’t it?