mom-approved: Donna Leon

Yesterday I ran straight from work to the public library on an errand for my mom. Lately she's been stuck at home in pain with limited mobility because of a herniated disc in her back or something along those lines. Now, my mom is a voracious reader. Her favorite genres are historical fiction and mysteries, though like me she reads broadly across most fiction genres and appreciates the occasional nonfiction title when it relates to long-term or of-the-moment interests. However, right now she's only interested in reading books from one particular author: Donna Leon. Two of the Donna Leon books she requested from one of our library system's other branches had come in and I needed to collect them before the library closed at 6 pm.

She's working her way (possibly nonsequentially) through the books in Leon's Guido Brunetti series of mysteries set in Venice. So far there are 23 titles in the series:

1. Death At La Fenice (1992)
2. Death in a Strange Country (1993)
3. The Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death (1994)
4. A Venetian Reckoning aka Death And Judgment (1995)
5. Acqua Alta aka Death in High Water (1996)
6. The Death of Faith aka Quietly in Their Sleep (1997)
7. A Noble Radiance (1997)
8. Fatal Remedies (1998)
9. Friends in High Places (1999)
10. A Sea of Troubles (2001)
11. Willful Behavior (2002)
12. Uniform Justice (2003)

13. Doctored Evidence (2004)
14. Blood from a Stone (2005)
15. Through a Glass Darkly (2006)
16. Suffer the Little Children (2007)
17. The Girl of His Dreams (2008)
18. About Face (2009)
19. A Question of Belief (2010)
20. Drawing Conclusions (2011)
21. Beastly Things (2012)
22. The Golden Egg (2013)
23. By Its Cover (2014)

Leon has also published a stand-alone novel, The Jewels of Paradise (2012), which is also set in Venice.

I'm pretty sure that I have a copy of Acqua Alta kicking around here, in turn I am pretty sure that I got it from my mom and that she picked it up as vacation reading. When I figure out where I put the book (if indeed I am remembering this all correctly), I'll read it and see whether I find the series as exciting as my mom does.

a few multiple POV novels

Or, short reviews of books read during June 2013, part 1

The Blood of the Lamb by Sam Cabot (source: Netgalley)
forthcoming: August 6, 2013

Catholic Church conspiracy thriller with vampires.
The novel is well-written, but its subject matter is divisive. Obviously if you dislike and/or are offended by books of this type, you should give The Blood of the Lamb a miss. Its multiple point-of-view narrative may also turn off some readers (for what it's worth, there's nothing especially problematic about how Cabot handles the various characters and their points of view). Otherwise, I think this cerebral thriller is definitely worth a read. It's written by two people¹ who clearly know how to write and, in the context of the novel, the paranormal elements don't seem unrealistic. I particularly recommend The Blood of the Lamb to fans of vampire novels, as I think they'd appreciate Cabot's take on them.

The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell (source: public library)

Debut novel by award-winning screenwriter.
I discovered The Death of Bees while browsing the new arrivals section of my local public library. I was intrigued by the book-flap text, but unsure as to whether I'd like the novel or not. The Death of Bees is dark and gritty (set in a Glasgow housing estate²), but compelling.
I, for one, like multiple POV narratives and I really appreciated how O'Donnell created such distinct voices for her three point-of-view characters: a fifteen-year-old breadwinner, whose straight-A average belies her rough-and-tumble make-it-work attitude about life; her gifted, but maladjusted twelve-year-old sister; and their doddering, Scarlet-Lettered neighbor.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (source: public library)
series: Lunar Chronicles (2)

Little Red Riding Hood set in a dystopian future.
The sequel to Cinder (see post), Scarlet introduces the eponymous character (and her Wolf) in addition to continuing the overarching story begun in Cinder.
After reading Scarlet, I'm even more keen on this series (the Lunar Chronicles) and recommend it to both adults and young adults who like science fiction, paranormal fiction (romance or not), retellings of fairy tales, dystopian fiction, or any of the above. Cinder is the book that I gave my dad for Father's Day this year and I may try to lure my reluctant-reader-due-to-dyslexia sister with the audiobook.

footnotes:

1. Sam Cabot is a pseudonym for the writing team of Carlos Dews and S.J. Rozan.
2. Housing project.  When I read "housing estate" in a British-authored book, my first instinct is not to think of the projects.  "Estate" sounds so much nicer, but I'm sure that's because I don't have the relevant cultural baggage.

More Disclosure: I received a review copy of The Blood of the Lamb from Blue Rider Press (Penguin) via NetGalley.

quick thoughts on a few recent reads (all from the public library)

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

An e-audiobook from the library. (Ebooks I can probably take or leave, but e-audiobooks I love).

The Chosen One is a work of contemporary fiction aimed at the young adult-audience. Set in a polygamist community and dealing with the abuse and abuse of power rampant within it, The Chosen One reads like a made-for-TV movie.

A bookmobile features prominently in the story. However the novel's 13-year-old narrator and protagonist insisted on referring to it nine times out of ten as "the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels," which was endearing at first, but quickly became irritating.

Crossed by Ally Condie

I read, but never posted about Matched, the book to which Crossed is a sequel. I hadn't planned to read Matched, one of 2010's mass of dystopian YA releases, after reading another to those releases (Delirium by Lauren Oliver, see post) that featured a society with Society-determined marriages, but it happened to be available for download on a day that I was browsing the library's e-audio offering so I checked it out. Since most of my preference predictions about that crop of books were wrong,¹ it should come as no surprise that I liked Matched.

The authoritarian society depicted in both Matched and Crossed is more complex than those in some of the other dystopian releases (yeah!), much more so that I expected, and its depth is revealed slowly to both protagonist and reader. The series also features a group of individuals referred to as the Archivists (expect a post on that in the near future).

I didn't enjoy Crossed as much as Matched, but considering that Crossed is the second book in a planned trilogy that's almost to be expected.

A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich

Russell came back from the library one day and said that he'd seen a book he thought I might like, a history of Venice, but that he hadn't picked it up for me since he wasn't sure what my reading schedule looked like. My reading schedule, such as it is, is nothing but flexible and I love variety so I asked him to bring the book home next time he went to the library.

I have to admit that I was overwhelmed when he presented me with John Julius Norwich's 736-page A History of Venice: so fat, such fine print. Norwich starts with early settlements in the general area of the Venetian Republic (late Roman period) and follows through until Napoleon conquers the Republic. I think that I made it through the introduction and four chapters before we had to return the book or suffer over-due fees. I'm not sure that I'll check it out again, though. I suspect that there is another Venetian history out there that would be a better fit for me. From other reviews I've read it seems like Norwich continues to focus on political and military chronology while generally neglecting all the other (in my opinion) more interesting aspects of the Republic's history.

1. I was disappointed by Bumped by Megan McCafferty (see post) and the aforementioned Delirium, both of which I expected to love, and pleasantly surprised by Divergent by Veronica Roth (see post), which I'd more or less decided to pass over and only read because I won a copy from Kaye at paper reader.