The ending of David Grann’s The Lost City of Z was satisfactory, much like Nicholas Clapp’s The Road to Ubar, but I wanted a book with more search detail, like Ubar. I hate reviewers who review the book they wish the author had written rather than the one the author did write, but hey. Daniel Silva’s latest, The Defector, is one of the harshest of the Gabriel Allon series. Back-of-the-book disclaimer or not, author Silva crafts a contemporary Russia with a Putin-like President that reads like a newspaper report. Maybe I should read Martin Cruz Smith’s Stalin’s Ghost just to clarify.
Yrsa Sdigurdardottir’s Icelandic mystery, Last Rituals, is a little bumpy which may reflect translation troubles or first novel awkwardness, but it builds support for my contention that the Irish were there (and here) before the Vikings. I’ve just ordered Frans Bengtsson’s The Long Ships which, according to alert RBR, includes Vikings and Irish in the same medieval saga. Could be good.
Fig. #89. High tide in the cove with "the wrecks" to the right of the tree with the ever larger overhang across the road in front of Roseledge Books and on p.7 of Coaster Days by Roy Meservey who built and lived in Roseledge until 1961.
For those of you mourning a summer without a new Julia Spencer-Fleming adventure with Reverend Clare and Chief Russ, I have two words: DIANA GABALDON. The reasons are many: a) she writes a series (the Outlander series is, so far, seven behemoths); b) the main characters are a couple, Clare (note) and Jamie Fraser; and c) Henry Knox, who lived nearby in Thomaston after the Revolutionary War, makes an appearance in this latest volume, An Echo in the Bone. (You may remember Henry Knox from David McCullough’s 1776.) I’ve just finished this latest Claire and Jamie Fraser adventure, an 800-page fatty, which I managed to read with one hand by whirring my feet up and my back way back in my new recliner which also has heat and massage buttons. Roseledge Books, of course, has the series, but only one copy of most of the volumes, so hurry.
You may recall the wine tasting late last summer when RB decided that Le Poule Blanc (with suitable label) would be our wine of this summer. So far, so good. We serve it and friends drink it, even after the wine seller referred to it as the chicken wine, albeit the POPULAR chicken wine. Low humidity and northwest breeze today, maybe a nip in the air. Perfect. The webcam seems to interfere with the modem, so until cleverer friends come next week, no webcam. If you want to see the harbor, you’ll just have to visit in person