These are great days, cold in Minnesota, but great. (Yes we can, President Obama, oh yes, we can.) So now is the time to sneak in mention of Arnaldur Indridason’s new paperback, Voices. (NYTimes Book Review,11-2-08) “Not the Icelandic guy again.” (Groan.) “Not more North Atlantic.” (Midwestern groan.)
Okay, his books are bleak, but North Atlantic sells to Roseledge sailors and his books are smart about Icelanders and well-written and at least one big groaner I talked with is probably going to read it anyhow. I’m going to pass for now and read instead the latest paperbacks set in North Atlantic countries from Swedish Henning Mankell (Firewall) and Norwegian Karin Fossum (The Indian Bride), both of which authors I have labeled “too bleak” in the past. Then I actually read Hening Mankell’s One Step Behind last Spring and liked it, partly because his turning-fifty detective is making a new friend at the end of the book, surely a sign of possibilities or hope, if not exactly merriment or joy. Maybe Mankell’s books are austere rather than bleak.
Fig. #50. Tenants Harbor public landing in spring, surrounded by the promise of dinghies in summer. Austere, maybe; never bleak.
Reading Karin Fossum’s latest may challenge my previous assumptions, too, because I liked Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses which was also by a Norwegian and had a Norwegian voice, my Norwegian friends tell me. It was surely austere, but the characters were resilient and saw possibilities. Resilience added to the expected forbearance may be another part of the bleak/austere difference. So I’ll try Karin Fossum.
An aside: Pettrerson’s several pages during which the now-older son is preparing breakfast for an unexpected guest at his isolated cabin reminds me of a Jamie Wyeth painting. The former’s spare language balances the latter’s rich colors as each features telling, promising details, but only Jamie Wyeth sometimes includes whimsy or joy. This makes him a great Tenants Harbor neighbor and through this link, a (somewhat indirect) reason to tie Per Petterson‘s book to Tenants Harbor.
I am reading Amir Aczel’s The Jesuit and the Skull about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, evolution and the discovery of the Peking Man. Teilhard de Chardin is one of my heroes. In the late ’50’s-early 60’s, I saw that he saw a promising future for man, especially the mind of man, and in the ’70’s when I really needed it, I found an essay in which he argued for the inheritability of a zest for living. Ninety pages in, Teilhard de Chardin is deliberating the complex, sometimes conflicting ideas of science and religion that made him whole, if often in trouble. Around these deliberations, Aczel writes a great snotty Vatican read. This one is definitely worth a little less sleep at night.
or 
, I forgot Elizabeth Peter’s Amelia Peabody series set in Egypt’s early 20th C. pyramid country (RB has 
), and visiting archaeologist Eric regaled all with tales of the black pharaohs on the “other side” of the Nile, in spite of my several loud “ahems” because RB had no books on the topic. All of this was such fun. The boating couple chose Annie Dillard’s 
and John McPhee’s 
and suggested we start a salon. The front porch looking over the harbor invites magical conversations.
, and created a new genre: dysfunctional family chick lit.
is our favorite Jack Reacher novel.
) and Reacher make comparisons difficult. Thinking fast of other edgy detectives who chafe at working “inside the box,” I was shouting “How about Ian Rankin’s Rebus (e.g. 
), or C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett (e.g. 
)” as the boaters were escaping down the walk. They shouted, “Next summer,” and waved.
is better than 
because First-mate Chase’s report was self-serving.
.
(chosen from the family exchange) and is the second person to recommend it for Roseledge Books. Good water-travel book, great tsunami. She’s also reading Julia Spencer-Fleming’s 
, the late August book club choice.
which is about deciphering the puzzle in the pattern of a centuries-old garden in Italy. I love it when a book makes me look differently at something I thought I knew enough about. There’s always time for Judge Deborah Knott’s North Carolina adventures in Margaret Maron’s latest, 
. In the wings are Per Petterson’s 
(it has a Norwegian voice, says my Norwegian friend who liked it a lot) interspersed with Daniel Silva’s latest Gabriel Allon adventure, 
that has additional stories titled “The [something] of Betsy Lane” and “Town Poor.” Roseledge Books has three editions of CPF (our locally-claimed classic), but none worked. He’s off to a St. George Historical Society potluck and talk about the Poor Farm of St. George. Maybe SOJ used as a model that very (now defunct) Poor Farm behind the handsome, renovated farm house across from George the Potter’s.
Banville, John. 
