Deb is friends with his wife, actually.

yeah? Her books look fun, from what I just read on Amazon. I'm adding her to my list of authors to look into.

Chabon's new book, that he's hoping to finish this summer, sounds interesting. He was speaking to a Jewish audience last night, and the new book takes place in the 1940's, post WWII, and supposes that a large group of Jewish refugees settled in Alaska, making their community there. You could sort of hear the audience vaguely interested, and then he said "and the state of Israel was never formed," and there was this audible intake of breath.

So instead of Palestinians, they'd have Inuit, caribou and polar bears; instead of the desert, northern lights. OK, as fiction that sounds... really cool. I want to read Kavalier anyway. Too bad I have about 40 books in the TBR queue right now.

Me, I'm reading one of the books that I got at Powell's...it's called "The Rising of the Moon", and I'm about halfway through it--it was filed as sci-fi, but it's not, really, other than being set in the future. A future that supposes Ireland got overtaken by the Catholic church and got mad oppressive to the women.

It's *dreadful*. And rather ridiculous. But the political speeches are fun.

I'm reading No Bone Unturned, which is a hagiography biography, sort of, of Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian. It's fairly well-written, in an engaging journalistic style, but the endless fawning over Owsley make me grind my teeth.

It also annoys me when the writer gives an exact transcription of a conversation that happened several years before he started writing the book. How could this possibly be accurate?

The big issue in the book is the legal battle over the disposition of Kennewick Man, who was discovered on federal land in 1995 or so. The writer really does spend a lot of time hammering away at the government and the tribes, and making the scientists look perfectly sensible and wise. I know from experience that neither the legal issues nor the science were quite as simple as he's making them out to be.

Although it was fun to see a woman I used to work with show up in the book.

All that said, interesting book so far. Just not perfect.

Yup, Ayelet Waldman. We're doing a literary festival together in December. Ayelet is also my source for kosher grocery locations, when Nilly is here. She writes the Mommy Track mysteries, which are very good fun; her crossover book is called "Daughter's Keeper" and is very powerful.

Her husband, besides being one of my favourite writers on planet Earth, is also brilliant. And a cutehead. Kavelier and Klay turns me into jello, every single time.

I just finished The Murder Room, PD James' latest Dalgliesh mystery, and was frankly underwhelmed. The reviews I'd seen made it sound like she was back in top form, but I don't agree. Or perhaps she is and I'm just not enjoying these books as much anymore.

Her younger characters are not particularly believable in how they talk or think. And the sooper sekrit sex club plot element made me yawn. How many times have I seen that in mysteries?

But, as usual, her settings are marvelous - London and the (fictional) Dupayne Museum are beautifully done. And the tidbits of information about famous murder cases of the 30's made me want to go out and read more about those.

Oh, while I'm at it, one more gripe. In this book Adam Dalgliesh is all gooey over a professor named Emma whom he met in the last book, Death in Holy Orders. What I want to know is whatever happened to Cordelia, the female PI she wrote a few books about? I loved that character & there were hints that she & Dalgliesh were attracted to each other... but she seems to have disappeared completely. Humph.

I found The Godfather in our work lunchroom/library so I picked it up. I'm actually quite engrossed in it. And it's quite porny, right at the beginning!

And it's quite porny, right at the beginning!

I read it in jr. high. And learned quite a bit. There's also a passage in the middle that's very -- educational.

wrod. Good times.