Just started reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" on Mein Kindle

Highly recommended by a Very Highly Valued Correspondent. It's by Muriel Barbery, a name (and author, obviously) unfamiliar to me. The original is in French, it's been translated by Alison Anderson. Too early for comments, but reading translations is a bit of a departure for me, I'm usually pretty stalwart anglophone. So I'm grateful to the VHVC above for pointing me in a horizon-expanding direction. She always does, but usually in Italian. More comments as the tale unfolds.

Well it's almost too late to get another post into June, isn't it?

It's almost too late for a lot of things. It IS too late to die young, for example - at least James Dean young, or My Dad young. Too late for that altogether, and it makes for some odd musings & cogitations, that. The widely acknowledged "borrowed time" notion, for example, whereby kids of parents who died young pass the marker on their own roads, and probably stop for a bit to contemplate it. "Here's the point on life's journey where the Old Man bailed out" is one way to see it. I suppose it's egocentrism that makes me phrase it that way, surely there are women whose mothers died young who must have the same thoughts; I wonder if the "borrowed time" thing is as prevalent among men whose mothers died young, or women/father pairings of similar situations? But what's all this about, I hear you snicker uncomfortably, as if hoping there'd be something witty and clever or at least diverting hereupon. Well what it's about is that I've discovered that it is, in fact NOT too late to embark on a serious crack at a "life's work" or at least a chunk of it. And that commitment, which I've been tap-dancing around for fifty years or more is liberating in the sense that - at least for a little while - I'm actually taking steps to realize what has 'til now been mostly moping internally. The writing is taking shape with the help of some former strangers with whom I've banded as a "writers' group" and with whom I'm sharing progress and frustration, along with their own progress & frustration. It's very interesting to note that we're a disparate bunch in terms of how much we've actually accomplished: several of the folks have completed multiple narratives so what we're seeing of their work is second or later drafts, one guy hasn't written anything yet, and my piece is definitively "in progress" so they're suffering through the initial composition phase. I think we're all learning something. I may have overcome my "stuck at 2000 words" syndrome, as well as the "if I start writing about the writing I'll never get the writing done" fears. It's good; scary as hell, but good. I'm dealing with the notion that the legitimacy of taking it seriously is entirely up to me, nobody else, and nodoby else has to like it, approve of the effort much less the product, or endorse it, or even acknowledge it.

I finished "Invisible Boy" - the third Madeline Dare book by Cornelia Read.

I liked it, it's a good book, it's very well-written. There are some things I'm still thinking about. For one thing, it's not really much of a mystery. It's pretty plain whodunit pretty early on. Maddie does less investigating than in Field of Darkness, (I haven't read The Crazy School, so no compare & contrast available there). She does a great deal of observing and commenting, and at times the commenting begins to sound & feel a bit like sermonizing. The plot uses a fairly quick & easy device to engage the reader's sympathy: the death of a toddler at the hands of his mother's abusive boyfriend. The evils of crack and poverty abound, as of course they do in real life; but I think we know that. Everybody has to be against little kids getting beaten to death. There's no ethical ambiguity available to Maddie here, as there was in "Field" - there's really no gray area to find her way out of.

Plus, the plot points involving attacks on her, and on a nice little old black lady, great-grandmother of the victim, are not satisfactorily resolved, or even explained. Quite a bit of text is taken up by these events, and having them dismissed as incidental assholery, and justified as neighbor boys looking out for a gang brother and/or the boyfriend of a childhood pal doesn't hang together at all, and turns out very unsatisfactorily. A weakness, in my opinion, but not fatal.

I also think the whole subplot (if it was even that much) involving Maddie's childhood pal and her neo Nazi husband was not sufficiently integrated into the main action. Clearly it was intended to illustrate that the cost of drugs, etc. is not levied only on the poor and black, but the whole relationship was a bit gossamer - it wasn't as well drawn as it might have been, felt rushed through.

The denouement felt rushed through too.

Not as satisfying an outing as the first in the series, though I do think it was wise to keep hubby "Dean" out of town through most of it.

Our Writing Group at the local library spent a delightful 4 hours yesterday

with Cornelia Read, author of Field of Darkness, The Crazy School, and Invisible Boy. She's the creator of Madeline Dare, sort of a "stumbler-upon-nefarious-deeds" who cusses her way through difficult confrontations to see miscreants discovered and justice done. Not a detective, exactly, more of a driver and observer, and an altogether sympathetic character. Ms Read allows as how Maddie is mostly Cornelia, and after a close encounter with the latter, this is plainly true. A most generous sharer of everything from the expected "tips, tricks, and techniques" and personal insights about writing, as well as a great deal of insider dope about the insanity rife in the book trade, and a lot else outside the expected sphere of topics. Spending time with her was well worthwhile for us wannabes, and as much fun as reading her books.

I mailed back the DVD of

"At Last the 1948 Show" this morning. I Was eager to see the "juvenilia" of some of the python crew, though it would be easy to argue that the Python stuff was in fact their juvenilia. As a whole, "1948" doesn't measure up to Python, unsurprisingly. Chapman and Cleese were just barely out of their Footlights training, Idle didn't have very much to do at all, and even Marty Feldman didn't have a handle on how to do much besides look in three directions at once. (I'm not sure Feldman ever did get beyond capitalizing on his "eyes akimbo" to use WC Fields's phrase. Most of his work that I can recall was manic setup of a full-face-on shot that substituted his roving eye for a punchline. But I digress) So I watched bout 40% of what was available, and it didn't get any better, and it didn't promise any hidden/lost gems, so I packed it in & packed it up. I'm glad I watched it, it's always (in my opinion) worthwhile to see how & whence your favorite talents arose.

Dream Journal 6/5/11

So there I was, in a new work situation, and my boss had a specific assignment for me, which he called me about on the phone and told me to come to his office, which I couldn't find, and the plant was spread out over the top of a derelict city - as in superimposed - the skin & bones of the dead city were still in place, and the facilities of the company were here & there in between. The twists and turns of the old city's streets and alleyways and the empty, abandoned diners, luncheonettes, convenience stores (though they were all of a style we would more likely term "mom & pop stores" - of a bygone era, not like 7-11s) and so on were VERY creepy. I couldn't locate my boss's office, nor figure out how to call him on the phone. I wandered a lot, and was some stressed. I"m not sure whether this was lucid or not; not sure either what woke me, nothing particularly shocking or threatening happened in the dream, it was just very frustrating and WAY creepy.

Finished Cornelia Read's Field of Darkness last night.

Very enjoyable it was, very compatible I think I would find myself with its protagonist Madeline Dare. I enjoyed it; I found her style totally compatible with my taste. The story moved very well, settings & characterizations quite well-drawn. I think there may have been more time & place-specific allusions than would serve well for other than an airport book (it's NOT an airport book but might be mistaken for one), but I suspect that at least some of them work without cultural familiarity with the reference (an example, as the protagonist is driving out of town on a particularly grim day in a grim mood, leaves the chapter with the line "All the leaves were brown and the sky was gray" - well that works just fine even if you aren't hip to the John Phillips song. I'm not sure they all did, but I don't think I'll re-read right now to track them all down.

A fun book, but more than just fun, well done & worthwhile, worth reading - glad I bought it & read it.

Good old Wikipedia points out that it's the 28th anniversary of

the destruction of Air Canada flight 797, in a fire on the ground in the Cincinnati-Kentucky Airport, in Boone County Kentucky. Ordinarily I don't think much about such anniversaries, but Stan Rogers happened to be among the fatalities in this particular event, just as his career as "the voice of Canadian folk music" was swinging into high gear. He was 33; had a gorgeous voice, a more than tolerable way with a 12-string, and a real sense of what being Canadian meant (at least for the Anglophone Europeans). Wrote a number of very memorable songs, and is practically worshiped in Canada today (among some of course; I don't think the First Nations or francophone Quebecers care all that much about him, but I could be wrong). Hell of a singer, damn shame he left so early.