i am now reading andrea camilleri's The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries)
, an inspector motalbano mystery. so far, in my reading of the series, the same translator, stephen sartarelli is responsible for bringing all of the novels to the english reading public. thank you.
the terra-cotta dog is the second in the series. the publisher, penguin books, could do readers a great favor by numbering the novels. you don't have to read them in chronological order, but since they do, ever so slightly, build up certain characters or refer to them, it would be helpful.
this novel continues salvo montalbano's saga as crime inspector in the fictional town of viagata, scicily. it begins with a call for a private meeting between montalbano and tano the greek, a well-known mafioso, who wants to be captured so that he can get good hospital treatment. again as is typical of this series, the detective does not move linearly toward solving the crimes of tano's death and the supermarket robbery. in fact, many more crimes and interesting characters intervene.
true to his character as set up in the other novels of the series, montalbano spends a great deal of time eating (eating by himself and eating food he does not prepare) and swimming. me, too. maybe that's why i like him.
the book was written in 1996 and translated in 2002. it is 331 pages.
i am also reading thomas hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (Signet Classics)
. this is a novel i hated when i had to read it and other hardy stories as an undergraduate at northwestern university. now i am reading it with pleasure. who knew that thomas hardy had a sense of humor?
, an inspector motalbano mystery. so far, in my reading of the series, the same translator, stephen sartarelli is responsible for bringing all of the novels to the english reading public. thank you.
the terra-cotta dog is the second in the series. the publisher, penguin books, could do readers a great favor by numbering the novels. you don't have to read them in chronological order, but since they do, ever so slightly, build up certain characters or refer to them, it would be helpful.
this novel continues salvo montalbano's saga as crime inspector in the fictional town of viagata, scicily. it begins with a call for a private meeting between montalbano and tano the greek, a well-known mafioso, who wants to be captured so that he can get good hospital treatment. again as is typical of this series, the detective does not move linearly toward solving the crimes of tano's death and the supermarket robbery. in fact, many more crimes and interesting characters intervene.
true to his character as set up in the other novels of the series, montalbano spends a great deal of time eating (eating by himself and eating food he does not prepare) and swimming. me, too. maybe that's why i like him.
the book was written in 1996 and translated in 2002. it is 331 pages.
i am also reading thomas hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (Signet Classics). this is a novel i hated when i had to read it and other hardy stories as an undergraduate at northwestern university. now i am reading it with pleasure. who knew that thomas hardy had a sense of humor?
this time around, it is also interesting to me that bathsheba, the outspoken, beautiful, and independent heroine, falls for a uniform (troy) in much the same way some of jane austen's young ladies do. i'm guessing that this is a true reflection of part of english life.
during the process of reading far from..., we went to see the ohio light opera company perform gilbert and sullivan's iolanthe, which is in part a satire of pastoral romances, which is in part what hardy is writing. was this written before or after moby dick? should i say that hardy does for sheep farming what melville does for whaling? or is it that melville does for whaling what hardy does for sheep faming? i close with a note on writing. this crossed my e-mail path a few days ago. it is from a posting of a poem a day. the writer is talking about the author elizabeth gilbert and quotes her as saying: "As for discipline — it's important, but sort of overrated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. [...] Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn't take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness."
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