Current reads: The Mother Tongue, More Than You Know, The Consolations of Philosophy.

Current read: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.

There should have been an orchestra behind her but no one noticed its absence. No one would have said her voice sounded better with an orchestra, or that it was better when the room was immaculately clean and lit by candles... The sound was no more beautiful when her voice was limber and warm. Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans. They were thinking of the last time they had heard her sing and longed for the women who had been beside them then. All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear.
~ ~ ~
It didn't matter that he didn't understand the language, he knew what it meant. The words and music fused together and became a part of him. Again and again he sang the chorus, almost whispering for fear someone might hear him, mock him, punish him. He felt this too strongly to think that it was something he could get away with. Still, he wished he could open himself up the way she did, bellow it out, dig inside himself to see what was really there. It thrilled him when she sang the loudest, the highest... He leaned back against the wall, dizzy and electrified. They were for her, these furious erections. Every boy there dreamed of crawling on top of her, filling her mouth with their tongues as they pushed themselves inside her... But for Cesar it was more than that. Cesar knew he was hard for the music. As if music was a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck.

Current read: Atonement by Ian McEwan.

The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.

More to come, seriously.

So, I'm not so great with the updating of this. Since I last posted, I have read not one but two books: The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. I do want to write about them, but I think I need to read them each at least once more before I can say anything about them.

More to come.

At this point, I am about three-quarters of the way through A Traitor to Memory by Elizabeth George. It is excellent. I'm at the point where I can barely keep myself from skimming around the end of the book because I can't stand not knowing who the killer is, but I also don't want it to end because I know she's at least a year away from the next book in the series.

My mother first introduced me to George's novels in 1994 or 1995, and I think she already had four books out by that point. I devoured them, one right after the other, in the space of about six weeks. George writes richly detailed classic British mysteries, which is astonishing given that she is a native Californian. What I love about her novels, besides the incredible use of the English language (I like to think I have a fairly wide vocabulary, but I always reach for a dictionary at least once per book), is that she generally spends at least as much time delving into the background of the recurring characters as she does on the plot of the mystery. Her fourth novel in the series, A Suitable Vengeance, is actually the first chronologically, reaching back into her main character's past, explaining some things that were only hinted at in the first three.

Of course, I say that, and the one I'm currently reading is a notable exception. There has been very little on the personal lives of the regulars, which is fine because the mystery itself is so intricate and so captivating. That's the other thing about George: these are not lightweight, throwaway mysteries. You have to pay attention, you have to work at it, and I love that. It turns the book into something you experience, rather than just read.