Still Reading Murder Mysteries by the Light of the Naked Moon

Browsing through the two week take-outs in the library, picked up Naked Moon by Domenic Stansberry only because it was a new moon, the sturgeon moon this month. Unfamiliar with the author, but he has won an Edgar and been nominated for both a Shamus and Hammett. This story gets off to a slow and confusing start, maybe because I am picking up the series mid-stride. Set in an old part of San Fransisco, a former Italian now Chinese neighborhood, the lead, Dante Mancuso of the pelican nose, faces intrigue from "the company" ... an ill-defined organization with either/or or both underworld and governmental ties. Trust no one. Dante is not a noble protagonist but surely a memorable one. I have reserved three of Stansberry's other books to continue my delving into this threatening milieu.

Meanwhile, I also finished the book for book club Tuesday night, a Booker prize winner, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Funny, I mentioned this book to Hamagrael who was vacationing "back home" this week, and she said she avoided this book hearing about its vulgar language. I told her the book is written as if by Paddy at age ten so the swearing is juvenile bravado, testing out dirty words almost like the boys do at Catholic grammar school learning a new word in vocabulary lessons. The tone of this book is marvelous. All the "growing up" stories that are familiar, be it Tom Sawyer, Tin Drum or Painted Bird, still leak the dexterity of a class A writer. This book not only has the language but also the random memory structure and absence of motives that are the realities of a young boy's mind. I will not enthusiastically endorse the book, though, being more intrigued by another Booker winner I am reading, The Famished Road by Ben Oki.

Meanwhile, ran a double feature on my DVD last night, finally getting a long-reserved copy of A Single Man and chancing on a copy of Changeling. I wanted to see the former because I thought I liked Julianne Moore; I was reluctant to watch the latter because I strongly dislike Jolie. What a surprise. I guess I forgot Eastwood directed Changeling and it was a perfectly, if violently rendered true story that holds its own against the greats of LA corruption, as good as Chinatown.

Funny while Hamagrael was home, we were both reading Victor Hugo, she Toilers of the Sea that I picked up for her here since her library system isn't deep, and me reading Last Day of a Condemned Man on the Hesperus Press list. While neither of us have finished, we both remarked on the blaring anti death penalty polemic that saturates these books.

I feel like the lethargy of summer is ending and I want to read more. Just one more weekend of picnics and parties and my life hopefully resumes its more natural rhythms.