books....

ok, so.....i brought my driving to-and-from work book on cd in the house on friday evening so that i could finish it up....yeah, i had 2 discs to go before it was over, but i was anxious to find out how it ended....The Messenger by Daniel Silva.....part of a series of mystery-thrillers that feature an art restorer/spy for the state of Israel Gabriel Allon......i heard about this series on npr in a 'books you ought to read' sort of piece......though the library has all of the books in this series, i prefer to listen to them on cd so that i do not miss any of the clues and nuances that often allude me when i read book in print.....with actual books is it too easy to skim through the pages to get the gist of the story line.....and while this method gets the job done by the deadline (read this as bookclub meetings).....i do lose out on much of the word pictures.....such is probably the case with the book i read yesterday after weeding out the hydrangea bed.....A Parchment of Leaves by Silas House.....i was ensconced in the red lounger on my new terrace, with a glass of wine....and i managed to get through the book from start to finish.....ideally i would reread the book to get all that i missed the first time, but i have no interest in reading about these characters a second time.....and i will go to book club having finished this assignment, and i will bite my tongue when the cozy, flowery prose is talked up to the point of worship.....my oldest child refered to this same author's previous work as precious prose.....meaning that with ky authors we are less apt to judge the work critically than we would the work of out-of-staters.....enough of precious prose....i am on to the second book suggested on npr as thrillers worthy of my time.....The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.....written by a Swede who turned in to his publisher three novels in a series and then promptly died....i had to start over in order to remember the plot as it has unfolded thus far.....the time line has jumped back and forth a few too many times for my taste.....the prose is spare..which i much prefer to the alternative......to the point.....too bad the library did not have this book on cd......i would have enjoyed listening to this plot unfold...