Buffalo

Word of the day :

occlusion:  a shutting off or obstructing of something 

Waiting... waiting... waiting...

Always waiting for something here in SE Georgia.  Waiting for the weekend, waiting to get out of town, waiting to her back from a job, waiting to get out of the country... Always waiting...

But, hey, that's why we invented books, right? 

Here are some recent reviews: 

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (2007), Gail Tsukiyama

A poignant, delicately-written (a phrase you can but probably shouldn't mistake for 'slow-paced') novel that follows the lives of two brothers through about twenty-five years of Japanese history.  One brother is interested in being a sumo wrestler and eventually does, becoming the highest-ranked (a yokozuna, which may ring a bell to some wrestling fans of old), while the other brother becomes a highly-skilled mask maker, in demand by the Noh theater actors and artists.  Tsukiyama traces these tight-knit brothers as well as some other characters and does so with skill and command.  It's just an easy novel to read, never quite a soap opera, and it was nice to see the WWII experience and aftermath from the non-western side. 

Drawing Conclusions (2011), Donna Leon

Leon has kept her Inspector Guido Brunetti mystery series going for twenty-years now, with this year's The Golden Egg the 23rd entry in the bestselling, critically-admired series.  I'm a newbie to the mysteries, and I was rewarded for my efforts with drew me to the book to begin with: a smart, lived-in portrait of Venice.  All the books take place in "The City of Water," and, to Leon, it's both a magical and mundane city, a city of dreams and transients, tourists and thieves, enchantment and faded glory - all of which, I suppose, is what makes it so compelling.  I'm definitely going to read more of these books, even though this one is never anything more than a solid effort - not great, not bad.  Brunetti is investigating the murder of an old woman who housed battered foreign women.  What kind of seamy stuff eventually did her in?  Or does it have something to do with an old will she knew was fake?  Brunetti is an appealing, level-headed character. 

Black Irish, (2013) Stephan Talty

Nonfiction author Talty (who has written books about Napoleon's ill-fated army, Captain Morgan - the pirate, not the liquor - and mulattoes in America, among others) sets his fiction debut in his hometown of Buffalo.  And boy does he know the streets and highways and beliefs of Buffalo inside and out, particularly the clannish neighborhood of Irish Town, which is where his main character, Absalom Kearney, grew up, raised by an Irish cop father.  Kearney, after a stint in Miami, is a detective in faded Buffalo now, working its depressed, often-hostile streets.  A series of gruesome murders has the city panicked, and Kearney is tasked with solving them.  Seems the victims were all members of a nationalist Irish group with ties to the NRA.  Who is picking them off?  And is Kearney's father, a looming, decorated officer now on his last legs, on the list?  Talty is a smart writer and the convincing milieu he limns is the most absorbing part of the novel.  We've seen this plot before - the brilliant serial killer who mutilates his victims and leaves a calling card behind - a hundred times.  Still, the final-act revelation is triumphant.  Stephan Talty, you've hooked for me life now!           

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Crime novel readers, try this quiz: 

http://www.sporcle.com/games/Mavis_Cruet/pen-names

It's hard!  If you can get half right, you really know your stuff! 
(I won't tell you how many I got, but I will say that I am a mystery-novel expert, so I expected to do well...)