July 3rd

Fra Bartolomeo's portrait of the crazed monk Savonarola (who plays a significant part in The Agony and the Ecstasy), as seen in Florence's San Marco Museum, 1498.  

It's 4th of July weekend, and all I really wanna do is sit around and watch TV, read Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and listen to music and dance with Gabriel.  All this rain! 


I read nine books while I was in Italy, did I mention that? 


- Tess Gerritsen's The Surgeon, the first entry in the Rizzoli & Isles series, a solid outing - though Isles isn't in it. 

- Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, an overlooked, underread novel involving a certain painting in the Louvre.  Fun stuff, though undeniably silly.  But, yes, I do want to read Brown's Inferno.

- Pat Barker's Regeneration (1991), the first in her acclaimed WWI trilogy.  Strong stuff.  A canny, probing interweaving of history and fiction, this book centers on the real-life psychiatrist Dr. William Rivers and his relationship with other soldiers home from the front, including vocal anti-war poet Sigfried Sassoon. 

- Irving Stone's last biographical novel, 1985's Depths of Glory, which charts the life - in minute detail - of Camille Pissarro.  You definitely learn a lot when you read a Stone book, I'll say that much.  More non-fiction than fiction, the book is a tribute to Stone's fanatical research skills.  As a novel, it's clunky, of course, but, hey, if you want to learn about everything Impressionism...

- Laura Lippman's first Tess Monaghan mystery, 1997's Baltimore Blues, a well-written, engaging novel that lets a reader unfamiliar with the well-regarded author bask in her knowledge of all things Baltimore. 

- Simon Kernick's Relentless (2007), a fast-paced but forgettably dumb thriller about a meek British man hunted by thugs.

- Jeffrey Archer's 1979 blockbuster Kane & Abel, one of my favorite books of the year and the main reason I'm now an Archer fan for life.  It's an epic that charts the collision course set upon by two men born on the same day, of vastly differently environments and circumstances.  Fun, soapy, incapable of being set aside.  If you like Ken Follett, you'll like Archer. 

- Ruth Rendell wrote as Barbara Vine for the first time in 1986's stunning A Dark-Adapted Eye, a stew of hothouse Vine themes: adultery, murder, troubled pasts.  Impeccable prose, convoluted backstories, remorseless characters, that cold, cold tone that has been described as "an alien touch in the dark."

- Harlan Coben's No Second Chance (2003), my favorite novel by him outside of Tell No One.  An action-packed grabber about a man whose wife is killed and daughter abducted, it's a page-turner, a mystery that isn't back-heavy with twists, which Coben tends to employ with overkill.  This one's good from start to finish. 

Ah, Italy.  Thanks for the reading...

Italy for me in 100 words?   Hills, David, Pozzo, brie and crackers, Trevi Fountain, Conad, students, Giotto, Angelico, Hart of Dixie, croissants, air drying, Irving Stone, cats, Botticelli, ATMs, Duccio, calf muscles, small glasses, buttered noodles, Daft Punk, views, Pienza, Martini, San Popolo, fleece, sorted trash, Il Sasso (don't ask), TUCs (again... don't ask), Auto Grille, waiting, bathroom searches, tuna, shower seats, Caravaggio, metro strike, Fortress, De Chirico, Signorelli, first course, stroller, Saint Francis, Camposanto, Michelangelo, forced bonding, alcohol, gelato, butt bleeding, Cinque Terre, salt tax, Pisano, Bernini, yogurt, Pink's "Try," sweat, late busses, Piazza Grande, duomos, Cortona, chess, Yahtzee, pizza, Sistine, "I'm hot," cups, Bagno, Fanta, Raphael, Maestas, baptisteries, chocolate. 

Bad reviews for the new Lone Ranger movie, with Johnny Depp apparently trotting out his Jack Sparrow-schtick for that franchise's director Gore Verbinski.  It's really long, too - 2 hours and a 20 minutes - for nostalgic escapist summer "fun."  But, really: Who is the audience for this thing?  Who under the age of, say, 50, remembers - let alone, likes - anything about the Lone Ranger?    




Image courtesy of: 

http://www.friendsofart.net/static/images/art1/fra-bartolomeo-portrait-of-girolamo-savonarola.jpg