Slacks for Ella Funt

Reginald Hill’s Dalziel/Pascoe series is one I’ve been reading for a while, primarily because it combines some elements of cozy mysteries, classic British mysteries, and contemporary urban procedurals. This one, however looses a bit as a mystery because I was much more curious whether Hill would kill Dalziel, his main character, than about the terrorist group plot that Pascoe was trying to solve.

E got a commission to do a big piece for the New Yorker Passport to the Arts benefit for the High Line. He had a little over a week to do it, but they wanted him to finish it at the cocktail party—sort of a live art thing. When they said that it would be 8 ft. by 8ft., neither of us really pictured how big that really was. It took up our entire living room floor after all the furniture was moved out. Luckily, it came in four 4 ft. x 4 ft. pieces, or it never would have made it up the stairs.
The event itself was fun. In the afternoon, there was a gallery walk. We each had little passport books and each gallery that was part of the event had a rubber stamp of a piece of art that they stamped in our books. I’d never explored the Chelsea galleries before, so it was a good way to look around. Some friends joined us for the cocktail party and E finished his painting in time to have a few drinks with us. It’s funny, all of these sponsored parties seem to be sponsored by some kind of alcohol that you’d never drink otherwise, generally because it’s not very good. This was sponsored by something called St. Germain, some variety of supersweet liqueur. Blech. I think I had a few sips of the St. Germain cocktail before swapping it for wine.
They auctioned off E’s piece in a silent auction, in four pieces. All four pieces sold, which was very exciting.

Joanna and I saw this lost dog poster while walking in a park in Portland.
I’m afraid Potato might have been dognapped—she doesn’t really seem like the kind of dog to wander off on her own. Or move much in general.

This one kept me up late finishing it. I hadn’t finished a book in one shot in a while. It’s a real page turner, and the twist ending still surprised me.
In the seventies, two sisters disappeared from a mall and were never heard from until a hit-and-run driver 30 years later claimed to be one of the sisters. The action shifts between the present and the past and shifts between the perspectives of multiple characters. Lippman manages to give just enough clues as the book goes along to keep me curious and reading, without giving too much away.

I’ve enjoyed the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series for teens, so I thought I’d try Brashares’s first book for adults. It was a speedy, easy read and fun to read about Fire Island, since I’d just been there. But I kept forgetting that the characters were supposed to be in their early twenties, not teenagers, because they think and act like teenagers, not like adults. It felt like reading a YA book, which would have been fine if the characters weren’t supposed to be older.

We’ve been watching Anthony Bourdain’s show on the Travel channel occasionally and enjoying it, so I decided to pick up his book. It’s a bit of a rarity among food books. Most food writers tend to fetishize and obsess over the flavors, colors, and textures of food. Bourdain seems to have gone into cooking and restaurants not out of love of food, but as a means for living a lifestyle of drugs, drinking, sex, and macho. Essentially, he seems to have picked it as an alternative to being a rock star. I was pretty entertained by his stories of excess and craziness in various restaurants along the way. The only complaint I had was that the book seemed to be compiled of essays and the chronology of events was a bit confusing.

I enjoyed Packer’s first book, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, much more than I expected to, given that it seemed a little Lifetime-movie-of-the-week. It had a theme that almost always appeals to me: a woman from a small town, striking out on her own to the big city.
Packer’s characters are as fleshed out and detailed as I could ever want. However, I didn’t find either of the two main characters, Sarabeth and Liz, to be as sympathetic as the narrator of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. They both seemed a little tiresome, and the book revolves around their relationship and Liz’s relationship with her depressed teenage daughter. It all kind of added up to a lot of people sitting around thinking about their feelings and not a lot of plot.

My book group decided to switch from reading books set in New York City to books by Latin American authors. This was the first pick. I was pretty excited about it based on the back cover description—a group of strangers, together on a cruise ship, not sure where it’s going. It seemed like it could be a surrealist, Latin American Murder on the Orient Express. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite the Christie-esque romp I was hoping for, and it didn’t quite have the depth of character development I want in a more serious book, though the comments on the class system were interesting. What wasn’t interesting was the chapter long philosophical musings of Persio, the character who seemed to represent the author. I skipped most of those