The Scent of Rain and Lightning

Her three uncles have come to tell Jody Linder that Billy Crosby, the man who murdered her father and probably her mother when she was three years old, has been released from prison. Billy is coming back to Rose, Kansas, the small town where Jody grew up with her grandparents, Annabelle and Hugh Linder.

Annabelle, Hugh (and the uncles) have given Jody as much love and protection as they could after the loss of her parents, at the same time living with their grief and anger over losing their first born son and daughter-in-law.

They can't protect her from Billy's return, but the Linder family is nothing if not protective and loyal to their own.

I felt privileged to read as the story developed, from Jody's first hearing about Billy's return, back to seeing the Linder family as they lived through the death and loss of two family members and then returning to the present to the events that played out after his return.

Pickard is a master at skillfully weaving past and present, telling about the Linder's lives from the events leading up to the violent night when Hugh-Jay died and Laurie disappeared to the present when Billy Crosby reappears on the scene.

I won't say any more about the story, and I urge you to do as my partner does, don't read things that will give anything away, such as reviews or even the back cover. I went to the author's website this morning and read a review that gave info I'm glad I didn't know while I was reading. Sometimes it's better not to know much about a book before reading it.

The ending was a teensy bit too tidy for me, however I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the Linder family, the other residents of Rose (including the Testament Rocks, which almost seemed like a character themselves), and the night that defined their lives.

A good read!

The Scent of Rain and Lightning will be released May 4, 2010.

Satisfying List of Books

I keep a list of books I've read...below is what I've read so far in 2010.

I have a sense of accomplishment when I look at the list. This is a nice contrast to my usual feeling of frustration and feeling overwhelmed so often at work. There so many books that I haven't read and there are so many books that I want to read and I know I cannot get to all of them.

Yet I have gotten to these...

The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers
The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor
Cowboy and Wills by Monica Holloway
Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith
Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger
One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Impatient With Desire by Gabrielle Burton
Imperfect Endings by Zoe Fitzgerald Carter
Tweak by Nic Sheff
Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato
I Want to be Left Behind by Brenda Peterson
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Divine Misfortune by A. Lee Martinez
Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry
Making Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa
Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Some of the books on the list didn't really do it for me...The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Impatient With Desire, Even the Dogs, and even The Elegance of the Hedgehog...evidently just not the right books for me.

Others were fairly forgettable...Secrets of Eden, One Amazing Thing...

Some I really enjoyed reading...Every Last One (her descriptions of being a mother are spot on), The Map of True Places, Eternal on the Water (there were some flaws in the book, but I really liked the main characters), Mathilda Savitch (I really liked Mathilda, though I've talked to others who didn't...it's so personal)...

And many were lovely, even luminous...The Last Chinese Chef (the descriptions of food!), Making Rounds With Oscar (describing living with someone with dementia, though maybe it resonated for me because I was one of those people), A Reliable Wife (luminous in a creepy sort of disturbing way)...

Right now I'm reading The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard, which is really enjoyable. It opens with Jody Linder in bed in the middle of the day. She's in bed with her (sort of) boyfriend. Her three uncles drive up to the house, which does not bode well, not only because she's in bed with a boyfriend that they don't know about, but the uncles, being ranchers, are rarely together in the middle of the day. In addition, they are dressed up, which is another bad sign. They've come to tell her that Billy Crosby, the man who killed her parents when she was 3 years old, has been released from prison and is coming back to their small town in Kansas.

Scent of the Missing by Susannah Charleson is what I'll be reading next. That was my St. George's Day present from my sweetie. The subtitle is Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog. This will hopefully be a partial dog fix until we can get a dog of our own.

Read on!

Bookcrossing!

I just got back from the post office where I mailed six packages of books, all to people I don't know.

This is a Bookcrossing thing.

Bookcrossing http://www.bookcrossing.com is a place to keep track of books you've read (or owned, or that have come into your hands) by registering them and then journaling what happens to them. You can keep them (permanent collection), you can reserve them, and you can list them as available. And, you can release them.

Books can be released into the wild. Wild releasing is when you take a book you have, register it (so it has a Bookcrossing ID number), and then leave it somewhere for someone else to find, like maybe in a coffee shop or on a park bench.

A controlled release is when you know who will be the recipient of your book(s), and you are mailing them or perhaps hand delivering them to a specific person. This is what I did today. Several of the packages were RABCK's, (Random Acts of Bookcrossing Kindness), where we looked at books we were done with (a Scott Turow, Harry Dolan's Bad Things Happen, and audio version of Muriel Barbery's Gourmet Rhapsody, Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates, to name a few), searched wishlists on Bookcrossing, checked another site to get addresses, and sent them to people who want them. They do not know that they are coming.

It is delightful to be a recipient of an RABCK. And, we feel as though we've done a good deed when we send books off to someone else. When they are received, people journal that they've received them and are grateful and pleased. So maybe our good deeds aren't purely altruistic in intent. I love being able to track where books go and have gone and what others think of them. My book that's traveled the farthest? I took Nicole Mones's book, A Cup of Light, to Indonesia from the U.S. and (wild) released it there. It got 'caught' and someone took it to Italy.

One of the books I sent off today was Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife, one I'd been wanting to read for months. That book is part of a bookring. In a bookring, one person who has the book posts that they are willing to make it into a ring. Interested parties sign up, and the bookring 'host' then determines who gets it first, second, and so on. When it arrives, bookring participants are expected to journal that they received the book, read the book, journal that they read it and what they thought of it, then contact the next person in the ring and send it on its merry way. (By the way I really liked A Reliable Wife...kind of gothic and mysterious and haunting. This may be a book that sticks with me for a while...)

One of the downsides? The next person to receive A Reliable Wife lived in the United Kingdom, which is one of, if not THE most expensive places to send books from here. I could have bought the book for less than I paid to send it. (You can opt not to send to other countries, or whether or not to participate in bookrings at all. It's fairly reasonable to mail books within the U.S., especially if media mail is used.)

The very best thing about Bookcrossing? It's where I met my partner. Bookcrossers meet every month or so in this area and have for years. I attended many a Bookcrossing gathering, and so got to meet some of my fellow Bookcrossers. Therapist was at one of the meetings several years ago. We have been together now for several years.

Can I promise that you'll meet the love of your life at a Bookcrossing meeting? Well, no. However I CAN say that with Bookcrossing you'll very likely enjoy your books' traveling adventures, which are in addition to the adventures you already find from books on the pages inside.

My New Favorite Holiday!

Last year an advance reader's copy of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's new book (well, new to us in the US), The Angel's Game was sent to the bookstore. With it was a letter from the publisher, describing the release date (April 23) as coinciding with St George's Day, also known as World Book Day or International Day of the Book...

Wait, there's a WORLD BOOK DAY??? And no one told me??? This had to be the best holiday ever...

Wikipedia says...

St George's feast is ranked higher in England and in certain other regions. It is the second most important National Feast in Catalonia, where the day is known in Catalan as La Diada de Sant Jordi and it is traditional to give a rose and a book to a loved one. This tradition inspired UNESCO to declare this the International Day of the Book, since April 23, 1616 was also the date of death of both the English playwright William Shakespeare (according to the Julian calendar) and the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes (according to the Gregorian calendar).

Okay, International Book Day, World Book Day, different names, same great idea...

Carlos Estrada from the Barcelona School gives more background...

St. George's Day has been celebrated since 1436. St. George is the patron Saint of Catalonia

• Catalonia : In Catalonia St. George's day coincides with the Fair of the Book and the Rose. On this day every man offers a rose to his loved one (wife or fiancée), and in return she gives him a book. The book is in memory of Cervantes. This custom was started in 1926, to commemorate Cervantes death (author of "Don Quixote").

A holiday where one is supposed to give a loved one a book? Not just a present, but a BOOK. I'm surprised bookstores all over the US haven't jumped all over this one...but I digress...

The Legend.

The 23rd April is a date that has always been linked, either directly or indirectly, to literature and popular traditions.

Here is the legend: St. George fights the wicked dragon that held the princess captive. Finally St. George kills the dragon and on the spot where the dragons blood was spilled a rose grew as a symbol of love and friendship.

But what has really given importance to this date is that it is now considered to be the "World Book Day".

On 23rd April books are sold in the streets on long stalls prepared specially for the grand occasion. Many people take advantage of this day, even though they may not normally be regular readers, to buy and enjoy a book. It is one way of encouraging people to read.

This is also a popular date to launch new novels onto the market and many authors take advantage of the fact in order to promote their latest book.
Last, but not least, there is nothing nicer than lovers exchanging a book and a rose.

Indeed!

Right now I am reading Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell. It's kind of a Da Vinci Code for Shakespeare, with a little Don Quixote thrown in there as well.

This is not the book I'll be giving on St George's Day, but it seemed an appropriate one to read as my new favorite holiday approaches.

Happy St George's Day!