Snippets from Booklandia

I went on another Walter Mosley tear and read his 2 newest books, All I Did Was Shoot My Man and The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. The first book is the usual Mosley detective story, with so many characters, plot twists and red herrings that your head spins. Mine does, anyway. The second book is a meditation by an elderly man who is approaching the end of his life. He gets special medication that allows him to remember the present, which he doesn't have a grip on. He has a strong lock on the past. The main characters in both books suffer from fevers, which ultimately give them more mental clarity than they had before.

At the recommendation of Patty Sidor, I read On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry. It's a beautifully written account of an Irish woman who travels to the US when she's 20 or so and lives in Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, D.C. and finally Bridgehampton, L.I. It's not a happy book, since her life is a string of grief, but the writing makes you feel at home in the sadness.

I'm currently reading Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, which is set in the 1600's in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. My problem with this book is that bad things happen but you don't have great writing to soften the blow. I hope that the book I just started, Changoe's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy, is a little more buoyant. It takes place in Havana in 1957 and has Hemingway in it. Bring me a daiquiri, please.