Late Winter Wrapup

Okay, technically Spring doesn't start until March 21 and it is snowing and blowing this weekend in Colorado, but it is March so I'm calling Spring!

Since my last roundup, I've read some terrific books (and one dud, The Marble Faun, which got its own post).

The Heron's Cry, by Ann Cleeves - #2 in her new mystery series featuring Matthew Venn and set in Dorset. I enjoyed the first book in the series, The Long Call, and the second book was just as good, with an interesting plot, interesting characters, and endearing returning characters. I love how in just two books, I can see growth and change in Matthew. I love it when the main character in a series is not stagnant--it makes their world that much more real. Cleeves really knows what she's doing.

The Family, by Naomi Krupitsky - I loved this book so much. Two Italian-American girls (Sofia and Antonia) literally growing up together in Brooklyn in the first part of the 20th century. Interestingly, they were born just a couple of years before my own mother, who was born in 1923, and so in reading about their lives in a city I could track her life in a city (Montreal). Thankfully, my own mother's life, while not a bed of roses when she was young, didn't have the pall of the Italian Mafia (the Family, of the title) hanging over it. I was so frustrated by some of the decisions Sofia and Antonia made, but their fallibility made them feel so real to me and the world they lived in so claustrophobic.

La Dolce Vita University: An Unconventional Guide to Italian Culture from A to Z, by Carla Gambescia - this was a Christmas present from my wish list, and it was absolutely a treat to read, from A to Z. The idea is that the author provides mini-essays on a wide variety of topics that are anywhere from a paragraph to a few pages. I loved it, learned a lot, and took my time reading it (just a few pages a night during January and February). Honestly, anyone planning a trip to Italy will not go wrong by reading this before, during, or after the trip. 

Here's a sample of the topics, brought to you by the letter B: 

• Barbells and Bikinis
• Bellini
• Bernini's Angels
• Beatrice (Love at First Sight)
• Botticelli's Venus
• Bonfire of the Vanities
• Burano's Candy-Colored Casas
• Bolognese...Sauce or Dog?

A Town Called Solace, by Mary Lawson - set in northern Ontario, way northern Ontario, I loved this story told by three people, an 8-year old girl, a sixty-something woman, and a thirty-something man. The man is given the house next door to the girl by the woman and their lives intersect in ways that are interesting, affirming, and comforting. I know nothing else about the other books that Lawson has written, but her bio on GoodReads says she is a distant relative of my beloved L.M. Montgomery, so I will be digging into her backlist for sure!

Sharpe's Tiger, by Bernard Cornwell - This isn't the first book about hero Richard Sharpe in the series set during the Napoleonic Wars but it is the first chronologically. Set in southern India, the action concerns the British attack on Mysore in 1799 during their campaign to bring the entire subcontinent under British rule and become a jewel in their crown. While the storytelling is first rate, and Richard Sharpe is an intriguing hero (not pure as the driven snow by any means), I was reading this with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia as a backdrop. Cornwell didn't employ stereotypes or paint the British aggression as anything other than it was, but it was still a bit weird to read the book with the current world situation unfolding. I do plan to read more in the series and Cornwell is a terrific historical writer.