Full of myriad musings

Really good day today, because I was able to finish off a long work day with laying a VST track for a friend. Her standard poodle is a cutie & really good tracker. Really fun dog. We left the other two standard poodles at home & I'm sure they were very jealous about being left behind. :) It is so fascinating & magical to watch the dogs work. How do they do this?

Fun stuff came in from the University of Michigan Press today. Really gorgeous books too. I also got a book from Forge, the newest Estleman book, Frames. I love this series & am glad that Estleman's Valentino now has a book of his very own. I could be mistaken, but I think this is the first time in full novel format, because I've read the Valentino short stories in Ellery Queen many times. Those are so great & the book is awesome so far. I'm already on chapter 4, the part where Valentino meets a beautiful girl whose name is Fanta. I just may finish it tonight.

Other books are: Michigan : our land, our water, our heritage, which is full of wonderful essays on what Michigan's natural environment means to some native Michiganians & to people who have moved here. I particularly liked Alison Swan's essay about introducing her daughter Sophie to her first painted turtles. These turtles are beautiful, do look up some pictures if you haven't seen one for yourself. We had a painted turtle in our house for a little while. My mother liked having us know about some of these wild creatures, but always released them back to the wild shortly. I still remember those scratchy little feet, and the feel of that moist skin. Turtles are just amazing creatures. I haven't finished this book yet, but I plan to do so tomorrow. I love many of the authors who are in this book. Should mention too that Nature Conservancy is part of this book & that the profits from buying the book go to the Nature Conservancy.

Other books: Ludington State Park: Queen of the North by the Reeds. Another really amazing nature/photography book. I haven't seen the DVD that goes along with it, but I'll bet it is really cool.

And my canning & preserving books arrived too. I have often helped my mother can, but never done the whole thing myself. I'm looking forward to it this year.

Loren Estleman, Jane Austen, and my Annie update

This is Loren Estleman at the2006 Night of Notables, held at the Library of Michigan. In the very background, you can see a silver haired man in a grey suit, and this is former Governor Milliken. Since I've been talking about Loren Estleman's books in previous posts, I thought I would include his picture here.

Loren was great, and I loved talking to him. In fact, at the earlier reception just a few moments ago, I had walked by his truck and said to him, "Hey, I love your truck!" and he smiled & waved, said "Thank you. The truck was beautiful, a clear bright cherry red, and of course, he is a pretty cool guy. The book he was being honored for is in the Amos Walker series, and is called Nicotine Kiss. Do read it if you can, as nobody does dialog better than he does. And his plots are fun.

Back to Jane Austen, whose letters I am still reading & whose various biographies I'm still reading. Her letters really convey the sheer fun, humor, and wittiness of Jane. She would've been a fun correspondent, had she condescended to write to me. Her biographer comments that one of the things that keeps Jane's novels so timeless is that she does not put many details about food or clothing into the books. The books are very much about the people and the houses they live in, but descriptions are usually relatively cursory, consisting of "how elegant your furnishings are!" and such, rather than lengthy descriptions of what people wore or how their houses were arranged. This writer (the Double Life author, by the way) also talks a bit about how much thins were changing for Jane's culture & society & describes in great detail all the class consciousness that exists then. This helps a lot in putting her tart remarks into perspective and also is explaining a lot about British culture to me, especially at that particular date in history. There's one part of the book where the biographer comments on the things Jane would not have heard on her walks... things like cars, airplanes overhead, etc. I'm learning a lot, and best of all, enjoying the writing as well.

Back to Annie, she is continuing to eat her bubble-gum antibiotic in tuna fish. I even splurged & brought her some canned Salmon as a special treat. Here's hoping I can continue to fake her out! I just have to get to Monday after next. I am also hoping this round of antibiotics will do the trick, but if they make me give her pills, I plan to crush them in the tuna fish. (bleah! better her than me). She is currently yelling at me about the fact that she wants to go out. She gets particularly bad in the spring & in early fall about this. I do take her out & watch her & walk around after her, to make sure she'll be ok, but I can't do this every day or for very long. It is an indulgence, but I can't help spoiling her. I wonder if Jane Austen would approve. ;)

Speaking of which, Masterpiece will have Sense & Sensibility on, on Sunday at 9. I am looking forward to it very much. It is a new movie, and it'll be interesting to see how it compares to the one with Emma Thompson & Hugh Grant. It is also longer, so they are showing it in two parts. Goody!

Last, but not least, I made my first ever quinoa salad. It went pretty well, I think. Recipe is linked here and I understand that the salad improves if it stands overnight. I am hoping to make this for the family reunion & since my family (extended ones too) are adventurous eaters, I think they'll at least try it.

Question of the day : I've been growing my hair out for a while, because I didn't want to spend the money for a haircut. Shall I grow it out & cut it for Locks of Love? Saw a program about it & wondered..... but I'm not sure I have the patience to have my wild curly hair long and in my eyes for however long it takes to grow my hair out to seven cuttable inches.

Finishing Persuasion by Austen (and Gas City)

I have to admit that Persuasion by Jane Austen is probably my least favorite, in part because the character of Anne Elliot is so calm, withdrawn, and reserved. She lacks a certain ardent spirit, which most of (many of?) Jane Austen heroines seem to have.

Yet in this book, there's a great deal of insight into character, personality, and yet again the inconstancy of people (in general) who are so quick to say, "they always knew the bad in someone" even when the previous day, they were talking about how great that someone was. That perception in Jane Austen's writing is probably one of her greatest strengths as an author for me. She is compassionate, but wryly understanding of the foibles of human behavior.

Gas City by Loren Estleman : I've read the beginning & the ending of the book. I find much to admire about Estleman's writing & his cleanly written prose. His plotlines are consistently interesting and hard driven, as benefits a book which is very much centered around hard crime.. The strength of Gas City lies in its clear tally of the evil that can lie underneath a corrupt city government and how truly sick at heart people can become. Some of the changes in one man's heart because of the loss of his wife precipitates a lot of changes in this city, and yet, at the ending of Gas City, you're left with an awareness that there is a certain inertia in the city itself that will be very hard to change.

I am looking forward to Frames, which is Estleman's next book out, and which should be out this coming April, if I recall rightly. It is the start of a new series.

Gas City by Loren Estleman

Published by Forge Books in 2007, Loren D. Estleman's novel, Gas City, is a stand-alone. The jacket flap says, "Beneath the surface of a blue-collar Midwestern city roil dark undercurrents of lust, power, revenge, and madness... exposes the black heart of the Gas City..."


Estleman has a gift for dialog and for capturing nuances in relationships. I nearly always like his beginning lines & Gas City begins with, "A couple of days before Arch Killian's seventy-eight birthday, he mentioned to his son that he'd outlived all his old friends and no one was left to serve as his pallbearer." Turns old Arch Killian was a surveyor, which of course, is a time-honored profession in Michigan. In fact, we have a Museum of Surveying in Lansing. Should be interesting to see if surveying becomes a dominant element in this book.

Looking at page 123, "Work was another thing. She suspected she owed her gold shield to the two years and three months she'd spent married to Billy Boyle, and the bureaucratic inconvenience involved in resuming her maiden name after the divorce; she'd just decided to keep it. When Rice-Hippert was in office, Chief Russell ahd responded to the mayor's push to promote female members of the department to positions of responsibility by pulling a half a dozen personnel files and greenlighting the Dugans and Callahans."

And that's as far as I've gotten. Will finish this later, as I'm only on page 25.