Friday, May 28, 2010

Blindspot

Last night I finished the novel, Blindspot, which was a real treat, with a great plot, a murder, good guys, bad guys and a setting in colonial Boston in the year of the Stamp Act.  It was a big meaty book, written in the style of the age in which it was set.  Maybe only an English major or an historian can appreciate the lush vocabulary and the felicitous descriptions, but I liked it ever so much and hated to see it end.

Not my usual reading matter.  I heard Kamensky and Lepore discuss how the novel came into being at a PEN meeting in Cambridge, and naturally we bought the book and have been devouring it.  Both authors are historians of the colonial period, a fact that greatly informs their writing, and the details certainly make the story special. A fabulous collaboration and the writing was not terribly "academic" as one might expect of such illustrious scholars.

I don't recommend a lot of books, but this I do unreservedly.  I had the misfortune/good fortune to be laid up with a bad cold this week, and was able to read more than usual.   I have taken to reading during the Red Sox commercials, and it's amazing how much one can do.  And on the deck in the nice weather.

Now I  must hie myself (gee, was the olde language catching?) up the stairs to my garret to don Japanese gardening pants and set forth into the garden, well-doused with mosquito spray and sunscreen, to plant yesterday's purchases.  We'll have 6 tomatoes and 12 garlics.  2 green beans and only 1 musk melon, as my grandma called them.  Lots of flowers.  The wild iris are blooming for the first time.  I love summer and my garden.  The chipmunks are playing tag, and the hummingbird comes often.  The male goldfinches constantly have dogfights in the air.   Lovely.

Grapeshot

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your comments are always welcome!