Monday Malarkey

Recent arrivals:

• As You Wish by Cary Elwes 
• Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton

Both of these were purchases. I ordered As You Wish after seeing Cary Elwes on an old episode of Psych. He played an art thief and he was every bit the charming rogue with a twinkle in his eye as Westley in The Princess Bride. I've wanted to read the book since it came out and the Psych episode motivated me to purchase it. Blitzkrieg is a book I saw recommended on a WWII site and I love Len Deighton. In the 80s and 90s, I read tons of his spy novels and then stupidly gave them away. I'd love to reread them, someday. I've never read any nonfiction by Deighton so Blitzkrieg should be interesting.


Books finished since last week's Tuesday Twaddle:

• Nadya Skylung and the Cloudship Rescue by Jeff Seymour

Yep, just one book, again. I'm in a summer slump. I just haven't felt like reading. I had a terrible time getting into Nadya Skylung, in fact, even though it's an adventurous tale with a strong young heroine -- one of my favorite types of book. Fortunately, I enjoyed it; I just had trouble getting through it because I wasn't in a reading mood.


Currently reading:

• As You Wish by Cary Elwes
• Siracusa by Delia Ephron
• High Season by Judy Blundell
• Israel/Palestine by Alan Dowty

I was not really getting into anything at all (although I think I've read about 80 pages of Siracusa, this week's F2F discussion book) then As You Wish showed up. I sat down and opened it on Saturday and 65 pages later I came up for air. It's a fun read. I probably would have finished it last night, had I not found out that a friend died yesterday morning. Back to not feeling like reading.


Last week's posts:

• Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi (book review)
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (thoughts - not much of a review)
• Fiona Friday - Somebody's watching (cat photo)

In other news:

This is the friend who died, Enver Antonio Ávila, from Stockholm by way of Peru. He was a talented musician who taught music and math, spoke at least 5 languages (I'm pretty sure he was up to 7), wrote poetry and music, and took beautiful photographs. He was a health nut so it was more than a little surprising when he found out he had Stage 4 stomach cancer. We were internet friends only. He followed me on Twitter and then we became Facebook friends; I don't even remember when this happened, it's been so long ago. He was a voracious reader, particularly of poetry, and loved to travel. Tomas Tranströmer was his favorite poet. I don't know who took the photo; we never met in person so I snagged it from his Facebook page and hope the photographer won't mind. He will be missed.

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