Reading now...comments to follow

The Girl of His Dreams by Donna Leon. A Commisserio Burnetti mystery that takes place in Venice. As usual, my favorite parts of this book is Burnetti's home life with his wife and children. I also love hearing his movements through this city on water with the long lunches (with wine) and espressos in between as well as the Prosecco in the evening with dinner.

Listening to the audio of Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. I can't believe these are the first Alice Munro stories I've experienced. I have listened to one whole story and am on the second one.  I may need to get the book to read since these stories are meant to take completely in during one sitting. Amazing. The first one, "Dimensions", is about a young woman moving forward from a horrific occurrence in her life. The unfolding of her story was perfect even if I could see it coming, I felt denial of the outcome.

Facebooking in San Francisco

If only I had a better phone! Sitting at an Italian Resturant on a July sunny day in San Francisco just down the street from City Lights Bookstore. We had a nice lunch after going to see the Picasso exhibit at the De Young.

Amazon is taking over the World!

Be afraid, be very afraid!?  Actually, I'm not that fearful but it is something to watch.  Three news items came across my desk last week.  This will take a bit more time than I have now to write about but since I haven't written much of late, I thought I would start. 

First an article in the October issue of Vanity Fair by Keith Gessen examines the world of publishing through the story of his friend and college mate who just had a book published with lots of fanfare.  The friend is Chad Harbach and his book, The Art Of Fielding, hit the Best Seller list fast.  At the end of this very interesting article, Keith observes that Amazon hired David Blum an editor from The Village Voice to be the editor of Kindle Singles.  Amazon's attitude is, "The only necessary parts of the business are authors and readers." And with eBooks, Amazon is proceeding to bring readers and authors together without all those messy in-between people.

The second piece of the puzzle that came across my desk was the fact that Amazon wants to start a Netflix type of rental service for eBooks.  Whew...what will become of libraries in that situation?

The final piece was the realization that when one "checks out" an eBook for a Kindle from the library the patron is taken out to Amazon.com to complete the transaction.  When the loan period is finished for the "library" book, the patron gets an email from Amazon notifying the loan period is up and a suggestion that the patron buy the book from Amazon. And, as Sarah Houghton points out we California librarians are not upholding California privacy principles as our patrons' lending patterns are being tracked by Amazon.com. This was all a surprise since our vendor did not forewarn librarians that Amazon would do this as an exchange for allowing Kindle downloads.

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is the master of the crime novel and uses Los Angeles as one of his characters. In this second in his Lincoln Lawyer series, the novel opens two years after the first novel. Mickey Haller had a tough recovery from the injuries he suffered from at the end of the last book.  His recovery led to a particular difficult addiction to pain medication. Now his colleague has been murdered and Mickey was the attorney in line to step in upon an event such as this. He now has a high profile case involving a studio head who is accused of murdering his wife. But why was the collegue murdered?  Is Mickey now in the line of fire.

Great action and intrique.  I have not read Connelly's other series featuring world-weary homicide detective Harry Bosch but Bosch shows up in this book as a minor character.

I like Mickey Haller and it does not hurt to have Mathew McConaughey in my mind as the main character.