Donna Tart, The Goldfinch

I mentioned previously that I started reading this book, got about twenty pages in, and realized I wanted to reread The Secret History first - no slight intended to The Goldfinch, but instead a reminder of just how much I love The Secret History. So after my reread, and getting a little sidetracked by a book club book, I've been reading The Goldfinch while I recover from a really wringing bout of a stomach virus.

It's a beautifully written book. Given that it's Donna Tartt, that was probably a given. It's also a compelling book, and I read, captivated, up until about the halfway point, where some frustration set in. I felt a similar problem to what I felt when rereading Lev Grossman's The Magicians - basically that yes, people frequently drink and take drugs, and whatever - but I don't find spending chapters and chapters tagging along for the ride while the characters do so all that compelling. (I can't find a way to say that that doesn't make me sound insanely prudish, but there it is - I was in my early twenties before I even saw pot, and have never contemplated the various locations where it would be best to drop acid. I don't mind reading about it, but I find it tedious as a plot device unless you're Hunter S. Thompson. Also, it worked better for me in A Secret History because, you know, Dionysus.) I can understand that an insanely traumatized young teenager would certainly take comfort in whatever he could put his hands on, but all I tend to get out of it is a vaguely sympathetic sense of nausea (perhaps worsened in this case by the aforesaid stomach virus). It's a hard path to character development for me.

So at a little past the halfway mark, I skimmed fairly ruthlessly forward, although I'll probably go back and fill in things that I brushed past. I stopped closer to the end and dove back in, and again, as I could have predicted, there were some beautiful, thoughtful, heart-striking passages in there that I'll probably want to return to. The skimming says something either about my attention span or about the need for a slightly more ruthless hand with editing the book - I'm not sure which - and while its themes of art actually speak very directly to me and the profession that I'm in, I'm not entirely sure that I'll return to this one as I do to The Secret History. I'm going to let it marinade in my brain a bit and see what floats to the top.

Bletchly Circle, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

I've been meaning to get around to watching The Bletchly Circle and then discovered that season 1 (three eps) was on Netflix streaming, so I absorbed them also while lying on the sofa in between running to the bathroom to heave. Don't we all need solid, women-centric mysteries where people are smart and awesome in different ways? (The answer is yes. Yes, we do.)

I've been watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries as well, and love those too although in a different way - they're much fluffier and there are more of them so you occasionally hit one where the plot doesn't even pretend to make sense. But they're delightful, and I say this as someone who didn't fall in love with the books.