It's HOLMES homes! (Sorry)

You know that feeling you get when you've got work and life and friends and the gym and all you want to do is go. back. to. your. book?

No? JUST ME THEN.

The Russell Holmes mysteries make me so happy, I geek out. The series is about Sherlock Holmes' wife: how she met him in the early days of the Great War, and their marriage in the 20s. The character is wickedly aberbic and rabidly intelligent, and gives Holmes a run for his money. I enjoy her immensely. This is the latest book, just out in April:

I spent about an hour at Crepes on Cole tonight with a strawberry-nutella crepe and a pot of English Breakfast, completely blissed out.

That's the sweetness.

Hi Welcome. I'm Confused. And You Are...?

Oh - you are confused too? Yeah. Join the club.

The latest selection at the Non-Nerdy (Ok - maybe nerdy) book club is A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Mirakami:

And...what? Please be prepared for spoilers for the first 80 pages, cuz that is as far as I have gotten.

The Mav and I have discussed our feelings for this book, and so far they are generally not positive. She is displeased with the non-sequitors and general randomness, and I can't STAND the lack of timeline. I suppose that is unimaginative of me, but I like my stories to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The so called "sheep-chase" has just been introduced, and going from the back blurb, appears to be the main focus of the story. That being said, I think you could pretty safely compost the first 80 pages into mulch, and not really have done much injury to the story.

I AM SO CONFUSED. A great deal of attention has been paid to his girlfriend's ears? Apparently they are mindbogglingly gorgeous. Unfortch, I cannot empathize with the narrator here, as I have never seen a truly staggering set of aural accoutrement. I am always annoyed with a narrator I cannot empathize with.

Ok so this blurb provides a little more information - it is mock hardboiled mystery? Buckoes, this is NOT hardboiled. Not remotely. The closest egg analogy would probably be scrambled.

HOWEVER. We shall see. I like me a little bit of action - mayhap getting to the yolk of the plot (PUNS) will change my mind.

Being confused is not an uncomfortable state of mind for me after all, so I continue. Just muddled.

Images Courtesy of The Book Bark

Let the Wild Rumpus Start

...with a RAWR.

Ahem. Sorry.

Let it be said at the beginning that I haven't seen Where the Wild Things Are. It looks beautifully done, but I just haven't been in the mood.

HOWEVER, Katastrophic and I did go see the Maurice Sendak exhibit that has been advertised all over the city at the Contemporary Jewish Museum off Yerba Buena Park in SOMA.

Team, it was charming! Perhaps this is a feeling that is shared by every generation, but I feel like the quality picture books that I knew and loved are simply not around anymore. I find myself thinking that when it comes time to be buying picture books again, I will most likely look to things that I read when I was small. And hang up posters like so:

Also side note: The Contemporary Jewish Museum is GORGEOUS. Check it out on Thursdays - its $5 after 5:00pm. Katastrophic and I hit up the Sendak and Jews on Vinyl exhibits (which was awesome: we chilled and chatted on classy MCM furniture listening to The Temptations do Fiddler on the Roof)

It was lovely - they displayed final drawings and concepts for many of Sendak's books, including The Night Kitchen which was always my favorite:

A lot of Sendak's work is politically motivated, which I didn't know. Down in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1983) takes place in the homeless lots of the Great Depression, where kidnapping fears from the Lindhberg case are combines with Sendak's fears of the 1980s AIDS crisis.

WHO KNEW.

I leave you with the last image from Kitchen.

That's the sweetness.