Finished: The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal)...finally! This was a hard book to "get into" and it certainly doesn't belong on MY top 100 list, even though it is on the top 100 list I'm trying to read through. There were a few entertaining moments, but not enough to keep me from leaving my reading to go do other things for the past 10 days. It's the story of young Italian boy, Fabrizio del Dongo, who as he grows up, goes on many spontaneous adventures and is adored more by his aunt, the Duchessa, than his own parents. Set during the Waterloo years of Napolean's war, I think we are supposed to find Fabrizio to be the hero and his antics to be endearing, however I just found him to be utterly self-centered and rather dense. His aunt is another main character who moves heaven and earth to get him out of his various scrapes, while she also falls for the most decent character in the book. Count Mosca. However, she always loves Fabrizio more than the Count who adores her. Meanwhile, Fabrizio gets in fights, leads with his little head, brandishes bravado at all the wrong times, goes to prison, is nearly poisoned, falls in love with the prison keeper's beautiful daughter, Clelia, pursues her relentlessly, and on and on. Finally, through the machinations of the Duchessa, Count Mosca and Clelia, Fabrizio is able to escape from prison, and then have a real trial where he is pardoned, but his actions continue to be completely narcissistic. I truly find nothing endearing about the character, or his aunt's character for that matter, though she's a little more understandable. I just don't get why everyone in the book falls so hard for the two del Dongos! In the end, the Duchessa and Count Mosca end up happy together, but Clelia marries another man, who she doesn't love but must marry for her father. Fabrizio becomes "the youngest Archbishop" who can't marry anyway, but he laments away in his self-involvement. He and Clelia have a secret affair which produces a young son. Out of his selfishness of wanting to raise his own son, he convinces Clelia to pretend that the boy is ill and dies so he can spirit him away from the man who THINKS he is his father to a secret house, which Clelia can visit every day. Clelia doesn't want to do this, but Fabrizio talks her into it. And, of course, the worst happens....the little 2 year old boy really does get sick and die, followed by his mother who dies of a broken heart. All because Fabrizio wanted it. Ugh!! So, just not my favorite of books and really hard to get into the writing of this one! Whew! Glad to be done.

And so the soldiers buried Hector breaker of horses....Finished: The Iliad (Homer)...and that was the last line of a classic book. I'm so, so glad I finally read this! I had put if off because it is so long and I wondered if it would keep my interest. It did keep my interest, and showed me at the same time why Homer was considered to be one of the greats. Of course, I was reading a translation (translated by Robert Fagles) of the original language, but it was beautifully written. :-) He kind of "had me at hello" with passages like this one that describes the hordes of the Achaean army (the Greeks) as they marched ahead to attack the Trojans:

   As a heavy surf assaults some roaring coast,
piling breaker on breaker whipped by the West Wind, 
and out on the open sea a crest first rears its head
then pounds down on the shore with hoarse, rumbling thunder
and in come more shouldering crests, arching up and breaking
against some rocky spit, exploding salt foam to the skies--
so wave on wave they came, Achaean battalions ceaseless,
surging on to war. Each captain ordered his men
and the ranks moved on in silence...
You'd never think so many troops could march 
holding their voices in their chests, all silence, 
fearing their chiefs who called out clear commands,
and the burnished blazoned armor round their bodies flared,
the formations trampling on.

That's just a taste of the descriptiveness. I could SO see the waves and breakers hitting the coast just like they do when we vacation in Oregon....perfect imagery....and then they totally translated over in my mind to become the soldiers marching on. Anyway, I really liked the book! I basically knew the story of Helen, Troy, Paris, Hector, Achilles, Patroclus, Agamemnon, Priam, etc., but  I never realized that the gods played such a roll in the war, at least in Homer's version. :-) There were Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, and Apollo, always in the mix...making spears miss, making their wounded favorites disappear in a mist before death, etc. It was truly almost more a war of the gods than one of men. Also, I'd never read the story in such lengthy detail. Some of the passages in the book did get a little gruesome in their descriptions of death, and tiresome in the endless naming of so-and-so son of so-and-so and so forth, lol. Oh, and I was really surprised that the book ended with Hector's burial and NOT the death of Achilles, especially given how much Achilles' foretold death was mentioned in the book. And, of course, that means no Trojan horse in this story either. Oh well...I'm still happy to be finished, but even more so, happy that I read and enjoyed such a classic!

Finished: Line of Fire (White) Another page turner! Hard to believe this series is almost at an end. :-( I will definitely miss Dr. Alan Gregory, his wife Lauren, and best friend Sam Purdy, the cop. Of course, I also missed Adrienne and Peter when they were killed off in the middle of the series! I truly hope that Lauren did NOT die at the end of this book as the implication seems to be. I guess I have to wait until August to read the last in the Dr. Alan Gregory series. To think that my son just randomly gave me a book for my birthday one year that he thought I'd enjoy, Privileged Information...the first book in the series....and I've read most of the books in the series since! I still have one to read that plops Sam Purdy right down at Yale University. Anyway, another page-turning, shock-ending book. Honestly, though, were Alan and Sam REALLY stupid enough to talk about a huge secret in the ICU room of someone they thought was unconscious?? Looking forward to August. :-)

Finished: The House of Mirth (Wharton). Awww, another sad ending. :-( Darn, I really thought this one might actually end happily. It was obvious through the whole book that Lily Bart and Lawrence Seldon loved each other, but the evils of high society gossips and superior judgments were the downfall of poor Lily. Why couldn't Seldon have just not believed the worst in her when he saw her coming out of Trenor's house?? Through every obstacle in trying to keep herself afloat in the circles of the upper crust, and from spiraling into the despair of poverty, Lily's gut conscience always won out and she didn't follow through with plans to marry rich men she didn't love or blackmail the hideous Bertha Dorsett, etc. When she thought Gus Trenor had legitimately turned her meager $100 into $9000 with stock investments, she was shocked to learn that he'd really just given her the money and then expected favors in return. Sadly, everyone else believed she'd given the favors....including the level-headed, obviously in love, Seldon. When Bertha Dorsett paid Lily to come on a Mediterranean cruise with her and her husband, George, to be a distraction to George so Bertha could carry on an affair under his nose, the ending results were again disastrous...with Bertha dumping her young lover, and publicly ousting Lily from her employ with the suggestion that she'd been having an affair with George! Nothing could have been further from the truth, but money and gossip prevailed, and Lily was pretty much ruined. Just when she finally figured things out at the end, and kept her pride, and learned that maybe love was more important than being rich...and just when I think she was going to go and confess her love to Seldon....and just when Seldon was actually on his way over to Lily's to sweep her off her feet and tell her he loved her, she took an accidental overdose of sleeping drops to help her get through the fretful night and died. :-( Dang it! I want one of these old classics to have a happy ending!!!!!!! A good book, but sad, sad, sad.

On an interesting side note...apparently Edith Wharton's family is where the term "keeping up with the Joneses" came from! Edith's maiden name being Jones, and the family being ultra wealthy, they traveled back and forth from Europe to New York to Newport during Edith's childhood. I just thought that was interesting. :-)

Finished: Vanity Fair (Thackeray). A really good, and very looonnnngg book! I can see why it is on the Top 100 list, but I just need to decide if it's on MY Top 100 list. At 950 pages, it was super wordy...and I mean in the descriptive way. Of course, that's one of the big reasons it's considered one of the great novels. The detail and depth which Thackeray goes into when expounding on the lives and doings of the British upper classes in the early 1800's is mind-boggling. And, he does much of it with names of people and places that were supposed to be a humorous satire of the times. I don't always get those jokes, because, well...I didn't live back then when it was first published. Anyway....he's brilliant in his writing, but as always, I prefer much more dialogue and action than I do so much intense description and tangent-taking to describe different social people who had nothing to do with the story. However, I would venture to say that Vanity Fair will make it onto my Top 100 books list. Thackeray titles the book Vanity Fair, or The Novel Without a Hero...but I beg to differ. I consider Major William Dobbin to be the epitome of a hero. Does a hero have to be good-looking and the lady-charmer? The story begins with the teen aged young ladies, Amelia Smedley and Rebecca Sharp graduating from Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies and arriving at Amelia Smedley's manor. Amelia has grown up well off and in the upper class. Becky has grown up poor, the daughter of an artist and a stage dancer, who are both deceased. She had been at Pinkerton's on scholarship. She is the focus of much of the story...her personality, her ability to take advantage of anyone and everyone to propel herself up the social ladder. She hoodwinks nearly everyone in the story at one time or another with her charm, wit and personality. She appears to genuinely care for people, but in reality, she cares only for herself. Amelia is the opposite, almost to a sad degree. She's the sweetest, truest, sappiest of people. She's been "engaged" to fellow socialite, George Osbourne, since childhood and they are well on their way to marriage. However, the good-looking, charming, self-centered George has become quite full of himself and turned into a dandy. George's best friend, confident, and protector, the not-so-good looking William Dobbin, is always there to guide him in the right direction....and he's also helplessly in love with Amelia. Amelia, though, only has eyes and a heart for George. Even when George has a wandering eye and questions getting married, Dobbin is there to strongly encourage him to tow the line. When the Smedley's loose all their money and become destitute, George's horrible father, who owes much of his own success to Amelia's father, forbids George to marry Amelia. When George breaks it off, Amelia becomes so despondent that Dobbin feels like she is at death's door. He convinces George that he should do the right thing and marry the girl who he's been promised to his whole life...the girl who has totally given him her heart. So, George defies his father and marries Amelia. George's father is furious and disinherits him. George and Amelia spend a few weeks of happy bliss on their honeymoon trip until the reality of having no money sets in on George. They truly do love each other...but then George's eye is caught by the wicked Becky! Becky, who had become a governess for crotchety, uncouth Sir Pitt Crawley's young daughters from his second marriage, had then fallen for Sir Pitt's careless, cavalier, charming, free-spirited, much in debt from his shenanigans, younger son from his first marriage, Rawdon Crowley. Rawdon is someone who actually COULD have been a hero in the story, but the author clearly wanted to show him in a very weak light so Becky could be pushed to the forefront. Anyway, Rawdon is in line and favor to inherit his rich aunt's money when she dies, as she adores his unruly ways. She even falls in love with Becky, like everyone who meets her does. But...when Becky and Rawdon elope, the aunt has a hissy fit because she believes that Becky is too beneath Rawdon's station. So....the aunt disinherits Rawdon. Rawdon and Becky continue to spend what they don't have, living on credit, and charming people out of money, or in Rawdon's case, winning money from people at billiards. When Becky and Rawdon run into Amelia and George on their honeymoon trip, Becky is already thrusting herself higher into society by flirting with all the officers. They are all in Brussels in the days before Napoleon's big march to regain his former power. George, Rawdon and William Dobbin are all in the military and expect to be called to battle any day. Becky sets her sights on turning George's eye, and she succeeds. He actually asks her to run away with him, but then when they all find out the men will be called out the next morning to fight, George has a crisis of conscience and falls into Amelia's arms and declares his love. The battle that follows is the famous Battle of Waterloo. Only two of the young men come home alive. Meanwhile, Amelia shows anger for the first time in her life and estranges  herself from Becky, who she used to see as a close friend. Amelia knows that Becky had set her charms on George. George is the one who is killed in battle, and Amelia is devastated.  However, Amelia is pregnant! And, for that matter...so is Becky! Baby George brings Amelia back to life, and she loves him more than anything in her life. Poor Dobbin who is always there for her and the baby, is still on the back burner and she never even glances his way romantically. He knows she'll never love him the way he does her. Becky, who goes hot and cold with Rawdon, seems to love him at times, but grows tired of him and just wants to climb higher and higher in society. Her baby son, Rawdon, is just something to get in her way. She instantly puts him out to a nurse and doesn't give him a second thought. :-(  Becky meets up with the Marquis Steyne, who she charms, and who takes her under his wing to propel her to new social heights...of course, at the expense of her relationship with Rawdon and her own son. It's so sad to see Becky ignore her little son as he grows older, though, Rawdon become a really good father! He loves spending time with his son, but he's so whipped by Becky that he does what she says most of the time, including sending the boy off here and there. Dobbin, knowing he hasn't a chance with Amelia, leaves town for over ten years. He makes sure, however, that Amelia and little George have a small income. However, Amelia's father puts them in dire straights once again and the family falls into dire poverty. ok, it's impossible to recap this 950 page book, lol. In any event, Dobbin does swoop back into town and declare his love for Amelia, but she still rebuffs him because of her love and duty to her dead husband. Dobbin, however, grows really close to the young Georgy. After a couple more years, Dobbin has finally had enough of being Amelia's lapdog...especially when she forgives the lying, scheming, opportunist Becky, who is back in the picture after being left by Rawdon, who finally grew some pride and dumped her when he walked in on her in a compromising position with Steyne. Becky has cried on Amelia's shoulder that the evil Rawdon ripped her own little Rawdon out of her arms and kept him from her, when in reality, Becky dumped her son long ago. When Dobbin can't convince Amelia of Becky's lies, and when Amelia is angry with Dobbin for his opinion, Dobbin finally tells her he's done! Finally, he shows some self-respect! He hops a ship back to England (they've all been in Germany), and soon, it's Becky of all people who convinces Amelia that George was never half the man that William Dobbin was, and that she should jump at the chance for true love. Amelia realizes that she does love Dobbin, and with Georgy's happy approval, writes and begs him to come back. Dobbin comes back and marries Amelia, making the three of them a family...and adding to the family with a baby daughter of his own. :-) I stand by my original statement...to love Amelia unconditionally all those years, and stand by not only her husband and friend, but then his widow and son, makes him a hero in my book! There is so much more to the book besides just the story of these young folks, but I can't possibly detail it all. Though Amelia, Dobbin and little George get their happy ending, I can't say that all the characters do. Still, in all....it was a very good book. :-)

Currently Reading: Vanity  Fair....this one could take awhile. It's over 900 pages! Good so far.

Finished: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (McCullers). A really good book! It definitely deserves its spot on the Top 100 list! This was a book that I wanted to finish but savor at the same time. The characters were so real, and came right off the page. I don't think I'll forget any of them for a long, long time....especially John Singer, Mick Kelly and Dr. Copeland. The writing was similar, to me, of Lee Harper's writing in To Kill a Mockingbird, which I also loved. It was so authentic and displayed the main characters feelings and hearts in such a moving way. The book is set in a small Georgia mill town in the 1930's, where race relations are definitely strained, and poverty is rampant among the whites and the blacks. John Singer is a 32 year old white deaf/mute who has been with his one friend, the obese and gluttonous Greek, Antonapoulos, for 10 years. They've lived together, walked to work together, spent meals together...but they are always just identified as friends, best friends. Whether or not their feelings were more than that, is never spelled out. When Antonapoulos is committed to a mental institution by his brother 200 miles away from their town for bizarre behavior, John Singer is totally lost. He packs up his belongings and moves into a boarding house run by the white Kelly family. The Kelly's, with their six children, barely make ends meet. Their 13 year old daughter, Mick, is the central character of that family. We hear her thoughts and feel her feelings. She usually takes care of her two younger brothers, and she's rather tomboyish. She also loves music! She is enthralled by music, more like it. She listens for hours to symphonies being performed outside the windows of the "rich" people of the town who have radios. Mick becomes fascinated with Mr. Singer, as do three other central characters. Mr. Singer can read lips, and he is so calm and understanding. He actually becomes the listener for all these characters. They poor out their hearts to him and each one of them feels as if they have a special, unique relationship with him...that he totally "gets" them. Mr. Singer, though, while he sympathizes with each character, basically has only thoughts of his friendship with Antonapoulos and waits for the days when he will get to see him again. He cares for the other characters, but in a more peripheral way. He still considers himself to have only one true friend, even though each of these people practically worship him and have come to count on his presence in their lives. Mick tells him about her love for music while he lets her listen to his radio. She just knows that he understands her more than anyone. Dr. Copeland, a black doctor who is run ragged in the town trying to take care of the black population, thinks Mr. Singer is the only man he's ever met who can understand the plight his people are going through, i.e., he feels he's the only decent white man alive. Biff Brannon, the all-night cafe owner, is more of a listener himself, but he comes to count on watching the relationships that these people develop with Mr. Singer, and a few times himself, he goes to talk to him. Jake Blount is a white, alcoholic, rabble-rouser. I'm not sure what to call him actually. He has very strong views about the oppression of ALL Americans by the rich and by the government. He is driven by the need to inform people how America has become so unfair to most of the population. He and Dr. Copeland actually have an all night conversation towards the end of the book, where they realize their feelings are pretty similar...however, Dr. Copeland wants to view it only in terms of how the black people are oppressed, while Jake wants to view it as how the entire nation is oppressed. They can never come to a solution as to how to resolve things. Dr. Copeland is a bitterly disappointed man whose own four children never understood his desire to have them make more of themselves than just being a white man's servant. They were all capable, but none succeeded, because none of them truly had that burning desire in their hearts like he did.

In essence, we have all these lonely, solitary people with deep feelings who have no one who understands them...until they meet John Singer. It is so sad that each one thinks they've met their soul-mate in terms of understanding, when in reality John Singer is just a nice guy who "listens", but doesn't totally understand what each of them is really saying. He knows he's important to them, and he's a super nice person, but his heartbeat lies 200 miles away with Antonapoulos. Mr. Singer goes to visit Antonapoulos, who is pretty self-centered, but I suppose mentally ill, three times. The first time, Antonapoulos is pretty disappointed that John Singer doesn't bring food. The second time, Mr. Singer panics when Antonapoulos isn't in his room anymore. It is Christmas time and he's brought presents and food. The desk clerk informs him that Antonapoulos has been moved to the infirmary due to nephritis. They spend a lovely evening together before Mr. Singer has to head back. The third time he goes to visit, he begins in the infirmary and doesn't find Antonapoulos there OR in his room. The desk clerk writes on a piece of paper that Antonapoulos is dead. Mr. Singer is beside himself. He wanders the town in despair before heading back to his own town where he takes a gun and kills himself. It is so, so sad. None of the four: Mick, Jake, Dr. Copeland or Biff can understand at all why Mr. Singer would have taken his own life. None of them really knew anything about him at all. I guess they were always so busy talking and unburdening their own hearts that no one ever asked him about himself. A heartbreaking end to a really good story....a story that will stay with me for awhile and go in my favorites list I'm pretty sure. Definitely John Singer will go in my Favorite Characters list.

A sample of just one of the passages that I liked. John Singer has been alone for a year and he's thinking back on alot of the selfish things that Antonapoulos used to do. However, he resolves to think of only the good times with his friend. Mr. Singer then also contemplates the other people who have come into his life:

    This was the Antonapoulos who now was always in his thoughts. This was the friend to whom he wanted to tell things that had come about. For something had happened in this year. He had been left in an alien land. Alone. He had opened his eyes and around him there was much he could not understand. He was bewildered.

    He watched the words shape on their lips.
    We Negroes want a chance to be free at least. And freedom is only the right to contribute. We want to serve and to share, to labor and in turn consume that which is due to us. But you are the only white man I have ever encountered who realizes this terrible need of my people.
    You see, Mister Singer? I got this music in me all the time. I got to be a real musician. Maybe I don't know anything now, but I will when I'm twenty. See, Mister Singer? And then I mean to travel in a foreign country where there's snow.
    Let's finish up the bottle. I want a small one. For we were thinking of freedom. That's the word like a worm in my brain. Yes? No? How much? How little? The word is a signal for piracy and theft and cunning. We'll be free and the smartest will then be able to enslave others. But! But there is another meaning to the word. Of all the words this is the most dangerous. We who know must be wary. The word makes us feel good--in fact the word is a great ideal. But it's with this ideal that the spiders spin their ugliest webs for us.
    The last one rubbed his nose. He did not come often and he did not say much. He asked questions. 
    The four people had been coming to his rooms now for more than seven months.....
    At first he had not understood the four people at all. They talked and they talked--and as the months went on they talked more and more. He became so used to their lips that he understood each word they said. And then after a while he knew what each one of them would say before he began, because the meaning was always the same. 

Finished: Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro). Haunting, heartbreaking, well-written book! What you think is going to be a story about three children growing up together at an English boarding school, turns into a horrific reality. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, raised and educated at Hailsham all their lives, even as infants, form a friendship and bond that carries them through ups and downs in their relationships and their lives until only one of them is still surviving at the end of the story. Ruth, the more dominant of the three, attaches herself to Tommy in their teens and they become a couple, when in reality, it's clear that Kathy and Tommy have more of a connection and have "loved" each other for a long time. What they, and we, come to find out is that the three friends, and many other children like them, are clones of other human beings....clones that were created for the sole purpose of some day being organ donors for "real" people. Their reproductive organs have been altered so that they can never have children. As they reach the age of 18, they are all taught first to be "carers"...people who will actually be caregivers to the organ donors. Then, after a few  years of being carers, they become the organ donors themselves...living in centers, going through surgeries, and eventually donating so many organs (usually by the fourth donation), that they die (in their terms, they "complete"), where everything else that can possibly be harvested is then taken. It's just an awful, haunting premise...scary. And it takes place in the 1990's!  Even the guardians who are their teachers at Hailsham are reluctant to embrace them, as they can't really think of them as real human beings. However, they do require the children to show their artistic abilities through painting and poetry so they can take proof back to the scientists and the financial backers that the clones do indeed have souls, and therefore should be treated more humanely. It still doesn't cover up the fact that children are created and raised, only to be harvested until their bodies are depleted. Meanwhile, in their young lives, they fall in love, have feelings, have experiences, just like everyone else. :-(  It makes me shudder to think something like this could really happen!

Finished: Cousin Bette (de Balzac). Another interesting de Balzac book from his Le Comedie Humaine. I found this one in a tiny used book store in Canon Beach, Oregon. Sigh, another nice memory of vacation! I love how so many of de Balzac's books refer to, or even include in scenes, many of the same characters. In Cousin Bette, though, recurring characters are only referred to and the action centers around Baron Hector Hulot, his beautiful, kind and virtuous wife, Adeline, and her less beautiful, spiteful, and very vengeful cousin, Lisbeth, or Bette. Jealous of all that Adeline has, Bette encourages the roving eye of Hector. Hector, who has already spent half his fortune on one mistress, becomes enchanted by the young and beautiful Valerie Marneffe, and ends up going into debt, ruining the lives of his own wife, son and daughter, being responsible for the death of his brother and his brother-in-law, and becoming destitute...all in the name of chasing after the younger woman who just strings him along for the money. Bette, having become best friends with Valerie, schemes and plots with her, as this is the perfect revenge she can take on the family...especially since Hector and Adeline's beautiful and kind daughter, Hortense, falls in love with Wecuslus, the young, equally attractive artist that Bette has been hiding away and supporting with her own money. Bette, however, is old enough to be his mother. She can't accept it when he falls in love with Hortense and they marry. She encourages Valerie to entice Wenceslas with her charms as well, and soon both marriages are on the rocks. Throw in the creepy, but rich, Crevel who used to be friends with the Baron, until the Baron stole HIS mistress from under his nose...the woman the Baron had an affair with before Valerie. With Bette and Crevel both seeking vengeance, and Valerie seeking money, and Hector willing to throw everything away, including his family, for the "woman he loves", it doesn't take long for circumstances to become dire. As Hector sinks to his lowest lows, through it all, Adeline remains dignified, loving and respected. She refuses an offer to become the mistress of the very rich Crevel in exchange for him settling all their hundreds of thousands of francs worth of debts. She actually never gives up hope in wanting Hector to come back to the family. She never scolds him or causes any scenes. Their son, Victorin, is like his mother and sister, and is a level-headed young attorney. He takes on most of his father's debts. By the end, Valerie has strung one too many lovers along and is killed by a Brazilian who had waited for her for three years. She dies an ugly, leprosy-like death from a virus-like substance he gives her. Crevel, by that time Valerie's new husband, also dies from the contagious disease. Hector runs off with his tail between his legs to skirt his debts. He changes his name and goes into hiding, but still keeps up his womanizing ways. Cousin Bette knows where he is at all times, but never lets the searching Adeline know. Finally, goodness and family perseveres. Victorin is able to pay off his father's debts and make a decent living that he, his wife and child, his mother and his abandoned sister and her child can live on. Wenceslas comes back home with his tail between his legs and remains the lazy artist who never makes another good piece of work, now that his wife has some money left to her, ironically, by the death of Valerie. Bette, dies a death of consumption, surrounded by the family that she detested, though they never knew it.  She dies in extreme unhappiness knowing how happy they have all become. Finally, Adeline finds Hector and he comes home to the family! Everyone is happy, or so it seems for about six months...until one day Adeline hears Hector telling the kitchen maid that his wife probably won't live much longer and then he can marry her and she'll be a Baroness! Say what?? After all the forgiveness and non-judgement he received from his family, and especially Adeline? Adeline dies of a broken heart. And, sure enough, the Baron runs off and marries the kitchen maid. At least he is out of the lives of his children! As usual, the de Balzac writing is witty and great. :-) I'm sure I'll read even more of his books. It would be really nice to read the entire Le Comedie Humaine in order, but that in itself would probably take an entire year. I've got to move on to some other books!

Finished: Call For the Dead (le Carre) and Six Years (Coben). I'm off on vacation and reading books when I can. I always enjoy Harlen Coben books, so I saved his latest for the airplane. It didn't disappoint. :-) A fast-paced tale about a man, Jake, who gives up the love of his life when she marries another man and asks him never to contact her again. Six years later Jake sees the obituary for his old flame's husband and goes to seek her out, only to find out that the widow is someone completely different...his old love was never really married to the man and is nowhere to be found. Mystery and intrigue ensues. :-)

Then, sitting by the ocean breezes, I read le Carre's first book about British spy, George Smiley. Smiley is introduced, as well as Peter Guillam, his co-worker, friend, and eventual betrayer years later in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In Call For the Dead, a man turns up dead who George has just interviewed as a possible betrayer. He is classified as a suicide, but nothing is as it seems, especially when George himself is attacked and left for dead. Again, mystery and intrigue ensues. A nice book for the beginning of a good series!

And, two good travel reading books!