The Cabinet of Curiosities

Okay so I thought I might have been a little hard on Douglas Preston and the Monster of Florence so I picked up one of his older mystery books just to see how he usually writes.

Holy Crap! This book is awesome. I just picked it up on Saturday and I'll probably finish it today. It's been a while since I've read a mystery/police/FBI book so this one has me completely enthralled. It's creepy, unpredictable, not too gory, and a page turner.

It's about some old bones that are found during a construction excavation and how those old bones relate to a string of new murders in NYC. I think this is the 3rd or 4th book in a series of books that have this mysterious guy, Agent Pendergrast, as the chief investigator. There is a little bit of back story from the other books that is over my head, but not enough to distract me from the juicy story.

It's got all the cool creepy backdrops..... old archives at a musuem, old buildings, deserted streets, a Jack-the Ripper type bad guy, and just a slight tinge of romance. Like I said I haven't finished it yet, but I don't think I'll be able to keep myself away from it for too long today. I usually try not to read until after 3:00, but I might have to break the rules today.

It's obvious that Douglas Preston's strength in not in the real life crime book, but the fiction book. There are still a lot of facts and figures, but there is more story and people in this book than in the Monster of Florence. I highly recommend this book and will probably have to go out and buy the previous books in the series jsut to try and figure out some more about this guy Pendergrast. He's a very interesting character because he is so ambiguous.

Validation

 I read an awesome essay yesterday by Anne Tyler titled "Still Just Writing". I had been wondering earlier in the day if there was anyone else out there in the world that was living a life like mine that was frustrated by the inability to produce anything creativily due to the decision to have children.  Jackpot! Bingo! There she was. I knew there had to be others, but in this essay Anne Tyler almost describes my life word for word. She has a husband who leaves at 5:30 every morning, makes most of the regular income and she stays home, tries to write and takes care of all the chores related to the house, pets, children, etc. I was amazed.

It's not just me that can't write when the kids are home. There are constant distractions, band-aids, snacks, homework, repairmen, deliveries, school functions, snow days that hamper the desire and ability to write. I have learned through the years that I just give in to the demands and save the writing for my time when there is no one to disturb my train of thought. At first I felt guilty for not doing what I wanted to do, but over time I realized that if I give my full attention to the kids when they are home I am happier and they are happier. I am not yelling at them to be quite or to get their own snack. They are not distracting me from my work. We are all happier if I just go with the flow and work when they are not home. Anne Tyler says the same exact thing.

It's a difficult line to walk. There are days when I have no time to myself and I have to learn to just write that day off as a day that was spent helping the children and realize that there will be days in the future that will be all mine. For now they come first and my time is what ever is left over. Soon enough they will all be off at school and the days will be endless and I will wonder how to fill them all up.

My schedule will always have to be felxible since my husband's is not. I will always be able to stop my work to be there for the kids. That is why I find work that I dictate the schedule. I have chosen to be a creative person. I have chosen to write and to document this time and this place and I will do it mostly between Labor Day and Memorial Day. I am glad to see that I am not the only one who has made that decision.

The Monster of Florence

This book had all the makings of a great read. It had all the things that I love: mystery, history, a cool Italian setting, and dirty little secrets.

But I was so disappointed. I have never read any of Preston's other mystery novels so I don't know how well he writes in those, but this was all journalism and no romance, too many of the wrong kinds of adjectives and a little too bloody for me. It's full of 3 page chapters that seem like they were taken directly out of Spezi's files with little to no addition of human feeling and interpretation. It seems to be lists of dates and facts and people listing suspect after suspect. I understand that the case was never solved, but it seems to be a let down in a book of this kind. The main focus of the story is supposed to be the city of Florence itself, but I never felt a part of the city. I only felt a part of the frustration that the Italian police must have felt at their continual ineptness at containing crime scenes and fingering suspects.

The book was compared to "Midnight in the Garden of Good an Evil", but never did Preston give me the feeling of the city and the people the way that Berendt did. Midnight read like a novel that just so happened to be a true story while Monster read like a newspaper archive.