One week to go

Talaria - Winged sandals, like those worn by Hermes.
According to the OED the word comes from the Latin tālāris which means, "things pertaining to the ankles." That's fairly specific.

My Great-grandmother is the young woman on the far right.

I have to get a hair-cut for my sister's wedding today, or at least soon. It's coming up fast. I also have to go to the library because I finished a number of books in the last couple of days.

The Swallows of Kabul was poetic, I'll give it that, and it fulfilled the author's intent to show the stark horror of the Taliban and radical Islam. However, I'm not sure it told a very good story. To go into a few of the problems I had with the story part of the book, (which should hold up on it's own, outside of the setting, description, and prose,) if Zunaira weren't so beautiful, would Atiq have had such a change of heart? He is seeing another woman as a human being for the first time in decades but does this extend to other, more common people? Would a less attractive woman have had such a profound effect on him? What if she had actually been guilty? He's been leading up to something but he still doesn't seem to have any sympathy for his dying wife. Atiq is the only character that is followed for the entire book but rather than being an active participant in the unfolding events he is only caught up in the actions of others. This sort of negates any change that comes over him. Or maybe that's the point although it doesn't really work for me. In the end nobody is really changed and the story just peters out. I felt like I read half a book. Also, where the hell did Zunaira go?

I also read DeKok and the Dead Harlequin by Baantjer and Silk by Alessandro Baricco. The DeKok book is a neat little mystery that kept me entertained. I knew that the one, obvious clue in the murdered man's past that the detectives overlooked was going to be the key to the crime and that bugged me a bit but otherwise it was a fun book.

Silk is incredibly short but is probably the most passionless lust-based almost romance ever committed to paper. The chapters are short; there are 65 in a 132 page book. Some are a couple of pages and some are no more than a few sentences. The characters are never developed, certain phrases are repeated over and over, and the whole thing is surprisingly emotionless. The only character who shows any real feeling is the main character's wife and she has a very small part. Herve is a buyer of silk eggs in mid-19th century France. During a silkworm epidemic his town sends him to Japan to illegally obtain eggs. Hara Kei is the man he negotiates with in Japan. Hara Kei has a mistress with "non-oriental eyes in the face of a girl." (This phrase is repeated several times.) Herve sees her maybe a grand total of five times on his four or so trips to Japan. Herve and the mistress never talk, never really meet, and never develop any real connection with each other and yet the author tries to present this as some almost-consuming romance. It's very strange. I get what Baricco is trying to do with the repetition of phrase; it's a short book and the phrases are a sort of short-hand for description in order to elicit emotion and set up atmosphere. However, that could also have been done with better writing. It wasn't a terrible book, I enjoyed reading it, but I'm glad I got it out of the library.

I read the DeKok book and Silk at work while posted at places where I was allowed to read and I wonder if I would have been as interested if I hadn't been just killing the time until five o'clock.

I'm giving up on Wizard's First Rule. The writing is juvenile and the set-up between good and evil too simplistic. The idea that righteous anger can be used as a force for good weirds me out a bit. There's no need for compassion on the side of the heroes because the bad guy and those who follow him are beyond redemption. I haven't been fond of characters with "designated hero" and "designated villain" status since I was a preteen. There are too many other books I'm interested in reading.