It has been a mad blur of reading and note taking and reviewing here of late - because everything I read seems to be either as research (thus the notes) or the for future columns (thus the reviews). Hmm. Except for Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor which I'm just reading because it is funny. But I'll probably blog on it at some point too.

Booklist likes the latest Maisie Dobbs, The Mapping of Love and Death, which is a relief. This one focuses on the true story "about the discovery of a collapsed dugout from World War I containing the bodies of a cartography team and their equipment."

Booklist also recommends the Molly Murphy series by Rhys Bowen (latest title, The Last Illusion) to fans of the 1920s time period & Dobbs series, although it is set in the US (the new one includes Bess Houdini).

I wish Vanity Fair had their excerpt up online of the new Waugh biography Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead by Paula Byrne as it is quite a good read and really made me look forward to the book. (That is a charming cover too, isn't it?)

I am reading Kate Milford's The Boneshaker and all of you who have heard early Newbery rumblings about this one would do well to heed them. It certainly has some Bradbury (ala Something Wicked This Way Comes) touches, but also a delightful bit of Wright Brothers bicycle invention/repair, Robert Johnson at the crossroads and Dewey Kerrigan (via The Green Glass Sea). I am most pleased with this one (about one third of the way through) and will have a review in my May column.

Just finished Joan Didion's Where I Was From as she mentions Jack London a few times and he is a current subject of study (along with Stegner and Kerouac and Thoreau and George Mallory and several lost climbers and hikers and those who seek adventure in the west and on mountains). (Do you see a theme emerging?)

There is some fascinating stuff in this essay collection on class and California - I'll leave with a bit that resonated quite strongly with me as it explains so much of the social confusion the country seems to be grappling with today (the initial quote comes from an LA Times article Didion pulls from about a string of crimes committed by teens in a middle class community that can not believe what has happened):

"But we had a our class differences before the immigrants. One of our sons was on the football team in the high school in Costa Mesa about twelve years ago. They had a great team and they were beating the pants off one of the schools in Newport Beach and the Newport stands started to cheer 'Hey, hey that's OK, you're gonna work for us one day.'"

This is what happens when that class stops being useful.

ETA: Do go see the mad book binge Jenny D., is on - is that a wondrous library pile of light reading, or what?