Good reading weather

Jim Harrison, 1937-2016

I love it when I stumble on a famous author I've never read. I picked up "The English Major" on the bargain cart outside my used book store, and now wonder how I managed to miss Jim Harrison all these years?  He was best known for the 1980 novella "Legends of the Fall," made into a movie starring Brad Pitt.

Quite a character himself, Harrison wrote beautifully about nature, food, fishing, teaching, farming and travel.  "The English Major" was one of his last books, about a 60-something protagonist, on a road trip across America on a late life mission to rename all the states and state birds.   The book has everything you want in a novel.  (Dave, I'll send your way.)

Sarah Waters is very different. Again, I found her book "The Paying Guests" on the bargain table. She's a Welsh author, known for her Gothic novels set in Victorian society.  She creates great twisting plots and characters, like a modern day Dickens.  I'm reading "Fingersmith" and can't put it down.  Oh, boy! It was made into a BBC mini series and I just put the DVD on our Netflix queue.

Good reading weather for this weekend.  High temperatures only in the 60's, cloudy skies and even the slightest chance of rain. Our air quality has finally returned to normal.  We don't have much planned for the weekend, other than looking forward to meeting friends for dim sum on Sunday morning.