La Serenissima & Dordogne Mystery Read Along

This is a group that reads series mysteries. We started years ago with the works of Tony Hillerman, Craig Johnson, and then moved on to Camilla Lackberg and Donna Leon. Since we have "caught up" with Lackberg we are moving on to a different author. We will alternate authors every month and will read 6 titles by each author this year.

This year (2021) we are going to read and compare and contrast the books of Martin Walker, a British author, who lives in the Dordogne region of France, with those of Donna Leon, an American ex-patriot who lives in Venice and writes about La Serenissima.

There are a total of 11 Benoît "Bruno" Courrèges novels and 4 short stories that have been published. Bruno is an unconventional detective. He is a passionate food lover and is a former soldier who was wounded in the Balkan Wars of the 1990's. The books are set in the Perigord region of France and is located in the northern part of the Aquitaine. The Perigord has been renamed and rolled into the administrative department of the Dordogne. This will be a new series for this group.

The other author we will be reading is Donna Leon who writes the Guido Brunetti series. In total there are 29 currently published Guido Brunetti novels with novel number 30 coming out in 2021. We will be starting with novel 22 in the series.

Here is the reading schedule for 2021.

January 2021 - Golden Egg by Donna Leon
February 2021 - Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker
March 2021 - By It's Cover by Donna Leon
April 2021 - Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker
May 2021 - Falling in Love by Donna Leon
June 2021 - Black Diamond by Martin Walker
July 2021 - Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon
August 2021 - Crowded Grave by Martin Walker
September 2021 - Earthly Remains by Donna Leon
October 2021 - Devil's Cave by Martin Walker
November 2021 - Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon
December 2021 - Bruno and the Carol Singers by Martin Walker - a Christmas short story.

We may not be able to find the short story, but I will work on this for our group and see if we can find copies of it to end our year.

Added the OTHER thread to the wiki based on your message below

All sorted now!

Thanks for getting this set up! Bruno and the Carol Singers is available for $.99 in the Kindle store. It's also available in my county library's Overdrive collection.

It looks like this is the correct one since it's in the 2021 group.

I've owned a Kindle copy of the first Bruno book since 2012 or so, so I'll be all set for February.

>7 lindapanzo:
I investigated further and Lindapanzo (and a couple of others who posted on my profile page) is correct. The other thread is connected to the 2020 Group instead of the 2021 group, so this one is the one that should be the correct link to use. We should all unstar the other link and use this thread. It is connected to the right year - 2021.

The way the continue the topic link works does not allow me to continue the thread from the previous year to the new year. Each year a new base thread has to be linked to the current year group. I started working on straightening out this confusing mess this morning and doing the updating necessary, and this is the one we will use for the coming year 2021.

I am so sorry for this confusing mess. I feel like a real techno-rube. I thought it would be easy to set up and do the linking. However, it demands a bit more thought than I thought. 😩 A new day, a new year, and a bit of thinking and checking with the LT Gods have brought a bit of clarity to the situation - at least on my end of things.

I will continue to check the other thread and direct people here so that we all get onto the same thread! I hope that things will settle in and that we will all be on the same page - soonish.

I hope that all of you will forgive me for this glitch and stay with the group as I think this is going to be a fun group of books to read.

At this point, Brunetti feels like an old friend. I look forward to spending time with him in each subsequent read. And I'm looking forward to getting to know Bruno. The first book in the series has been in my TBR stash for far too long.

The first book for the year will be Golden Egg by Donna Leon. As autumn starts in Venice we will journey with Guido, Señora Elettra, and Vianello through another adventure into the city known as "La Serenissima" and its inhabitants. This time Guido is curious about a man who Guido sees periodically and dies an apparent accidental death. At Paola's urging Guido investigates and his curiosity about the man and his life results in an unexpected story.

The Booklist review for the novel has this to say about the novel. "In the end, this novel is a celebration of the humanizing power of words. “At one point,” Leon says, describing the dinnertime conversation, “Paola expressed a wish and used the subjunctive, and Brunetti felt himself close to tears at the beauty and intellectual complexity of it.” Name another crime novel that ends like that." I suspect it is kind of interaction that keeps all of us reading these novels.

WorldCat says that there are 1,283 copies of this book in libraries worldwide. There are also 426 libraries worldwide that have the recorded version of this title in their collections. That all means that it should be fairly easy to get a copy of this book.

I started the book on Christmas Day and read almost half of it that day. I finished it a few days later. It is a good one and it was my last book read in 2020. It was a good way to end a big reading year and it will be a good way for us to start the new year. Happy reading everyone in 2021! 🤩

Looking forward to spending time with Guido again and seeing what Bruno is like!

I finished The Golden Egg this morning. If you know your fairy tales and fables, the book's title is a spoiler.

It is getting on towards the end of the month and time for us to switch books. How did everybody like Golden Egg. I thought that Guido really let his anger at society show in a very public way in this book. I thought that was unusual for Guido. The only time previously that I thought this happened was in About Face. However, in that book he understood why society thought what they did about the woman's face - because it was so visible and because so many of the rich and famous indulge in purely cosmetic surgery. This was a bit different, and the more Guido found about about David the angrier he became at the way he was treated. This was a very subtle and nuanced story. In my mind it will be hard for Leon to top this one in emotional impact.

>13 cbl_tn:
I am not sure what fairy tale this is based on. I would like to hear more about what you were thinking.

>15 benitastrnad: The goose that laid the golden egg. David was the goose and his mother killed him out of greed.

I have Bruno, Chief of Police lined up and ready to go! It will probably be the middle of the month before I get to it. I have some borrowed ebooks that I'll need to read before they expire.

I just got the Golden Egg from the library. Love the family word games in the first few pages.

>16 cbl_tn:
I thought about that, but then I thought it was too obvious. I tried to make it harder than it was.

>17 Helenoel:
The word games keep coming.

>18 benitastrnad: Yep, it was that obvious!

I just started Bruno, Chief of Police. I love the way the author uses such descriptive language in the first chapter. I think I'm going to enjoy this one. Of course, it's probably too early to judge that simply because I haven't gotten to the mystery itself, but I'm loving the setting.

The setting is a lot of the charm. and the food.

>21 thornton37814: >22 Helenoel: I'm looking forward to starting it soon, after I finish my two library books.

I will be starting it sometime this week. I want to finish a library book I have started before I start this one. I am looking forward to it because I have heard a lot about this series.

It is now February and time for us to start our new series. We will be reading the Bruno detective series. This series is set in the Dordogne department located in Southwestern France. It is part of the Nouvelle Aquitaine. This area is located between the Loire river valley in the north and the Pyrenees mountains in the south. It is named after the river that flows though it. This region is famous for its food and wine.

I first heard about this region while watching a Rick Steves "Europe Through the Back Door" episode. I hope you will take the time to look at the links provided below as this is an often overlooked region of France and it should provide you with a good introduction to the area. Here is the link to that page on Rick Steves web site.
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/france-dordogne

It was this episode that made me want to try eating escargot and foie gras. It also made me think that I could rent a canoe and take a river trip on the Dordogne, while I don't think that I would try to navigate the canals of Venice on my own.

When I read a couple of reviews of the Bruno series I wanted to read them because I had seen this episode of Rick Steves show and knew that food was very important to the region. What I didn't realize was that it is also the region of the prehistoric cave painting discoveries. These caves also figure in the mystery series.

Here is a link to all the information on Rick Steves program relating to the Dordogne.
https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/france/dordogne

A few years ago I read a book titled Mays of Ventadorn by the American poet W. S. Merwin. He was so enchanted with the scenery, history, and culture of this region of France that he has a home in this area. In his book, he refers to the Dordogne as the region of the first troubadours and the home of French poetry.

It should be a fun journey for us into a different country that is just as steeped in food, history, and culture as is Guido's Venice.

OOOO...I just found this group. The Brunetti series is one of my favorite and I'm perfectly willing to jump in at #22 (I'll catch up quickly) and it's been so long since I read the first Bruno, that I'm looking forward to reading from the beginning to get me caught up on where I left off last year.

Sadly I could not find a copy of the first Bruno book, so I skip this months read.

>26 tututhefirst: Hi Tina, I haven't seen you around in a long time. Hope all is well and that you're settled in now.

>27 FAMeulstee:
I checked on WorldCat (the world's largest library catalog) and it says that there are 728 libraries world wide that have this title. That's not a whole lot, so it may indeed be hard to find this book. Does your local library have Inter-Library Loan service? That may be a way to get the book.

It is not unusual for the first book in a series to be scare in libraries. It takes some time for a series to catch on with the public and to build readership, so those early entries in a series are sometimes hard to find. Shelf space in public libraries is at a premium and what often happens is that books are withdrawn from a collection based on use, date of last checkout, or a combination of copyright date and last use date. Because early titles in a series are not checked out as often they tend to get withdrawn, whereas later titles in a series are popular and get checked out quite often, keeping them on the shelves longer. In some ways this is a catch-22 for book titles and hinders readers who stumbled onto a series midway and want to go back and catch up with the series.

If you live in the US you can find this book in used book sites on the web. My favorite place to purchase used books is from Alibris. Here is the link to that web site. https://www.alibris.com

I checked and they have 59 copies of this title in paperback starting at $2.00. Of course, it will be mailed to you and the purchaser pays the postage. Given the state of deliveries at the USPS it may take a month to get the book.

If you live outside of the US you can look for it at Book Depository. They ship all over the world and their prices are very reasonable.

>29 benitastrnad: I am looking for the Dutch translation, and sadly it is not available in my province.
There are copies of he next two books.

>30 FAMeulstee:
Oh Wow! Dutch! I didn't check WorldCat to see if there were any Dutch translations entered in it. I sometimes forget that many books are translated into other languages. That is my American/English language egocentrism showing. I suspect that Dutch libraries probably follow the same library collections management practices as libraries all over the world. That would mean that unless they are an archive the would withdraw books that aren't being read enough to justify holding that space on the shelves. Since I work at an academic library we have the "Once in - never out rule." That means that once we put a book into our collection it will never leave. We have a huge warehouse that is off-campus in which we can store books that are no longer being used on a regular basis. Library patrons can make requests from it, but it takes 24 hours to get the book. Most public libraries do not have that kind of storage.

I am sorry that you won't get to read the first one. However, when we get to the second book, if any holes in the narrative do show up, I am sure somebody else on this thread will be happy to fill you in.

>31 benitastrnad: I really wish we had some sort of shared warehouse facility for "last copies" of a title in Tennessee among the academics. Many of us private academic libraries do weed a lot more, and we don't have the facilities for retaining those outdated, unused or little-used items. When I lived in Ohio, a system of statewide warehouses began. I withdrew something this past week that only 10 OCLC libraries still own. I felt guilty, but I just could not justify its retention.

>32 thornton37814:
When I withdraw I do lots of checking to make sure that a copy is available at an academic library somewhere in the Southeast. I also know that Jacksonville State (a small state 4-year institution) has lots of room in its library, and the have a retention policy that allows them to keep books. If they have it I feel better about withdrawing it. Otherwise, I send it to our storage facility and hope that it stays there longer than I will care about.

>33 benitastrnad: Unfortunately we don't always have that luxury. It's probably still in a box in the office area, but I don't know another library that would take it. I do need to see if Empty Shelves will take it, but I think it is before ISBNs so I doubt they will.

Just in case none of you have enough books on your TBR lists. Camilla Lackberg has a new book coming out in English in July of 2021. It is titled Silver Tears and it appears to be a stand alone mystery/thriller and not part of the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedstrom series.

Some of you have been reading along in the international mysteries for several years and will recall that we read the Guido Guerrieri series by Gianrico Carofiglio a few years back. There is a new entry in that series as well. It will be published in April 2021. In this book Guido Guerrieri has aged and is in the twilight of his career.

Both of these titles are being published in English. I think that they are probably already published in their native languages.

>35 benitastrnad: Thanks for the update! I will be on the lookout for both books.

I have started reading Bruno, Chief of Police and so far am overwhelmed by the descriptions of the food and lifestyle of Bruno. The French country life as portrayed in this book is very different from the urban life of Guido in Venice. It will be interesting to see how this novel develops.

>35 benitastrnad: thanks for the heads up on the Guido Guerrieri. It took awhile, but I finally began to enjoy that series. Have the southeast coast of Italy on my 'someday if the world ever opens again' list, so I'll keep my eyes open for this one.

>38 tututhefirst:
Be aware that the advance book reviews that I saw of this new book, say that it is not the best book in the series. Guerrieri is older and the book has long portions of reflection in it that the reviewer thought were boring. That said, I too am curious about it and hope to get my hands on it someday.

I'm really struggling with The Golden Egg - I've listened to all the Brunettis up to this one, but the audio version I have is being narrated by a different orator. I'm used to David Colacci, and this one by David Rintoul is very different. Rintoul has a distinctly British/European accent as opposed to Colacci fluent Italian accent. The story is a good one, but I find myself abandoning it when the accent becomes unbelievable.

I may just skip this one to catch up on my re-read of the 1st bruno for this month. Then I'll step back in with the next Brunetti in March.

>40 tututhefirst: I didn't like Rintoul's narration either. I hope the next one is Colacci. I always wonder why they use different narrators. There was a different narrator for an earlier one--and the narrator butchered Italian names.

>40 tututhefirst: & 41
I have wondered about that as well, so at one of the American Library Association conferences I asked the people at Books-on-Tape about it. They said that sometimes it has to do with contracts. Readers/narrators are under contract to do work for one producer of recorded books or another. In turn the producing company is under contract with a publisher to get a recorded book done. Sometimes the timing of the publication date interfere with one or the other of the parties involved in the production of the recording and they just can't match up a schedule that works for the reader, the producer, and the publisher. It works much like the old Hollywood studio system.

The Books-On-Tape people told me that they don't like to switch readers either, but sometimes they have to do it. They told me that people who listen to audio books become fans of the narrator as much as of the author and the reader becomes part of the story as much as the words do. For that reason they don't want to change readers. However, sometimes it has to be done in order to meet contractual obligations.

It's really interesting when I go back and look at my review of The Golden Egg written after I read the book on my e-reader back several years ago. A real example of how a lousy narrator can kill a good book.

I am a week behind in posting here because I have been deeply involved in the Seussian Crisis of 2021 - which is related to our book for the month - By It's Cover by Donna Leon. This book is number 23 in the series and it should come as no surprise that the new title is a mystery about books. Here is the Amazon blurb about the book.

In the pages of Donna Leon’s internationally bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries, the conversations of the Brunetti family have often turned to topics of art and literature, but books are at the heart of this novel in a way they never have been before. One afternoon, Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, a visiting American professor. But the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, it becomes clear that he is not who he said he was. As the investigation proceeds, the suspects multiply. And when a seemingly harmless character turns up brutally murdered, Brunetti must question his expectations about what makes a man innocent, or guilty.

There are several librarians in this group read-along, and none of us will be surprised by the mystery here. Books are very collectable - as those of us in the US have seen in the last week with the panic buying and selling of the Dr. Seuss books. About fifteen years ago, our library was hit by a thief. This one used a razor blade to cut out pictures of famous people, maps, prints, etc. from our bound journals. This resulted in the theft in the amount of $100,000 - 120,000. All of the items were sold on E-bay. The biggest surprise was that the thief was a fellow librarian. Libraries don't like to publish their problems with theft because that only makes them easier targets, so our theft problem was never even in the local newspapers. It will be interesting to see what twist Ms. Leon comes up with on the library theft story.

Happy reading everybody.

I left last month's Bruno book to the very end because I owned it, and I had several library books and ARCs that were going to expire. I liked it very much. The community spirit reminds me of Louise Penny's Three Pines. It will be interesting to see if there are more similarities to one of my favorite series as we continue with the Bruno books.

By Its Cover is next up for me.

>44 benitastrnad: I'm in the process of reading By Its Cover. It reminded me of the thefts and mutilation in the 1980s and 1990s. I know we moved a lot of books with those types of plates to more secure locations because some were operating in the Cincinnati area.

I had a half day off because there might be bad weather and I used it to finish up working on my journal article and to finish reading By Its Cover. This was a good mystery. Has anybody besides me noticed Leon's style with the last couple of books. There seems to be a long slow lead up to a very abrupt ending.

I am not sure if I like that or not. I like having a denouement or at least an epilouge.

>46 thornton37814:
I thought it was one of the tricks of fate that I was reading this book at the same time that I was dealing with the Dr. Seuss Crisis. I can understand how the theft and mutilation of rare books is cause for concern, but the concern showed over the five titles that were ceasing publication was just over-the-top. Especially when none of our copies were rare and several of them had been rebound so do not have the original covers. They might have been worth about $5.00 each on Ebay, but the necessity of special meetings to deal with their disposition was ridiculous. It is entirely a different case with the books in this mystery.

>47 benitastrnad: Yes, I've noticed that, too. It makes the books feel unfinished.

>49 cbl_tn: >47 benitastrnad:
I just finished By its Cover and agree. Maybe it is a teaser to get up coming back to watch Guido's life evolve, but it seems odd. I did like the book- This is the first I noticed mention of future occupancy of Paola's parents' palazzo. and I like seeing more of relationships in the family. The lack of resolution at the end may be the reality of the policeman's lot - I know in my work, I rarely see the final resolution of things I work on.

>47 benitastrnad: My comment in my review about this was: The novel felt "unfinished" because it lacked a wrap-up, and the only "justice" achieved was through a murder.

I just read this review in Publisher's Weekly (the weekly newsletter that I get by e-mail) and thought I would share it with you guys. It seems to me that Mr. Carofiglio has been busy writing. This is the second of his books to come out in English this year.

Three O’Clock in the Morning
Gianrico Carofiglio. Harpervia, $25.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-06-302844-9
Former Italian senator and prosecutor Carofiglio (A Fine Line) takes a break from his Guido Guerrieri crime series with this poignant and moving father/son story. Antonio, an Italian 18-year-old whose parents are separated, is largely estranged from his father; he suffers bouts of epilepsy and, having endured years of failed treatments, is told by a specialist in Marseilles that he may be able to be cured. First, though, the doctor must test how Antonio’s brain reacts to stress. To that end, Antonio is ordered to not sleep for two days, and he spends the 48 hours awake in the city, accompanied by his father. He asks his dad about a scar, which leads to a how-I-met-your-mother story, and a dazzling episode, set in a jazz club, has Antonio marveling at his father playing piano on stage. Then the pair talk about mathematics and magical thinking, and after they visit a porno shop his father recounts visiting a brothel. They eventually get invited to a party where Antonio has a transformative experience. The father and son’s odyssey through the gritty streets of Marseilles is laced with many memorable details, such as the single-file pack of dogs that reminds Antonio of the Abbey Road cover, and Carofiglio shines with vivid descriptions of Antonio’s epilepsy fits (“I had a bedspread that was light blue, almost sky blue. All at once that pale, relaxing colour grew threatening...and went right through me with a violence that was unreal”). Antonio’s catalog of intimate experiences, whether painful, pleasurable, or bittersweet, make for an enchanting coming-of-age tale.

I almost forgot - On March 9, 2021 the latest installment in the Guido Brunetti series was released. It is number 30. Here is the review of the book from the web site Criminal Intent done by a regular contributor to that site. Criminal Intent is a site that is devoted to crime thrillers and mysteries. It is a fun place to go to find books to read. Not that I have to look very far to find those - but it might alert some of you to what is newly released.

I wonder if we will ever catch up with Leon and Brunetti? Here is the review.

In the thirtieth installment of Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series, Brunetti is pushed to his limits as he is forced to confront an unimaginable crime.

There must be something said for longevity. In this case, I refer to the latest release by author Donna Leon title Transient Desires, which is now the 30th installment in the beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti series set in picturesque Venice, Italy.

I have been there from the start and this may be my favorite recurring mystery series. Not so much for the stories, which are always solid, but for the comfort of being able to return each year to these indelible characters and settings. In an age of such unpredictability, it feels good to be able to count on these great annual reads. Transient Desires opens with an event that finds two female American students left on the back dock of the local hospital with nearly life-threatening injuries. The only evidence that Commissario Brunetti and the colleague who brought this to him, Claudia Griffoni, have is a video showing two young men dumping the girls outside the hospital and then leaving in a hurry.

One of the girls was still unconscious with severe head injuries. The other, with a fractured arm, just remembers riding at night on a boat with the two young men who picked them up and then waking up in the hospital. Further digging allows Brunetti and Griffoni to identify the two men as Marcello Vio, who works as a loader and driver for his uncle’s ships, and his best friend Filiberto Duso, a young lawyer. The uncle in question, a man named Borgato, is bad news and suspected of several illegalities in the late-night shipping trade.

The two young men are scared, more so from the uncle than of the Carabinieri. As it turns out, they thought they were doing the right thing by dropping the injured young women off on the back dock of the hospital rather than calling the accident in late at night and wasting time waiting for the Coast Guard to arrive. They also thought they pushed an alarm button to indicate there were patients waiting for hospital care—regrettably, they had pushed an inoperable button that did nothing, and the girls were found hours later only because a hospital employee came out back for a smoke.

Understanding that this is a Donna Leon novel makes the reader conscious of the fact that there will be some deeper message and social injustice that needs to be addressed. In this case, we learn that one of the illegal trades Borgato is involved in deals with human trafficking. Duso also confesses to Brunetti that his friend Marcello was deeply troubled by an event one night where he showed up at his apartment soaking wet and claiming, ‘We killed them’. Later, it is discoverd that this is a reference to the Nigerian woman who drowned while being illegally transported by one of Borgato’s ships that Marcello was working on.

Brunetti and Griffoni, with the help of the Coast Guard and other coastal authorities, must come up with a plan to catch one of Borgato’ s vessels in the act of conducting illegal activities. However, this will not be easy and could put young Marcello’s life at risk if he is caught assisting the law. Transient Desires is a quick and engaging read. It is sublime how easy readers are able to fall into Leon’s great Brunetti stories and I hope we have many more to look forward to in the future.

>53 benitastrnad: I just added that one to our library's collection this week! It arrived Monday.

Just in case nobody has looked at the calendar it is my duty to tell you that we have four days left in the month of March. That means that we will soon be reading the second in the Bruno Courreges series. The title is Dark Vineyard.

Tomorrow is April 1 and it will be time to turn to our other detective - Bruno Courreges and the Dordogne region of France. The book we will be reading for April is Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker. I checked WorldCat this morning and there are 800 books with this title cataloged around the world, so I hope that some of you might be able to find this book a little easier than the last Bruno book.

This one is book 2 in the series. It has been translated into French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Japanese, but I did not find Dutch listed in WorldCat. I hope that it might be available in Dutch because this series has proved to be popular and the more popular a series the more likely it is to be translated. I hope that all of us will be able to find the book and read it. I happened across a used copy of the book in a Used Book store and I loaned it to a friend. I hope I can get it back in time to read it for this month.

Good luck on finding the book, and happy reading.

I finished the Dutch translation of By its Cover during my vacation. Dutch translations go to now book 28. I expect book 29 will be published later this year.

I reserved the second Bruno Courreges book at the library, and expect to get it next week. The third book was the last one translated, so I doubt any others will be translated.

I'm about 50 pages into this month's installment (The Dark Vineyard). I'm enjoying it so far.

Tonight I watched the second installment of the PBS Masterpiece Theater series "Atlantic Crossing." This show might be of interest to those who participated in previous iterations of this group. As I watched this episode I couldn't help thinking about several of the Camilla Lackberg books that dealt with the lasting repercussions of Swedish collaboration with the German Nazi's during WWII.

The show "Atlantic Crossing" is and 8 part miniseries that is currently on Masterpiece Theater. It is the story of Crown Princess Martha of Norway. She was the niece of King Gustaf V of Sweden and married the Crown Prince of Norway Olav. During WWII she and her children made a daring escape from the German invasion of Norway to her family home in Stockholm, Sweden. From there they were rescued by the US, because at that time the US was still a neutral country and Sweden was also neutral. She and her children ended up in Washington, D. C. where she spent most of the war (until 1943) as a guest of the Roosevelt's and living in the White House.

The episode tonight was about the issue of Norwegian and Swedish collaboration with Germany. This is what made me think of the Lackberg books. The mini-series is done in Norwegian, Swedish, and English so there are subtitles, but the story is interesting and the politics and crisis of the time are accurately portrayed and the tie-ins with our previous reading are very obvious - or at least seemed so to me.

It is interesting that all of the European based mystery series that we have read have had some kind of story in which the issue of collaboration in WWII is part of the plot.

Dear Readers,
We are getting close to the end of the month and there has been little discussion of Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker. I found this book delightful. For me the mystery was almost a distraction as I found the author's descriptions of the lifestyle in that part of France to be so very enticing that I tended to get lost in it. I am learning so much about the governmental organization in France that I didn't know. In this, I find that Bruno and Guido have much in common as the different kinds of law enforcement in the two countries seems complex and confusing to me. Of course, I think that people from other countries would think that of the U. S. with its myriad of federal, state, and local laws and enforcement agencies.

I also found the contempt for the American wine industry amusing. The other day as I was walking past the wine aisle in my local Publix (the supermarket chain) I found myself regarding it from a European point-of-view.

After this second book, I think that Rick Steves is right - we should all be lucky enough to visit the Dordogne! Who wouldn't want to go to those local farmer's markets, eat that food, and drink that wine.

>60 benitastrnad: I loved the descriptions of St. Denis and the Dordogne. I thought the plot was slow to develop and was almost an afterthought to the setting and characters. I didn't really mind this since I enjoyed the setting and the characters are mostly congenial. It wasn't a page-turner so it was easy to put down and hard to pick up if I had other things competing for my attention.

I too just finished this one - and was so glad we are doing this challenge. I thought I had read all the Bruno stories, but must have missed this one. I loved the explanation of the truffles, and the settings of the village markets. In my travels through Europe I've always found the local street markets some of the best fun. I also liked the wonderful scene of Bruno in the Merde!!!

this is such a great endeavor. Both the detectives are charming, the scenery and lifestyles different but still easy to read, or listen too. It's a great group of stories to accompany us through the end of this everlasting pandemic.

I enjoyed my first Bruno, and didn't feel I missed reading the first book.
The Dordogne is a beautiful part of France, in my teens I have spend a vacation there with my family.

Like others, I loved the village life far better than the mystery in the second installment.

>63 FAMeulstee:
I would agree with you. This seems to be a series that is easy to jump into and out of at will. The books are definitely connected with the reoccurring characters and towns, but they are also enough different that they can easily be read out-of-order.

I gave the first two books of this series to a friend of mine who is a gastronome and she loved them. She told me that she has already called our local public library to find out if they have the rest of the books in the series.

In short Bruno and his lifestyle are easy to like.

Today is the first day of May and time for us to turn out attention to the East of the Dordogne and head across the Mediterranean to the city of Venice and into the world of Guido Brunetti. Our book for this month is Falling in Love. It is book number 24 in the series and it will take us back into the world of Italian Opera.

In this book Donna Leon returns to a character that she introduced to us in book number 1 of this series. I checked back through my LT booklists and that told me that we read that book as our January 2018 title. It was a long time ago when we first read about Flavia Petrelli and Opera in Venice and now we get to see what has happened to Flavia in the years since we first met her. In this book Flavia is in Venice to sing the title role in Tosca. How many of you are going to find a recording of Tosca and listen to it or watch it? I may if I get time during my vacation.

I checked in WorldCat and this book has been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Polish. I couldn't find Dutch, but I hope that it is available in Dutch. It is also available as a recorded book so those of you who prefer to listen to this book can do so. I found a German recorded version of the novel listed in WorldCat.

>66 benitastrnad: Tosca is one I actual saw performed, sometime in the mid-60s or early 70s. Probably the New York City Opera in Los Angeles. I know I saw at least two of Beverly Sills' performances but I doubt she did Tosca.

The opera Tosca was composed by Giacomo Puccini with the libretto written by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It was based on a play by the French playwright Victorien Sardou that was first preformed in 1887. When Puccini saw the play in 1889 while it was touring Italy he knew it would be a great opera and he set about getting the permissions needed to do so. This took some time as Sardou vacillated on the agreements but finally in 1895 Puccini obtained the rights and started to work. It took him 4 years and many arguments with the librettists and the publisher.

Finally in then opera premiered in the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on January 14, 1900. It is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias. Tosca premiered at a time of political unrest in Rome, and the premier was delayed for one day to forestall any public disturbances. Critics thought it was a ho hum opera but the public loved it.

Musically, Tosca is very much an opera of the Romantic period. This means it is often considered to be over-the-top in the melodrama category while relying on Wagnerian leitmotifs that opera goers would have instantly recognized. Critics have often dismissed the opera as a facile melodrama with confusions of plot—one musicologist famously called it a "shabby little shocker"—the power of its music is now widely acknowledged and recognized. It may be melodramatic and sappy but the opera is still popular and remains one of the most frequently performed operas. It is also an opera that is considered to be a "must" performance for singers because of the combination of dramatic acting and singing that the role demands. It is this quality that makes it a perfect backdrop for the mystery in Donna Leon novel.

While Guido Brunetti may not be the world's greatest opera fan, he is very much able to appreciate the combination of singing and acting ability that the star of this opera must have. He is also appreciative of the singing talents of Flavia Petrelli and her ability to bring Tosca to life on the stage.

So fellow Guido lovers and mystery readers, this is the backdrop for Falling in Love. Enjoy the reading and the vicarious experience of a Ventian opera through the pages of this novel.

>66 benitastrnad: Yes, Falling in Love is available in Dutch translation. I have my copy from the library.

Traveling from the Dordogne to Venice would go all over land. Part of the drive goes along the Mediterranean coast. Going over sea would mean you have to go all the way around Italy ;-)

It is almost to the end of the month and there has been little discussion about Falling in Love. I just wanted to check in with all of you and let you know that I am in Kansas. My mother is home from the nursing home, but we are having problems with getting her to eat. She tells us the food tastes bad. She complained about it in the nursing home and she complains about what I am cooking. I am 99% certain it is being caused by her medication, so now I get to start contacting doctors and seeing if something can be done about it.

All of this is far away from the world's of Bruno and Guido. On June 1, we will be reading our next Bruno, Chief of Police book. This one will be Black Diamond by Martin Walker. I will take time to do a better wrap up later this week and give you an introduction to the next Bruno book at that time.

I enjoyed revisiting our opera diva in this installment. Even though we might prefer justice to be served in a slightly different manner, I think we all know that the ending afforded more than would be meted out in Brunetti's justice system.

Deleting the duplicated post. How did it do that without a warning?

>71 thornton37814: Yes, I was happier with this ending than I've been with most of the books in this series because there was a better sense of justice.

>71 thornton37814: & >73 cbl_tn:
Justice, at least from my American viewpoint seems to be hard to come by in this series.

Funny, it looks like I am the only one who liked this ending less.

It has always struck me that the endings of Leon's novels are so ambiguous. I wonder if she does this on purpose in order to help people understand why Guido thinks the way he does and why he does what he does? Is she trying to show us the beauty and the beastly part of everyday modern Italian life?

>76 benitastrnad: I always thought it was just to emphasize the political corruption that aids and abets criminals.

It is now the first part of June and time for us to return to the Dordogne and reenter the world of Bruno, Chief of Police. It is time to read book 3 in the Bruno Courrages series, Black Diamond. This book starts out being about the local farmer's markets in the Dordogne and about truffles. It ends up being about something else.

WorldCat says that there are plenty of these books in libraries all around the U.S. It is also available in French and German. There are recorded versions available as well. I don't know if it is available in Dutch. I hope it is.

I have already read the book. I read it in three days this weekend, and it was a fast read but also very engaging. I hope that all of you can get a copy of this book and enjoy reading it.

>78 benitastrnad: Yes, it is available in Dutch translation. I have my copy from the library to read soon. Sadly it is the last one that was translated.

I placed the audiobook on hold. I'm hoping it comes in right about the time I go back to work so I can listen on the commute.

>79 FAMeulstee:
Oh - that's bad. Can you get the recorded versions of his books in Dutch?

>80 thornton37814:
It would be interesting to listen to these books. You will have to let us know how they work in audio.

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking on your site, I read both of the series you are following although I'm pitifully behind on Brunetti. I haven't seen a mention of Bruno's Facebook page and you might want to check it out although I promise you that it will lead you to another and another and another. One of the others being Fort Knox Citrus Farm. Did you know Walker's wife was with Gourmet magazine for a long time? She's the one watching over Bruno's shoulder!

>81 benitastrnad: Well, it came in early so I'm going to try to find a little time this week to listen to some of it so I'll be done by the time it comes due.

I started reading yesterday and I'm up to chapter 9. So far I'm liking this better than either of the first two, and I really enjoyed those.

It is almost the middle of the month so most of us should have started reading Black Diamond and figured out that truffles are a big part of the book. The subject of truffles is an obscure one for most of us and so I did a little digging into the topic. There is a very nice entry in Wikipedia about the French Black Truffle, which also has the name Perigord Truffle.

The Wikipedia article describes the French Black Truffle like this - The round, dark brown fruiting bodies (ascocarps) have a black-brown skin with small pyramidal cusps. They have a strong, aromatic smell and normally reach a size of up to 10 cm (3.9 in). Some may be significantly larger, such as a black truffle found in 2012 in Dordogne with a mass of 1.277 kg (2.82 lb). Their flesh is initially white, then dark. It is permeated by white veins which turn brown with age. The spores are elliptical and measure about 22–55 µm by 20–35 µm. They are dark brown and covered with large spikes. The article goes on to say that truffles should be stored at near freezing temperatures. If they are stored at room temperature they loose their smell and taste.

Research has discovered the specific chemical compound that dogs, pigs, and truffle flies smell is dimethyl sulfide.

I could not find much information on truffle plantations, but the Wikipedia article did say that there is a large area in Spain where truffles are cultivated and grow extremely well. This one area is now almost to surpass France in the amount of truffles harvested and sold each year. There is also an up-and-coming area in Australia where black truffles are now being grown.

If you want to read further about truffles there are several books that would be relevant.

Truffle Boy: My Unexpected Journey Through the Exotic Food Underground by Ian Purkayastha is by the man who is the largest importer of truffles into the U. S. (This book ended up in my giant TBR list.)

Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World's Most Expensive Fungus by Ryan Jacobs looks like it would be very relevant to our mystery.

Then there are two books that are about fungi in general that look like they would be full of great information.
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

This last book Mushroom at the End of the World is a book that I own. I purchased it because I went to a librarians training session and the librarian seated next to me was reading it. I as curious about the title. She said it starts out being about the Matsutake mushroom, which is the most expensive mushroom in the world and ends up being about social justice. That made me curious enough to purchase a copy for myself. Granted, mushrooms are not truffles, but both mushrooms and truffles are fungi, so the topics are related.

I enjoyed The Mushroom at the End of the World and remember it and its messages better than most books I've read fairly recently.

It is getting close to the end of the month and I am wondering how everybody is faring in the venture into the land of fungi? I have to say that I learned some about truffles and some about the French culture and added several books to my growing TBR wish list.

I am really enjoying this mystery series and I think that it has to do with the attitude of the main character. Bruno likes the people he works for (for the most part, while Guido doesn't. Bruno has respect for the system and seems to think that it works while Guido doesn't. Is this national psyche in play? Or just a different approach to a main long term character by two very different authors?

I was just cruising through my Publisher's Weekly newsletter and the title of a new book that will be available in October 2021 popped off the screen right at me.

Truffle Hound: On the Trail of the World’s Most Seductive Scent, with Dreamers, Schemers, and Some Extraordinary Dogs

Rowan Jacobsen. Bloomsbury, Oct. 5 ($28, ISBN 978-1-63557-519-4)

The James Beard Award–winning author of The Geography of Oysters dives nose-first into the world of truffles in an attempt to understand their mysterious allure. 60,000-copy announced first printing.

How is that for serendipity?

I have enjoyed all of the Bruno novels we've read so far, and I liked this one the best. I think the secondary characters are beginning to gel, and I like how Bruno interacts with them.

>88 benitastrnad: I love serendipity!

There is one more day in the month and it will be time to move on to our next book. This one will be the next entry in the Guido Brunetti series by Donna Leon. The July selection is Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon.

I checked WorldCat this morning and this novel is available in French, German, Spanish, Polish, and Finnish, but I didn't see Dutch listed. I hope that it is available in Dutch because this was a Brunetti novel I really enjoyed.

Yes, I have already read it. I took it with me to the swimming pool and read it there early this summer and took it home with me when I went to Kansas. I think this plot is one that will be very interesting for us and I look forward to your comments about it.

This book is number 25 in the Brunetti series and is available in recorded versions in German and English.

I also learned that there is a German TV series based on the Brunetti books that ran for 4 seasons. Has anybody seen any of these?

Another serendipitous find. Listen to Martin Walker talk about the Dordogne and the Bruno books. While reading through my e-mail this afternoon I found this invitation. I hope that some of you will join in as it will be a great way to spend Bastille Day. It's a free event. Remember - it is Eastern Time.

Here is the link to register.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-have-i-not-read-this-book-club-discussion-of-a-...

Event Details:

• WEDNESDAY, JULY 14.

• EVENT START: 12:00 PM ET (or shortly after once all are checked in)

• Hosted in partnership with E. Shaver Booksellers.

• NOTE: This is a virtual event that will be hosted on Zoom—you will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing and sufficient Internet access. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.

Featured Participants:
JENNIFER MAYLE… After pursuing several passions on her career path—fashion and 18th Century porcelain to name but two—Jennie changed course into advertising working on TV commercials. Her final switch was to the film production side which led, a few years later, to her opening her own production company, Jennie & Co. One of the directors to join the company was anxious for her to meet his ex-boss, the creative director of an extremely well regarded small agency. The creative director was Peter Mayle, and the rest is history. She is now proud to be the sole director of Escargot Copyrights Limited which handles Peter Mayle’s literary estate.

MARTIN WALKER, after a long career of working in international journalism and for think tanks, now gardens, cooks, explores vineyards, writes, travels, and has never been more busy. He is the internationally bestselling author of the Bruno, Chief of Police series and divides his time between Washington, D.C., and the Dordogne.

JONATHAN SEGAL is Vice President and Executive Editor at Alfred A. Knopf, where he has worked since 1989. Prior to that he worked for Simon & Schuster, and for The New York Times. Seven books that he has edited have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes, and the list of remarkable authors with whom he has worked includes both Peter Mayle and Martin Walker.

A bit more explanation about the previous posting -

I found this listed on a newsletter posting that I get from Vintage Books and Anchor Books. They have a virtual book club titled "How Have I Not Read This?" The book for July is Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. Mayle died in 2018 but the series of books he wrote about restoring a farm house in Provence have remained popular. (I have read the first two in the series and have the third one on my wishlist - I just haven't gotten to it yet.) Jennifer Mayle is Mayle's third wife. This should be an interesting program. Something fun for Bastille Day.

>90 benitastrnad: Yes it is available in Dutch (Eeuwige jeugd), and a copy is on its way from an other library. It should arrive later this week.

Hello,

It looks like we went an entire month without a posting to this thread. How many of you finished reading the Guido Brunetti book - Waters of Eternal youth?
I am back in Kansas where I am in hopes of being able to say that my mother is finally on the way to recovery. She had COVID towards the end of November in 2020 and was hospitalized. She was released in December 2020 and since then has been in the hospital three times. The doctor told me in May that she has what is called Long Haul COVID. I spent six weeks here in Kansas with her setting up the needed social services to help her deal with the consequences and after effects. My sister was here last week and I am now back. Both of us teach school and our respective schools start here in August. My fall term starts August 18 and so I wanted to check to make sure things were working right and that Mom was doing well enough that we could make it through the fall semester. I am happy to report that she is doing very well. The reoccurring ear infection is gone - finally and she is eating and sleeping much better. The physical therapy she is doing is helping her stamina and they just started to work on some strength training. Things are going well so I hope that after her last appointment on Monday I can leave and she will be OK.

Since it is now August we will be leaving the world of Guido Brunetti and his beloved La Serenissima and returning to the Dordogne and the life and world of Bruno Courreges. The book for August will be Crowded Grave by Martin Walker. Since I have been traveling I will confess that I have already read this book and can tell you that, once-again, we are in for a treat.

The book this month, Crowded Grave takes us into the world of prehistory. The Dordogne is famous for its food and lifestyle, but it is also famous for its prehistorical sites. Most of these are caves that often feature the famous paintings of prehistoric animals. The most famous of these caves is Lascaux. Lascaux is located close to the city of Montignac and is in the northern part of the Dordogne. The cave was discovered in September of 1940 by a teenager and was opened to public viewing in 1948. This proved to be disastrous to the cave paintings and the cave was closed to the public in 1963. A full sized facsimile was built and opened in the 1990's and there are several full size traveling facsimiles that have been to cities all over the world. The original cave has been closed to scholars since 2012 and access is only granted to a few people who are allowed in using stringent sterile practices. In many cases the paintings have so deteriorated over the years that scholars now study a series of drawings done by a local priest between 1940 and 1948 as a record of what was in Lascaux.

Lascaux is not the only cave with prehistoric paintings. There are at least 37 documented sites in the Vezeres River valley alone. Some of these are open to the public and some are not. Since the Dordogne is a very popular tourist destination there are many prehistoric themed parks, camping grounds, and other tourist sites that can be found in the area. Just because it is France doesn't mean that everything is high culture. There are still tacky tourist things to be found.

There is also ongoing work being done in the Dordogne on many aspects of prehistoric life and cave paintings are only a part of that archeological work. There are currently several sites where excavations are being done and the lifestyle of Cro-Magnon humans are being actively studied in the region. Mr. Walker has chosen to bring pre-history to us in this new mystery, so I wish all of you a month of happy reading.

It was a busy month, but I did really enjoy The Waters of Eternal Youth. I've already completed Crowded Grave also and enjoyed it.

Glad to see that people are enjoying the Bruno books. I never did read the first one last winter but I'm hoping to get to it in September and maybe get caught up (after talking to Carrie and Lori). Besides the first book, I've also got a Kindle copy of the Christmas short story.

>97 lindapanzo: We're happy you are considering joining us. I think you'll like Bruno.

This month we will be returning to Guido Brunetti series. This will be book number26 in the series - Earthly Remains by Donna Leon. In this book we spend most of reading time in the quiet backwaters of the Laguna - with the bees.

>99 benitastrnad: I've been listening to this one on my commute all week. I honestly don't know if I can wait until next week to finish the four hours. I'll get another hour or so in running errands in the morning, but I'm just not sure I will resist listening some more this weekend.

>100 thornton37814:
This is a good one!

Back in August I was at home to make sure that my mother's care for COVID was going well and I had the last three Guido Brunetti books with me. I took them with me to community coffee to give to a friend of mine who had started reading the series about a year ago. I had the books in a stack and one of the ladies sitting there picked them up and started looking through them. (One was The Golden Egg) Soon she asked me was the word vaporetto was. I explained it to her. She humphed and asked me who the books were for, but that since Carol wasn't there that day that I was just going to leave them on the table and Carol could pick them up when she came to coffee next time. This woman asked me if she could read them first. I said no problem. Last week my sister told me that she had read all of them in August and had asked if I had more of them. I told my sister to direct her to the local public library as I was sure that they would have some of the books.

This woman is a quilter and she listens to books while she is quilting. I told my sister to recommend the recorded versions of the series as I was sure that she would love hearing David Rintoul read these books.

My sister told me that every time I bring a batch of books home and pass them out at coffee that the books end up getting passed around to all the ladies. I have also brought Carol the first two Bruno books but haven't seen her to ask how she liked them. Even though Leon is now on book number 31 in the Guido series she is still finding fans for these books.

I finished Earthly Remains a couple of days ago. I thought it was a little different as it's more of a character study than a mystery. Even the smaller-than-usual mystery plot was more about the character of the victim than anything else. I like how Leon keeps finding new locations to explore in such a long-running series.

>102 cbl_tn:
I like that she stays away (most of the time) from the touristy sights and keeps telling us about the other parts of Venice and the surrounding region.

I also agree that this mystery was about the character of the men involved. I found that I couldn't put this book down when I was wanting to go to sleep a bit earlier. It kept me reading.

I liked Wat niet verdwijnt (the Dutch title of Earthly Remains), it entered my personal top five of Brunetti books. I was happy to spend some time with Brunetti, like spending some time with an old acquaintance. Indeed not much mystery in this book, but that didn't matter to me.
I also liked how actual themes like climate change and pollution came up.

Tomorrow is the last day of the month and it will be time for us to start reading the next book on our list. In October we will return to the world of Bruno and his beloved Dordogne. The book will be Devil's Cave. I could not find this book among my locally available collections so had to place an Inter-Library Loan request for it. Luckily, I started looking for this book at the beginning of September and so when the book got here (from the University of Pennsylvania Library) I got busy and read it, so I already know what a treat all of you will have when you start reading this book.

Used copies of this book are available for about half the price of new paperback from Amazon at several of the used book outlets. New paperback copies are available from Amazon. I hope that those of you who need this book in a language other than English will be able to find it, as it is a very enjoyable and satisfying book.

>105 benitastrnad: Sadly only the first three Bruno books were translated, so I will skip this months read.

>105 benitastrnad: I began listening to it today.

>106 FAMeulstee:
Oh - that's too bad. These books are very enjoyable. I would like to think that eventually they will be translated as the series is becoming quite popular here in the U. S. and two new titles have been published in the U. S. in the last year. This brings the total of the Bruno novels to 16 - counting the published short stories.

As I was listening to the Bruno book en route to work today, Isabelle made some sort of comment about if she tried to get into some sort of record on the Internet that it would send up a red flag. I couldn't help but think she needed a Signorina Elettra.

It is time to start thinking about if we want to continue this thread into next year.

Currently, we will have read 27 out of the 31 titles in the Guido Brunetti series. There is another new Brunetti book scheduled to be released in March of 2022. That would be 4 titles left for this series for next year.

There are 9 titles in the Bruno, Chief of Police series that we have not read, and there is a new one scheduled for 2022. That would mean that we could continue to read the two series we are currently involved in for the year 2022. We could read one of the Guido Brunetti books every quarter next year and read 8 of the Bruno books in the other months. Would that work for everyone?

Or do you want to switch and read a new series in 2022?

>110 benitastrnad: I would like to finish the in process series! 4 and 8 sounds good.

>110 benitastrnad: I like that idea!

>110 benitastrnad: I would join for the remaining Brunetti books, although in Dutch we are two behind.
Sadly no further Martin Walker books available in Dutch translation, as I did like them.

>113 FAMeulstee:
That is interesting about the Martin Walker books. As popular as they are here in the States I would have thought that some Dutch publisher would have purchased the rights to translate them. Of course, popularity can be a double edged sword. The more popular they are here the more it will cost a publisher to purchase those rights. Can you read German? I know that many publishers translate books into German.

>114 benitastrnad: Dutch is a small language in numbers, so some succes is needed to continue translating and publishing a series. The market for German books is much larger, and the market for English books is gigantic, compared to those.
My German is worse than my English. And reading English takes 4 to 5 times more time than reading Dutch. With my TBR well filled, I keep it at reading my books in Dutch ;-)

>115 FAMeulstee:
Your post made me laugh. Here at the University many people consider Dutch and German to be close cousins - so if you speak one then you can understand the other. Probably not true, but ... I have a friend here who is German and speaks Dutch, English, Italian, and Spanish. His wife speaks German, Dutch, and French. Both of them got their post-graduate degrees in the Netherlands so that accounts for some of their multilingual ability. One day at lunch my friend was speaking to a fellow professor who is Italian and they were speaking Italian. All of a sudden the Italian professor got a confused look on his face, and then both of them started laughing. Rainer had gotten confused and started speaking Spanish to the Italian. He apologized, in English, and said that the two languages sound so much the same that he got confused and started speaking Spanish to his Italian colleague.

If I get time I will look and see if I can find out if more of the Martin Walker books have been translated. It is easy enough to search in WorldCat and find out. It is only a question of time.

>116 benitastrnad: It was intended to make you laugh, so mission accomplished.
The story of your friend is funny. I have found myself mixing up languages on vacation in Germany, when I met a fellow LT member from England. Speaking Dutch with my husband, speaking German in the hotel and restaurants & then move on to English was a bit to much to handle.

My problem is that I have dyslexia. The way my brain took care of this, is making an image of every Dutch word, this way I recognise the words I read. My "brain catalogue" of English words is less extended, and German is almost non existant.

I have already searched the catalogue of the Dutch "Koninklijke Bibliotheek", that is were you can find every Dutch published book, there are only three Dutch Martin Walker books.
There might be some hope: the first three books were newly translated and published earlier this year.

It is almost the end of the month and there has been very little said about Devil's Cave. I enjoyed this novel as much as the previous ones in the Bruno series. I find that I really enjoy reading about the community and the ties that so many of them have to each other. I also find it interesting that the concerns of the area are about attracting and keeping good paying jobs in their corner of France. These are the same concerns of the people who live in my home area of North Central Kansas. Good jobs are fast disappearing and the young people go off to college and stay in the big cities. Few of them ever return and so the area is slowly dwindling away as the population ages. (I should know, as I did the same thing- went to college and moved away.) I think that Walker has pegged it correctly when he says that the very essence of France is in danger because of the population shift.

I enjoyed the book. I listened to it early in the month but I didn't want to say anything until others finished reading it. While I enjoyed the setting and Bruno, I did not enjoy the Occult elements. Even as a cat person, I appreciated Bruno's new little pup!

Tomorrow will be November 1 and time to read the next Donna Leon book. For November we will be reading Temptation of Forgiveness. I have it on my bedside table but have not started it yet. I am currently reading several other books and will start on this one as soon as I finish one of the others.

Temptation of Forgiveness is book number 27 in the Guido Brunetti series. The Amazon blurb for the book follows.

In the twenty-seventh novel in Donna Leon's bestselling mystery series, a suspicious accident leads Commissario Guido Brunetti to uncover a longstanding scam with disturbing unintended consequences. Surprised, if not dismayed, to discover from his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, that leaks are emanating from the Questura, Commissario Guido Brunetti is surprised more consequentially by the appearance of a friend of his wife’s, fearful that her son is using drugs and hopeful Brunetti can somehow intervene. When Tullio Gasparini, the woman’s husband, is found unconscious and with a serious brain injury at the foot of a bridge in Venice after midnight, Brunetti is drawn to pursue a possible connection to the boy’s behavior. But the truth, as Brunetti has experienced so often, is not straightforward.

As the twenty-seventh novel unfolds in Donna Leon’s exquisite chronicle of Venetian life in all its blissful and sordid aspects, Brunetti pursues several false and contradictory leads while growing ever more impressed by the intuition of his fellow Commissario, Claudia Griffoni, and by the endless resourcefulness and craftiness of Signorina Elettra, Patta’s secretary and gate-keeper. Exasperated by the petty bureaucracy that constantly bedevils him and threatens to expose Signorina Elettra, Brunetti is steadied by the embrace of his own family and by his passion for the classics. This predilection leads him to read Sophocles’ Antigone, and, in its light, consider the terrible consequences to which the actions of a tender heart can lead.

Guido's predilection for the classics as his reading material has become something of a trope in these books. I find that I am beginning to wonder which one he will be reading in this novel. (sort of like what book is Longmire going to be quoting from in his next mystery?) The Amazon blurb answered that question for me.
The works that Guido is reading are then becoming interesting to me in their own right. In the last book Guido was reading Pliny the Elder and his Natural History. In this one he is reading Sophocles. I am also trying to read through some of the Mary Renault books on ancient Greece and so many of these famous founding fathers of literature are becoming more and more familiar to me through other literature. Who knows - I may begin to read them as well.

I have read Tacitus, Plato, Aristotle, and one or two of the plays of Sophocles. Not everything by them - only what was required for my college courses. However, through Guido's eyes I am beginning to see them as literature that could be enjoyed as reading for pleasure.

>120 benitastrnad: I put the audiobook on hold, and I'm next on the list, so I should get it this month.

For those who have been on this mystery tour for several years I wanted to let you know that there is a new Tony Hillerman biography. I ran across it yesterday when I was cruising through book reviews. This biography was published in October of 2021 and is by James McGrath Morris and is titled Tony Hillerman: A Life. It is published by the University of Oklahoma Press. The book review was great but I thought it might be of interest for those who want to know more about Hillerman and what led him to write the Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn mysteries.

I finished reading Temptation of Forgiveness today while I was waiting in waiting rooms, and I think this might be the best one yet, in this series. Really nothing happens in it, but so much happens in it. I can't wait to hear what the rest of you have to say about Claudia Griffoni, or some of the other women characters, and of course Signorina Elettra. And Antigone.

Better late than never. I've finished the first Bruno book, Bruno, Chief of Police and now I want to read more. I own a copy of the Christmas short story so I'll probably read that one next.

>125 lindapanzo: It's the one for December anyway so you'll be joining the rest of us in reading it.

I just got back this evening and I will get us going tomorrow with the last book for our year.

Maybe I can get to it this weekend since it is so short! It may be "just the thing" to get my reading mojo back.

How is everybody doing with this short story. I was unable to get the story before I left Alabama, so I can't enter into any discussion about it.

I did want to let people know that I will be setting up the thread for this group for next year. I plan on devoting some time to it after December 29, 2021. It will be ready before the First of the New Year. I will post the link to the new thread here when I get it set up.

I read it early in the month.

I got it on my Nook and haven't read it yet. I will get to it - probably after January 1.

I have set up the 2022 thread for this reading group. Here is the link to that thread.
https://www.librarything.com/topic/338481