Yesterday we also went over to the Madsens again. In typical fashion, no one had told what time dinner was at so Steve just got home from being out with his cousin at 2:00 when Alice calls to say that dinner is at 2:00 and where are we? Steve -- in typical Madsen noncommunication style -- says we're not hungry (we completely weren't). In this, he meant we weren't coming so go ahead with dinner. Alice heard that we were going to be late so they held dinner for an hour. Unaware, we took a nap and then walked Tug. Alice calls while we're walking Tug and long story short we got there at 4:00 and Alice gave us the dirtiest of looks I have ever seen from her. Shocking. We still weren't hungry -- they had left plates on the table and everything -- and stayed until almost 7 basically watching tv and a little chatting. UFF DA!!
It's a nice cool rainy dark day here today. Lovely. Only getting into the low 50's tops. I've been on the computer, dealing with wet carpet, and getting groceries at Walmart today. Now I'm back on the computer for more. I'm doing laundry of things that were on the floor of the laundry room that got soaked. Another day in paradise. :)
TV: Well, Monday is tv night. The Closer, Jon & Kate Plus 8, Paranormal State. This is the first day of the RNC convention but it is scaled back for the hurricane so there's not much to watch except all the correspondants in St. Paul talking about how nothing is going on, etc. Ah well.
Reading: THE BLACK TOWER by Louis Bayard. Standalone novel at 352 pages. Here's the blurb:
Bayard (The Pale Blue Eye) sets his latest historical adventure in the streets of Paris as the blood lust of the revolution subsides. It is 1818 when Vidocq, a former convict and the (real-life) founder of the newly created plainclothes investigative force known as the Sûreté, tracks down obscure medical student Hector Carpentier, whose name was found in the pocket of a dead man. As they work through the clues together, they move from the slums of Paris out to the royal gardens of Saint-Cloud. The duo soon realizes that the murders they are investigating may be connected to the whereabouts of Marie Antoinette's lost son, said to have died in the Black Tower. Then they conclude that they might have found the lost prince. As Vidocq and Carpentier fight to keep him alive, they face a dark cover-up and evil alliances that will shape the history of France.
The author's website is found at http://www.louisbayard.com/ and more information can be gleened at his page on the publisher's website at http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061173509/The_Black_Tower/index.aspx where this more detailed description of the work can be found:
Vidocq. The name strikes terror in the Parisian underworld of 1818. As founder and chief of a newly created plainclothes police force, Vidocq has used his mastery of disguise and surveillance to capture some of France’s most notorious and elusive criminals. Now he is hot on the trail of a tantalizing mystery—the fate of the young dauphin Louis-Charles, son of Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI.
Hector Carpentier, a medical student, lives with his widowed mother in her once-genteel home, now a boardinghouse, in Paris’s Latin Quarter, helping the family make ends meet in the politically perilous days of the restoration. Three blocks away, a man has been murdered, and Hector’s name has been found on a scrap of paper in the dead man’s pocket: a case for the unparalleled deductive skills of Eugène François Vidocq, the most feared man in the Paris police. At first suspicious of Hector’s role in the murder, Vidocq gradually draws him into an exhilarating—and dangerous—search that leads them to the true story of what happened to the son of the murdered royal family.
Officially, the Dauphin died a brutal death in Paris’s dreaded Temple—a menacing black tower from which there could have been no escape—but speculation has long persisted that the ten-year-old heir may have been smuggled out of his prison cell. When Hector and Vidocq stumble across a man with no memory of who he is, they begin to wonder if he is the Dauphin himself, come back from the dead. Their suspicions deepen with the discovery of a diary that reveals Hector’s own shocking link to the boy in the tower—and leaves him bound and determined to see justice done, no matter the cost.
In The Black Tower, Bayard deftly interweaves political intrigue, epic treachery, cover-ups, and conspiracies into a gripping portrait of family redemption—and brings to life an indelible portrait of the mighty and profane Eugène François Vidocq, history’s first great detective.
The first paragraph reads (after a couple pages of diary excerpts critical to the story) :
I'm a man of certain age -- old enough to have been every kind of fool -- and I find to my surprise that the counsel I have to pass on is this: Never let your name be found in a dead man's trousers.
So the rest of the day should continue as is. Right now, Steve is watching stupid daytime tv and making fun of it. I'm drinking some General Foods International Coffee (what else on a cold day such as this?), munching on animal crackers and perusing the Internet. I didn't read yet Sarah Wienman's roundup of book news from yesterday (posted later in the day than usual). I'm reading a couple of 4MA digests and need to post my August reads to it. I've got some blogs to check in on and news stuff. It feels like an uber-Sunday rather than holiday Monday. At least this work week will be a little shorter.
I believe that is all the news for now...
Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster
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