Mysteries Solved

Finished Reading:

• Paul F Boller, Jr. – Presidential Campaigns
• Julia Stuart – The Pigeon Pie Mystery: A Novel

Currently Reading:

• Herman Melville – Moby-Dick
• Griffith John McRee – Life and Correspondence of James Iredell Vol. I
• Frank Van Der Linden – The Turning Point: Jefferson’s Battle for the Presidency
• John S D Eisenhower – Zachary Taylor

I finished up two books this week, including one which I had been working on for a while. Boller’s Presidential Campaigns was a good synopsis of the presidential campaigns up to 1980 and had some fun tidbits and interesting quotes. My main complaint, though, is that I often found inaccurate dates in the work. Typically, each chapter had at least one date wrong, some by a good many days. For me, it takes away from a work when I can’t intrinsically trust that the information being presented is accurate. Still, I did enjoy the experience of examining the elections that led up to the present day, just in time for the revelation this morning that Rep. Paul Ryan will be Romney’s running mate. I’ll reserve my judgment of this move but merely state my relief at having this one mystery solved so that journalists no longer have to speculate what Romney’s every move says about who he’s going to choose.

Speaking of mysteries, Julia Stuart’s The Pigeon Pie Mystery is one of the best mysteries I’ve read this year. Though there is a feeling of getting oriented to the setting and characters in the first couple of chapters, once the plot picks up and the reader starts learning more about the quirky characters at the grace and favour house as well as the main character Mink and her servant Pooki, one can’t help but be entranced. The mystery becomes a race against time to find the murderer, and Stuart has the reader in her grip up until the very end. With an air of dignity and more than a dash of gossip, the mystery unfolds in a delightful way. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading novels set in Victorian England or who enjoys a good mystery.

My other books are progressing. I haven’t read much in Moby-Dick or the Iredell book this week. I’m planning on devoting more time to The Turning Point now that I’m done with Boller’s campaign book, and I began reading Eisenhower’s Zachary Taylor as it will be a quick read and will be another Times Books presidential book I can check off my list. Speaking of, I’m waiting for Calhoun’s Benjamin Harrison to come in via Interlibrary Loan. Also, I have a book to read for professional development that I’ll likely start sometime this weekend. Plus, there’s a fiction book that’s been sitting on my nightstand for a bit waiting for me to cull through my reading list so that I could get around to it. I seem to be cycling through books at a good pace now so I can get to it in the next week or so. After that, who knows? The summer’s not gone yet, and I plan on enjoying the last vestiges of it with some good reads. I hope you do the same!