Interim

Can't believe that it's been 11 months since I posted to this blog. But I am going to begin discussing PD James' Lighthouse now and let the reader finish The Murder Room.

PD James' The Murder Room was wonderful, as usual for Lady James' works. I had intended to blog by chapter on that crime novel but that plan did not seem to work with my own style. I was rushing on and on to follow a thread of clues or a character's next move.

I always have a piece of paper -- notepad leaf, discarded receipt, torn corner of a newspaper -- on which I jot down notes when reading a crime novel, list of characters, locations and time tables. This blog will be that electronic piece of paper for me.

When (or IF) I trade in a crime novel (Murder By The Book on South Pearl Street in Denver), and when I return a library book, I will often leave that piece of paper in the book for the next reader. I never give away a secret or spoil the next reader's enjoyment. But the piece of paper is a conversation between two strangers about a book that we are both reading. This is as if we had met on a bus going downtow, never to meet again as fate would have it, but spending a few minutes together. Delicious time together. Except here we slip the laws of time and space and never actually meet except through a time-traveling piece of paper.

Time and space, such an interesting concept. We should read The Elegant Universe together someday.