Good Reading and the lazy day that wasn't

I like to share mysteries I've enjoyed with blog readers, for those of you who like mysteries as much as I do. I just finished Jessica Rohm's Sugar Tower in which she mixes the decline of newspapers, the New York City real estate crisis, the workings of the medical examiner’s office, and one woman reporter, single at 42, hearing her biological clock and wondering if she made the wrong choices in life. Rohm adds the murder of a prominent developer’s wife, and then crafts a whopping good mystery with a lot of depth and character development. Yes, there’s an obvious allusion to Donald Trump in Barry Sugarman’s empire but Sugarman is better looking. Mach (Marchessa Jesus Piazza, whose newspaper byline reads M. Jesus Piazza) is the self-deprecating amateur sleuth who meets not only mystery but moral dilemmas as she tries to figure out who killed Annabel Trainor Sugarman and get an exclusive story for her newspaper. You know somebody in this story is smarmy but figuring out who isn’t easy, which is as it should be. A good read.
Today was supposed to be a lazy Sunday. I had the whole day ahead of me to do with as I pleased--well, almost. I guess my work ethic got to me or something, because after lingering over the paper and coffee (one can only linger so much on our much-reduced Sunday paper) I went to the grocery for one item (but did explore a new grocery store everyone raves about--it was just a nice clean grocery but not, as Sue said tonight, Central Market). Came home to ride my bicycle five miles and then start unpacking the Christmas decorations. My house is now really really messy, a work in process. Decorating for Christmas is sort of addictive--you think you'll quit for now but then it strikes you this belongs there instead of where it is, and you keep moving things around until without realizing it you've spent an hour. And it still doesn't look quite right. I usually do this Thanksgiving weekend but won't have time this year and my memoir class is having a Christmas party on the 30th. I told them not to expect decorations, but then I thought, "Why not?" So I'm working on it.
I finally quit rearranging to go to dinner at the home of my former neighbor, Sue. Her parents are in town, and I always enjoy seeing them. Good dinner, good conversation. They're Canadians, as obviously is Sue, and we discussed Prince William's engagement--Sue's father, Bob, says we Americans get a lot more excited about it than they do in Canada. Then we had a long talk about Prince Charles--they had not seen the NBC special that so impressed me, but we talked about him as an adult almost as old as we all are. A nice way to end a pleasant day, even if it wasn't lazy.

His Royal Highness Prince Charles

I watched the NBC special interview with Prince Charles tonight, and my first thought was that he reminds me of Henry Adams. When I was a freshman in college I passed out of freshman English second semester and took instead an entire semester devoted to The Education of Henry Adams, a dense, multi-layered, introspective sort of autobiography of a man lost between two worlds that he symbolized by the Virgin and the Machine--the old order of faith and the new mechanized world. If I remember the book correctly, he saw these two polar opposites most clearly at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.
Prince Charles seems much the same--caught between the old order of the monarchy and his contemporary world of ecological concerns, particularly his project to save the rain forests. As newscaster Brian Williams found it, it's difficult to ask this man who will be king about his role as monarch, because it presumes the death of his parent and, as he said, now that he's in his sixties he may drop dead before he ever becomes king. It strikes me William is likely to ascend to the throne in much shorter time than his father, who is the longest-serving (is that the word?) heir apparent in the British monarchy.
Call me a patsy for a well-done pr piece and perhaps it's true, but Charles came across as very human in this special. Like many Americans, I had little regard for him, thinking he had dumped poor Diana for Camilla. But that's a surface reading of a complex situation. Having carried that image of a young Charles in my mind for years, it's strange to see him at the far edge of middle age, a graying, slightly paunchy, balding man but one who seems highly introspective, thoughtful when he speaks (almost sometimes in riddles), and a concerned parent. I loved seeing his castle/estate in northern Scotland where he grows all sorts of organic plants and puts his ecological concerns to a practical test. He's also a man comfortable with solitude, which I admire, and with long walks in the rugged countryside. All in all, I rather liked him--and now I want to go to the Scottish Highlands all the more.
I ignored Jacob to watch that. At one point, he told me to turn it off and play "Who Let the Dogs out" but I refused. I felt a trifle guilty when I snuck a look at him, a lonely child watching TV by himself. But we had great fun after the program was over reading a Star Wars book, watching dog videos that made him giggle. Otherwise a fine day--my friend Kathie picked me up and we met Carol and Fran at the Zodiac Room in the Dallas Neiman's. High cotton, that! But the best tuna I've had in a long time. And a good visit--with that bunch, talk inevitably comes back to publishing.
A nice day, and now I must go wish Jacob "Sweet Dreams." Sweet dreams to you, too.