Dropping in: Jan. 4, 2015 Sunday Salon

• Just finished: Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North. Still mulling reactions to this book.
  
• Listening to: Michael Connelly’s The Gods of Guilt. Criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, so-called because he works from back of a Lincoln Town Car, defends a virtual pimp who is accused of murdering one of his clients, a prostitute. The prostitute happens to also be one of Haller’s former clients – a woman he connected to.
       The Gods of Guilt came out in 2013. I was reminded of it when I picked up Connelly’s 2014 offering, The Burning Room. In that, Harry Bosch, a detective working what is likely one of his last cases mentors a rookie who shares some of the work motivations of his own past.    Love Connelly for his characters, his plots, his themes.  I’m particularly moved by descriptions of the way life used to be, a time just passed in general and at specifically at newspapers  – whose hay days are over. Connelly’s a former reporter at the LA Times.  I worked at a small Maine newspaper.
       The Burning Room is a passing-the-torch book. I only wish Connelly wrote more than a book a year. I need his excellent but easy-to-read writing to punctuate some of the tougher stuff I take on. Haven’t found any detective novels I like as well.
•  Next Up: For book club Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins.
• Also in line David Mitchell’s Bone Clocks.
• Interested in:  Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven.
• Presently rereading: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Translation and Commentary by Edwin F. Bryant, a text that was used in my Yoga Teacher Training class.
• Participating in: a Movement Cleanse on the website: Liberated Body. (Some do food cleanses to bring awareness to food reactions; this is a movement cleanse to bring awareness to body movements.)