Mondays are universally tough, or so it seems to me. Even the most upbeat of people sometimes want to postpone them. For me, even though I almost always love where I'm going to be going when I wake up on Mondays, I still need something to make me smile.

Mariachi bands make me happy, think of better times and futures ones I hope will happen someday. I don't care if it's authentic mariachi or samples of it in OMC's 1996 "How Bizarre," I get pretty much giddy, going on vacation in my mind since it's much cheaper and the chances of things getting out of control much slimmer.

Here are some bands to check out now:

http://www.mtviggy.com/lists/7-mariachi-bands-you-need-to-know-now/

Thank you, Shuffle...

I'll take my smiles any way I can get them these days and for some reason whenever I unexpectedly hear "Got A Hold On Me" by Christine McVie I feel better. Not only does it have lots of feel-good vibes, it's just so darn bouncy you can't not smile. :)

I've always liked Christine McVie. Her voice may not have the character that Stevie Nicks's has, but it's still a very nice one (not bad "nice," but real nice) and "Songbird" (one of the prettiest Fleetwood Mac songs...prettiest songs, ever, really) is all in her court.

According to Songfacts:

Christine McVie penned the song in half a hour after she woke up in the middle of the night with the song in her head. She recalled to Mojo January 2013: "I got up and I wrote it on the piano."

I love the comments about the song. One Songfacts user writes that she sings it to her three-year-old to help her get to sleep at night.:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2182

And, as much as I love Stevie, it doesn't hurt to remember that Christine contributed a lot of good to the band too (so glad she's back for the current Fleetwood Mac tour!):

http://thewildheartrocks.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/10-great-fleetwood-mac-songs-that-are-written-or-sung-by-christine-mcvie/

 

Sunday paper snippets...

From this section of the New York Times Book Review ("Sara Paretsky: By The Book") I discovered another "new" author, whose books sound very intriguing:

Which do you consider the best detective stories of all time, and why?

Anna Katharine Green, for defining the consulting detective for the 19th century; Wilkie Collins, for playing with the form and transforming it; Dashiell Hammett, for reinventing the form for the 20th century; the Holmes oeuvre, for making detective fiction popular in both Great Britain and America; Amanda Cross and Lillian O’Donnell, for opening the door that enabled Marcia Muller, Linda Barnes, Sue Grafton and me to challenge the form in new ways.

 

What makes a good detective novel?

Believable characters first, a good story, an understanding of how to pace dramatic action. I like commitment by a writer, to the form, to the story — there are lots of slick writers of crime fiction who aren’t writing out of passion, but for the market. They write good English sentences, but for me, the lack of commitment makes them uninteresting.

for the rest of it, just jump here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/books/review/sara-paretsky-by-the-book.html?_r=0

 

To get a free copy of The Leavenworth Case for your ereader go here:

 

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Anna_Katherine_Rohlfs_The_Leavenworth_case?id=JQ0GAAAAQAAJ



Girl Defective continues to haunt...

Girl Defective is the kind of novel that continues to beat in your soul long after you've finished it. I absolutely loved the characters, the story, the love, but I also adored all the music references and jotted down almost every song referenced.

I re-discovered some favorites and found some "new" to me. Tim Hardin's "It'll Never Happen Again," for instance, is one track I pulled up online right away to listen to, then bought off iTunes because it's so achingly beautiful. As Sky says, "the mournful piano was like a finger prodding me."

Some people cite High Fidelity as their favorite music-infused novel. I mean it with all sincerity when I write that Girl Defective pretty much topples that to the ground. It's more heartfelt, more earnest and, in a fiction world where record collectors and music lovers are almost always guys, it's nice to have a girl be the main character.




"Music was everything: the whole stinging, ringing pulse of being human was in here."
 

This drawing is from Dickens' Bleak House and done by Hablot Knight Browne (I love that name!) way back when the novel was originally published in serial form. I look at it and find odd comfort and can't get over how much the shading adds to the mood, makes the picture so powerful.

The way Caddy Jellby is leaning against the mantel is so modern, reminding me that body language is universal and timeless. I'm not a big Dickens fan, but I do so love Bleak House.

 

As I sometimes do when I can't sleep, I wander out into my living room and look at all the books on my shelves and know that even if I never slept another night in my life there still wouldn't be enough time to read novels new to me or revisit the careworn ones.

 

When you love books a lot, sometimes you just have to find comfort in their presence alone and not worry that you'll never get to them all...