On Friday, March 25, year 421, Venice was founded. The people began as fishermen and refugees from the invasions sweeping Lombardy. They started at the Rialto area.  Pic via UCSC archives

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. Really, really a good read. A beautiful book.

1776, by David McCullough - Follows George Washington through 1776. The Declaration is given short shrift--which is fine. Plenty of stuff about the Declaration elsewhere. I grew up with a myth that GW was basically a wooden fellow with wooden teeth. Besides indulging all the war-geek stuff, McCullough illustrates the myth that Washington was in his own life. He had a charisma, in his character and his physical presence, that was almost godly.

Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, edited by F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan. Perfect name for this book, the numinous southernness of "the crossroads." Blues, the devil, goth rural life, weirdness. The first story in the book "Plate of Mojo" by Honoree Fannone Jeffers, was so unique and strong, I had to give the anthology a rest after reading it. It just didn't seem fair to put any other story up against it. The rest of the stories range from medium grade short-story-with-a-twist to fine stuff.

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, by Faiza Guene. YA. Not much of a plot, but a good read. A strong voice, from the POV of a young French-Moroccan woman in a Paris project.

In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel, by Sarah Dunant. Takes place in Venice. My kind of book. Told from the POV of a dwarf and his business partner, a high-class sex-worker. The characters are exquisitely drawn.

The abandoned islands of the Venetian lagoon, by Giorgio and Maurizio Crovato. Melancholy, intriguing. I'd wondered about these little scraps of earth and sky when I was over there. More musings (on my website)

pic from weird venice blog

A couple of friends just posted what they're reading, etc. One wrote in despair about finding good books to read. I'm able to find good books. The despair comes in not being able to finish them. The stack of half-reads is growing at an alarming rate.

I don't know what's wrong, exactly, but I find myself just not wanting to go on with the story. Even if the writing is good and the characters are well-realized, somehow the stories just aren't... something. Fulfilling? Interesting? Original? Maybe I'm abandoning these characters because I just can't identify with their predicaments, which will go on for many, many more pages.

I did finish: 
King's Dragon and Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliott
The Girl of His Dreams, by Donna Leon. A contemporary mystery set in Venice--which is a huge part of the appeal.
Frail Barrier, by Edward Sklepowich. Ditto.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Translated by James Winny. In process, actually. What got me to reread this favorite old weirdy was the Strange Horizons article by Susannah Mandel.
A Day in a Medieval City, by Chiara Frugoni. Two things I like about this: It's about Italy, rather than England, like most medieval stuff in these parts, and it's a fun read.

Does the list of books I did finish mean that I identify only with Italian detectives and bumbling knights? Or that all books should be about Italy or medieval stuff? Nah. I think it's mainly the WIP effect.

Do you tend to avoid or avidly read books that are connected with your WIP in some way?

One of my sisters sent me a link to gorgeous images of Venice. Old hand-colored photos, it looks like.

Music: La Moresca antica listen

How many of you have always wanted to write a scene in which people wear masks? A costume ball, a burglary, people disguised as animals, or performing a magical ritual. (Maybe the steampunk fascination with goggles is a longing for wearing a mask?)

I haven't written that masked scene yet, but someday I will, I'm sure. It's in my blood. My mother's Venetian. (Although when she was a girl Carnival wasn't a big deal the way it is now. It was revived later.)

Italian photographer Roberto Delpiano (now in CA) has great images and history of the Venice carnival. His site also includes other Carnivals. (Photo by Delpiano)

The following is from a comment I made on Heather's (VPXI) wonderful blog, in response to her posts Places that are lost and Day of the Dead. Please be sure to check out these beautiful pictures and Heather's essays on (my interpretation) memory.

In sixth grade, my best friend and I had a place we called "the sacred place." It was in a meadow. A fallen tree was there, and we would sit on it and tell each other the secrets of our burgeoning sexuality. In a story, the fallen tree would have been a premonition. The meadow is long since developed into housing.

Many places of my childhood are lost, but I moved around so much, maybe I don’t care as much. Always new horizons. But sometimes I wish my grandparents, long dead, still lived in their little pink and green house in North Carolina. We would always visit there, between moves, and I would go around and look at everything, enjoying that they were still the same as they'd been the last time. I was sad when I learned that the young couple who bought it got divorced.

Mr. Saiga's account mirrors the island. In his passion to photograph the passing island are the seeds of his own decay as an artist. Even as he's beginning, he's ending. "But however unskillful the pictures might have been, I honestly feel that my desire to take photographs then was stronger than it is now."

(Heather said:) "I was always one of those weird people who were conscious of things going away, I don't know why." Maybe you have Buddhist karma. You know deep inside the truth of Samsara, the floating world. Or Italian karma. In Venice, they put little posters of the dead on the walls in the sestieri: a picture and the name and dates, and maybe a little tribute. Paper shrines.

It's funny to be so connected with impermanence, isn't it? Seems paradoxical.