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No hits from those for me. Robbins has been somewhere there waiting. Ian McEwan only vaguely. I remember seeing the movie based on his novel "Comfort of Strangers" set in Venice. That leads me with free association to this:



Donn Leon: Blood from a Stone (and many others)

Ive read about 8-10 of these. Donna Leons books follow inspector Brunetti solving one big case and couple of smaller ones in one book. What separates this from many other books tagged with "crime" and "Venice" is the fact that the writer knows how italian society and people work. Location setup is also superb and shows that she is no tourist in the city of Venice.

Okay, I started the Fandorin series from the first volume "The Azazel conspiracy" or whatever its called. Its always best to start the series from the first, cause the character is "born" in the first one. Then its okay to read the rest in random order if there is no continuing storyline.

Couldnt find the cover of the first one but this looks swanky. So far lot of russian roulette, but its described here as american roulette! This feels just like good entertaining summer stuff Ive been looking for.

Then something else:



Christian Jacq: Stone of Light-series. More intertextual historical adventure- series from middleaged white european men. Jacq is an egyptologist and it shows in his books, he has no other themes than Egypt. This 4 book series follows a wanna-be painter who wants to paint the wallpaintings in the pharaohs tombs. Excellent decriptions of the conditions and culture where the egyptian art was made. Plot and characters are more thin, and sometimes there is too much repetititon when characters are introduced again in next installment. Its hard to get everything right in a series that follows one single continuing storyline. Anyway, read the whole series quite happily after getting to know the first one. English readers have complained that translation from french to english has hampered these books more than Jacqs Ramses-series.

Next: The Alchemist

You read, you learn. You live, you learn. Heres a story told in a Paulo Coelho way.

After the sun had burned the landscape whole day a man started his journey towards a bookshop. When he was young he wanted to travel and see the world but that dream had disappeared. He had settled in one place and that gave him the life he had. Now he had a task. He had asked an advice from a wise man who appeared in a virtual world. Wise man said: go and seek a book with my name. Read it and you shall become more wiser. So thats what the man was doing. He went to the bookstore and asked for a book of the wise man. They said they had it, but after long and laborious search they couldnt find. He was sweaty and about to give up. Thats when two stones, Umin and Turim, fell out of his pocket before he exited the shop. The stones said to him: "seek something else". There it was, another book, nicely displayed and with a small price that was about the same the man had in his wallet in coins. Man remembered hearing good thoughts about it. Man thought that this must be an omen. The man gave his money to a happy woman, who was happy because she was finally able to serve the customer that she thought was too picky.

Man went home and the book gave him a sense of something good. But it was too early to tell. He told the wise man about the purchase he had made. The wise man was partially responsible for the purchase (in a hippy astral way), as one thing had led to another. The mans disppointment was big as the wise man said that this book was utter hippy crap that will rot your brains. Many people had found it good, but the wise man thought it was not true. Wisdom is instead in a concert by a rockband that lives in another side of the world. Seek this and you will be wiser. Now the man was thinking...