Book Beginnings #20 & Friday 56 #20: The Fifth Season

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week. I am rereading The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin the first book in the Broken Earth trilogy. I wanted to read a book for the SFBC Book Club (we have a yearly challenge reading past group reads) I started a different one, Among Others, a few days ago, and didn't like it enough to keep reading, so I thought that I would like to reread this instead. After I finished the trilogy in 2018 I thought I would probably want to reread it eventually.   

PROLOGUE: you are here

LET’S START WITH THE END of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche’s broken little body with a blanket—except his face, because he is afraid of the dark—and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She’s old hat at this by now.

And for the Friday 56:

Book Beginnings #19 and Friday 56 #19: Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week.

My book this week is Chocolat by Joanne Harris. This is a reread for me. The beginning:  

February 11

Shrove Tuesday

We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds that line the narrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crêpe-covered char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anouk watches, eyes wide, a yellow ribbon in one hand and a toy trumpet in the other, from between a shopping basket and a sad brown dog. We have seen carnivals before, she and I; a procession of two hundred and fifty of the decorated chars in Paris last Mardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the Grosses Tetes with their lolling papier-mâché heads, drum majorettes with batons spinning and sparkling. But at six the world retains a special luster. A wooden cart, hastily decorated with gilt and crêpe and scenes from fairy tales. A dragon's head on a shield, Rapunzel in a woolen wig, a mermaid with a cellophane tail, a gingerbread house all icing and gilded cardboard, a witch in the doorway, waggling extravagant green fingernails at a group of silent children... At six it is possible to perceive subtleties that a year later are already out of reach. Behind the papier-mâché, the icing, the plastic, she can still see the real witch, the real magic. She looks up at me, her eyes, which are the blue-green of Earth seen from a great height, shining. 

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

This post is also for this week's Friday 56. Here is a bit from page 56 (Pere Reynaud's pov) :

Her eyebrows are perfectly straight, giving her a stern look belied by the comic twist to her mouth. Hands square and functional; nails clipped short. She wears n makeup, and yet there is something slightly indecent abut that face. Perhaps it is the directness of her look, the way her eyes linger appraisingly, that permanent crease of irony about the mouth. And she is tall, too tall for a woman, my own height. She stares at me eye to eye, with thrown-back shoulders and defiant chin. She wears a long, flared, flame-colored skirt and a tight black sweater. This coloring looks dangerous, like a snake or a stinging insect, a warning to enemies.  

Book Beginnings #18 & Friday 56 #18: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week.

My book this week is Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. I first read it a few years ago and loved it. I am really enjoying the reread so far.  

GoodReads description: 

Before Salman Rushdie had that problem with a certain religious-political figure with a serious need to chill out, he'd already shown he was an important literary force. Quite simply, Midnight's Children is amazing--fun, beautiful, erudite, both fairy tale and political narrative told through a supernatural narrator who is caught between different worlds. Though it's a big book, with big themes of India's nationhood and of ethnic and personal identity, it's far from a dry history lesson. Rushdie tells the story in his own brand of magical realism, with a prose of lyrical, transcendent goofiness.

The beginning: 

I was born in the city of Bombay… once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date. I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th 1947. And the time? The time matters too. Well then, at night. No, it’s important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out, at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. There were gasps, and outside the window fireworks and crowds. A few seconds later my father broke his big toe, but his accident was a mere trifle when set beside what had befallen me in that benighted moment, when thanks to the occult tyrannies of the blandly saluting clocks I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country.  For the next three decades there was to be no escape. Soothsayers had prophesied me, newspapers celebrated my arrival, politicos ratified my authenticity. I was left entirely without a say in the matter. I, Saleem Sinai, variously called Snotnose, Stainface, Baldy, Sniffer, Buddha and even Piece-of-the-Moon, had become heavily embroiled in Fate -- at the best of times a dangerous sort of involvement. And I couldn't even wipe my own nose at the time.

Now, however, time (having no further use for me) is running out. I will soon be thirty-one years old. Perhaps. If my crumbling, over-used body permits. But I have no hope of saving my life, nor can I count on having even a thousand nights and a night. I must work fast, faster than Scheherazade, if I am to end up meaning -- yes, meaning -- something. I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity. 

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

This post is also for this week's Friday 56. on page 56, a character is in hiding from assassins:

He was down there a long time, too -- long enough to start talking to flying cockroaches and fearing that one day someone would ask him to leave and dreaming of crescent knives and howling dogs and wishing and wishing that the Hummingbird were alive to tell him what to do, and to discover that you could not write poetry underground; and then this girl comes with food and she doesn't mind clearing away your pots and you lower your eyes but you see an ankle that seems to glow with graciousness, a black ankle like the black of underground nights...  

Book Beginnings #17: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week. 

Synopsis: A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.

Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.

This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny - they must sing.

A one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock. (from GoodReads)

The beginning:

Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb. Somewhere in between discovering various heretofore cripplingly socially anxious particles and transuranic elements and digging through plutonium to find the treat at the bottom of the nuclear box, he found the time to consider what would come to be known as the Fermi Paradox. If you’ve never heard this catchy little jingle before, here’s how it goes: given that there are billions of stars in the galaxy quite similar to our good old familiar standby sun, and that many of them are quite a bit further on in years than the big yellow lady, and the probability that some of these stars will have planets quite similar to our good old familiar knockabout Earth, and that such planets, if they can support life, have a high likelihood of getting around to it sooner or later, then someone out there should have sorted out interstellar travel by now, and therefore, even at the absurdly primitive crawl of early-1940s propulsion, the entire Milky Way could be colonized in only a few million years.

So where is everybody?

This is my current audiobook! It's the silliest thing I have read in some time, but I'm really enjoying it. I have read one other book by the author; a few years ago I read Deathless, a fantasy inspired by Russian folklore and set during the Russian Revolution. I liked it, but this is a completely different kind of book. 

Book Beginnings #16, & Friday 56 #17: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (reread)

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week. 

This is the 8th book in the Discworld series and the first book in the City Watch series. (There are several different series that branch off from each other  in Discworld.) This is one of my favorite Pratchett books. Here is the description: 

Long believed extinct, a superb specimen of draco nobilis ("noble dragon" for those who don't understand italics) has appeared in Discworld's greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, in rather short order it is crowned King (it is a noble dragon, after all...) 
Meanwhile, back at Unseen University, an ancient and long forgotten volume -- The Summoning of Dragons -- is missing from the Library's shelves. To the rescue come Captain Vimes, Constable Carrot and the rest of the City Watch who, along with other brave citizens, risk everything, including a good roasting, to dethrone the flying monarch and restore order to Ankh-Morpork (before it's burned to a crisp). (from back cover)

The dedication: 
They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men.

The beginning:

This is where the dragons went. 
They lie... not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is... dormant. 
And although the space they occupy isn't quite like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realize the space between each dragon is, in fact, another dragon.
They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were large and scaly and proud and arrogant.

And presumably, somewhere, there's the key.

This post is also for this week's Friday 56.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

Here is a bit from page 56: 

"Back in the mountains," said Carrot, "if a thief was caught, he was hung up by the --"

He paused, idly rattling a doorknob. 

Nobby froze.

"By the what?" he said in horrified fascination.

"Cant remember now," said Carrot. "My mother said it was too good for them, anyway. Stealing is Wrong."

Nobby had survived any number of famous massacres by not being there. He let go of the doorknob, and gave it a friendly pat. 

"Got it!" said Carrot.

Nobby jumped.

"Got what?" he shouted. 

"I remember what we hang them up by," said Carrot.

"Oh," said Nobby weakly. "Where?"

"We hang them up by the town hall," said Carrot. "Sometimes for days..."

Book Beginnings & Friday 56 (late post)

I haven't written any reviews yet this year, but I will have some up soon, I think. 

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week. And for this week's Friday 56:

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

I am reading The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Here is the description from GoodReads:

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the entire arc of his career, from luminous reworking of ancient Irish myths and legends, to passionate meditations on the demands and rewards of youth and old age, from exquisite, occasionally whimsical songs of love, nature, and art to somber and angry poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising. In observing the development of rich and recurring images and themes over the course of his body of work, we can trace the quest of this century's greatest poet to unite intellect and artistry in a single magnificent vision.

Revised and corrected, this edition includes Yeats's own notes on his poetry, complemented by explanatory notes from esteemed Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats is the most comprehensive edition of one of the world's most beloved poets available in paperback.

The book is organized chronologically from his first collection, Crossways (1889), to Last Poems (1939). Crossways has an epigraph from William Blake: The stars are threshed, and the souls are threshed from their husks. 

The first poem is a long one, but here is the beginning:  

The Song of the Happy Shepherd

The woods of Arcady are dead,

And over is their antique joy

Of old the world on dreaming fed;

Grey Truth is now her Painted toy;

Yet still she turns her restless head:

But O, sick children of the world,

Of all the many changing things

In dreary dancing past us whirled,

To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,

Words alone are certain good.

From the endnotes: Arcady is Arcadia, the land imagined in the pastoral tradition as an ideal realm of rustic contentment. Chronos is the Greek word for time, personified by Pindar as the father of all.

And from page 56:

The Moods (The Wind Among the Reeds, 1899)

Time drops in decay, 

Like a candle burnt out, 

And the mountains and woods 

Have their day, have their day;

What one in the rout

of the fire-born moods

Has fallen away?

This page has a useful note on the second poem. I'm still not sure I understand it. A rout is a desperate retreat, but I'm not sure why the fire-born moods are routed here.  

I might have read these before, but I don't remember them. I'm more familiar with his later poems. 

Book Beginnings #15, Friday 56 #16:The Song of Achilles

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week. Here is my belated post!

My book this week is The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

Synopsis from GoodReads:

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. By all rights their paths should never cross, but Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles' mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But then word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus journeys with Achilles to Troy, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.

The beginning:

My father was a king and the son of kings. He was a short man, as most of us were, and built like a bull, all shoulders. He married my mother when she was fourteen and sworn by the priestess to be fruitful. It was a good match: she was an only child, and her father’s fortune would go to her husband.

He did not find out until the wedding that she was simple. Her father had been scrupulous about keeping her veiled until the ceremony, and my father had humored him. If she was ugly, there were always slave girls and serving boys. When at last they pulled off the veil, they say my mother smiled. That is how they knew she was quite stupid. Brides did not smile.

I have read a few chapters. I like it so far.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

For the Friday 56, here is 56%:

We gained the beach, and pulled the first ships onto the sand. Scouts were sent ahead to watch for further Trojan ambush, and guards were posted. Hot though it was, no one took off his armor. 

Quickly, while ships still clogged the harbor behind us, lots were drawn for the placement of each kingdoms camp. The spot assigned to the Phythians was at the furthest end of the beach, away from where the marketplace wud be, away from Try and all the other kings. I spared a  quick glance at Odysseus; it was he who had chosen the lots. His face was mild and inscrutable as always. 

Book Beginnings #14, The Friday 56 #15 & Book Blogger Hop #3

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week.



synopsis from GoodReads:
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the First Folio, 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility. As You Like It follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle's court, accompanied by her cousin Celia and Touchstone the court jester, to find safety and, eventually, love, in the Forest of Arden.  

Here is the beginning:

Enter ORLANDO and ADAM
ORLANDO and ADAM enter.
ORLANDO

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother on his blessing to breed me well. And there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he keeps me rustically at home or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that “keeping” for a gentleman of my birth that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better, for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage and, to that end, riders dearly hired. But I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth, for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me, and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

For the Friday 56, here is 56%, nothing special at this point, I'm afraid:

CELIA

I would sing my song without a burden. Thou bring’st me out of tune.
ROSALIND

Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on.

hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer

Q: Which is your favorite library (or which would you most like to visit)? 2. How often do you visit the library? 

A: I'm not sure which one I would like to visit, but I visit my local library a few times a month. 

Book Beginnings #13, The Friday 56 #14 & Book Blogger Hop #2: Tigana

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week.

My book this week is the fantasy novel Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. This is not my first book by him; I tried The Lions of Al-Rassan and didn't like it, but so far I like this one much better.

There are some quotes at the beginning: 

All that you held most dear you will put by 

and leave behind you; and this is the arrow 

the longbow of your exile first lets fly. 

You will come to know how bitter as salt and stone 

is the bread of others, how hard the way that goes 

up and down stairs that never are your own. 

Dante, The Paradiso 

What can a flame remember? If it remembers a little less than is necessary, it goes out; if it remembers a little more than is necessary, it goes out. If only it could teach us, while it burns, to remember correctly. 

George Seferis, "Stratis the Sailor Describes a Man"

The prologue: 

Both moons were high, dimming the light of all but the brightest stars. The campfires burned on either side of the river, stretching away into the night. 

The first chapter: 

In the autumn season of the wine, word went forth from among the cypresses and olives and the laden vines of his country that Sandre, Duke of Astibar, once ruled of that city and its province, had drawn the last bitter breath of his exile and age and died. 

I am halfway through and not sure that the prologue was really necessary. I like the first chapter, though.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

For the Friday 56, here is page 56:

Autumn was very definitely upon them, with the Ember Days approaching fast. It would not be long, a matter of days, before the first frost touched those last few precious grapes that had been left on chosen vines to become -- if all fell rightly -- the icy blue clear wine that was the pride of Astibar.

hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer

Q: What's the oldest work (by publication date) you've read?

A: According to GoodReads, it is The Iliad, -890 B.C.E.

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: Spinning Silver

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week.

I started The Innkeeper's Song  by Peter Beagle earlier this week, but then I decided to start Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, and I think I will finish the latter first. I have been looking forward to this, because some of my GoodReads friends really loved it. It combines two of my favorite things: retellings (Rumplestiltskin, in this case) and historical fantasy. The setting is a fictional country in Eastern Europe. 

Description (Goodreads):
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders... but her father isn't a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife's dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers' pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed--and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.

But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it's worth--especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.

The beginning, which is a wonderful first paragraph:
The real story isn’t half as pretty as the one you’ve heard. The real story is, the miller’s daughter with her long golden hair wants to catch a lord, a prince, a rich man’s son, so she goes to the moneylender and borrows for a ring and a necklace and decks herself out for the festival. And she’s beautiful enough, so the lord, the prince, the rich man’s son notices her, and dances with her, and tumbles her in a quiet hayloft when the dancing is over, and afterwards he goes home and marries the rich woman his family has picked out for him. Then the miller’s despoiled daughter tells everyone that the moneylender’s in league with the devil, and the village runs him out or maybe even stones him, so at least she gets to keep the jewels for a dowry, and the blacksmith marries her before that firstborn child comes along a little early.

Because that’s what the story’s really about: getting out of paying your debts. That’s not how they tell it, but I knew. My father was a moneylender, you see.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

And for the Friday 56, here is a bit at 56% in my ebook from OverDrive:

I did not want to wake up, but I thought I heard Mama calling me in a voice that sounded like a bell ringing, so I opened my eyes. 

I really like it so far.

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: One Hundred Years of Solitude

My book this week is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It is interesting so far. This one seems to get extreme reactions from people I know who have read it.

Synopsis (from GoodReads) 
One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

The cover of the library copy I am reading features the painting The Well of Toledo by Monica Elias.

The beginning:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

page 56: Francisco the man, called that because he had once defeated the devil in a duel of improvisation, and whose real name no one knew, disappeared from Macondo during the insomnia plague and one night he reappeared suddenly in Catarino's store. 

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: Why Poetry

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week. My book this week is: 

An impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for poetry’s accessibility to all readers, by critically acclaimed poet Matthew Zapruder.

The beginning:

"I have a confession to make: I don’t really understand poetry." For over twenty-five years, I have heard this said, over and over in slightly different ways, but friends, family, colleagues, strangers I met in bars and at dinner parties, on planes -- so many people, practically everyone who found out I was a poet. Clearly, there is something about poetry that rattles and mystifies people, that makes them feel as if there is something wrong. 

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

And here is my Friday 56:

page 56: the author describing his early attempts at poetry:  

I carried around a rhyming dictionary, writing terrible sonnets, lousy sestinas, atrocious villanelles, abysmal pantoums. I felt like I was working, and was, which was good, but it was also painful and embarrassing. I didn't realize then that I was doing my own clumsy version of what art students do when they learn to paint. Now, whenever I go to the museum I usually see at least one of them with a sketchbook, copying the great paintings, and it makes sense to me. 

I really like the first few chapters. I will probably finish it and write a review next week.