It Wasn't Me
Sun., March 15, 02:17 AM
Recently I checked two books out of the bookmobile. (It comes every other week, quite convenient, and I try to change my books each time.) I started reading the first one and, after a week and a half, I had read about one third of the book.
That sort of thing makes me mad. Why can’t I concentrate and finish one darned book? Is my memory or my concentration deteriorating? I think my aunts were older than this before they had the problem…
I put down the first book, which I will not identify, and began the second, Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs. I finished it in three days. Obviously, it wasn’t me; it was the book.
Kathy Reichs has written a series of books about Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist. They are my kind of story, well-crafted mysteries with interesting continuing characters. I followed the clues and came up with answers before Dr. Brennan, maybe because I know about times when the central disease was more prevalent and had no recognized treatment. Part of the story centered around forensic linguistics, a fascinating subject; her expert in this area is a man who was one of the founding members of Sha Na Na. (We were great fans of Sha Na Na at our house.)
Like Dr. Reichs, Brennan divides her time between Montreal and North Carolina; the character is in her forties or fifties with a college age daughter. I love to read the books, but I also love the television series, “Bones,” that it inspired. It is an entirely different story line, with Temperance Brennan — the only character who is in both stories — about twenty years younger and working out of Washington, D.C. When reading, you have to remember the differences — different parents, different siblings, for example — and then you have to re-orient yourself when you go back to TV.
I am looking forward to the next book, Devil Bones, which is eleventh in the series. I am also awaiting some new television episodes. But mostly, at the moment I am grateful to Kathy Reichs for reminding me that my mind still works.
