Where are my holds? the public library is still closed and I am STILL relying on borrowing from friends, little libraries and digital collections, all of which have limitations BUT ALSO some benefits.
Last week my friend Sharlene gave me Black Knight in Red Square written in 1984 by Stuart Kaminsky, author of 50 books who died in 2009. The book is worn, frayed, with yellowing pages, but what a fabulous read.
Kaminsky's character Rostnikov works as a detective in the Soviet Union where he has to solve murders while dealing with a suffocating paranoid bureaucracy that has the power and inclination to send him to the Gulag or worse should he displease his masters. Add this to your work-related stress!
The murder itself is clever and interesting, but it's not the main charm of this read. Kaminsky adds humourous touches, such as when an experimental filmmaker from the west shows an incomprehensible movie at a Moscow film festival. Only the elderly mother of one of the detectives finds it "not too bad." The filmmaker, of course, attributes the audience's hostility to being Russian.
Kaminsky's Rosnikov series isn't that easy to find, so I was terribly pleased that Sharlene has found a stack of them to give me.
Onward! today I may scavenge through more little libraries on my daily walk, the purpose of which is to improve my state of mind. I encourage all little library owners to please add some good books and recycle the junk.
Lively Joy. Perhaps I can borrow this book from you. Also I have a very secret little lending library to show you sometime soon.
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