Whate'er the course, the end is the renown

I finished the last book in my new favorite medieval mystery series. The Witch in the Well was a superb tenth book and series finale! It had everything: a castle (with secret tunnels!), a siege, a myth, a few happy endings, a few sad endings.

Sharan Newman wrapped up some loose plot ends by bringing all of her surviving characters under the same besieged fortress to wait and see if an ancient prophecy comes true. ZOMG, so cool! (Mainly, the secret passageways were the coolest part.)

The tale was appropriate closure for readers to the life and times of Catherine LeVendeur in 12th-century Paris. The series was predictable at times, but was creative and entertaining enough to make me rush to the library in search of each successive book . If nothing else, it's brilliant because it incorporates both the story of Abelard and Heloise and medieval Jewish merchant life into the narrative. (The intellectual, plucky heroine helped. Just sayin'.)

Sigh. Now I need to find a new series...

Whirlwind, part trois

It's amazing that there are only two and a half more weeks left in 2009! The last few weeks have gone by quickly.

• Thanksgiving in Michigan was a welcome respite, though I spent my nights writing post-election analyses after the kiddies went to bed. I thought I'd have more free time to read or veg out, but that didn't happen -- though I was able to catch up on "Glee," most of the TV I watched was Sesame Street. I miss my niece and neffy already, but will get to see them at Christmas.
  
  
• Mi Hermana and I woke up at 4 am on Black Friday to do our part to stimulate the local economy. (Hey, Michigan can use all the help it can get.) The main reason was that La Pinguinita wakes up at 7 and then runs around. So we woke up at 4 and took the 8-month-old, who required only to be put in a stroller. Oh, the suburban rebellion! The parking lot at the outlet mall where we did our holiday shopping was already a third full at 4:30am. (Stores opened at midnight, so we were already late.)
  
  
• The fellowship changes into a full-time position with the new year, though the organization is undergoing some reorganization and I won't have a title for a while. In the meantime, I'll be helping mobilizing constituents on progressive issues and it keeps me in the political mix, so I'm happy.
  
  
• I did have time to read the next installment of my favorite medieval mystery series, however. Sharan Newman's The Outcast Dove is, unfortunately, not about the heroine I've grown to like -- the star of this book is another character. There's a murder. It's Easter and Passover. There are monks, mobs, and Jew merchants. Like the previous books in the series, Newman throws in some heavy-handed stuff -- in addition to anti-semitism, this time we also have autism (or so the reader infers, since the concept didn't exist in the twelfth century) as well as slavery. It was a decent mystery story, though. A few plot threads from the earlier books were wrapped up. And I rushed to the library to pay my fines and check out the last book in the series...