walking

Lying on eleven years
Taking it into my head
Leave my clothes on the beach
I’m walking down into the sea

Prove it to me
Prove it to me
Prove it to me

Now the water to my ankles
Now the water to my knees

water, pj harvey

come with me, to the sea

drowning in the sea of love, joe simon

sea of love, honeydrippers (youtube)

on neither a day

Mood to Burn Bridges, Neko Case & Her Boyfriends

Helge Bøe

Man-size, PJ Harvey

a most benign book review

Image by Anders Kjellberg, who says, “This one started with the modeling of The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte — a great book and a very talented writer. If you’ve seen Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate you should definately read the book it’s based on as well, The Dumas Club.”

I fully agree. Arturo Pérez-Reverte is a wonderful writer. The Ninth Gate is just a sketch of what’s going on in The Dumas Club. Reverte packs his books with so much detail, research, and history. They are wonderful puzzles. I’m not as excited by his swashbuckling Captain Alatriste series, but I say that knowing I haven’t given them a fair chance (a handful of paragraphs in the first chapter of the first of the series is not enough to judge). But his other novels? Oh, my. They are fantastic.

I never saw Nicolas Cage’s The Treasure Hunt, but the loose plot outline always reminds me of Pérez-Reverte’s The Nautical Chart. If ever I do see the DVD, that will be the reason why, to see if it relates to it at all.

Now that I think about it, it’s as if Pérez-Reverte has been writing two series of books. The adventures of Captain Alatriste, and his puzzle books. Apart from Queen of the South, which is a heady tale about drug running in Spain and Mexico, the rest of his novels all revolve around a mystery of history surfacing through an object of some sort or another in the present. The unfortunate soul who comes across this artefact becomes entwined in dubious events in real time that echo events from the past. Reverte brings his modern Spanish settings to vivid life, which act as a counterbalance to the rich details of the past he is also illustrating. In between sways the tension of the main character. If you like mysteries and historical fiction, you’ll enjoy Reverte.