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Carissa Green Reads

I read widely from many genres. Perhaps this blog will feature fewer ratings and reviews, but I certainly intend to write about my reading life - it's the subject I most find myself wanting to talk about.

Currently reading

D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of WWII
Stephen E. Ambrose
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
M.T. Anderson
The Path Between the Seas
David McCullough
Chekhov Four Plays
Anton Chekhov, David Magarshack
The Gay Science: with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
Walter Kaufmann, Friedrich Nietzsche
A Kierkegaard Anthology
Robert W. Bretall
SPOILER ALERT!

Word Play: Chasing Vermeer

Chasing Vermeer - Blue Balliett

Blue Balliett's charming and intriguing kids' novel, "Chasing Vermeer," features one of the more likable duos I've met in a long time. Petra and Calder are sixth graders who bond over an art mystery. 

 

Calder's little quirk is that he keeps a set of pentominoes in his pocket. (Remember those - the geometry game your grade school teacher gave you to play with during free time?) The pentominoes play a big part in the action of the novel. 

 

When you know the book has an art plot, as a reader, you're looking for art terms. And a very common art term is pentimento. Pentimento NEVER is mentioned in the novel. Not once. But every time I read the word "pentomino" (and there were many dozens), I read "pentimento" first.

 

Considering that one of the premises of the novel is that coincidences matter (and maybe aren't always so coincidental), and considering the meaning of pentimento, perhaps this is neither unexpected nor bad.

 

-cg