When It Comes to Fasting, I Prefer the Greek Way.

Jeff–Saturday

This past week marked the beginning of Lent for the Eastern Orthodox faithful.  It runs for forty days and ends on the Friday before Palm Sunday.  This year Greek Easter is April 12^th, one week later than Easter will be celebrated by Protestants and Catholics in 2026.  As I explained in other articles around this time, Eastern Orthodox calculations of the events surrounding Easter are based on the Gregorian rather than Julian calendar.

So what does the beginning of Lent mean?  For those of you looking for a liturgical or religious answer to that question, I can assure you this is not the place to find one. Yes, I know that for the Orthodox Lent begins not on an Ash Wednesday (as it does for others) but on “Clean Monday” (which actually begins the night before), that the reference to “clean” refers to leaving behind sinful attitudes and forbidden foods during Lent, and that the theme for Clean Monday is set out in an Old Testament reading from Isaiah 1:1-20, stating in part, “Wash yourselves and ye shall be clean.” 

But that’s not what this piece is about.  What the beginning of Lent means as far at this piece is concerned is one thing:  FOOD.

In Greek the name is Katharι (clean) Deftera (Monday) and is a public holiday.  It probably also is, or at least should be, a holiday for vegetarians around the world.  That’s because Clean Monday generally does not permit the consumption of any animal with red blood or of anything derived from those animals.  In other words, no meat, fish, milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, etcetera.  Many also exclude olive oil.  You see, Lent is about fasting.  If it’s starting to sound like a pretty boring feast day, trust me, you’re wrong.

But just to keep the interest of those unrepentant red meat lovers out there, the Greeks also have a day for you to circle on your calendars.  It’s two Thursdays before Clean Monday.  In Greek that day is called, Tsiknopempti, “pempti” meaning Thursday.  Tsikno is hard to translate, though most settle on “burnt” and call it “Burnt Thursday,” or use the rest of Europe’s name for the day, “Fat Thursday.”  To me, though, tsikno conjures up the engulfing smoke and scents of endless grills sizzling with meats.

 

Personally, I think a more appropriate name would be “Lipitor Thursday.”

As for Clean Monday, to Greeks it’s a time that is about a lot more than prayer and food. It’s regarded as the first day of Spring, a time to celebrate outdoors and picnic.  Kite flying is a huge tradition, as is dancing and music, and thoughts of a new beginning ... please God.

But back to the food. No one is supposed to eat until noon, but once it’s here, kali orexi!

Unique to Clean Monday is lagana, a generally unleavened bread eaten only on that day which serves as the perfect compliment to the rest of the holiday table (and is far different from the “matzoh” familiar to many as another form of unleavened bread).  Here’s just an example of what you might find to nibble on while you dream of that Big Mac.

Taramosalata, made of cod or carp roe, is sometimes called “the common man's caviar.”  It’s one of the tastiest and most famous of all Greek dips.

A fava (split pea) puree.

Yigandes, giant kastoria beans (similar in look to lima beans) generally combined in a casserole with tomatoes, onions, herbs, and spices.

Salads of marouli (romaine lettuce), three beans (fassolia), or perhaps something more daring such as revitho (chickpea) salad with artichokes and sun-dried tomato.

Dolmades, the traditional grape leaves stuffed with rice and fresh herbs

Peppers stuffed with bulgar and herbs.

Calamari, squid prepared fried or in any number of other ways.

Octopus grilled as is, or dressed up with tomatoes, capers, and other special touches.

Cuttlefish in wine sauce with pearl onions.

Garides, giant shrimp grilled with oil and lemon

Stews of wild mushrooms, onions, and herbs.

loukoumathes

Halvas (semolina pudding), loukoumathes (puffs of fried dough in sweet syrup sprinkled with cinnamon and walnuts), pasteli (sesame-honey candies) … and on and on.

Then, of course, there’s the ouzo, wine, and beer.

Some fast, huh?  Gotta got run now.  Suddenly, I’m very hungry.

—Jeff

Who (or what) will write the next best seller?

Michael - Alternate Thursdays 

AI is a very strange industry. Basically, as far as I can see, it is an answer in search of a question. I’m not saying it’s not useful, or at least helpful, but is it multi-trillion dollar useful? That is the question.

One area where the AI companies have been focusing is on writing. After all, they are working with Large Language Models (LLMs), computer systems designed to absorb languages and their structures and uses in order to "comprehend" human communication and be able to communicate with us.

So while humans seem to write more and more in shorthand with emojis and acronyms, it’s very important for AI companies that their systems actually write (or speak) clear, contemporary languages. And they are not very particular about how they achieve that.

Probably most authors (and many readers) have heard of the big settlement that Anthropic agreed to with authors of books that they used for training their systems. The law suit was settled for $1.5 billion dollars, but that turns out to be only part of the story. The judge has now unsealed some of the documents from the case, and it turns out that Anthropic’s aim was to scan all the books in the world to train their systems. The effort was called Project Panama. And it was secret. The company, along with the other AI giants, didn’t see it as practical to get the authors permission, so they acquired troves of books, separated the pages, and scanned them to feed their voracious LLMs hoping they'd learn to read and, perhaps, write as well as the authors of the books. At some point that became too slow and cumbersome and one of the company’s founders downloaded and shared a huge number of pirated books from an online library called LibGen. The newly-released court papers make it clear that he was well aware that this was a copyright infringement.

It was this direct copyright infringement that lead to the settlement. The deeper issue is about the legality and the morality of AI companies sucking all these books into their LLMs. I guess the moral arguments depend on which side of the fence you sit (as they usually do) and are unlikely to make much impact if they don’t lead to actual enforceable laws. The legal arguments are tricky, and so far no court has found against the companies. Their argument is that what they are doing is “fair use”.

Here’s what Google's AI thinks “fair use” is:

Four Factors of Fair Use: Courts determine fair use by analyzing the purpose (e.g., nonprofit educational vs. commercial), the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount used relative to the whole, and the effect on the work's market value.

Transformative Purpose: Using material in a way that adds new expression or meaning, rather than just replacing the original, strongly favors fair use.

Common Examples: Quoting a book in a review, using clips in news reporting, parodying a song, or using small portions of video for commentary.

Not a Rule, but a Defense: There are no strict legal limits (e.g., "under 30 seconds" is not a rule), and only a court can ultimately determine if a use is fair.

The AI companies claim that their work is “transformative” and “educational”. Anthropic also said that it hadn’t used the actual materials “read” for financial gain. (Hmm. Why do it then?) The settlement was based on the fact that the books were downloaded from an illegal site (in terms of copyright laws) and that the company was well aware of the fact that they were doing that. The use those pirated books were put to was not the issue. Other cases carry on in various courts against various companies, but my bet is that they won’t end with the judges ruling against the companies.

So where does all this go? Can LLMs write books? Of course they can. You can buy as many as you want on Kindle or another electronic or print-on-demand site. I certainly can’t tell if a random book from Amazon is written by AI or an unknown, mediocre, human author. If people keep buying them, they must find them readable. We like to think AI has nothing original to say and that may be true, but the same criticism applies to some human authors. Some publishers are requiring that authors of manuscripts sign that they haven’t used AI. The question is to do what? To write the book? To do research? To check geography? Publishers have famously released books with large parts lifted from other works. I can’t see them being successful as AI gatekeepers. And if a LLM comes up with a really good book (Borel's monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare comes to mind), is it wrong to publish that? If so why?

More questions than answers, I guess. In the meanwhile, AI systems have their own social media sites now. So they can try out their new writing skills on each other. Cut out the middle man so to speak. No humans allowed as members. See: A Social Network for AI Bots Only. Maybe we humans should start writing novels for them. They certainly have the disposable income.

Dearest Reader!

 Sujata Massey 

Berkeley, CA

I’ve been thinking quite a lot these days about human connection. 

Apparently, a loneliness epidemic is worsening--even though the pandemic is over.  Twenty years ago, most Americans felt they had more close friends than they do today. In addition to the pandemic cutting down on gatherings that never got restarted, we might also consider the ubiquitous presence of social media—and overwhelming YouTube and entertainment streaming options, and online games—and filling space. All this is an effortless replacement for the risk of reaching out to real people. 

But I am not here to judge. The loneliest time in my life was my years from age seven to eighteen. I was in the American Midwest, a place that has changed considerably since the 1970s. During my childhood I was an outcast because I didn’t look like or have the same interests as my peers. Plus, I sucked at gym games. 

My parents did all they could by giving me chances to take extracurricular lessons and summer camp. In these arenas, I was well-liked and happy. Yet every day I went to my elementary/junior high/high school, my stomach knotted. I didn’t have anyone I could count on sitting with at lunch, and I had the added fear of not knowing if I was going to be bullied. Words have the power to be so hurtful! 

St Paul, MN

And there are other miracles that come through words.

I started reading fluently and with exuberant joy in first grade. By second grade, I was unstoppable. And while I don’t want to be as corny as to say books were my friends, the fact is that I could depend on them more than anything else in my life. And within the pages, I felt aligned and that I had faraway friends among my favorite protagonists. I loved Sara Crewe, the little girl marooned without parental support in a cruel boarding school in Victorian London in Frances Hodgson-Burnett’s A Little Princess. I was captivated by a young Laura Ingalls, who like me, suffered through brutal Minnesota weather without much social contact outside of her own family. Small things Laura was crazy for like maple syrup on snow, or a hand-whittled toy, or an orange at Christmas, made me wish for the same. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield had three orphans under guardianship in London becoming child stars in acting and ballet, glamorous arenas that I certainly thought should become my career goals. Another British author, Rumer Godden, delighted me first with her stories featuring doll characters, and then with middle-grade stories about girls who were also fishes out of water.

Juvenile fiction is the most impactful fiction I’ve read—I take it very seriously. It helped me survive, and it shaped my character. But teen reading was great, too. Adolescence meant being able to read and fully bask in the glory of the best adult fiction. Some of the most transporting books were by young authors and featured coming of age themes. The year I was sixteen I found a used-bookstore copy of Bonjour Tristesse (translated into English, it means Hello, Sorrow) published in the 1950s when its author, Francoise Sagan, was about the same age. This story about a girl’s disillusionment in her philandering father, and her own bold decision to take a lover for herself, takes place on the France’s Côte D’Azur, an area that stayed in my imagination and that I’ll finally visit in a few months. Another great read from my high school years was This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: the author’s debut novel about a young man leaving my own city of Saint Paul to go to Princeton. I recall his struggle to find himself socially, and to find love in a new sophisticated world. There I was, seeing a dreamy vision of escape for myself, too. 

Yes, these books were my friends. And reading them made me feel so warm toward the authors. I wanted to ask them, what made you write this book? Is your protagonist you—because I really like them! 

Minneapolis MN

For a reader to meet an author of a  beloved book is a rare occurrence. What happens between a reader and a favorite book is intensely personal; it’s hard to express, even with a glass of wine at book club. Admiration, tenderness, distain and anger—we feel all of this while reading, and we are somehow linked in a relationship with the person who made these people.

I’ve experienced all of this as a reader. I also feel the emotion when I have my author hat on get to meet people through book signings and online book club presentations, and letters.

Lawrence, Kansas

Today fan letters don't travel in envelopes to publishers, but as emails to authors. Here are some I’ll never forget:

The email from a young woman in Finland, as miserable in school as I was, who submersed herself in Rei Shimura books which were published between 1997 and 2012. She was contemplating dropping out of school but stayed because her parents promised her a trip to Japan, if she did graduate. Her books were her comfort; and that brought tears to my eyes. The second letter I received was a few years later, post-Japan. She’d loved her time there and was thinking about a future possibility of working there—perhaps like my protagonist Rei Shimura. 

Another reader I recall was a man in his seventies, originally from India. He drove six hours with his wife at his side to a signing I did in San Diego. Not only did the two readers care about the books; they also had detected through careful reading of acknowledgements, my father’s identity. You see, my dad had studied at the Indian Institute of Technology, just as the reader had done, a few years earlier, and in the exact same field. Thus—a kinship network arose--and to that gentleman, I was as good as any niece who'd written a book!

Los Angeles

Just the other day, I received an email from a retired teacher in Hawaii who with his wife had gone traveling to India, visiting many sites in Mumbai that correspond to my character Perveen Mistry’s exploits. The concierge at their hotel wanted to help with any need, so on a whim they asked her to phone up Mistry Law. Could not be arranged, the concierge reported with an apology, not realizing she was playing a part in a comedy that would be later submitted to me via email. You are a mischief maker! I wrote back to him. 

The greatest thing that ever happens when I release a book is the chance to meet the readers. They are the only thing that keeps me going, that gives me the blood circulation I need to attempt another work of fiction.

I start a national tour next week to promote my new Perveen Mistry novel, The Star From Calcutta. I’ll tell you about its plot next time, because right now I am overwhelmed with tour preparations. The most wide-ranging tours involve a lot of flying, often with airport show times as early as 5 a.m. There are meals that are unpleasant or missed altogether, unfamiliar beds in sterile (if you’re lucky) hotels and unpredictable Uber rides. But I tour because of the readers, the independent booksellers, and I hope to see some of you guys in  some of these cities.

New York, NY

Try on some Fiery Horseshoes!

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

By the Chinese zodiac, we're now moving into the Year of the Fire Horse.

Fire Horse years are said to bring dramatic, intense, fast-paced upheavals. The last fire horse year was 1966--the year that marked the start of China’s Cultural Revolution and Singapore's first full year of Independence from British rule.

It was also the year of the University of Texas Tower shooting, America's first modern mass shooting.

I won't name the perpetrator who killed seventeen people and wounded at least thirty-one others, including his mother and wife who were stabbed in their respective homes before he went up to the tower. Ironically, some of the earliest shooting victims were thought to be anti-Vietnam war protestors and told to 'stop acting' by passers-by.

Hippies were in, so were mini skirts and Singapore's shortlived ban on 'long haired males'.

It was also the year of 'Batman' and 'Star Trek', the year the Beatles released 'Revolver' and John Lennon claimed they were 'more popular than Jesus'.

In short, it was a year charged full of crazy, chaotic fire horse energy. And now the fire horse is back.

I was born in the Year of the Ox and my 'ox' nature makes me inclined to keep my head down and wait out all the swirling fiery energies. But then I recently read about the Odyssey Plan--how visualising different possible futures can make us aware we have more options and decided to attempt a Fire Horse variation... Odyssey meets Fire Horse. What might my life be like if I choose to live this year as:

Fire Horse 1: A Safe, steady horse. Living as this horse I would continue working hard on the track I'm currently on, like a racehorse running round the track. Even if I 'win' a race I'll still be running in circles. But it's what I've trained myself to do and I know the track and how to run it.
If I live this year in safe horse mode, on a Tuesday in February 2027 I will have finished writing Bonsai Lives (working title), my attempt to step slightly sideways from my previous series. With luck I'll have got a contract for it or figured out how to self-publish it. I'll maintain my health and stamina by keeping to my yoga practice.
It would be a good place to end up in. But it looks kind of circular, not so different from where I am now.

Fire Horse 2: A paddock horse. I'm the same steady horse here, but in a different setting. Like the beloved horse a friend of mine recently sent to 'retirement' in a paddock in Australia. That's kind of me too--what if I continue working hard on my writing but look to figuring out and exploring the changes in the publishing and storytelling business? If I allow myself to play and try things out and not worry about getting published?
If I were to live this year in paddock horse style, next February I would have learned a lot more about self-publishing and may have published some stories set in the Singapore of Aunty Lee and the Tree Mysteries, but between the books. And I've been toying with the idea of creating a reading blog written “with” my dog, selecting mysteries featuring animals, preferably dogs (though we might occasionally allow a cat).
And yes, in this future Sophia is very very happy because less deadline stress means more time with her!

And then there's
Fire Horse 3: The Wild Horse:

Not all wild horses are truly wild, of course. I couldn't be truly wild (I'm Singaporean after all) like the Przewalski’s horses in Mongolia and the Kazazkhs. I see myself more as a feral horse, recently escaped from domesticity.

If I were to live as a wild horse I might not even create writing projects and set deadlines or source publishing possibilities. I might just read and listen and read and watch and read and daydream until I encounter the book or books that make me think, 'if only I'd written this, I could die happy in a year'.

But then instead of dying (I hope) I would try to figure out what in that book spoke to me so deep and loud and I would dissect it and myself to find the connection.
And if I don't manage to find even one such book then I'll attempt to write it myself--even if I can't sell it. Just for the satisfaction of having tried.
That would be my Wildly Flaming Fire Horse Year, running where I please without guarantees or contracts.

I don't know if I can do that though--I've already made some committments that I'll keep--but it's a nice dream.

Fire Horse years, historically, are charged with enormous energy. But energy doesn't necessarily mean chaos.

As a writer, as a person, which fire horse calls to you most?
The Safe Horse, steadily circling the track in good and improving form.
The Wandering Horse, exploring new (safe) paddocks.
Or the Wild Horse, adventuring into the wild unknown?

It's just for one year--choose to be a horse that scares you just a little!

Where Athenian Gen Zers Find the Dough to Party Hearty.

 

Saturday ––Jeff 

The following article by Eleni Sampani appeared Thursday on the front page of Ekathimerini-- Greece's paper of record. It shared headlines with an article titled, "Brain drain exacting heavy economic toll" brought on when "427,000 young people of family-forming age left the country" because of their nation's financial crisis.

Greeks are resilient entrepreneurs who love their country. Many of the young Greeks I've spoken to who moved away, long to return.  They miss the country and its way of life.  But things change, and old ways take on the new. Here's just one example.

 Gen Z moves the party to the bakery.

 

Over on downtown Athens’ Voulis Street, a small bakery smelling of butter and freshly baked bread is experiencing a second, unexpected incarnation. It’s midday and light streams through its big front windows, yet the vibe inside is more reminiscent of a club than a food outlet.

Like on a few other weekends, the people on this occasion are not here to grab a snack; they’re here to dance. Many are doing both, nibbling on a steaming croissant instead of sipping on a cold drink as they sway to the house beat that transforms the space into a dance floor. For a city renowned for its intense nightlife, the scene may seem a bit odd at first, but it is proof that Athenians like to party even when it isn’t dark.

“I’ve played at around four bakery house parties here at Neropistolo. I set up my gear behind the counter and started playing house in a completely unusual space, which soon started filling up with young people. Some came for my music, others because they heard that the bakery house party trend had come to Athens and others who came in to make a purchase and ended up staying for several hours, dancing,” says Chris Child, one of the city’s most popular and active DJs, known for sets packed with energy and a clubby vibe.

Bakery house parties are a relatively new trend that started in cities like London and Amsterdam, and made their way to Athens in the past year or so. They’re one of the most refreshing new forms of entertainment we’ve seen recently, small pop-up events that can transform a bakery, a cafe or some other such venue into a disco, without affecting their usual operating hours or compromising their cozy, everyday identity.

“Gen Zers don’t seem so keen on going out late or to clubs. They’re turned to soft clubbing, which is not only defined by early hours, but also by the absence of alcohol. The only thing you may see them drinking at a bakery house party is an Aperol, but overall, non-alcoholic events are attracting more and more people,” says Child.

“It’s different to going out at night and, in my opinion at least, better. It’s not lame at all; it’s proper fun and without the hangover the day after,” says 27-year-old Alexandra Papadopoulou, a fan of the genre.

She says a lot of young men and women of her generation are looking for new kinds of fun and new venues where they can hear the music they like without having to go to a club. “I work nights, so being able to go out early and listen to a particular kind of music is perfect, especially given that most midday parties – on the rare occasion that they happen – tend to play Greek music. You can also go to a place like Neropistolo for a chilled coffee and dance if the mood strikes you,” she adds.

A short walk from Voulis Street, on the corner of Aiolou and Agias Irinis, Lukumades – specializing in the traditional Greek, honey-soaked dough fritters – hosted its bakery house party a few weeks ago and the turnout defied all expectations. The bakery was packed and people were dancing among the tubs of dough and counters piled with fragrant loukoumades.

“The party started at noon and I had been wondering if anyone would show up so early in the day. But people did, and they seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves. Many of them had been out for a weekend stroll and just happened upon the party,” says DJ Pedrik, known for his feel-good house sets. For this particular event – which was organized in cooperation with the Primer Music Festival – he went full-on festive.

“Bakery house parties are not here to replace Athens’ nightlife; they’re here to complement it. It’s something different that offers a new, more relaxed form of entertainment, and I think it really suits the city’s vibe,” he adds.

The team behind the Lukumades chain had been keeping up with the rising global trend of bakery house parties on social media since they first started appearing around three years ago. The phenomenon gained more visibility when wildly popular DJs like Peggy Gou played at bakery parties in Paris, going viral on TikTok and Instagram. So the idea was being talked about before the trend came to Greece and the team now plans more parties this year.

City of bakeries

“People are sober so they’re paying a lot more attention to what you’re playing and they don’t feel obliged, in a way, to show so much energy. They’re basically there for the music,” says Moroccan DJ Tibes, who has played at several bakery house parties in Paris.

He says the trend is not really new in the French capital, but it really took off this year, especially during Paris Fashion Week. “You saw all these beautifully dressed people coming in and out of the small bakeries that are all over Paris’ central districts. Many told me how much they were enjoying being able to listen to house without having to wait in line to get in a club or spend €100-€150, which is what an outing of that kind runs to these days.”

 ––Jeff

Reading Like a Writer: Crocodile on the Sandbank

Karen Odden - every other Thursday

Last week, I participated on a panel for the quarterly Sisters in Crime's Reading Like a Writer Book Club, with sister mystery writers Julie Hennrikus, Gigi Pandian, Jen Collins Moore, and Stephanie Argy. Every few months, Sisters in Crime chooses a book, and we all read it with the intention of identifying and discussing the elements that make it a compelling mystery novel, so we can use them to strengthen our own writing.

This time, it was Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, one pen name for Barbara Louise Mertz (1927–2013), who wrote long-running series as well as stand-alone mysteries.

I confess, until two weeks ago, I had never read Crocodile on the Sandbank. (I was the only one on the panel who hadn't.) Because I write historicals, I knew I'd be called upon to discuss Peters' treatment of the Victorian era: How does Peters fix this novel in 1880s London and Egypt? 

I curled up and flew through the book in an afternoon -- what a fun read! How did I miss these as a young adult? I would've loved them then. I was always a huge fan of romantic suspense by Mary Stewart and Phyllis A. Whitney, and this novel has a lot in common with those. Part of my pleasure in reading the book now is that I traveled to Egypt last year, and so I found all sorts of "Easter Eggs" -- mentions of things I saw and learned there. (Just for fun, here I am dangling a pyramid!)

For those who don't know, this book is the first in what became known as the Amelia Peabody series (with 20 books), about a spirited, progressive, 30-something "spinster" in 1884 London, who has been left a fortune by her father. Her five older brothers are furious that she has been chosen as his heir, but her father's solicitor won't let them break the will. Once the inheritance is settled, Amelia explains:

"I had always wanted to travel. Now I decided I would see all the places Father had studied -- the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome; Babylon and hundred-gated Thebes."

Wow. Peters does two remarkable things in that line to ground her tale firmly in the Victorian period. First, the line "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" is a line from "To Helen," a 1831 poem by Edgar Allen Poe, which would have been familiar to Victorian readers. She also uses the Victorian name "Thebes" for what we now refer to as Amarna.

But beyond this, Peters shows Amelia doing something the Victorians were famous for -- memorizing poetry and tucking it into everyday speech without attribution. People of a certain education were expected to pick up on it. 

So in this one small passage, Peters anchors Amelia in the Victorian period, with respect to what she knows and how she speaks.

Peters also works in vocabulary particular to the Victorian era, including elements in the streets -- the butcher and baker as separate shops; physical objects  -- gingham dresses, Brussels carpets, gilt-edged mirrors; and the medicines she brings with her to Egypt -- "blue pills, calomel, rhubarb, Dover's powder, James's powder, carbolic acid, laudanum, quinine, sulfuric acid, ipecacuanha."

Another way the book is grounded in the Victorian period is by what I call its central theme -- how a woman can determine her life within Victorian legal, social, and economic frameworks. Peters is profoundly concerned with questions surrounding women's rights, suffrage, clothes that provide freedom of movement, and women having power over their money -- a concern that occupied the Victorians specifically during the 1880s. In chapter one, Amelia asks her solicitor, Mr. Fletcher, "Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself." Shortly after, she explains, "At Fletcher's suggestion I made my will." These are unusual attitudes and actions for a Victorian woman -- but ones that suggest evolving aspects of the culture.

To put this in context, a bit of history: The long-standing legal doctrine of "coverture" meant that in the 19th century, a single woman (a feme sole) could own property and even bequeath it as she wished. However, a woman who married (feme couvert) would immediately forfeit all rights to her property. Upon marriage, everything she owned -- including her dowry -- belonged to her husband. The suffrage movement was deeply concerned with this situation -- and in 1870, two things happened that suggest the ways society was changing. (1) the first Married Women's Property Act was passed. This meant that, for the first time, working-class women did not have to turn their earnings over to their husbands. Now, whether this happened or not in practice, this law was the first wedge into the iceberg; subsequent Married Women's Property Acts gradually expanded the possibilities for middle-class and upper-class women to control their money as well. (2) The very first issue of the Women Suffrage Journal was published. So Amelia's feminist views are in keeping with ongoing discussions in Parliament and the public press.

The author, Barbara Mertz, was as progressive as her heroine Amelia. Mertz earned her PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago in the 1952, an unusual achievement for a woman. In the 1960s, Mertz authored two books on ancient Egypt: Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, a popular history of ancient Egypt; and Red Land, Black Land, which explores daily life in ancient Egypt.  

As every writer knows, there can be the risk of info-dumping when you have so much knowledge about a particular topic. But Peters feathers it in beautifully, using a variety of techniques. One of them is a scene between Amelia and Emerson, a brilliant and rather arrogant archaeologist. As they stand together in the museum in Cairo, they argue -- and in the process provide a great deal of information about Egypt. 

 

The "dig" that the Emerson brothers and Amelia and her friend Evelyn work is in Amarna, around the tomb of the Akhenaten (photo), originally named Amenhotep IV, known as the "heretic pharaoh" for his radical religious reforms that shifted ancient Egypt from a polytheism to monotheism. After he died, his name was erased from cartouches, and the polytheistic religion was reestablished. I found it interesting that Peters chose this pharaoh as the object of interest in a book about a woman who overturned expectations and rebelled against societal norms. I find it yet another interesting layering of thematic and historical elements.

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?

AWOL

Annamaria is Absent Today

It was the difficulty trying to upload pictures when I was already nurging a migraine that put me over the edge.  I think Blogger dislikes my MAC laptop, and that was making it all worse.  And then it told me, when I tried to email a photo to mysel, that it could not send a photo to an unknown person.  Ouch!   

Here's why:

Migraine

Ice Pick Headache

You can read more about it if you click the links.  But I warn you: it isn't pretty.

In the inimitable words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, "I'll be back!"