I have two comments concerning the several books I’ve read lately.  First, I picked up The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle.  His first book, A Year in Provence,  was enormously popular and documented the year that he and his wife emigrated to France and restored a farmhouse.  It was voted the Best Travel Book of the Year (1989) by the British press, and Mayle was voted Author of the year in 1992.   He’s written many books since then.  The Vintage Caper is the latest.  I would recommend it as the kind of book one would take to the beach.  I would not recommend reading it when one is trying to diet.  Set in France, the book is filled with sunshine, wine, and food lovingly described.  The characters may be stereotypical, the plot predictable, but the reader (this one, anyway) does begin to long for a glass of vintage wine, a fondant au chocolat, or a warm, flakey croissant.  

The second comment concerns, really, three books.  I just finished the third book in the Alan Bradley, Flavia de Luce mystery series.  (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard)  These novels are entertaining mysteries set in a small English village in the 1950s.  The characters are well drawn and consistent--the remote philatelist father, the servant/handyman suffering from PTSD since the war, the two older sisters, and eleven year old Flavia, the chemistry prodigy.  The tribulations of the single father trying to raise daughters and the sibling rivalry of the sisters create a sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant back drop for the machinations of Flavia, who knows quite a bit about chemistry, but nothing about “proper behavior”.  She has her own well stocked chemistry lab, a left over from a great uncle, and she has no qualms about conducting experiments to solve a forensic problem, or exact revenge on her sisters.  However, what I find most enjoyable about the books is the tendency to allude to a broad spectrum of western literature, art and music.  Flavia expounds at length about little known chemists and interesting experiments and poisons, and the author, through all of the characters, provides a generous sprinkling of references  to literaturrre and music throughout.  I find this stylistic device refreshing in an age when much emphasis is placed on technology and speed.

To be honest, I had never heard the term Steampunk until I read it in an email from a book site.  Those of you who are sci-fi  and fantasy fans are probably well acquainted with the genre, which is, apparently, comparatively new.  At least the classification is new.  Apparently, Steampunk novels are set in the Victorian era, and draw some bit of technology from the future.  According to “The Beginner’s Guide” (http://www.abebooks.com/books/victorian-fiction-jeter-robots/steampunk-literature), this genre incorporates more than Victorian fantasy, and may include such things as “spring-powered robots, 22nd century zeppelins, Edwardian atomic power or a steam-powered hovercraft.”  This puts me in mind of such novels as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jules Verne’s  Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, forerunners surely, as the genre has only existed since the 1980’s.  Some of the Steampunk novels listed  are Morlock Night and Infernal Devices by K. W. Jeter, The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, and Homunculus by James Blaylock.  I thought about Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell  as a possible inclusion in this genre, but it is set during the Napoleonic War era rather than the Victorian and it doesn’t really have the technology component.  Obviously, I will have branch out in my reading, something that a couple of people have suggested to me.