Reading Report

I noticed this blog post yesterday about the Shiny Book Syndrome and must admit I felt slightly guilty.

But not today – I have just picked a book which has been gathering dust on my TBR for months, and I have no idea why I didn´t grab it before.

The story takes place in Brazil, and the writing and perspective are so captivating that it is exactly like being there myself. There are so many great paragraphs so which one should I choose?

Well, what about this one where we see the scene through the eyes of a professional photographer:

“He was on the church steps, almost in the vestibule, just below Gaspar Farias, the crow that ran the parish. (The black soutanes priests wore always reminded Walter of crows so that´s what he called them.) That put Walter seventy-five meters from the helicopter, maybe even a little more, but that was the beauty of it, the action of a man who knew his business. The punk kids always tried to get in close, instead of letting the lens do it for them. And now, while they were all down there in the crush elbowing each other out of the way, Walter had a spot all to himself, high above the heads of the crowd. There was nothing, nothing at all, between him and the Chief crow. He had an unimpeded view.

Exactly as he´d foreseen, Walter´s mediumlength telephoto, the 300mm, was the perfect lens for the job. His frame ran from slightly below the knees to the tip of the bishop´s miter.

Walter hit and released the shutter button. The Nikon clicked and whirred.

Ha! Gotcha sneaking a peek at your watch.”

What did I say? – like being there yourself. And the book? Leighton Gage´s first Mario Silva story, Blood of the Wicked.