Senior Citizens and Murder

 

  I heard this book recommended on the podcast "What Should I Read Next." This is one of my favorite podcasts. Two-thirds of the books I read I hear about are from Anne Bogel or her guest.  

Side note--I spent many minutes searching the internet to correctly punctuate a podcast series title. I'm not entirely comfortable with quotation marks, I was thinking italicized like a book title, but this is what I understand the internet to say. If you have a better answer, please try and leave a comment. I'm not sure that comments are working even though I've made them available in settings. This is my life with technology: sometimes I rock, sometimes I roll.

Back to the books I read this week. Richard Osman's book The Thursday Murder Club was a five-star read for me. I usually don't give five stars, especially to murder mysteries, but this was an exceptionally good book. The premise is a group of four elderly resident's living in a senior community gather together every Thursday to discuss unsolved murders when in their midst is an actual murder. There is Joyce, the retired flirty, nurturing nurse; Elizabeth, the hardcore former MI-5 (6?) cold war operative; Ron, the tough, but kind labor organizer known as "Red Ron," and Ibrahim, the wise no longer practicing psychiatrist. This book was funny, twisty, and heartwarming without being trite. It is peopled with quirky, distinctive characters and murder. I was guessing who-done-it right up to the very end. 

   I loved the first book so much that I immediately checked out the second one, The Man Who Died Twice. It was as good as the first. There is a third book in the series that I will read once it becomes available on Libby, or I might spend a precious Audible credit to listen. It's that good. I hope it gets made into a series on a streaming service I subscribe to. Fingers crossed.

Some New Reads and Some Re-Reads

    I am fortunate to have a book club with my sister. We meet on Zoom. because we live several states apart. This year we are reading murder mysteries. We started with The Thursday Murder Club, one of the best books I've read this year. I re-read it for book club and savored how Richard Osman dropped hints and clues about the murders throughout the story. The lovely, quirky characters made me laugh again. Even though they are in their 70s and 80s, they evolve and change like strong characters do. 

I count a book as highly successful if you can re-read it and enjoy it, but better still if you see details you initially missed. Richard Osman for the win! 📚⭐️📚⭐️📚⭐️

                                                     

    I don't know if it was because I had a busy week or because I paused reading Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano for The Thursday Murder Club, but this didn't sparkle for me. I like to finish books, so I finished this one, but despite being humorous and set in exotic Sicily, it didn't grab me. It had good elements: fun characters, puzzling mystery, and hot policemen. It is the first in a series, but I won't be reading the others because life is short, and they are lots of books. 🦁🦁🦁

    Several grandchildren visited this week, and I read The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson many times. I reviewed it earlier here. in-which-i-time-travel.html As part of fun things to do with Nana, we went to Barnes & Noble to get a book. I found this sequel to The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo's Child. I bought it for my home collection. The Gruffalo warns his child about the legendary fearsome mouse living in the deep, dark woods. The child becomes bored and ventures out to see this mouse for himself. What's going to happen? 🐭🐭🐭

From Mysteries to Misery to Making

 

  I was ecstatic to read the latest installment of the Thursday Murder Club, The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman. His quirky, complex characters and the ridiculous situation they get into make me laugh out loud. My minor complaint is there are many characters, and I get confused if I've encountered this or that person in his previous books. Is there something crucial I'm supposed to remember? In the third book, the Murder Club takes on a cold case of a missing-presumed-dead reporter who was about to break a huge story. There is also continuing fallout from previous cases. Spicing things up is a dash of romance amongst the senior set. 👵🏻 ❤️👴🏻

   The Dry by Jane Harper was also a mystery. It appears a struggling farmer, Luke, kills his wife, son, and himself. His estranged best friend, Aaron Falk, returns to the rural town that drove him away to attend the funeral. He gets roped into investigating the deaths. Harper paced this book well. Luckily I started it early in the day because it sucked me in, and I didn't want to stop until I reached the end. I listened to the audiobook, and the accents added to the Australian setting. It was a tense, secretive story that kept me guessing till the end. 

  Both the mystery books I read this week were stellar, but in different ways. Reading them one after the other caused me to appreciate the skill it takes to build a compelling mystery and the various paths authors take to achieve their goals. 🤩

  I find Elizabeth Strout to be a gifted author. When I read her books, I am wrapped in the sadness and struggle of her characters because their voices are that authentic. Lucy by the Sea continues the story of Lucy Barton, a fresh widow who lives in New York when the pandemic strikes. Her ex-husband William convinces her to go with him to Maine until it passes. About three weeks or so, right? Strout captures the terror and unpredictability so well. I returned to the world of washing my groceries, isolation, and worry. Lucy has a complicated relationship with her rural roots and family. This cripples her enjoyment of the family she's created as she battles self-doubt and anxiety. It is written in the first person. Having read the previous books in the series, I feel I'm residing in Lucy's head, hearing her thoughts and wrestling with her concerns. Her self-talk is abysmal, realistic, and too much like my own. She makes me feel my latent sadness and fear as I enjoy her first-rate writing.😢😱

  I'm so glad the next book I picked up was this one.

    Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic was the antidote to depressing inner monologue of Lucy Barton. Gilbert kicks butt and takes names when it comes to facing her fears surrounding creativity. This was my second read through this book and I liked it even better this time. Her enthusiasm and just-try attitude fired me up to invest in writing. I am inspired by her letter to fear because it is a negative self talk neutralizer. 😌 

Here is a cute video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utW2cq17nBk

    What a great reading week I had with four stellar, wildly different books. 📚

🐈‍⬛💊 🐕Murder Trouble, Drug Trouble, and more Murder Trouble!😍

 

    I love the whacky series featuring senior citizens who local murders called "The Thursday Murder Club"  by Richard Osman. He is starting a new series, and its first book is We Solve Murders. Osman writes quirky characters that get into ridiculous problems while trying to solve a tricky murder. He starts with a fresh cast. Steve Wheeler is a retired policeman comfortable with his well-ordered life. His daughter-in-law Amy works as a professional bodyguard for a high-end protection business. A mysterious trail of influencer deaths clusters around Amy. She needs to solve who is behind them and why before she ends up in jail or dead herself. She finds help in the unlikeliest of places. I'm going to like them!

🐈‍⬛🛩️🏝️🍸

    The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing by Lara Love Hardin was recommended by my sister, and when I started reading it, I thought it was fiction. It begins at a desperate point where Lara uses a stolen credit card to stay in a hotel with her young son. She waits there for her husband to bring heroin for them both to get high. She goes on to explain how their drug use has dismantled her comfortable suburban life as she steals and lies to support their habit. This is about the time I realized it was a memoir. Hardin tells her gripping story of addiction, jail, and recovery. 

💉💊🚓👩‍💻

    I have seen the Netflix series advertised, but I wanted to start with the book. I was surprised that A Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson was a  YA book. The mystery: a five-year-old disappearance of 17-year-old popular high school student, Andie, becomes the capstone project for straight-A student Pip. Andie's boyfriend Singh is believed to have killed Andie, then killed himself out of guilt, but her body was never found. The deeper Pip digs, the more things don't add up. When she starts receiving threats to stop looking or else, Pip knows she's onto something. I liked this twisty story. The pace was good. My only complaint is never go to confront a killer alone! There are two other books in the series, and I'm excited to read them.

🐕📝👱‍♀️💊

🦊🔐💻 The Latest Richard Osman!

 

    Richard Osman reminds me of Fredrik Backman because he writes with heart, but not sentimentality. Osman's latest book, The Impossible Fortune, the fifth installment in the Thursday Murder Club series, is an excellent addition to the series. I'm glad all the members of the Thursday Murder Club are going strong. Osman's characters continue to evolve and grow while facing the struggles of aging. This series is quite fun in a screwball comedy sort of way.

On another note, I watched the movie made from the first book on Netflix, and was somewhat disappointed. They nailed Elizabeth and Ibrahim, but I thought the material was too rich and complex for a 90 minute movie. It needed to be a series.

🦊🔐💻 

    I was visiting my six-year-old granddaughter last week, and she was listening to the audiobook of Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes, the Newbery Award winner for 2004. I was  ntrigued. The protagonist, 12-year-old Martha Boyle, is struggling with weighty material: the sudden death of a school friend, worry for an aging grandparent, finding herself attracted to a boy she'd previously disliked, wanting to be a writer  but unsure how. Changes wi hin and without. I think this would be a good book for a parent child book club. So many complex topics are thoughtfully addressed.

🌊🐚❤️

    I was familiar with Kevin Henke ' picture books. I love the bright illustrations and hilarious plots. Here are some of my favorites.

❤️📚❤️

New Series and End of Year Round Up

    I started reading the Longmire series by Craig Johnson. The Cold Dish and Death Without Company are the first two. I'm really enjoying them. Craig Johnson writes a tight mystery- always enjoyable- but I'm most captivated by the dry humor and the supporting cast. The protagonist is mildly depressed, and it would be a much darker book if it weren't for the strong women surrounding him and his faithful best friend. If he can keep this up throughout the series, it will be a fun year for me reading through his catalog. Book 19 is due to come out in 2023. In a future post, I'll compare the book series with the Netflix version. 

🤠🤠🤠🤠🤠

    I have done the GoodReads reading challenge for several years. I have settled on aiming for 100 books and usually pass it, but I'm reluctant to up the number. 100 is a satisfying number, and 125 or 150 just isn't. 

I see some trends in the latest books I read. One is the multiverse and, perhaps related, time travel within your life. Another is same-sex relationships. If it's not the centerpiece relationship, there is one somewhere in the book.

I read several terrific books this year, and a few I wish I hadn't.

📚📚📚📚📚

Most Helpful: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Favorite Mystery: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Most brutal to Read, but Worth It: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

Favorite Sci-Fi: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Most Disappointing:  The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Most Comforting: The Penderwick Series by Jeanne Birdsall

Favorite Fantasy: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Most Interesting Relationship: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Favorite Memoir: Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

Most Surprising: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Made Me Think: Hell of a Book Jason Mott and The Sentence by Louis Eldrich

Most Disturbing: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

My Favorite Book of 2022 is:

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

2022 READING 
CHALLENGE

Participants	6,758,337
Books Pledged	334,703,276
Avg. Books Pledged	49
Time Left	3 days, 17 hours

You have read 134 of 100 books in 2022.

YOUR 2022 BOOKS

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