Chase Me by Tessa Bailey

   Roxy is a struggling actress trying to make it in New York.  Louis is a young corporate lawyer with a passion for pro bono work.  Neither does commitment.  Then they meet and though they fight against it, they're committed before they know it. 

Chase Me is a new adult romantic comedy.  There are no real surprises here.  People say and do as one might expect in a romantic comedy.  Still it is a cute, quick, fun read.  It is perfect when you need something light or as a palate cleanser in between bigger tomes.  

Still Life by Louise Penny

  Still Life is the first in Louise Penny's mystery series starring Chief Inspector Gamache.  The story is set in Three Pines, a small town near Montreal where no one locks their doors.  The victim is Jane Neal.  Her body is found near a deer trail.  It appears she was shot with an arrow.  Everyone would like to think it was a hunting accident; that someone shot her by mistake and was too ashamed and embarrassed to come forward.  Gamache is fairly certain that it was more than an accident, but then that begs the question, why would any kill an old lady who by all accounts was friendly, kind and generous to all?

I read different genres with different expectations.  In the case of mysteries I look for either great characters or a good puzzle with an even better solution.  Still Life had a decent puzzle but the characters are the big draw.  With respect to Gamache and his team, Still Life felt like a good beginning to the series.  By the end I had some idea of the kind of detective and man Gamache was.  This was also true of his second-in-command Jean Guy but less true of the rest of his team.

One of the most interesting parts of the story was that of new to the homicide team, Agent Nichol.  It is not unusual to have a newbie on the team who makes lots of mistakes but who eventually proves him or herself.  Agent Nichol does the exact opposite, starting off strong and going downhill.  She is rude and arrogant, lacking any sort of emotional intelligence.  I couldn't help but think of the television characters House and Backstrom (which I guess is also a literary character) only unlike those characters, Nichol genuinely doesn't seem to realize that she is rude and arrogant or how she affects other people.  One of the funniest and saddest moments in the book is when Nichol notices a sticker on a mirror that reads "You're looking at the problem," and her reaction is to search the area behind her.

As rude and arrogant as Nichol was, I felt sorry for her.  Gamache tries to advise her but she does not get it.  One gets the sense that Nichol needs more than someone telling her to be nice.  She needs someone to explain to her that she shouldn't call people stupid to their face even when what the person is saying makes little sense because it hurts people's feelings and also because people tend to not to want to talk to you anymore when you call them stupid and that's bad since a lot of a detective's job involves talking to people and getting them to open up to you.  I kept waiting for Nichol to be diagnosed with some sort of disorder.  I hope she appears later in the series just so someone can figure out what's wrong with her.

I realize I just wrote about a side character than the main story, which says something.  The mystery was interesting up until it was solved.  I did not love the solution.  I don't need to be able to solve the mystery to like the book, but I do like to at least be able to look back and think, that thing that seemed like nothing was a clue and now it all makes sense.  Here the solution to the puzzle seemed a little like, hey now it's time to end this thing so time to pick someone to be the bad guy.

As I've said in other places on this blog, one of things I like about reading novels written by non-American authors or set in countries other than the U.S. is that I get to learn about other parts of the world. Still Life is set in the Quebec province, the French part of Canada.  One thing I liked about Still Life is that it touches on the tension between English and French speakers in the province.  At one point a character complains about being an English speaker surrounded by French speakers.  (One can only how wonder how French speakers feel when they cross over into one of Canada's other provinces.)  And a fun fact I learned: In Canada Thanksgiving is celebrated on a Sunday or Monday.  Further research on Wikipedia reveals that Canadian Thanksgiving is in October!  Who knew?  Well I guess Canadians knew and now I do too.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

  First a dead bird with a stamp stuck in its beak turns up on the doorstop.  Then Colonel de Luce is heard arguing with an unknown man in his study.  To top it all off, Flavia finds a red-haired man lying in the cucumber garden.  She arrives at his side just in time to hear his last word, "Vale".  Most eleven-year-olds would probably be frightened, might even run away screaming upon witnessing a man breathe his last breath, but Flavia is not most eleven-year-olds.  No, aspiring chemist, poison enthusiast, and all around adventuress Flavia is not frightened.  She is intrigued.

What a delight!  Flavia is precocious, funny, adventurous, and so much more.  Following her as she tried to puzzle out who killed the man in the garden and left the bird on the doorstep was so much fun.  Sure there were some clues that were easy to spot but then Flavia is eleven; it made sense that she didn't always figure everything out quickly.  But don't think because she is eleven this story is merely for middle schoolers.  Though I would have loved to have had something this when I was eleven and I think some pre-teens could handle this, this book is shelved in the adult section.  There are a few jokes that will make adults chuckle while sailing over the heads of youngsters.  One of my favorites: after being advised by her passionate-for-books sister Daphne to kick any man who tries to grab her in the Casanovas, Flavia wonders to herself, where exactly are the Casanovas?

The rest of the cast characters is just as entertaining as Flavia.  In between searching for clues Flavia battles her two older sisters, 17-year-old Ophelia and 13-year-old Daphne, using chemistry as her weapon.  Dogger, once the family butler, chauffeur, and all around right hand man, now gardener (the war having left him memory loss and hallucinations) is more family than employee.  He gives Flavia a hand when he can.  Harriet, the de Luce matriarch and an adventuress in her own right, disappeared while on one of her adventures and is presumed dead, leaving the girls' father Colonel Haviland to raise the girls.  Unfortunately the Colonel is a recluse who barely seems to notice his daughters exist, preferring to spend most of his time in his study pouring over his stamp collection, leaving the girls to largely fend for themselves.  They seem to do alright.  Ophelia worries about boys and makeup; Daphne loves books and reading; and of course Flavia has her chemistry. 

I enjoyed this so much.  Luckily this is the first in a series so there is more Flavia to read.  I can hardly wait.

Real Murders by Charlaine Harris

   There used to be a series of movies on the Hallmark Channel called Mystery Woman about a female bookstore owner who had a passion for mystery novels, a habit of stumbling over dead bodies, and a talent for solving mysteries.  I always wished that the movies were based on a book because that is a book I would read.  Alas, there is no Mystery Woman book series that I've been able to find, but I found something close: the Aurora Teagrarden series by Charlaine Harris.  This weekend Hallmark is premiering a new mystery movie called A Bone to Pick based on the second book of the series.  Because I prefer to start a series at the beginning I picked up a copy of Real Murders, the first Aurora Teagarden book.

Aurora Teagarden is a librarian in a small Georgia town.  She is also a member of a club called Real Murders, a group of true crime aficionados who like to research and discuss famous solved and unsolved cases.  As their monthly meeting is about to start, Aurora realizes that one of their members has gone missing.   Aurora goes looking for her and discovers her first dead body.  Not only has one of the club's members been murdered, the circumstances of the death are similar to the case the club was planning to discuss that very evening.  Aurora doesn't want to believe it but she suspects that the murderer is one of her fellow club members.

Charlaine Harris, the author of Real Murders, has written multiple series including the Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse series, which I enjoyed very much, and Harper Connelly series, which I enjoyed less.  (To be fair I only read one Harper Connelly book.)  So far, the Aurora Teagarden series falls in between Sookie and Harper.  Aurora reminds me a bit of Sookie in that she's another small town southern girl thrown into the deep end and finding she can swim pretty well.  Unfortunately the characters and the setting in the Teagarden series aren't quite as fleshed out as the Sookie series.  Bon Temps and its inhabitants felt like a real place, Aurora and Lawrenceton, Georgia not so much.  Still this was worth a read.  The mystery was an interesting one and just when I thought I had it all figured out it turned out I got it all wrong.

If you like cozy mysteries this one is worth the try.  I am looking forward both to reading the next book in the series and watching the Hallmark version.  There is a place in my heart for smart, often single women like Miss Marple, Cordelia Gray, and Samantha Kinsey who have a talent for solving murders.  Aurora Teagarden might soon find herself added to that list.

March in Review

The year started with a sprint.  By the end of January I had read eleven books.  I suspected that wouldn't last.  The next month I read three fewer books, completing eight books, and this past month my total was down to six (including one I finished on April 1st).  Seven isn't bad, but it did feel a bit slow.  Worse, I felt like I was moving very far with my reading challenges.  Looking at my progress chart I realize I'm not doing as bad as I thought.  In particular, I finally starting making progress on my Reading the World Challenge, reading books from Nigeria, Norway, and Australia.  On the downside only one of the seven books counted towards the TBR challenge.

Speaking of TBR challenges...this was a good month of not buying books.  Let me explain.  One of my goals this year is to reduce my TBR pile, which includes both reading books from that pile and not acquiring more.  In March I only bought a couple books and taking into account what I did read, my TBR pile decreased by four.  That will change this month as April is the month of my favorite literary festival - The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.  This year there is also a festival dedicated to young adult books called Yallwest.  Between these two festivals my TBR is likely to increase.  But that's okay.  I look forward to the Festival of Books all year and am glad to support authors.  Plus, there are deals to be had at the Festival of Books.  Yallwest is a first for me but don't be surprised if I come home with a few new books from their too.

March brought the beginning of spring.  It may be a little too early for those May flowers but I'm going to celebrate anyway.

MARCH

Every Breath by Ellie Marney

  It's Holmes and Watson as teenagers in Australia.  Rachel Watts is a country girl whose family moved to the city after her family lost the farm to the bank.  She misses open spaces and hates the city.  One of the few bright spots in her new life is her neighbor and friend James Mycroft, a teenage boy with an above average IQ and an interest in forensics.  When he and Watts stumble upon the dead body of their friend Dave, Mycroft suggests that he and Watts solve their friend's murder.  Watts is reluctant at first but who can resist a good mystery?  Especially when the police are completely barking up the wrong tree.  They aren't even looking for Dave's dog Poodle, which by the way isn't a poodle, that's just his name.  Mycroft is sure Poodle is the key.  Watts agrees and with that the game is afoot!

Conan Doyle's famous detective has been reincarnated in multiple mediums in recent years.  There's the BBC's Sherlock, Elementary on CBS, and the movies with Robert Downey, Jr, to name a few.  They each offer something a little different.  In all cases, Holmes is a man (where's the female Holmes, I wonder) with acute observation skills, strange hobbies, an ability to recall obscure facts about a wide variety of subjects, and a talent for pissing people off.  For me the most interesting part of a Sherlock Holmes' mystery is both how Holmes solves it and how he interacts with other characters.  The unresolved question in every story (admittedly I haven't read all of the Doyle's work) is how Holmes got to be the way he is.  One of things I really enjoyed about Ellie Marney's Every Breath is that she provides her ideas about why Holmes is the way he is.

In Marney's version Mycroft, as her prefers to be called, is an orphan living with an aunt with whom he barely speaks.  The tragic and violent death of his parents has given Holmes a certain amount of purpose in life, that of solving crimes.  It has also left him sad, lonely, and at times self-destructive. He's a kid on the verge of adulthood who suffered a catastrophic loss and who is trying to figure out how to move forward and sometimes failing at it.

This isn't a straightforward reincarnation of Doyle's detective.  Watts and Mycroft live in modern day Melbourne and are fully aware of the fictional detective.  They and their friends Mai and Gus make jokes about it.  If anything, Sherlock is a detective that Mycroft admires and perhaps aspires to be.  His friends have to remind him periodically that he is not Sherlock and this actions can have real consequences.

Every Breath was very, very good and I look forward to reading the next two books in the series.  That may be difficult as the series was initially published in Australia.  I was lucky to find this book at a library but so far haven't found any American libraries that carry the other two books in the series.  Hopefully they will grow in popularity and start showing up on this continent.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  For the past few months I've been reading mostly genre fiction - mysteries, romances, fantasy, and paranormal or a combination of two or more of the above.  Americanah is literary fiction, that is to say it is a novel of ideas and characters.  Reading Americanah was an abrupt change of pace for me and it took some time to adjust to the rhythms of reading a novel that was more about ideas than plot.  It was a welcome change.

The novel begins with Ifemulu and Obinze, two childhood sweethearts in Nigeria.  They have dreams of going to America but Obinze's visa application is rejected.  Ifemulu goes alone, while Obinze eventually makes his way to the United Kingdom.  One's dream of a place and what life in the place is like never quite matches up with the real thing.  Inevitably there are differences between one's imagination and reality, both good and bad.  Ifemulu and Obinze discover this first hand as they make their way in the countries they have chosen to travel to.  Eventually both of them find their way to back to Nigeria, and back in each other's lives.

Several ideas are explored in Americanah: immigration, race, class, romantic relationships, success, and perceptions of non-Africans about Africa, to name a few.  In particular Adichie explores what it means to be Black through the character of Ifemulu.  In Nigeria Ifemulu was simply Nigerian.  In the US with this country's complicated racial history, Ifemulu is Black.  Having grown up in a country where the majority of people are Black, life in the US takes some getting used to.  Ifemulu continues her formal and informal education upon arriving in the US and later begins a blog about being a "non-American Black" in the US.  Some of my favorite parts of the book are her blog entries. 

I have so many thoughts about this book but it is difficult to discuss them without revealing plot points.  Suffice to say Americanah was well worth the read.  Highly recommended.