Adults Reading Young Adult Books

Oh no! This columnist, Joel Stein, thinks that adults should read only adult books and forget about the teen books such as Hunger Games and books in the Twilight series.  I just finished reading the fifth and last book in the Boy Sherlock Holmes series by Shane Peacock targeting young adults.   They were all good reads but I prefer the first two in the series.  Sorry Joel but I am not with you. The Hunger Games is on my list of books to read this year.

Best-Sellers This Week.

I must be among the few who had never heard of this book, also referred to as "Mommy porn", until this week; Fifty Shades of Grey.  It's number 1 on the New York Times e-book fiction best-seller list, number 3 on Amazon’s best-seller list, and number 4 on USA Today's best-seller list. It's a trilogy by a British female writer E L James. By the way, Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is number 1 on USA Today's best-seller list. This is book 1 of a post-apocalyptic trilogy. Books 2 and 3 are also on the USA Today's best-seller list.

Agatha Awards 2011

I found a list of the nominees for the Agatha Award for Best  Novel in 2011 on this link

The Real Macaw (Meg Lanslow series) by Donna Andrews Meg Lansl (Minotaur)

The Diva Haunts the House by Krista Davis (Berkley)

Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet (Minotaur)

Three-Day Town by Margaret Maron (Grand Central Publishing)

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

I just finished reading A Trick of the Light and I loved it.   I'm eager to read book number 8, The Beautiful Mystery, set in a monastery, to be released in August.

The series of award winning books by Donna Andrews all have bird names in the title; the first one is Murder with Peacocks and is set in Virginia. All these novels seem to fall in the cozy mysteries genre - no gory murder details; small town or village setting; funny, entertaining or eccentric secondary characters.

Murder in Three Pines ... Again

If you have read any of my posts, you'll realized that my title is referring to the Three Pines mystery series by Louise Penny set in a village called Three Pine in Quebec, Canada.  I am reading A Trick of Light, shortlisted for a Dilys Award and named one of the best crime novels of 2011.

The focus of this story is on the artists, Clara and Peter Morrow.  Peter is the one who has achieved some fame and now Clara has got her big break. At the beginning of the story Clara's art is on show at a famous art gallery. She's a nervous wreck at her "vernissage" where her friends and special invited guests are viewing her works.  Peter's jealousy of Clara came up in previous books; it's rearing its ugly head here. Everything is interrupted as the very next morning the dead body of Clara's former childhood friend, Lillian, is found in Clara's garden.   Lillian was an art critic known for her acerbic critiques.  One particularly negative critique written by Lillian stands out in everyone's mind but no one can remember the name of the artist that was her target. My guess is find the target and maybe Chief Inspector Gamache and his team will find the murderer.

Some interesting themes are highlighted in this story.  There are references to light and darkness, fear and greed, jealousy and bitterness, hope and forgiveness.  There is a romance element in the story.  I am only going to reveal that Inspector Beauvoir has separated from his wife and he's in love with a married woman who, so far, has not shown romantic interest in him.

I am on page 113 and I am enjoying the quirky characters. Myrna,the retired psychologist, is coordinating a kind of exorcism of negative energy from Clara's garden using a prayer stick and colored ribbons.  Some type of ritual was also written about in the first book in the series, Still Life, after the death of Clara's closest friend.  I was hoping to see the very odd Agent Yvette Nichol in this story but so far no sign of her.