It's a Mystery

I bet it has been a year since I read the Amazon Kindle sample of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for the first time.  At that time I got hung up on the Swedish financial descriptions and thought the book was not for me.  I have been befuddled for months that it has been such a popular book.

Now I have seen the trailer to the David Fincher film version starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.  It looked gripping so I decided to read the sample again.  This time I zipped through it and thought I really needed to keep reading.  I got myself a readable .pdf and suddenly a book I hadn’t wanted to read sucked me into it’s grip and would NOT let me go.  I literally did not get on the computer for week and read that dang story every chance I had.  I bought the trilogy on Kindle yesterday, read until 1:30a.m. and awoke just after 7a.m. to read the first book to it’s abrupt conclusion.  I am really wanting to started The Girl Who Played with Fire but am still savoring Tattoo.

During the week it took me to read the first part of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander’s story I asked many people if they had read the book.  A handful truly enjoyed it.  Several said it started so slowly that they could not continue, much like my first impression.  One friend said she actually tried reading it twice and just could not get excited about it.

How is it that I could not fathom how much I would enjoy the book the first time I started, and then literally devoured it the second time?  Did I just need to be in the mood?  Did the movie tie-in help? Will I enjoy the foreign version of the film as much as the book?  And what about the rest of the series?  I feel quite protective of Lisbeth now and think she’s headed down an even darker road into the bleak mid-winter.  I know she can save herself and I know Mikael will do what he can to assist.  Guess I’ll climb into my new aubergine birthday sheets and get started.

I have not been well but I have been reading, & I promise to get back to my regular posts as I am moving forward with the Death on Demand series & other mysteries.

However, my geekout lil heart has to share this with ya’ll!  This book First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones is awesome!!!  J.R. Ward 1st told me so, but now I have read it for myself, & thanks to the world of Kindle am sharing it with my friend.

Friday night Darynda & J.R. were in a chatroom.  Ah, the good ol days. I used to have a chatroom, but this 1 was wild. The chat was to introduce First Grave & to allow all the Black Dagger Brotherhood followers to revel in the presence of their creator the Warden.  Revel we did!!!  It was so awesome to “see” other fans geeking out over the characters that I have loved & shared for the last year.  All in anticipation of Lover Unleashed um er unleashing @ the end of March. 

Warden (J.R. Ward) was there to plug Darynda’s 1st book released in hardcover.  For mystery, scifi or romance, that is just never done.  Ms. Jones seemed like a nice enough gal, but I did grumble @ the $10.99 price as a paperback would have been cheaper via Kindle.  However, I no longer begrudge the price, because short of re-reading the Black Dagger books again for the 1st time, First Grave was an awesome read!!!  Can’t wait for the 2nd book in August, but since Stephenie Meyers has ended the Twilight series for now, BDB & the grim reaper will do just fine!  Head to the paper or digital library & check out this hot 1 pronto <vbeg>  Then email or catch me here so we can discuss wooboy!

Needing to clear the bad taste out of my mind that The Christie Caper left behind, I immediately started reading Susan Kandel’s Christietown.  This is the 4th book in a great series starring Cece Caruso.  Cece writes biographies of mystery authors, & I have enjoyed the previous books with information on Dashiell Hammett, Carolyn Keene & Erle Stanley Gardner.

This time, Cece has turned in a biography on Agatha Christie.  While she solves a genuinely puzzling mystery in her life, she tries to unravel the time in Agatha’s life when her 1st marriage was falling apart & she disappeared for several days.  The book goes back & forth between the developments at Christietown, an elder living project based around Dame Christie’s mysteries, & Agatha’s movements during her missing days. 

I was tickled that Kandel even managed to include the memorable movie Chinatown in the plot & that she really seems to have answered what happened to Agatha during her bout of amnesia.

I highly recommend this book & the others in the series.  Well done Ms. Kandel!

Mom and I are having a bookclub of 2 this winter, reading Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.  I am greedy & single, so I make more time for myself to read than she does.  Therefore, I have finished the book, while she is still reading the final chapters.

So far we have had 2 meetings.  We agree that McCall Smith is a delight at evoking the way Botswanans speak.  It is very different from our American way of expressing ourselves. For example, Mma Ramotswe has no trouble saying something like, “He was a good man.”  We might think it, but even here in the Western United States, where language is less formal, we would not inject such a statement into conversation.

Mom has some friends who have spent time with an African missonary.  He says that McCall Smith gets it right as far as the life of an “average” African person.  I have read Cry the Beloved Country when it was an Oprah book selection, & 1 of my favorite movies is Out of Africa.  Other than that I would not say Africa is a part of the world that normally intrigues me.  That being said, I was pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed this light book. 

As a mystery book, what I found delightfully surprising is that the No. 1 Lady Detective does not just solve 1 mystery.  During the course of opening her business, & relating her early cases, she solves several little & a couple of big mysteries.  This is different than the usual 1 case experience of most mysteries I have read.  It is also fun to read about the ingenious way she gets information, solves the case & brings her clients closure.

When Mom has finished the last of the book, we can discuss how Precious feels about lying.  She does not believe it is a bad thing if it is for a good end.  Her friend Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has never lied until he starts assisting her & he has more trouble with it than she does.

You may remember from my previous post that we are reading this book because it was 1 of Grandma’s.  Mom mentioned that while Grandma rarely made comments about what she read, she did mention that McCall Smith is a very good writer.  We agree, & will read the 2nd installment Tears of the Giraffe in the future.  I would also enjoy renting the HBO series & seeing Jill Scott’s portrayal of the full figured African detective.

This just in:  True Grit by Charles Portis & The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett are finally available on Kindle.  Get them before they are pulled from the “shelf” as was Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

I have had The Christie Caper on my Kindle wishlist almost since I started the list last December.  This was the volume that attracted me to the whole series.  The actual book for me was a huge disappointment.

Yes, there were a ton of Christie factoids, a chapter clue game, the 5 paintings & character references from Christie novels.  I felt lost because I have not recently read a lot of Christie, & while it piqued my interest, was not as fun as if I had been an expert on all of her repertoire.  Then it would have been like revisiting with old friends.

The disappointment, again, was in the actual mystery itself.  From the beginning I didn’t care about any of the newly injected characters, the victim, who-done-it, or any of that.  If not for Annie & Max I might well not have finished the book.  As it was I took a break to start other books and read another in-total.

I will soldier on with the series & would recommend the book if you are a true afficianado of Agatha Christie.

1. Go to Wikipedia and hit random. The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr.com and click on “explore the last seven days”. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.
5. Reblog with your result.

photo credit

My Grandma Adena, Mom’s mom, passed away at 88 1/2 years old on Christmas Eve 2010.

In August 1999 I made a leap of faith & moved from Seattle, where I had resided for over 11 years, to Livingston.  I rented the apartment attached to Grandma’s house.  Thus, she was able to stay in her house until we both moved to other residences in October 2008.

My whole immediate family members are voracious readers.  Fortunately, Grandma read off and on during the years we lived together, & the last couple years of her life.

I bought her At Home in Mitford during my early years in Livingston.  Not having a shower I began to enjoy taking reading baths in my little half-bath.  Grandma was amazed I could spend hours in the tub replenishing the hot water periodically and petting the kitties while polishing off many a good book.  She was not amused when I dropped this book in the tub & it became twice its size!  Thereafter, she never failed to mention this incident when I regaled the pleasures of a reading bath.  I have also never read a borrowed book in the bathtub again.  Grandma read the entire Mitford series.  I read the 1st several & found them unfailingly uplifting & not too preachy.

Grandma’s friend “Sammy” Rustad loaned her some volumes in Earlene Fowler’s awesome quilting mystery series.  I made sure we read them in order, & we both thoroughly enjoyed the tales of Benni Harper. I am sorry that the latest installment State Fair will not be in paperback until May 2011, so Grandma miss it.  I will continue to read the series on my Kindle.  I highly recommend this author & series.

My mom Sharon got Grandma reading all of the Alexander McCall Smith’s series & we think Grandma read most of the Africa series.  We plan to read this 1st book together this winter.  It will be even more poignant now that it was a link to Grandma.

Rest in Peace Grandma Adena.  I hope heaven has a big library for you to curl up, be warm & read to your heart’s content.  I will miss & love you the rest of my days.

I am so glad to see you indulging in your love of the written word.  It gets us out of Livingston for awhile.

Dear Sherri -

Thank you sooooooooo much for the $50 Amazon gift card you gave me for my recent birthday.  It was the purrfect gift for me and so generous!  I thought I would say thank you in public & share what I purchased.  That sucker burned a hole in my brain from day 1!

As soon as I activated the card on December 20th, I purchased a little Kindle selection called Murder in the House of Beads for 99¢.  It is the 1st in a mystery series called “The House of Beads”.  Perfect for my love of mystery & jewelry dontcha think?

December 22nd I must have been feeling amorous & in a regency romance mood because I purchased these 2 titles:

For $8.36 I got Pursuit of Pleasure, the tale of a woman who wants to be a widow not a wife & the man who promises to die at sea.  I have started it & I don’t think it will go as either planned.  Read the sample 1st & was hooked!

Finally reduced to $6.99 A Wallflower Christmas is the 5th of Lisa Kleypas’s “Wallflower” series, which I read in late summer, early fall.

Today I actually spent some of the gift certificate on PAPER!!!!  As you know, I love the Moleskine notebooks.  You have seen me buy them on our trips to Bozeman’s Barnes & Noble.  So, I indulged in 3 offerings from the awesome company:

For $9.60 I got the Sky Blue address book.  I chose the large because it’s my dream next year to get a Vera Bradley messenger bag (I’ll start with my Franklin Covey briefcase ‘til the dream comes true) to carry my Kindle, moleskines & pens.

For $8.70 I added purple to the colors of the pocket ruled notebooks.  I already have blue & pink.  Still need gray, green & red.

Finally I purchased the large pink ruled notebook duo for $6.95 for my bedside.  You should have seen me last night & this a.m. trying to come up with the perfect combo to equal the $25 for super-saver-shipping.

That left me with a balance of $7.81, so I purchased the Agatha Christie Companion for $6.39 shown below to help me with my research for this blog.  Can I write it off on my taxes?

Anywho -  Thank you, thank you, thank you for making me happy & slightly frantic to find the perfect items on which to spend your most wonderful Birthday gift.  I still have $1.42 left, but The Maltese Falcon will be available 12/30 & my Kindle wishlist is still over 300 items long.  Love you lots!!!