A Year of Reading from my Library

My goal this year is to only read from my extensive, existing personal library.  I'm running out of room for books and might be persuaded to pass along a book to a friend once I've read it.  I can't seem to part easily with a book I haven't read because as soon as I do, I'll want to read it.

I do have several exceptions to this edict of only reading books I already own--it doesn't count if someone gives or loans me a book, or if someone gives me gift card for a new book, or if I download a book on my Kindle.  After all, the Kindle was a gift and it would be rude not to use it.

Today's book review falls in the latter category--I downloaded it on my Kindle, but it is an "old" book, published originally in 2009.  Number 3 in the humorous mystery series by Lisa Lutz, an Edgar Award nominated author, this book has all the characteristics of a Spellman mystery--no bodies pile up in this series but misunderstandings and subterfuge abound.

Isabel "Izzy" Spellman has taken a hiatus from the family's detective agency, but it hasn't ended her investigating because the Spellman family can't stop investigating each other.  Brother David is acting weird, Sister Rae is undeniably a weird teenager, but has suddenly turned studious while she relentlessly tries to get back in the good graces of her best friend, police inspector, Henry Stone.  Izzie is being blackmailed, she has lost her job as a bartender and is working freelance on a case while she decides whether to rejoin the family's investigation agency.  And so this crazy mystery goes lurching along to its predictable ending, but the fun isn't in the mystery but the characters and their strange, but somehow believable, behavior. 

A little bit of the Spellman family keeps me satisfied for quite awhile, plus the numerous footnotes used by the author are difficult to deal with on the Kindle.  Tomorrow another Kindle read brings me closer to home.