My personal reading challenge continues to be reading the books I
already own, now amended to include those that find their way to me via our
Little Free Library. It feels like my
TBR stack reproduces each night, and I fall behind daily in any effort to keep
current on recently published books.
Mostly, I just read what I want to read.
This spring, my light fiction reading list has included the following:
The Lincoln Lawyer, by
Michael Connelly (NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2005)
This book found its way to me from someone else’s Little Free Library. This Connelly series features Mickey Haller,
a defense lawyer, still in love with his ex-wife, a prosecuting attorney in the
District Attorney’s office. The book
starts slow but picks up its pace, so it kept me reading late into the night,
but I still prefer the police procedurals of LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. A wealthy real estate agent is accused of the
attempted murder of a prostitute. Mickey
is hired to defend him, but is the man innocent, or is Mickey being
played? The book was made into a movie
starring Matthew McConaughey. A theme
of Connelly’s seems to be how well justice is served by the systems of law
enforcement and the judicial process. While
Haller and Bosch always prevail, justice sometimes doesn’t.
Dead with the Wind, by Miranda
James (NY: Berkley Prime Crime, 2015)
This series features sisters An’gel and Dickce Ducote, 84 and 80 years
of age. I like to see older protagonists
in mysteries, plus this book was set in Louisiana, so I decided to read it. The plot strains credulity more than
once. The sisters are invited to a
family wedding but before it can take place, the bride, a real Bridezilla, is
found dead, apparently swept off her balcony during a violent thunder
storm?! For real? See what I mean? The most interesting thing about this book is
the author, Miranda James, is actually Dean James, a long-time librarian in
Texas. He started out writing non-fiction
reference books about mysteries with a collaborator, then got into fiction
writing and has since authored 18 whodunits.
Such a treat to find a Mrs. Pollifax mystery in my Little Free Library—it
just doesn’t happen often enough! Emily
Pollifax, the sixtyish senior citizen who studies judo and occasionally undertakes
a clandestine mission for the CIA, is persuaded to go to Jordan with another
agent to pose as an innocent tourist. All
they have to do is hang out at a popular tourist spot to obtain a book
manuscript being smuggled out of Iraq. Mrs.
Pollifax, as usual, is in the right, or wrong place (depending upon one’s perspective)
at the right time and ends up neck deep in multinational intrigue. Never one to be under-estimated, Emily
Pollifax survives with a little help from a Bedouin family. The last two Mrs. Pollifax mysteries I’ve read
have featured themes concerning turmoil in the Middle East. Gilman is timely even though her novel was
written 20 years ago. Early in the book,
Gilman writes that Mrs. Pollifax understands, “America was no longer immune to
terrorism and bombs.” Later a Jordanian
character says, ”I think it is our one big danger of a country….That the
extreme ones may become powerful and force our women to wear the heavy veils
again…all of us to become unfree, when we have become quite free here. Of fear.”
Julia’s Chocolate, by Cathy
Lamb (NY: Kensington Publishing Corp, 2007)
Someone gave me this chick lit book.
Because it had the word “chocolate” in the title and because it had an
intriguing opening line, I put it on a shelf and mentally marked it, “To be
decided.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to read
the book, but the first line, “I left my wedding dress hanging in a tree
somewhere in North Dakota,” reeled me in.
Julia Bennett is a runaway bride, leaving her wealthy but abusive fiancé
at the altar. She seeks refuge at the
home of her aunt, who provided her with the only safe haven she knew as a
child, and Julia knows she could count on her aunt. Her aunt has a cadre of female friends who
gather weekly to share, drink, shed inhibitions and empower each other and
themselves. The book is full of female rituals
that Aunt Lydia makes up, but each woman is able to overcome her own “devil” because
of the foundation gained at Aunt Lydia’s.
Julia is no exception. In the
end, it is the information about the author that interested me as much as the
book. A former fourth grade teacher, Lamb
has written over a dozen books of women’s fiction. She admits that she edits every book twelve
times, eight times before she will submit the manuscript to her editor. I enjoyed reading blog posts on her website as
she provides insights into her life and her writing process.
We had a little bit of trouble last month with the Little Free
Library. About midnight on a Friday
night, my husband comes flying down the stairs and says, “A group of kids just
went by the library, stopped, and did something to it. I’m not sure what, but I’m going to see.”
The six boys ran down the street when my husband went outside. They had dumped all the books out on the
ground and thrown some further down the sidewalk. Ricky said, “I’m calling the police to report
vandalism.”
Soon two police cars pulled up in front of our house. The officers looked at the books scattered
about and the female officer told my husband, “Another officer has these kids
two blocks up the street.”
She told the second officer to tell the officers to detain the youth
while she reviewed the video. She looked
at our video of the incident, noted which boys did what, and asked Ricky if we
wanted to press charges. She and Ricky
agreed that the boys hadn’t destroyed property, it was simple vandalism, but
Ricky told her, “If you could scare them, it would be good.”
The police left. We went to bed.
The next morning, I was in the house with the front door open and the screen door latched. I heard someone walking up on the front porch. It was a woman and her son. The mother was making the boy come by our house to apologize for his part in the vandalism of the Little Free Library. She was one upset mother! It seems a group of boys were spending the night together and had sneaked out.
The
young man apologized. I told him he
could help me put all the books back in the library. We talked a little as we worked. It turns out he loves to read, he said The Count of Monte Cristo is his
favorite book. I recommended another book from the LFL, and after examining it,
he decided to check it out.
While
the boy and I were putting the library back together, a woman and her two kids
stopped by. She thanked Ricky and me for finding her toddler's shoe, which the
child had kicked off unbeknownst to the mother.
Ricky had found it and put it in the LFL for her to reclaim later. The mom said she had never seen us outside to
thank us personally. Then her grammar school-age son piped up and added,
"You have good books in there, I like them."
We
were glad the boys were apprehended before they got themselves in a real jam. Little
Free Libraries—character and community building!
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