Collection of Cozies #3

A Room With a Brew by Joyce Tremel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The 3rd installment of this series about a brewer in Pittsburg who keeps getting mixed up in murders. This one was pretty far-fetched and the G-rated romance with the hunky hockey-player chef is also hard to believe.

Death of a Fool by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ritual dancing at the winter solstice provides the backdrop for this tale of murder from one of the queens of crime.



The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax
by Dorothy Gilman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This might stretch the definition of mystery a bit, but it is definitely a cozy spy novel.


Kansas Troubles by Earlene Fowler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Would have liked more quilting info in this one.




Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reread of a classic. Lots of interesting info about spiritualism. I love the ending of this novel. The actual last lines are great (total spoiler though so I won't quote them).


A Shot in the Dark by Lynne Truss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The tone of this novel reminded me of Josephine Tey's work. This one is comic though (think Keystone cops). Now and then the grammarian in Lynne Truss pops up in a charming way and the language was delightful:

"It's an aspect of old-school Variety that is often overlooked in respectful academic accounts of the genre's sad and lonely death-by-television in the 1950s--that what made the weak comedy routines sound so funny in the halls (and the tawdry 'glamour' even passable), was the audience's prior consumption of alcohol in quantities that would nowadays be considered catastrophically injurious to health." (p. 77)

This novel has been on my shelf for ages and so counts toward the Mount TBR challenge.

All of these books count toward the Cruisin Through the Cozies Challenge.

Joseph Andrews

Joseph Andrews
by Henry Fielding
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Tom Jones when I was an undergraduate and really liked it so when it came time to assemble my latest Classics Club list I knew wanted to read more of Fielding's work.
Joseph Andrews was originally published in 1742 and is the tale of a young man who gets himself into (and occasionally out of) a variety of ridiculous situations. This was a funny book but I didn't like it as much as I remember liking Tom Jones. This novel counts toward my Back to the Classics challenge as a comic classic and also toward the Mount TBR challenge. I think I have had this book on my shelves for at least 30 years and now it has finally been read.

Kingdom of the Blind

Kingdom of the Blind
by Louise Penny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was another excellent installment in the story of Armand Gamache and the Surete du Quebec. Like the others it was well written and presented an interesting puzzle. Something happened at the end that I wasn't very happy about, but that has occurred before and Penny has resolved the issue satisfactorily in the next book, so I will wait and see what happens before I get too upset.
This quote spoke to me (definitely more to do with me than the book):

"Things sometimes fell apart unexpectedly. It was not necessarily a reflection of how much they were valued." (p. 4)

This book counts toward the Canadian Book Challenge (setting and author are Canadian); Cruisin' Through the Cozies Challenge  as a cozy of my choice; and the Mount TBR Challenge since it has been on my shelf since last December.

Eminent Victorians

Eminent Victorians 
by Lytton Strachey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First published in 1918, Strachey's portraits of four legendary figures of the Victorian era revitalized the art of biography. The impression I got of each of these "eminent" people is of a very human and very flawed individual whose actions (and errors) affected the historical events they were part of. 
The profiled victorians are Cardinal Manning, a Catholic Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster; Thomas Arnold, an educator and the father of poet Matthew Arnold; and Charles George Gordon, a career British soldier whose debacle at Kartoum at the end of his life  is the focus of the profile.  The fourth subject was Florence Nightingale whose profile I found the most interesting of the group.  Her image as a kind "lady with the lamp" nursing Crimean soldiers was not nearly as intriguing as the management and organization that she undertook to get those soldiers beds and food which the army had neglected to plan for. 
Strachey was part of the Bloomsbury group and, instead of the ponderous celebratory tomes that had been typical of biography, he wrote lives with “a brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant.” 
This book is one of my Classics Club titles and also counts toward the 2019 Mount TBR challenge and the Back to the Classics Challenge (20th century classic)

Better Dead

Better Dead by Pamela Kopfler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"As the owner of a charming Louisiana bed and breakfast, Holly Davis believes in Southern hospitality--but she draws the line at welcoming the ghost of her cheating husband . . ."
I enjoyed this supernatural cozy, though it focused on drug smuggling rather than murder which wasn't what I expected. There was a handsome man from Holly's past with baggage of his own which provided the romance element typical of modern cozies. The cook at the B&B played the "sidekick" role and was an appealing (and funny) character.
This book counts towards my Cruisin' Through the Cozies challenge (for the paranormal mysteries category) and toward MountTBR2019.

Mount TBR 2019 Challenge

Bev at My Reader's Block is hosting the Mount TBR challenge again in 2019 and I decided to give it a try. I did a TBR (to be read) pile challenge a few years ago and it did not work for me. I felt a lot of guilt about my lack of progress and developed a loathing for the 12 unread books that I was "supposed" to be reading. I generally read library books, but I do seem to have quite a few books piled up that I bought or was given and haven't gotten read yet. The rules of the Mount TBR challenge are different from the one I tried before and I think it might go better for me. The primary difference is that I don't have to make a list ahead of time, I can tally the books as I "climb" the piles.
There are various levels (mountains) you can commit to for the challenge and after some assessment of my shelves I have decided on Mt. Vancouver (36 books). There are various rules about rereads and such and monthly linkups, all collected at Mount TBR Climbing Headquarters. The rules that seem most relevant for me are that books must be owned as of 1/1/2019, you don't have to blog about the book for it to count, and that if I abandon a book--for me that means I read at least 50 pages and never intend to pick it up again--it counts as done. (I am adding a rule for myself that I need to get rid of the physical book before I can count it as done in the case of abandoned titles).
I will be listing my completed books here and if I blog about them I will link to the individual posts.

1. Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness by Ingrid Fetell Lee (finished 1/5/19)

2. A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3) by Haruki Murakami (finished 1/6/19)

3.  Better Dead by Pamela Kopfler (finished 1/9/19)
4. The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl (finished 2/20/19)
5. Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (finished 5/6/19)
6. Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny (finished 5/24/19)
7. The Sound and the Furry by Spencer Quinn (finished 8/12/19)
8. Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding (finished 9/2019)
9. Living a Literary Life by Carolyn See (finished 9/2/19-reread)
10. Strong Poison by Dorthy Sayers (finished 10/26/2019-reread)
11. A Shot in the Dark by Lynne Truss (finished 11/8/2019)
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