Read all the things. Learn all the things. Talk about all the things.

Some time ago I realized almost all the books I read were by men, and so I focused on reading books by female authors.  This time I'm taking a break from female protagonists AND female writers courtesy of Kindle Unlimited and an ad on FB.  I really enjoyed Who Killed Mrs. Finch  by Peter Boon.  The narrator/protagonist is a murder mystery reader/librarian working for a small English village school. To spice things up, he is neurodivergent, and his protege is a 16-year-old with Asperger's (Yes, I know the classification is out-of-date, but I can't change the book.) who predicts the horrible Head Teacher will be murdered.  And she is.  The clues to solving this murder were all there, and I could predict some things, but not all of them. I seriously didn't anticipate who the murderer was until there was no one else, and then I saw how the author had woven clues which I ignored. (Story of my life. IYKYK.)  I'll check out the next one in the series.

Life is finite. We live . . . and then we die. There is no escaping this very human reality. We just don't think about it much. We don't want to think about it.  Until we have to.  Kate Bowler tells her story of facing death in  No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear . She begins with her colon cancer diagnosis in her mid-thirties, when her son is only a few months old, and the doctors tell her she is terminal. When they tell she has a small chance of survival, but survival just means an extra two years.  How does she make the most of this? How does she plan for the future, a future that probably doesn't include her? How does she fight for more?  This is Bowler's story of fighting for survival and thinking about what it means to be human, with all the joys . . . and disappointments. And Bowler is a fantastic storyteller who shares what she learns from facing death.  We all need to think about, at least some of the time, because not a one o...

I read a lot of cozy mysteries. (Or cosy mysteries given that many of the books take place in the UK.) It's not surprising, I suppose, since I tend to gravitate toward the same kinds of TV shows. These mysteries aren't too stressful, they offer likeable characters, and because they come in series, it's easy to "make friends" with the characters as I spend so much time with them. Most of the time I rate them a 4 or maybe a 3. They're good, I enjoyed them, but this isn't GREAT writing. It's good. (Which is good.) The first installment of The Thursday Murder Club  was great. I picked it up quite a while back, and I just couldn't quite get into it. The point of view switched frequently. When we get Joyce's point of view, she is using first person. We see an omniscient narrator when we see Elizabeth, Donna, or Chris's point of view. (We also see the POV of a couple of criminals and some side characters.) I set the book aside thinking I would com...