Tsundoku no more Day #1

I’m going to be reading in alphabetical order. First up is…
‘Scuze Me While I Kill this Guy by Leslie Langtry

Downloaded to Kindle 7, 2014

This is a first-person comic crime novel told by Ginny Bombay, a snarky single mother who comes from a long line of assassins. Tonally, it reminded me a lot of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books with her likable cast of characters (boyfriend Diego, brother Dakota, aka Dak) and her deadpan narration of the silly events that unold.

Langtry is a USA Today bestselling novelist and there are nine other books in her “Greatest Hits” series. (And it’s not the only series she’s written.)

“I turned the engraved invitation over in my hands and sighed. I hate these things [family reunions]. We only held them once every five years, but for some reason this time, the reunion was only a year after the last one. That meant someone in the family had been naughty. That means one of my relative was doing to die.”

Twelve Books That Made Me Happy

Good Housekeeping published a list today of 60 Books That Will Make You Happier and I found it a kind of strange list, full of books like Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and the ever-annoying Eat, Pray, Love. But that got me thinking about the books I've read that made me happy.  Not necessarily happy I'd read them--almost any book does that--but a book that made me laugh or gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling. I read a lot of noir and horror; sometimes I need a warm, fuzzy feeling from my fiction. Here's a list I made:

1.  Michael Malone's Handling Sin. This is a road trip book about a man chasing down his rascal of a father and discovering he has half-siblings. His full-of-life best friend comes along and it's all set in the south. And gets it totally right. Malone also writes wonderful mysteries.

2.  Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart. This is a novella and it's also very southern. Seems Uncle Daniel POnder, a confirmed bachelor, has married a young woman who spends all her time reading magazines and making "the kind of fudge anybody can make." This is a lovely take on small towns and families and will make you smile.

3.  Cyde Edgerton, Walking Across Egypt. The first book of Clyde's I read was The Floatplane Notebooks, which is a family saga told from multiple points of view, including that of the kudzu vine wrpping the house. This is a quick read, a book about an independent old lady and her dog and a young boy in need of love.

4.  Sharyn McCrumb, St. Dale. I am a huge fan of McCrumb's Appalachian Ballad es with their dual timelines. This stand-alone book is not a mystery at all, but an ensemble piece about a tour group visiting NASCAR sites as a summer vacation. It comes across like one of those multi-plot movies the late, great Garry Marshall used to make--New Year's Day or Valentine's Day, or a summer version of Love, Actually.

5.  Joe Keeena, Blue Heaven (not to be confused with the 1990 Steve Martin movie My Blue Heaven). This is a rollicking novel about two dead broke best friends in New York who decide to marry for the wedding presents and other loot and the hijinks that ensue. There's a running bit about a character  who fancies herself a designer coming up with the wedding dress that's hilarious.


6.  Rita Mae Brown, Bingo.  Again, a character-heavy novel set in the south.  My grandmother lived with me when I was a child and the old ladies in this book remind me so much of her, especially in a scene where two woomen get so competitive in a game of bingo that they start attacking each other with their dab-a-dot markers. (They're apparently called Do-A-Dots these days, but if you ever went to a bingo hall with your grandparents, you know what I mean.) there are sequels!  I love this book but hate Brown's super-sweet cozy mysteries.

7. Beverly Cleary, Beezus and Ramona.  Actually, I loved all the books that Beverly Cleary wrote. She was the first "author" I followed. I remember going to the library to get her books. she's 101 years old!!!  I loved the books because I had a little sister I loved and we had neighbors and the book seemed like the even-better version of my own childhood.

8.  Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game. I love, love, love this book. It's a puzzle about a wealthy man who intends to leave his fortune to whoever can solve a puzzle. It involves multiple characters in various families and it's a wonderful story about friendship and families and expectations and dreams. Raskin wrote other, similar books (The Disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel) but this one is her best.

for the TBR pile: Blood Orange by Karen Keskinen

Blood Orange is a debut novel and the first, I'm sure, in a series about a Santa Barbara detective named Jaymie Zarlin. I've done a "Fresh Meat" segment on the book over at Crimional Element, but I'll be doing a full review later in the week. I really, really enjoyed this novel. The heroine feels real and she's got her quirks but she does not, as a friend of mine likes to say, wear a parrot on her shoulder. Keskinen has a knack for character and dialogue and also for setting her stage. The book takes place in Santa Barbara and takes us from the century-old houses inhabited by old money to the grittier parts the gangs refer to as "Santa Bruta." the crime Jaymie's investigating is brutal--the rape/murder of a lovely young woman--but the women she encounters in her investigation are anything but passive victims. Well, with the exception of one wife who may or may not know what's going on with her husband and his long-time lover. The book shares some elements with Janet Evanovich's popular Stephanie Plum series, but with more heart. If you like mysteries by and about women, you should check it out.

Month of Streaming Netflix: One for the Money

One for the Money is a perfect example of why Netflix streaming has a bad name. If you type "Katherine Heigl" into the search engine, you find out you can stream episodes of Grey's Anatomy or Roswell; you can get a documentary she narrated (Shelter Me, about adopting pound pets) and you can get One For the Money. There's no sign of any of the romantic comedies she's done--27 Dresses or Knocked Up or or even Life As We Know It.

One for the Money was based on Janet Evanovich's book of the same name, the first in her long-running series about Stephanie Plum, a Jersey girl turned bail enforcement officer who is torn between two hot men--high school bad-boy Joe, now a cop and the intriguing Ranger.  The books were a lot of fun for a long time--they've gotten kind of formulaic lately--and a movie based on the series was in development for a long time. Sometimes....that's a bad sign.

It was a bad movie. Just.  Bad.  Heigl had the sass to pull off Stephanie but Debbie Reynolds as her trigger-happy Grandma was utterly cartoonish. Daniel Sunjata--or as I like to call him, the best-looking man on the planet--made a sexy Ranger but didn't quite bring the character's danger to the movie.  (In fact, the PG-13 rating kept everything at a low-level simmer.) Just disappointing all the way around, the movie made me glad I didn't spring for it when it was in theaters. So that's another minus for Netflix Streaming.

Feminist Fiction Friday--odds and ends

Janet Evanovich has signed a deal to write several more Stephanie Plum novels, but more excitingly, she's teaming up with crime writer Lee Goldberg (co-creator of the Dead Man series, amongst other thing) to write a new series. starring a female FBI agent and a dashing male fugitive. Will lovejinks ensue as well as crime? You can read the details here.

The Library of Congress has released a list of 88 Books that Shaped America.  (Why not 100 or 50?  Eighty-eight seems like a really odd number.)  They are listed in the order they were published and the first woman author appears at #9--Amelia Simmons' American Cookery (1796).  Billed as "the first American cookbook," an exact reproduction of the book is available on Amazon. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is number 18, with Louisa May Alcott's Little Women coming in at a few notches lower.  (Seriously--it's like a rule you have to read this book if you are a girl.  It should have been #1 no matter when it was published.) Toni Morrison's 1987 novel Beloved is the last book written by a woman on the list, at #86.

In the oldies department, I just ran across an anthology called This is Not Chick Lit, published in 2006.  Subtitled "Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers," it's crazily affordable.  Amazon -affiliate sellers offer it for a penny plus $3.98 shipping.  (And btw, I don't have an Amazon affiliate account--they were discontinued in California awhile ago, so I'm not making any money by shilling books and videos for them.)  Of the women listed, I only know the work of two of them, so I am looking forward to my introduction to Dika Lam, Judy Budnitz, Samantha Hurt, and the rest of the ladies.

Feminist Fiction Friday--Janet Evanovich

I’ve always thought that Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels were Nancy Drew adventures for big girls. Stephanie is smart, pretty and always solves her mysteries. Instead of just one boyfriend, she has two, and instead of chums like “George,” she hangs around with a former hooker, but she’s

I’m not sure when or why I picked up Janet Evanovich’s first Stephanie Plum novel, One for the Money, but I laughed all the way through it. It was a mystery but it had large dollops of humor and romance, and Stephanie was a Jersey girl with money problems and curly hair that never seemed to want to stay in a pony tail.  I liked the character and I loved the book and from then on, I was hooked on the series. 

In fact, I always thought the books would make a great television series because Evanovich surrounded Stephanie with a great cast of characters. There are the people at the bail bonds office (including her cousin). Her parents (particularly her long-suffering dad) are always around to offer sympathy and pot roast. And then there’s her Grandma Mazur, whose idea of entertainment is heading over to the local funeral home for viewings. (That funeral home figures prominently in a couple of the books.) And then there are the two men who are both pursuing our heroine.

These are people we could actually know.

And while some of the hijinks in the stories get a little out there, her brand of contemporary romantic suspense set the bar for writers who followed.

She started out writing romance novels, turning to fiction in her 30s and publishing her first book in 1987 when she was 44 years old. One for the Money came out in 1994 and kickstarted a series that includes 18 “by the numbers” books and a couple “between the numbers” novels as well.

And in between she’s written a slew of other books, both alone and with other writers a la James Patterson. (According to Wikipedia, she and the late Stephen J. Cannell were supposed to have written a book together. That would have been one lively romp.) And Castle fans who remember Cannell from the poker playing scenes, wouldn't it be fun to see Rick Castle playing poker with Janet?

You can follow her on Twitter @janetevanovich; like her on Facebook; and sign up for the newsletter on her site.

And you can go to see the movie version of One for the Money today, with Katherine Heigl as Stephanie.

Trailer for One for the Money

The first book in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, One for the Money, is one of the funniest books I've ever read.  I loved it. It's been in development as a movie for a looooong time.  And now the trailer is here.  I like Katherine Heigl. I like Daniel Sunjata (although my heart was set on Dwayne Johnson as Ranger). What do you think?

More Praise for Women Crime Writers

It may surprise people who know my fiction that I really have a taste for "cozies." I am very fond of the "Hamish Macbeth" series by M.C. Beaton (aka Marion Chesney). A new one is coming out next February and I can't wait. Oddly enough, I really don't like her "Agatha Raisin" books.  They're just a little bit too "twee" for me.

I am a huge fan of Ellis Peters (aka Edith Pargeter) who wrote under half a dozen pseudonyms (some of them male) and wrote dozens of books.  She was also known as a scholar and a translator. Before I knew her as the author of the Brother Cadfael novels, I had read her "Brothers of Gwynedd" quartet, brilliant historical fiction.  In addition to almost 20 novels about Cadfael,  former Crusader-turned-monk, she wrote 13 novels featuring Inspector George Felse. I have not yet had the pleasure of reading those and look forward to it.