I am suffering over this month's book club selection. It is an autobiography written by a local woodswoman environmentalist type. Anyway, it is one page after another of minutia of her daily life, with alternating pages of how great am I blathering. I have adapted to the high school method of reading the first and last paragraphs of the chapter with some skimming of first sentences. It is pure torture. Yes, it is super cool that she builds her own cabin and fights acid rain battles and all that, but it would be much easier to read a 4 page article in National Geographic about her rather than hundreds of pages of self-aggrandizing.

This reminds me of why I so dearly love fiction.

Oh, too bad, Laura. It's so hard to tell if that sort of thing is going to be for you or not except by actually reading it.

I wouldn't normally pick this sort of thing, but it is a very small community here and I actually was in elementary school with the librarian. It is the local library book club. So I'm kind of hoping I am not alone with my utter boredom. I am able to say nice things about the author to be polite and all that.

Last month was even more bizarre with the pick being #13 in Louise Penny Gamache series. Glass Houses. I had read the previous 12 but none of the other people had so we had a different experience. It was one of my least favorites of a great series too! I told them all they really had to start with Still Life.

Oh, that would be weird to read just that one! I had to google to see which one it was (Penny's titles are not generally attached to her plots in my head, alas) and I only vaguely remember it so I think I am with you in not preferring it. I hope the book club has more congenial choices for you coming up!

I am currently reading a mystery series that I stumbled across because the first book in a different series by the same author showed up on one of the emails that tells me about deals on books and I was intrigued by the title enough to look into the series and this first book is all there is of it so far but there was this other series that is Regency era and I thought sounded vaguely familiar (but that may only be because Kurland St Mary is slightly reminiscent of St Mary Meade) and the first book of *that* series was available on Kindle Unlimited, so I gave it a try and I quite like it! Kurland St Mary Mysteries by Catherine Lloyd - likable characters with relatable problems, decent mysteries, either well researched or plausibly made up historical detail. The first one is Death Comes to the Village.

I'll investigate that one, -t. I do like a series. Maybe I'll recommend it for the book club!

I do love some mysteries that are not modern!

Laura, Anne LeBastille? My old boss at The Nature Conservancy used to vacation in the Adirondacks and gave me a signed copy. I felt pretty much the same.

Oh yeah, Cash. Her high opinion of herself kind of overshadows her accomplishments. I guess the locals don't care much for her either. I'll be interested to see what the consensus of opinion is tomorrow at the meeting. My sister hasn't opened it yet! I told her to read the jacket cover.

I just finished Psalm for the Wildbuilt, and I immediately put a hold on the sequel at the library. It's great to read a book that I found gripping—I very much wanted to see how it ended—with such an underlying thread of kindness.