The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

"Once is Not Enough" … for Me!

As much as I enjoy this website, I have to admit that sometimes, it bogs me down! My husband is the "expert" in the technical things, and as the expert, he thinks that I will be an expert after he has explained a method of doing something…. once.

Hmmm…. That reminds me of a title of a book that I read years ago…. "Once is not Enough" (by Jacqueline Susann…. in the days before I knew just how much better a cozy mystery would have been!)

I asked my husband if he could go ahead and "program my website" so that I could start posting other people’s blogs on my blog page… When I asked him for his help… I worded it very carefully… lest he get the impression that I actually wanted him to show me how to do it, so that I could do it (alone) in the future. Somewhere between my question and his walking toward me, a misunderstanding occurred! As he approached me, I started thinking…. I bet he misunderstood me… He actually thinks I want to learn how to do this! All I want is for him to do it, and then show me the easy steps I have to take when I want to use the function.

Anyway… It took several times of him saying things like: "Remember what I told you a minute ago…" and "Okay, let’s see if you can try that again…" and, the very best: "So, now you know how to do this…" Right!!!!!!

I don’t want to sound as bad as this reads…. While I am proofreading this, I am thinking… Hmmm… she takes him for granted! I guess that I do… because he does so very much for me, as well as for our two children. But maybe, since we are aware of how wonderful he is, and how he is always willing to drop whatever he is working on so that he can help us with what we need, we don’t actually take him for granted. Maybe, and that’s a big MAYBE, he knows how grateful we are that he is who he is. (I certainly hope so!)  

Let's Go to the Bookstore for a Croissant and an Espresso…

We are lucky to live in a city that has a lot of books stores. I have to admit that I usually do all of my book-purchasing through Amazon’s site, but occasionally I break down and buy a book at an actual store. We have five Barnes and Nobles and seven Borders books stores within a 25 mile radius! That’s a lot of books stores!

Recently, though, I have not really enjoyed my visits to these bookstores. On one occasion, two teenagers were seated (plopped) right in front of the area (mysteries, of course!) that I wanted to look at… They didn’t budge, even with me towering over them trying to find my author of choice. On another occasion, people on the couches near my area were talking loudly on their cell phones while I was trying to peruse the books (mysteries… again!)

I have noticed a trend in the bookstores near our home… they seem to want to make the store have the feeling of a lounge… where people can sit and talk, eat, drink, and even LAY on the floor !!!!! It appears that some people go early so that they can stake out a favorite couch to call their own while they read magazines and drink their morning coffee… before reading more magazines while sipping their fruit shakes in the afternoon.

When I go to a bookstore, I am there with a purpose…. I always take my list of books… I go in, find my book, do a little browsing, and then leave. Well, that’s what I used to do. Now I go in, carefully walk around, step over, peer over, or try to phase out people’s chatter.

Years ago, when our children were young, we had access to a wonderful branch of bookstores called Book Stop. Each trip to Book Stop would last at least an hour…. but it was an hour that was spent on our feet, combing through the children’s’ aisles, discovering the latest Bruce Coville, Daniel Pinkwater, Roald Dahl, or  Klutz books. Certainly, we were not having lunch on one of the store’s couches… while talking on our cell phones… while paging through the latest magazines!  Come to think of it, they didn’t have couches, nor did they sell café latté/caffè latte! 

Necessity is the Mother of Invention…

I remember when my husband first joined audible.com several years ago. He kept trying to get me to buy some of the audio books. Every three or four months I would go into their site and take a look to see if any of my favorite authors’ books were included in their very big library of books. I was always disappointed to see that they had very few authors who I would actually "choose to choose." So, I stayed with my local library, preferring to get my audio books on their book cassettes… since my library carried a lot of my favorite authors. 

At one point, I decided to expand my horizons (mostly because I was running out of library audio books) and I found that I actually enjoyed listening to "regular" mysteries. While they wouldn’t have been my first choices, I discovered that I actually enjoyed them a lot! If I had been provided a large menu of authors like M. C. Beaton, P. D. James, Agatha Christie,  and Ngaio Marsh at audible.com I never would have tried what they had to offer…. authors like Jeffery Deaver, John Grisham,  and James Patterson… all authors who I enjoy…. now.

Hmmm…. the cozy authors who I listed in the above paragraph just happen to all be women, and the authors audible.com carried just happened to all be men. (That is not to say that to be a cozy mystery author you must be a woman. But I have to admit that the majority of my favorite cozy authors are women… and I’m not talking about a 70% type of majority…. I would venture to say that I am talking about somewhere around 90%!)

Of course, if you have spent any time on my alphabetical authors’ pages, you have seen that I also enjoy reading a lot of non-cozy mystery books…. Reginald Hill, Colin Dexter, and Harlan Coben just to name a few.  But, when choosing my next book to read, I usually want to go with a tried and true cozy mystery.

Oh, and almost as an aside…….. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I recently checked and found that Ann Granger is now being carried by audible. I wonder if the purchasing agent mistook Ann as Andy when contracting for those audible books. Either way, although I have read most of her books, I have all of the available titles on my queue to purchase!

 

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say…. Then Tell Me!

My family has encouraged me to give the names of authors I have tried and could not abide. I guess that "abide" is a pretty strong word…. but, there are several authors who I really cannot make myself read. The other night, when I put down that book (after trying unsuccessfully for more than a week to read it) I went to my list of authors and wrote a big "YUCK" by her name. I also proceeded to mark off the chronological list of her books… to make sure that I don’t accidentally buy any more. Once I finished annotating my "YUCK" and strike-out marks, I got both of the books that I own ready to donate to my library. I am that sure that I will never want to attempt to read her work again.

So, my family wonders why I don’t "blog" the name of the author. They think that I should be honest and "tell it like it is." But, that really isn’t how "it is." The main reason I don’t give a strong opinion about an author who I can’t force myself to like, is that there are other people who truly enjoy that very same author. I just don’t want to prejudice people who might want to give that author a try in the future who might become a fan of that author… like so many other people. I know it sounds VERY presumptuous of me to think that I might influence someone who is choosing an author for the first time, hoping to find a new favorite…

I have one friend in particular who absolutely loves an author who I have tried to read….  five times…. unsuccessfully! Each time I tried to have a positive attitude when I started reading the first book in her series, but each time I felt like everything about the book was "forced." I simply could not enjoy that particular author. This friend of mine knows how I feel about that author, and sometimes I wonder if she tries to avoid talking about how much she likes her. I know that she eagerly awaits a new book by that author, and, when I come across a new book by the author (while updating my cozy mystery list), I tell her about the new book. But, that’s as far as it goes……… she never tells me how much she enjoyed the book, or even if she read it.

Anyway, getting back to my family’s thought about this subject… Do people who come to this site want me to disclose which authors I simply cannot enjoy? I think that, no, they don’t. But, my husband and two in-their-early 20s children think that yes, I should "tell it like it is." If you have any thoughts on this question (or comments on how I could improve this site)…. please feel free to write a comment to me. (There is a very dim gray line under this blog post with a button to comment.)  I’d love to hear what you think!

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