The Cozy Mystery List Blog

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

Jennie Bentley, Gail Bowen, Mindy Starns Clark, Ruth Dudley Edwards : Four New Cozy Mystery Site Authors

Here are the four latest author additions to the Cozy Mystery Site. All four of them have been recommended by Cozy Mystery Site Readers:

Jennie Bentley writes the Do It Yourself Mystery Series which features Avery Marie Baker, a New York professional house renovations expert.

Gail Bowen is a professor of English in Canada who writes the Joanne Kilbourn Mystery Series  which has, as its sleuth, a Canadian professor

Mindy Starns Clark  writes two inspirational mystery series: the Million Dollar Mystery Series and the Smart Chick Mystery Series.

Ruth Dudley Edwards became a civil servant in London and a freelance writer after finishing graduate school at Cambridge. Edwards writes the Robert Amiss Mystery Series which features a retired civil servant in England.

We finally decided… no Kindles for us…

So, I’m back to my Kindle 2 thought…

My husband and I have talked about it several times since I posted my blog the other day, and we’ve decided that we’re just going to have to pass on it right now. We started wondering about feeling like we had to justify the high price tag… and how I (as a compulsive collector) would feel like I had to replace all of my books in the Kindle format. And, once I did that… what would happen with all of those Kindle books if the actual gizmo broke?!?

I would have to look into it, but once the warranty runs out, I am assuming that we would have to buy another gizmo, since all of our books would be in that format. (I think that’s called a Catch 22, endless loop type of a deal!)

I reminded my husband that I thought it  would be a nice gift for him, not me. He assured me that he does not want one, as he feels like he would have to be particularly careful with it, since he wouldn’t want the hassle involved with having to replace it before he could access any of his books (which would all be in the Kindle format) if the gizmo broke… even under its warranty time, he wouldn’t want to have to wait until a new gizmo arrived.

So, I guess for now, we are going to pass on the Kindles and stay with our “real” books.

Sir David Attenborough: Great Nature Shows

If you have yet to see any of Sir David Attenborough’s nature collections, then you have missed some of the rarest glimpses into our world’s environments. There is a very obvious reason that this Natural Sciences academic from Cambridge is world-renowned: He is one of the world’s foremost experts in his field.

Each of Attenborough’s BBC series take place in different kingdoms. Some of the series that my family has been able to enjoy are:  The Life of Birds,  The Life of Mammals,  Life in the Undergrowth,  Life in Cold Blood,  Life in the Freezer (Antarctica).

Attenborough travels the entire planet so that we don’t have to. While “there”  (wherever that might be!) he brings us truly remarkable sights. And, he is not without the youthful heart of a small boy at seeing something truly amazing. Attenborough’s sense of glee when he watches an elephant quite literally going bump in the night is infectious. His obvious enjoyment at watching an orangutan grab a cracked nut from him or his laughter at watching an albatross land is contagious. >>> Even those Grinches among us are not able to resist his enjoyment.

Did I mention the filming? The Attenborough series are simply spectacular. He has hiked through the hot, dry Sahara Dessert or the hot, humid Amazonian jungles so that we can enjoy the sights that he and his production crew have had to wait for… sights that we would most likely never have seen even if we had been in the dessert or jungle… sights that took enormous amounts of patience and time to capture on film.

I’m happy to let Attenborough and his production crews/experts do the work so that my family can enjoy these beautiful pieces of nature’s art work! The footage we see is absolutely incredible.

(As with most things in nature, some of these shows include scenes not suitable for young children.)

If you would like to see more TV and Movies suggestions, click here.

2008 Agatha Awards… Finally Posted!

Finally! I just posted the Agatha Award Nominees for 2008, and there are a lot of our favorite Cozy Mystery Authors on the lists of the wonderful nominated authors and books. I was surprised to see that I already had pages for all of the five Best First Novels‘ authors! (Wow! I had first heard of them from Cozy Mystery site readers’ recommendations.)

It didn’t surprise me that I already had pages for the five authors of the five Best Novels‘, though. They are some of the most popular authors in the Cozy Mystery genre.

Here is the complete list of the 2008 Agatha Award nominees. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!!!

(The winners will be announced at the 2009 Malice Domestic convention – at the beginning of May.)

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