The Cozy Mystery List Blog

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

Is There A Doctor In The House… Or How About A Book?!?

I have been in and out of doctors offices this past week, and I am here to tell you about an observation I have made… and, as my family will attest to, I have made (and made and made and made, ETC) this observation "a few times" before. (They would probably tell you that I make the same observation… almost verbatim, every time I return from visiting any type of office where I am required to sit in a waiting room…)

Let me preface this blog by saying that I NEVER go to any type of waiting room without my current book…. and, I mean NEVER… As a matter of fact, I think that I would be very safe in saying that neither of my children nor my husband ever go anywhere without their current books… either a "real" book, or an audio book. So, enough about us!

I am always amazed, while sitting in a waiting room, at just how few people take a book to read. I guess that a lot of people really want to read golf magazines that are so outdated that Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus are the big stars, or basketball magazines that feature the dazzling new young players… Larry Byrd or Wilt Chamberlain.

What are these people thinking?!? I just cannot imagine going somewhere that might require an hour (or longer in some cases) wait, and not having something to read… of MY choice!

I remember back to the time when my children were young. Any time there was an expectation of sitting in a waiting room, there was a tote bag with several books in it that came with us. Apparently, doctors’ offices are now aware that the majority of people who bring their children for doctors’ appointments do not bring books, because now there are actually little play areas for all of the sick children to congregate and share germs while handling the toys.

Whatever happened to children sitting quietly while their mother or father simply read to them? When did it become necessary for doctors’ offices to have play areas, or loud videos on over-head plasma  televisions in their waiting rooms? I guess a better question would be WHY is it necessary for the people who are going to keep us waiting to provide entertainment for us…. wouldn’t a better idea be for us to simply BRING A BOOK?

If you’d like to post a comment… please feel free to do so… the comment button is below this blog entry.

…About the Cozy Mystery List Lady…Who, What, Where, When, How….and Why!

Perhaps, upon reading the title to this blog, you might think that I am going to introduce a new cozy mystery to you. Nope! Instead, I am going to introduce myself…I have tried to add little things about myself throughout my site… If you have read the “B” page, then you know that my ALL TIME, VERY FAVORITE AUTHOR is not even a cozy mystery author… E. F. Benson‘s Mapp and Lucia series is the only series of books of which I have well-used copies… The series is the only set of books that I have read more than once, and plan on reading again…. and again. They are Cozies without the mysteries! (As an addenda, I am now – 2014 – making my way through Agatha Christie’s mysteries again, so I should add her to my very short list of authors who I have read more than once.)

When I wrote my definition of What Makes a Cozy Just That?,   I submitted a little information about myself… (Don’t ask me why, but I made up a pseudonym for myself…. as if the people across the street might read the biography and know it was me!) Anyway, here is what I submitted as my biography:

“Erin Martin is a freelance author, an avid reader, and a fan of mysteries (of all types.) She has a master’s degree in education. Erin resides with her husband who also enjoys reading. Erin created and maintains the Cozy Mystery List, a Reader’s Guide to Cozy Mystery Books (and Other Favorite Authors).” (I used a pseudonym because at the time, I thought that I would possibly start writing articles for other sites to use… but, instead, this site has become my priority and takes up most of my computer time.) My name is Danna (as in banana… not Dana or Donna.)

So, why do I have this site?

Well, after joining several mystery reading groups, and making some very good friends who shared my love for cozies, I started branching out… and slowly started accruing all of these authors… one author “leading me” to another author through their similarities, etc.

I have been reading cozies for years, and I got very discouraged when I attempted to find new authors to try. I remember that I would go to Amazon to buy a book, and there would be all of these “come-ons” from different readers… and (at first) I would get so excited thinking that I would find new authors to try, just by clicking on the “cozy list-mania” type of lists. After clicking on many lists, I felt very discouraged to find that the person would have one or two authors he/she liked… listing the authors’ books out of sequence, and most of the time, not even listing all of the given authors’ books.

Also, after buying several books twice… (And that is no joke!) I decided that I would have to start writing down all of the authors and books that I read. I actually found that when I went to place a newly acquired book in my TBR section of my bookshelves, the identical book would already be occupying its proper space! Thus, my initiation into the world of compulsive author/book lists.

One of my cozy mystery book reading friends asked if she could have a copy of my list, and the rest is history! That is when I started to index all of my authors on my computer, trying to update whenever I found a new author or a new book for one of my “old” authors. And, after years of keeping a list on my computer, my husband suggested that I put the lists on the internet. So I made this alphabetical and chronological list of books and authors into the Cozy Mystery site that you see now… after several years (and thousands of hours!) of effort. A full disclosure about the links is here.

I sure hope that these author and book lists can be of help to you.

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!

 

What Happened to Gold Medal?

As I was getting together the list of Edgar Awards in the Best Paperback Originals category, I was surprised to see several publishing companies that I simply did not recognize. What a surprise that Playboy actually published books… and not just their monthly magazines… In 1981, Thomas H. Cook’s Blood Innocents was up for the Edgar’s Best Paperback Original prize, with Playboy being his publisher. Who’d have known!?! I had no idea that Playboy published anything without glossy pictures!

And, ending in 1978, there were several books that were put out by the Gold Medal publishing house…  Who’d have known that not only cake-bakers and Olympiads would strive for the Gold Medal?

Whatever happened to some of the "old" publishing houses? Several years ago, when I was still very active in my mystery reading groups and forums, I "heard" cozy mystery readers complain that some of their favorite authors were being dropped by the very same publishing houses that the authors had helped finance.  (I wish I could remember some of the authors’ names…. but one thing I do remember…. the authors were famous cozy mystery authors.) But, I think that there lies the problem. Are cozy mysteries given the same amount of "legitimacy" as other types of fiction?

I remember on one particular reading forum board, a woman from the non-mystery fiction group referred to mysteries as mind "candy"…. apparently, she thought of mysteries as just being something sweet and frothy, frosting (on top of frosting) on a cake, summer beach-time books… nothing of any importance.  I am sure she didn’t mean to label our mystery reading group as a mindless group of twits, but let’s face it, that is certainly what she inferred with her "candy" comment.

I have to admit, though, that I didn’t take it personally…. I enjoy good non-mystery fiction, but I just happen to enjoy mysteries more. I particularly enjoy cozy mysteries, but that’s just me!

 And oh, by the way, I happen to enjoy candy, too!

 

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