A Highland Christmas by M.C Beaton is a cozy mystery that is part of the Hamish Macbeth series. It is the first I've read of the series, and I was surprised by how enjoyable it was. It is the perfect Christmas cozy, as there is no murder, just a few mysteries to be solved by the local police. My introduction to Hamish finds him a caring copper, interested in people, what makes them tick, and what is really worrying them. There is a little history here of the Scottish traditions at Christmas. Who knew that there is this Calvinist influence up in the Highland so that people don't want to put out Christmas lights and celebrate the pagan aspects of Christmas, not me? This introduction to Hamish has encouraged me to try more of this delightful character. Okay, I know I'm a late convert to M.C. Beaton's charms, but better late than never. Similar to when I discovered Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, I had to read every Bill Slider mystery there was, and since she was still writing I had more to look forward to.I'm in the middle of a Bill Slider mystery right now, and it feels good to come home to a familiar character with all the charm of an English city including the fish and chips.Fell Purpose finds Inspector Bill Slider trying to understand his victim, beautiful Zellah Wilding, a young teenage strangled at the end of the woods. Who were her friends, and what was an intelligent and talented young girl doing out so late in defiance of her strict father? Zellah had a holiday and told  her parents she would be staying with her girl friends for the weekend. Her parents couldn't agree, father wants her home and protected and her mother wants her to meet young friends in rich neighborhoods and make the right connections. How could they have made such a terrible mistake? Join Bill Slider and his crew of detective in this London police procedural mystery series compared to Ian Rankin and John Harvey.

A Sip and a Sneak preview

I am trying to start another interest group at the Tipp City Public Library. A morning coffee group on every Friday at ten thirty am, to listen to the adult service staff present the new books that the library is just adding to their collection. Today we had a very interested group who enjoyed the donuts and the discussion of the reading interests. Patrons had a chance to look over the new books before they were sent off to other libraries in our consortium for patrons who have already put holds on the items. Now Tipp Library patrons can see the books before they go out. Patrons have a chance to post their name onto the book, I place the hold and then I check the books in. If a book belongs to the Tipp City Library, it will go to a Tipp City Library patron first. Here is the list of a few new presented books of non-fiction:
Better Angels of Our Natures: Why Violence Has Declined by Stephen Pinker, a study on the history of violence that purposes that we are not as violent as our predecessors.
Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy: Advise From Rock's Ultimate Survivor by Ozzy Osbourne, a memoir with humor from the rock star who has a history of drug abuse and multiple near-death experiences.
A Thousand Lives: the Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival by Julia Scheeres, gets a starred review . It is the story of the ill-fated Jonestown. Julia Scheeres is the author of the memoir, Jesus Land.
Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age by microbiologist Nathan Wolfe. He has researched the global medical issues that ultimately have an effect on all of us.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This was our first book for our new Classics Books Discussion group at the Library. Meeting on Thursdays, once a month at 1 pm, we are choosing the books from the Big Read sponsored by The National Endowment of the Arts. We had a small group for our first discussion, but there is promise there, as people have shown an interest. We talked most about our own insecurities, our competition with others, and the American dream of acquiring wealth and what it means. All the characters in the novel were flawed in their own way. We find out that Gatsby is driven to New York to acquire his dream girl, Mrs. Daisy Buchanan, married to Tom Buchanan. After going off to the first World War, when he comes back to Louisiana, he finds that Daisy and her husband are on their honeymoon. He has to win her back by acquiring wealth and social status. He buys or rents the house across the Long Island Sound, to stare at the green light at the end of the dock at the Buchanan home. We discussed whether Jay Gatsby would ever really fit into Daisy's world. Just as Myrtle would never really stay with Tom, or that he would even take her permanently. Nick decided that the Buchanans are just careless, running away to avoid the truth if it embarrassed them. Conspiring together over the kitchen table, Nick notices the intimate world they live in that Gatsby will never be able to separate them. Gatsby is stunned. He is so sure that Daisy will call, he is still not realistic at the end. Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald when he is just 29 years old, it seems so sad that the prominence this novel has achieved could not have been realized while he was still alive. Much of Nick is Fitzgerald, always the boy looking on, from early school to his Princeton years, he was socialising with the wealthy, but never quite meeting the mark. His whole dissolution with the wealthy types is portrayed in this novel extremely well. I think is is as great as everyone says, and his writing is poetry, and it is the type of novel I love to savor and revisit. Our next novel for November 17th will be The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, about the restrictions on the classes during the Gilded Age in New York.

Paiula McLain's Novel about the Ernest Hemingways in Paris in the early 1920's

I think this has been my favorite novel of 2011. Paula McLain does an excellent job of telling the love story between Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson. Even though she was seven years older than Ernest she was naive in many ways, and totally unprepared for the fast life in Paris in the 20's. Too much booze and too many egos clashing for attention. I like finding out that they meet up with the Fitzgeralds in Paris and follow them to a vacation spot. I had read Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast", published after his death, and sometimes referred to as a love letter to his first wife, or is it a tribute to his first wife. In my opinion, he was crazy to let her go, but that's what young men do, fall in love or lust so often and wreck their marriages. She was able to have success with her second husband and live a long life. "In 1933 Hadley married a second time, to journalist Paul Mowrer, whom she met in Paris." 
I am glad about that, I think she was a real trooper. Especially they way she adapted herself to so much of Hemingway's life style, so different than anything she could imagine on her own. I love the description of her skiing in Switzerland. Beautiful novel.

Reading another cozy mystery

 M. C. Beaton has been writing mysteries for a long time. She is Marion Chesney of the Cotswolds in England who writes romances under her own name. Born in 1936 in Scotland as Marion McChesney, she has more than one pseudonym. Before the Agatha Raison series she wrote the Hamish Macbeth mystery series that she started in 1985 with Death of a Gossip. I decided to start with the first of her Agatha Raisin series, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, written in 1992. Agatha Raisin is a divorced woman in her 50's about to retire from her London job who has always dreamed of living in a cottage in the Cotswolds. As she places herself in the perfect cottage, she immediately feels the coldness of her fellow neighbors. She decides to enter a cooking contest only to end up the suspect of a murder investigation, as the judge of the contest took her quiche home and ended up dying of poison. How could everything end up this badly. Because she is a woman of action, Agatha Raisin starts her own investigation of the murder. Murder with a little fun thrown together in a small village creates the perfect cozy mystery. If you haven't found these yet, you are in for a real treat because she has written 22 mysteries so far with a wide audience appeal. One appeal is that the reader knows that the mystery will be solved at the end of the book, and the main character may go through some dangerous and suspenseful events, she will be alive at the end. Not all mysteries can say that.