Happy Friday, all!

This week I retreated back into the village of Taviscombe with Mrs. Malory, the Jessica Fletcher of 1990s England.  I am ridiculously addicted to these vintage cozy mysteries, although I’ve been trying to pace myself so I don’t read them all up too quickly.  This week, it was Superfluous Death, involving dodgy doctors, real estate, and the suspicious death of a pensioner who refuses to move; Death of a Dean (and, really, by the time he’s murdered, you really are rooting for the death of the dean); and Death Among Friends, in which a school reunion dredges up deadly secrets.

My other read this week?  You may remember this one from your childhood: From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler by E.L Konigsburg.  (As you might have guessed, this re-read was kid-inspired.)  It’s always interesting, as an adult, revisiting a book you haven’t read since you were a child.  The Mixed Up Files is such an artifact of a particular time period.  The prices!  Just over a quarter for an ice cream sundae!  The old restaurant and fountain at the Met that I remember from when my grandmother used to take me to lunch there!)  As a child, I read the book as if it were contemporaneous with me, even though by then it was already twenty years in the past.  Now, it resonates with me as the portrait of a vanished world.  When I read it back when, the bits that stuck with me were the domestic details of their lives at the museum: how they bathed, how they ate, etc.  My eight year old was far more into the mystery of the statue, which I viewed as a digression from the running away plot (while he viewed the domestic details as an interruption of the angel mystery).  Did you read it back when?  Which bits of the story made an impression on you?

As you can tell, I’ve fallen woefully off the wagon in my plan to try to make myself read new books and not just vintage mysteries.  But I have a pile of new books waiting for me, including some I’ve really been looking forward to, so more on those next week– as long as I can keep myself out of Taviscombe!

What have you been reading this week?