To Write or Not to Write?

That IS the question! For me, right now, at this time in my life, I have discovered that reading is less a pleasure and more of a chore because almost everything I read is for a deadline. This is a truly debilitating state of affairs for someone who, from the age of maybe seven or eight, has preferred books to just about anyone else's company. True confession. This winter I've read and written reviews for five books about Florida for my radio program (http://news.wgcu.org/programs/florida-book-page) only to find that the web page is woefully outdated.

Then there is the ultimate joy, writing for "Library Journal" as a way to advise collection development librarians where to spend their hard-earned cash and where to save it for another day. I've read and reviewed three novels for them since the beginning of the year.

Where, you might ask, does that leave reading for pleasure? And what happens if I read a book for said pleasure and find that it isn't worth sharing with you readers? Currently I'm so far behind the eight ball that I've seriously considered bringing this book blog to a close before it becomes obsolete. But then...I hear from one or two of you with encouraging words and I read a book like the latest in the Armand Gamache Three Pines series by Louise Penny and I  have to weigh in, just in case there's someone out there who hasn't fallen in love with this outstanding collection - thirteen now - that truly eludes categorization.


A New York Times book reviewer exclaimed, "Louise Penny wrote the book on escapist mysteries." What an outrageous put down cloaked in a compliment. There is nothing escapist about Penny's books. In fact she seems to delve deeper and deeper into the nuances of good and evil, black, white, and gray, with each entry in this stellar collection. And yes, you must read them in order! ("Still Life," 2005)

Inspector Armand Gamache may be at the titular heart of these novels but each secondary character is so fully drawn, so important to the fabric of the whole, that the death of one would diminish all. I listened to the latest book, "Glass Houses," and was treated to an interview with Penny at the end of the recording. Penny aficionados know that there is a great deal of sorrow behind these beautiful novels and it leaks through in the prose. There is something so poignant, so melancholy about the struggles of the characters that reflect the author's own issues with alcohol and the recent death of her beloved husband from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

The author has said that she views the fictional village of Three Pines, less than an hour from the Surete de Quebec where Gamache, along with his son-in-law Beauvoir, lead the province's crime fighting apparatus, as a refuge, a place called home. And it is truly one of the most delightful fictional villages of all time. My friend Cathy and I have said that, were it not so chilly, we would be happy to retire and die there. We each see ourselves as Myrna, the psychologist/book store owner, at least when we aren't closer to resembling the foul mouthed poet Ruth.

This entry in the series is exceptional. Penny has taken her hero, Gamache, and placed him in an untenable position. Established over the years as the epitome of honorability when all around him are failing, he now finds himself forced to use deception in a court of law, against all the beliefs he holds dear, in a gamble that will bring him accolades or prison. And he will take others down with him. Penny exhorts us to remember the bombing of Coventry or the Enola Gay. Terrible examples of times when those in power determined that the end justifies the mean. In this case she examines the opioid crisis, especially the increase in the trafficking of fentanyl. Escapist literature? I think not.