The Joy of Reading

I am a voracious reader. The librarians know me well, and I am sure would worry about me if they didn't see me one month (or several times a month).

So I decided to share my favorite authors today. I hope you will find a new favorite in them!

Andrew Greeley - When Father Greeley passed away last year, I was sad, mostly because I had always meant to write him a note and tell him how much I enjoyed his writing. He was a very interesting man: a Catholic priest who wrote fiction novels about everything from love to pressing social issues to controversial Catholic doctrines.  He wrote mostly about Irish families in the Chicago area (since that is the world he lived in), and there are many that deal with World War II and the tumultuous '60s.  He has a few series (Blackie Ryan mysteries, Nuala Anne McGrail Irish mysteries) and then a lot of stand-alone books.  I love the Irish mysteries with Nuala Anne McGrail, but the ones about the Catholic church really speak to me. I am not Catholic, so seeing the inner workings of the choosing of a pope (White Smoke) is fascinating. I also love that he did not turn a blind eye to the failings of his church (The Priestly Sins, The Cardinal Sins) or to politics (The Senator and the Priest).  But even when he was pointing out the flaws of the Catholic church, his overwhelming faith and love of the church and God shone through, and he was never preachy.

Jasper Fforde - I already sang his virtues on my list of favorite YA novelists, but Fforde began as an adult fiction author. He writes quirky books that have a lot of inside jokes for literature lovers. He defies categorization, unless you create a category called science fiction/fantasy/mystery/satire.  I love his Thursday Next series of novels (The Eyre Affair is the first in the series), and his series of YA novels, The Chronicles of Kazam (The Last Dragonslayer is the first book). I am less fond of the Nursery Crime series and Shades of Grey, but they are enjoyable as well.

Louise Penny - I love mystery novels. I love getting to know characters over a long story arc. And Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series gives you a chance to get to know a whole village of characters over a period of several books. What sets Penny's books above many mysteries is her incredible ability to delve deep into a character. There is no good guys and bad guys, but instead flawed human beings who are mostly good, but sometimes do bad things: for love, to protect themselves, out of selfishness.  Still Life is the first of this series and once you read one, you'll be clamoring for the next!

Honorable Mentions in the Mystery Category: Dana Stabenow, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Margaret Maron

Alan Bradley - His series about young chemist and troublemaker Flavia de Luce is fantastic. The heroine has a very unusual family, and solves mysteries in the charming village of Bishop's Lacey while concocting potions to poison her sisters (who give as good as they get), bolstering her family's shell-shocked servant, and finding a way to keep their family home. The first in the series is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

Lisa Lutz - The Spellman Files series is similar to the Flavia de Luce series above, in that the main characters are women that are smart and fearless and solving family crises. Izzy Spellman is one of family of private investigators who are all expected to contribute the the family business (even her 14 year old sister Rae). They investigate each other as much as they do others (and use blackmail the way other families use conversations around the dinner table).

Sarah Addison Allen - This NC author writes books that teem with magic, yet its characters inhabit a world very much like ours. Her first book, Garden Spells, has an apple tree that can tell you your future and flowers that can heal. Lost Lake is one of my favorites, with an unusual set of cabins around a lake in Georgia where some lost souls are drawn to help each other.

Meg Wolitzer - The Ten Year Nap is one of my favorite books. Wolitzer writes about the (familiar to me) world of stay-at-home moms that find that, after ten years, they are increasingly not needed by their children, forgotten by ex-coworkers, and striving to find some relevancy in a life that has been centered around their children. Their feminist mothers don't understand their decision to give up on "having it all," yet they don't know if "having it all" is even possible. This hits very close to home for me, as I try to figure out what I will do "next" now that my child is in elementary school.  I also just finished her first YA novel, Belzhar, and enjoyed it as well. In Belzhar, she wrote a book that would resonate with teens, and has the angst, the requisite love story and the family dysfunctions, but she manages to turn those tired plot lines on their heads and write a compelling story.

That's my list, at least for now :-).  Share with me some of your favorites!