Those “Best 100” Book Lists Got Me Thinking…
What are the books that stick with us? Which books do we re-read? Who are the authors we read religiously? Will making our own "best" lists give us some insight? Let’s try!
AN embarrassing admission for starters: I was a Nancy Drew girl. Read every single friggin’ one of them. I say this simply to explain that little Nancy Drew Mystery readers grow up to be adult Louise Penny mystery readers.
So, before I start down the road of discussing novels, memoirs, and nonfiction books of considerable merit, I have to say that given a choice between a new Louise Penny mystery or any other book to read, I will always choose the Louise Penny mystery. (And do I love that my favorite author is also sober? Why, yes I do!) Not that there’s anything wrong with mysteries. And to be fair to Louise Penny, she is a much (much) more skilled writer than Carolyn Keene was – Carolyn Keene of course being not only a pseudonym, but a pseudonym for more than one writer who penned the Nancy Drew Mysteries for a syndicate.
More awkward admissions: Like every red-blooded English-major book-lover reader-writer-editor, I scoured The New York Times “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century” (so far) when it came out a few months back, eagerly checking off the books I had read. I took the same approach when the Readers Pick Their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century came out. So fun!