Unbalanced. And a Mini-Review.

Remember that I have declared 2025 my “Season of Balance”. This is the year that I am going to focus on the myriad of things I love, while taking care to not focus too much on any one. We are less than three weeks in, and I am finding that to be much, much, much harder than I had hoped.

I do love to read. But I also love to talk about books. And write about books. And make collages of the books I read. And read reviews. And shop for books.

And when I am “in a reading place”, I can’t seem to do that without the other stuff. And that pushes out all the other things I want to do.

But it’s—at least in the moment—so damn fun that the rest of it just fades away, and here I sit, surrounded fifteen open tabs all pointing to a book or a book review that I want to add to a list that I haven’t even written yet, and…

And the other things that I wanted to make time for are suffering. Not hitting the panic button on balance just yet. But it’s tricky.

Louise Penny has been writing books about Armande Gamache since 2007, and I have been reading them since 2015. This is installment #19.

I really love this whole series. I love that Gamache is a cop who doesn’t like guns (“Guns are dangerous!”) I love the tiny, dangerous hamlet that is Three Pines. I love Clara and Myrna and Olivier and Gabri and Clara. I love Reine-Marie and Daniel and Annie. I love Jean-Guy and Isabel. I love Ruth, and Rosa.

Rosa is a foul-mouthed duck. Just thought that was pertinent.

But what’s interesting is that if this book were written with the same story and at the same pace with a different cast, I don’t think I would like it very much. Penny unfolds her story at a downright glacial pace, and I would find that frustrating, were I not so attached to THESE characters, and so happy just to be able to visit with them. And Gamache’s indulgent (at this point, it really is) internal monologues would be off-putting in any other character. They are even off-putting in Gamache, if I am being honest, but it’s ok cause he’s like my favorite uncle at this point, so he gets a pass.

So. Is this a good book? Yeah, I guess. Is it a better book when you have invested the time in the other eighteen?

Absolutely.

Will I be in line for number twenty?

Absolutely.

Love y’all.