Following My Path

- * - My first entry for a new blog and the first time I have written 2008 - * -

It is such a cliché to say that I still had trouble writing 2007, but it is sadly true. I have always said that the hardest thing to accept about growing up is to accept that what your mother always told you is true. Time does go faster the older you get!

At any rate, in keeping with the first stated purpose of this blog, I record my first finished book of 2008:

All The Crazy Winters
by Deborah Adams
A Jesus Creek Mystery

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read - light, entertaining, but with some very interesting points. Two of the characters are very eccentric librarians; and since I am a librarian, I thoroughly enjoyed them - even though one of them was already dead when the book began. I might become an eccentric librarian as well!

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The second stated purpose of this blog is to track the reading challenges that I accept. My first challenge of this year is

Who: hosted by Joy
What: read 12 books that are the 1st in any series
When: between January and December 2008

I am very picky about my reading choices. My genre of choice is the mystery; I prefer women authors and a female protagonist; and I am compulsive about reading all entries in a series starting with the first if possible. Therefore, it was difficult to locate and then pick choices for this challenge. I spent a very long time researching which titles to select - many, many pages of Amazon’s “those who bought this book might also like . . . ”. I reserve the right to change my mind if I don’t like the title I am reading and to pick my alternates at a later date.

With that said, listed below are my initial choices for the 1st In a Series Challenge:

1. Evans Above by Rhys Bowen
(The Constable Evans Series)
2. Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn
(The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries)
3. A Share in Death by Deborah Crombie
(The Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Series)
4. O’ Artful Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor
(The Sweeney St. George Series)
5. Blood Ties by Lori G. Armstrong
(The Julie Collins Series)
6. Consigned to Death by Jane K. Cleland
(The Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries Series)
7. The Xibalban Mystery by Lyn Hamilton
(The Lara McClintoch Series)
8. Generous Death by Nancy Pickard
(The Jenny Cain Series)
9. The Whole Truth by Nancy Pickard
(The Marie Lightfoot Series)
10. Death at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham
(The Albert Campion Series)
11. Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
(The Nora Gavin, Pathologist, Series)
12. Miss Zukas and the Library Murders by Jo Dereske
(The Helma Zukas Series)

Let the reading begin!