so I ended up in Quebec instead, as of last Saturday. One of the other books I've had on order for a long time showed up: Louise Penny's latest installment of her Chief Inspector Gamache series, The Nature of the Beast.
It's entertaining enough, and moves right along just fine, but the central plot point is so absurd that it's quite difficult to suspend my disbelief enough to really get into the story. At least it's not as absolutely dreadful as her last book, The Long Way Home, which had me retching repeatedly as I doggedly slogged my way through it.
It's too bad. I really loved this series in its early days - I've read every single book of the series in order - but the author reached her high point with The Beautiful Mystery, imho. She ought to have ushered Inspector Gamache to a graceful retirement, and moved on to something else.
As it is, the lovely and charming village of Three Pines, and the lovely and charming and eccentric characters who inhabit the village, have become cliché and tiresome, and just too, too precious. I am simply unable to much care about them anymore.
I'll finish it, of course, because I DO want to know whodunnit. But I may take a pass on her next one, if she continues down the same tired path. It's too bad. Louise Penny is a good writer, and has done some wonderful things with language and characters and plotting, but it feels (to me, anyway) like she hit cruise control a while back, and reading her just isn't that much fun - and certainly not fresh - anymore.
Anyway, I just got an email notice from my library that the next Inspector Shan book has come in, so I'll be able to head back to Tibet soon.
Ironically, I also got notice that another book I ordered months ago has come in as well, Peter May's Entry Island. Peter May is the Scottish author of the Lewis Trilogy: The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man, The Chessmen, and anyone who may have followed my posts here for the past many months will know how much I enjoyed those books. So I'm very much looking forward to reading this one!
Being faced with such an embarrassment of reading riches, only next Sunday's thread will tell which of the two books I've chosen to read first. I'm thinking that either one would do quite well as a palate cleanser after I finish the Louise Penny book. 
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