April reading

As happens occasionally in my reading life, I'll start a book with high hopes, read along happily, and then say 'so what?' and quit. And I'm not talking about the Nancy Pearl 'your age minus fifty pages and then quit' either. This month I read over half of a book before returning it to the digital state library. And I read along in a 'chunkster' for a while before quitting it as well. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here is April's list:

25. The First Rule of Ten - book 1 in the Tenzing Norbu series
by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay
mystery, 2012
Kindle book
finished 4/24/13

24. Getting Old Is A Disaster - book 5 in the Gladdy Gold series
by Rita Lakin
mystery, 2008
Kindle book
library book
finished 4/7/13

23. Getting Old Is To Die For - book 4 in the Gladdy Gold series
by Rita Lakin
mystery, 2007
Kindle book
library book
finished 4/3/13

I lived happily within the pages of the Gladdy Gold books, but… there was this little nudging dissatisfaction that I recognized and pushed aside. In an earlier book in the series, Gladdy meets Jack, a widower of her age; a former cop and the father of the local policeman. They get along well, and their relationship flourishes. But then in each further book, there is some obstacle to their relationship, and in this reader's opinion, that obstacle is Jack himself. I thought him rude, unforthcoming, easily annoyed with Gladdy's friends and Gladdy's sense of responsibility and love toward them. It was like he wanted her all to himself. I found him unreasonable and unkind, and I didn't like the way Gladdy kept caring for him. But I kept on reading, thinking that surely the situation would resolve itself, and he would take the higher ground. Nope. In this one I got so annoyed at the way he couldn't say no to requests for help from an old girlfriend that I just said, 'enough. I'm done.' Too bad. In a way, the books would have been more realistic without the introduction of romance. We all know there are way fewer older men than women. And these women are good for each other, and each have something to offer in the private investigating team. Oh, well. No big deal. There are plenty of books to read, and I did like the series for a while.

As for Tenzing Norbu, well, he is an interesting character. 'Ten' as he is called, grew up in a Tibetan monastery in India but chafed against it all through his childhood. Though he believes in Buddhism, and practices his beliefs, he always wanted to be a detective, like his idol Sherlock Holmes. He has been a policeman for many years, but after a shooting incident he decides to quit and pursue his dream of being a PI. He lives in a wonderful sounding house in Topanga Canyon in California with his eighteen-pound cat, Tank. It is a small, uncluttered place in which he has a meditation room. His breathing, his meditations, his Buddhism are who he is though he was a good cop and is a good detective. You might think his 'self' and his job are mutually exclusive, but not at all. The one nurtures and nourishes the other. We get insight into his mother and his father, and see how each of them has influenced who he is today. I'm reading the second in the series now, and am so enjoying it. Though I had not heard of Gay Hendricks before, he is very well-known in his field. You may read more about him here.