Maggie Pill Mysteries

Right now there's a lamp nestled in the corner of a stair halfway down our staircase. It's there for the cat...and maybe to save our lives. In her dotage, Old Cat wants to nap on the stairs, possibly to keep track of where I am (usually upstairs) and where my husband is (usually downstairs) at a given time. She chose the darkest spot, where the upstairs light doesn't reach. (The downstairs light isn't left on because it's a chandelier and therefore terribly inefficient--though workable for avoiding cat traps. There are two possibilities for terror: First, one of us might trip over her and hurtle to our death. Second, one of us might kick her and injure her old, brittle bones. She doesn't seem to care, though I have explained the perils to her very patiently, several times. Hence the lamp. It lights that central area just enough that we can see her there, and she actually seems to enjoy its little glow. She doesn't have to sleep on the stairway. ...

September 26th is approaching--faster than I thought it would--and I'm both anxious and excited about the first-ever Alpena Book Festival. Anxious questions: Will there be a good turnout? Will they have a good time? Will we have enough of everything? Does everyone know what to do? These are questions I have every time I'm part of organizing things, and I've learned there's no use trying to turn it off. Of course I know things can go wrong. It might rain buckets (or snow, after all, this is Michigan). We might run out of tote bags or tickets or whatever. And since it's a new thing, people will no doubt be following the organizers around saying, "What should I do?" "Where should I go?" I can take the chaos once the day arrives, but beforehand, there are no answers, which is what makes me a little crazy. As to the excited part: I know that people who attend the Festival will be happy they did . We have great giveaways, so just showing up ...

It isn't that literary fiction is bad. I would never argue with the Great Minds who hand out Pulitzer Prizes and such. It's just that books that are termed "literary" aren't always what I'm in the mood for. Here's why. Too often, nothing happens. The author is so busy telling the character's thoughts and describing the sunlight on the pines that he/she forgets to put in, um, what shall we call them?  Events that lead somewhere.  When I got to the end of Papertowns , for example, I thought..."So what?" Sometimes something happens, but it's bad. And then it gets worse. I read The Gold Finch . I read All the Light We Cannot See . I even read Anna Karenina. Things happened. Things got worse. And then it was over. The characters are so messed up that I can't find anyone to like. Holden Caulfield. Raskolnikov. Anything I've read by Elmore Leonard. The author seems to have a feeling of god-like superiority to the characters: ...