Louise Penny and Charles Finch

I had the pleasure of seeing Louise Penny in conversation with Charles Finch this evening (8/30/2016). This the third or fourth time I’ve seen her and, yes, I know how spoiled that makes me!

Louise seems to like the Chicago area and this is the second time she’s held an event with Anderson’s Bookshop at North Central College in Naperville, IL.

Today was the release day for A Great Reckoning, Penny’s 12th book in her Chief Inspector Gamache series.

Tonight’s event was the kick off of the tour for A Great Reckoning. Other cities on the tour are:

• Wichita
• Kansas City
• St Louis
• Greenville, SC
• Ashville, NC
• Southern Pines, NC
• Washington, DC

Click here for more tour details.

If you live close enough to any of the cities above, go see her even if you haven’t yet started reading the Gamache series. Louise is funny and smart and emotionally brave. So are her novels. You’ll want to go home and start reading the series cover to cover.

A friend asked me today where to start with the series and I recommend reading it in chronological order due to the exquisite character development and story arc. That said, the first book in the series, Still Life, was hard for me to get in to. I tried three times before I made it through. The second and third book are good, but after that the series just exploded for me and I read like a wood chipper until I was caught up to wherever the series was at the time. I have heard some people start with a later book and then want to know what lead up to everything and so go back to the beginning.
 

Missy: my book junkie friend

Why did I give Still Life so many chances? My good friend Missy, pictured above, has turned me on to some excellent reads and she pushed me to start this series. Since she never steered me wrong when it came to books before, I complied. So glad I did! Missy drove from western Iowa to Chicago for this event and I was able to meet up with her and our mutual friend, Linda. We three met working at Borders many moons ago. Here we are waiting for the doors to open tonight:

Me, Linda, Missy

 Now, off to read!