Book club is tomorrow, so today I read the book. Pro-active, that's me! This month we are reading a mystery novel, and we deliberately picked a middle book in a series (I think maybe one member has read the series). This is something I like to do -- start any series in the middle, especially an open-ended one. I figure if I'm going to commit to reading a zillion words by an author, I want to make sure she can write well enough to interest me even if I don't know the zillion details that went before. If I like the series, I'll go around and read it all, and probably eventually do a series re-read in order, but I want it to be good enough to start anywhere.
I think I have many unusual reading habits.
Anyway, this book was _The Penguin Who Knew Too Much_, one of Danna Andrew's Meg Langslow books. There was a mystery, or at least a dead body, and Meg does sorta want to find out what happened, but she's more interested in her new house, her fiance, and the influx of animals her father has invited to shelter at her house while the local zoo has some unexpected set-backs. There were zany neighbors and family members, annoying yappy dogs, spitting llamas, and smelly penguins in the basement. I didn't guess who the murderer was, but I didn't really care, because the story was all about the crazy family and the huge party going on in between the animals and the ditch-digging and the murders.
I give it a B+ because it was a lot of fun, and that was going without the net of any associations with previous book. For #8 in a series, that's good work.
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