2020.09.28 Meeting Notes

In case all you read is the first part of my email (as if) I will first talk about important upcoming events first. 
HALLOWEEN:
We WILL have a HALLOWEEN COSTUME CONTEST for the Zoom meeting on October 26th. It’s only waist up, you can do it. There’s no reason why going virtual should affect our holiday fun!
OCTOBER MEETING:
Dress up and Zoom in on October 26 at 6:30 pm when we will discuss, in costume, 9 Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty.
DECEMBER HOLIDAY PARTY VIA ZOOM:
I’m still taking RSVPs for the Holiday party on December 18th. See my previous email for all the details. We’re doing a Secret Santa event and each participant will also receive a swag package from yours truly with this year’s Crime & Beyond logo’d item.
BOOK VOTE:
There will be a book vote, I will finish compiling the list this week and send it out for e-voting.
SEPTEMBER MEETING:
And now to September. We met this past month to discuss Camino Winds by John Grisham. It was the second book in his new series (Camino Island being the first) and it was quite different from his legal thrillers we are used to.
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We actually had some pretty low scores for the book. Here’s the rundown: Three 3s, One 4, One 5, Six 6s, Four 7s, and One 8. 
If you consider a bad score to be 5 or less, the book did have some decent scores, but it also had an equal amount of low ones. The negative comments really outweighed the positive. Partly because even those who gave it a decent score had some negative things to say.
Some of the positive comments for the book were: We liked Mercer’s character. It was simple and easy to read and sometimes we just want simple and easy. It was light, easy, and quick. It was like a Hallmark mystery and we like Hallmark mysteries. 
My favorite positive is also a negative and was from Allie: “I didn’t hate it. I’ve hated other books way more than this.”
The negatives went like this: Bruce was hard to like. We were rooting for the hurricane. We think this book was written by Grisham’s intern. The first book in the series was better (characters were more appealing and storyline was better). The murder wasn’t even a mystery and there was no investigation – Grisham told rather than showed. We were hoping for Death in Paradise and it wasn't even close. Just add a cat and you’d have a cozy (or maybe CJ Box’s falcon). Grisham’s teenage books are better. Audio narrator’s imitation of a woman who had had a stroke was painful. It wasn’t thrilling, shouldn’t have been in the mystery category. Grateful it was a fast read. The “why” of the story wasn’t plausible. Fluffy – not a Grisham book at all. Boring as hell. Wanted more of an investigation. Fell asleep twice while reading. There was no point.
We asked everyone if they would read another in the Camino Island series and 8 people said yes, 2 said maybe, and 6 said no. I highly doubt the series will get voted in again, but who knows – we’re a strange group and some of us have no short term memory.
A big welcome to our new member Tara, we’re glad to have you in the group!
TV/MOVIE RECOMMENDATIONS:
After the meeting, we went over what everyone was watching and got some great recommendations. Jeff took notes too, and puts things on our Wiki site, so check there for ideas. I will list what I wrote down, but I don’t always have the network the show is on, so a Google search might be needed. I might also have written the titles down wrong, it’s been known to happen. But here is what I have:
* Murdoch Mysteries
* My Life is Murder (Acorn or Britbox) starring Lucy Lawless
* Queens of Mystery (Acorn or Britbox)
* Upload (Amazon Prime)
* Doctor Foster (Netflix)
* Marcella (Netflix)
* Years and Years (HBO)
* Grand Seduction (Amazon Prime)
* Tin Star (Amazon Prime)
* Happy Valley (Netflix)
* Van der Valk (PBS)
WHAT WE’RE READING:
We also talked about what everyone was reading. Here were a few:
* Blood Relations by Jonathan Moore
* The Order by Daniel Silva
* The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason
See you all in COSTUME on the 26th.
Kerry