Because I have a “to-be-read” list with more than 3,000 titles on it, I realized that I very rarely read new books. By the time I get to reading a book I’ve added to my list, it is often many years later. And as someone interested in books and the reading life, I did wish I was reading more of the books of the moment. So I started a small reading project in which I now have a section of my TBR with books from the weekly Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association bestsellers list. I start with the number one book of the week, although oftentimes books are on the list for several weeks, so if the first books is already on my TBR, I go down to number two and so on.

The first week I started this list in 2021, the number one book on the list was the 17th book in the Inspector Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny. Welp. For me, that meant not just one book on my TBR, but 17. Also, despite making this intention to read these newer books, I didn’t actually start tackling my PNBA list until this year. But I did finally start with book 1 of the Gamache series, Still Life.

I have never been much of a mystery reader. Something I’ve learned to articulate for myself in the past few years is that I’m much more of a character-driven reader than plot-driven. (In fact, I almost always skip to the end of the book at some point during my reading, something I’ll write about another time.) But I’ve heard enough about this series to believe that I would enjoy Inspector Gamache as a character, and a 17-book (now 18) series would mean getting to spend a lot of time with the character.

I did enjoy Still Life. I liked the multiple meanings of that title. I like the town of Three Pines and the various people we meet there. And even though I did indeed skip ahead to read the end, I realized that I like the puzzle-solving aspect of mysteries. I don’t love the murder aspect, but I liked seeing how the pieces unfolded to figure out what happened. The part that left me less than satisfied, though, was the character of Agent Nichol. I was really counting on seeing her grow by the end of the book, and I was disappointed that she didn’t. I realize that there are 16 more books (and I did Google that she appears in some of them), so I hope that means she will have some development over the course of the series.