“So we were all witnesses to a murder” says Elizabeth “Which, needless to say, is wonderful.”

(This book deserves two quotes!)

“We normally meet in the Jigsaw Room, you see,’ says Joyce. ‘But it’s not Thursday and the Jigsaw Room is being used by Chat and Crochet.’
‘Chat and Crochet is a fairly new group, Detective Chief Inspector,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Formed by members who had become disillusioned with Knit and Natter. Too much nattering and not enough knitting, apparently.”

This was recommended to me by a friend when I finished The Postscript Murders and it was the perfect pairing! The Thursday Murder Club is full of a quirky group of people in a senior living community. Their obsession? Murder. They spend their time poring over cold case files until a new murder comes knocking on their own doors.

This book was hilarious. It was a wonderful group of pitch perfect characters with a complex plot. I wasn’t even sure I was following along very well until the very end and the pieces finally came together. Plenty of red herrings, plenty of good suspects, and I would have never guessed the ending but it made perfect sense. I loved it and am definitely looking forward to the next one, which is due to be published in September.

“She sat back on her heels and nodded. The thought experiment she proposed was certainly odd, but her point was simple. Everything in the universe was constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives.

That’s what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again.

And just like that, you die.”

There were so many quotes I could have shared from A Tale For the Time Being but this one captured my essential takeway from the novel. This will easily be one of my favorite books of the year – think Karate Kid meets Proust. The story is told by Ruth and Nao. Ruth finds Nao’s diary washed up on the shore of her island in British Columbia after the tsunami in Japan in 2011. Nao’s diary is devoted to her grandmother, a 104 year old Buddhist nun, but we learn about Nao’s own difficult situation while reading along with Ruth.

Ruth is a writer from NYC living with her husband on a relatively remote island filled with eccentric neighbors in British Columbia. Ruth becomes obsessed with Nao’s diary while attempting to write her own memoirs. I loved cozying up in Ruth’s home with the kettle on, winter storms raging outside, and Nao’s diary spread out before us.

This book tackled so many topics: mental health, bullying, climate change, Alzheimer’s, economic collapses, and finding happiness in everyday life. I was hooked after reading the first chapter and couldn’t wait to spend a little time with Nao and Ruth each evening before I drifted off to sleep. I already want to read this one again!

I saw others here on LT discussing this book recently and just had to read it. I remember the movie as a young child and how much fun it was; this book didn't disappoint. Dahl did a wonderful job of telling the absurd story of a young boy who learns about REAL WITCHES. REAL WITCHES hate children and concoct ways to rid the world of as many children as possible. One day, the boy and his grandmother go to an English hotel for vacation. It just so happens that the annual meeting for all REAL WITCHES in England is at that very hotel.returnreturnThis was good fun and easy to read. It was very descriptive and the adventure unfolded brightly and clearly. Very nice escape for today.