This old souse Book

I have an affinity for cozy mysteries. They generally aren't written in pursuit of a spot on the bestseller list; rather, cozies are written to give the reader a sense of comfort and calm (ironically, by way of murder).

My mom read cozies to escape her three eccentric young daughters and grumpy husband: one daughter, the artist, painted five-foot tall green flowers on the side of the freshly painted rental when she was four; the adventurous daughter asked which way north was, and was found by neighbors five hours later walking up the beach, wearing a backpack, in pursuit of Santa in the North Pole (we lived on an island--she wasn't the brightest of the three of us); and the oldest daughter (that would be I) caused her first-year kindergarten teacher to quit by demanding that all classroom toy soldiers and toy weapons be removed from the classroom so that her classmates would not become violent adults, and that the teacher immediately stop smoking on her breaks because she would surely die of lung cancer. As to my mother's husband, he had some strange notion that feeding 40 stray cats, a stray goat, a duck, and 4 turtles (not stray) out of a 2-bedroom apartment was odd. He also became irrationally upset when the cat gave birth in his shoe. So you see, for my mother, it was either read a cozy or drink (or possibly dispose of the children and husband).

Years later, when my grandmother came to live with us (bigger house, different country, revolving pet door, dad retired and usually lost in Best Buy, girls now goth, theater geek, and raver) we slowly replaced her true crime books with cozies in order to keep her from roaming the house at night after taking her pain pills, looking for the Son of Sam whilst armed with a shoe horn.

And all this is how I came to read cozies myself, because they were always there to help me escape my crazy family, you could carry on a screaming match with a sibling and not miss much in the book, and thanks to grandma's Dahmer intervention, there were always a shitload in the house. (Serious reading was done away from the insane people.)I have an affinity for cozy mysteries. They generally aren't written in pursuit of a spot on the bestseller list; rather, cozies are written to give the reader a sense of comfort and calm (ironically, by way of murder).

My mom read cozies to escape her three eccentric young daughters and grumpy husband: one daughter, the artist, painted five-foot tall green flowers on the side of the freshly painted rental when she was four; the adventurous daughter asked which way north was, and was found by neighbors five hours later walking up the beach, wearing a backpack, in pursuit of Santa in the North Pole (we lived on an island--she wasn't the brightest of the three of us); and the oldest daughter (that would be I) caused her first-year kindergarten teacher to quit by demanding that all classroom toy soldiers and toy weapons be removed from the classroom so that her classmates would not become violent adults, and that the teacher immediately stop smoking on her breaks because she would surely die of lung cancer. As to my mother's husband, he had some strange notion that feeding 40 stray cats, a stray goat, a duck, and 4 turtles (not stray) out of a 2-bedroom apartment was odd. He also became irrationally upset when the cat gave birth in his shoe. So you see, for my mother, it was either read a cozy or drink (or possibly dispose of the children and husband).

Years later, when my grandmother came to live with us (bigger house, different country, revolving pet door, dad retired and usually lost in Best Buy, girls now goth, theater geek, and raver) we slowly replaced her true crime books with cozies in order to keep her from roaming the house at night after taking her pain pills, looking for the Son of Sam whilst armed with a shoe horn.

And all this is how I came to read cozies myself, because they were always there to help me escape my crazy family, you could carry on a screaming match with a sibling and not miss much in the book, and thanks to grandma's Dahmer intervention, there were always a shitload in the house. (Serious reading was done away from the insane people.)