Welcome to Check It Out! Are you new here? Me too!
Allow me to introduce this column and myself. Check It Out is a weekly review of books at Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries. We have 15 libraries and two bookmobiles across three counties — Clark, Klickitat and Skamania — and part of Cowlitz County. Your library card allows you to check out books at any location, put holds on books to be sent to your home library, and use our electronic resources including e-books and e-audiobooks.
I’m Beth Wood, and I’m a collection development librarian. My main job is to select adult nonfiction books to add to our library collection. I also select DVDs and our Lucky Day collection. Shopping! For books! What a great job!
Taking over for Jan Johnston has left me big shoes to fill (metaphorically — Jan’s feet are petite and perfect, like Cinderella’s). I’m looking forward to sharing many books with you, as you get to know my weird quirky sense of humor. The genre that I read most often is Mystery. I’m partial to historical mysteries and funny mysteries, so I enjoy series by Rhys Bowen, Carola Dunn, Kerry Greenwood, Jana DeLeon and Allison Montclair.
If I were represented as a book character, it would be Gertie Hebert in the Miss Fortune mysteries by Jana DeLeon. We meet Gertie in the first book of the series, “Louisiana Longshot.” Gertie is a woman past middle age, (for heaven’s sake, don’t call her old!) fun-loving and easily bored. She needs excitement and supervision in equal measures. She also needs new glasses and more exercise. She makes the best chicken casserole in Sinful, La., and she usually has a stick of dynamite in her purse. Every title finds Gertie embroiled in some new disaster due to her excitable and impetuous nature. Yeah, it’s me in 20 years. Sure, I’d rather be Phryne Fisher in the Miss Fisher mysteries, but let’s not start this relationship by lying to each other.
