Cadfael
Two Christmas Mystery Short Story Anthologies
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 21 — Good Luck Charms and Traditions: Read a book from the fantasy genre, or one with something on the cover that refers to “luck”. Festive Tasks, Door 24 — Cherished Memories: Read a book with a split timeline, one that takes place in the present […]
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Favorite Rainy Day Reads
24 Festive Tasks: Door 5 – Bon Om Touk, Bonus Task: List / tell us about your favorite rainy day reads. I suppose it only takes one look at my list of read books this year to determine my favorite rainy day books, as 2020 was essentially one extended rainy day: Golden Age mysteries and […]
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Ellis Peters: The Raven in the Foregate
24 Festive Tasks: Door 13 – International Day for Tolerance, Book: Read a book about tolerance, or outside your comfort zone, set in Paris (seat of UNESCO), by or about a Nobel Peace Prize winner, or about a protagonist (fictional or nonfictional) who has a reputation as a peacemaker. Earlier this month I reread […]
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Book Characters Turning Over a New Leaf
24 Festive Tasks: Door 4 – Japanese Culture Day, Task 2: Japanese Culture Day was first held in 1948, to commemorate the announcement of the country’s post-war constitution on November 3, 1946, which was to make a new start for Japan. Which book did you read this year where someone was searching for or starting […]
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Brother Cadfael: An Ideal Teacher
24 Festive Tasks: Door 14 – Diwali, Task 2: Goddess Lakshmi in her eightfold form is referred to as the Ashta-Lakshmi. Vidya-Lakshmi is the 7th of her 8 forms. “Vidya” means knowledge as well as education, not just degrees or diplomas from the university, but real all-round education. Thus, this form of Goddess Lakshmi is […]
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Ellis Peters: The Devil’s Novice
Another (re-re-)reread and, not just in its medieval setting, the perfect follow-up to Michael Jecks’s The Malice of Unnatural Death: The story of a young man professing an earnest desire to become a novice at Shrewsbury’s abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul and yet, soon revealing in his sleep that he is haunted by […]
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Halloween Bingo 2020: The Rest of the Game and Wrap-Up
Sooo, that’s another bingo game behind us already! Many thanks to our game hosts for successfully moving the game from BookLikes to a new venue and organizing one heck of a game despite that venue’s built-in limitations. I had a great time and would only have wished I could have participated more throughout the game […]
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Snakes and Ladders, 2020 Edition – TA’s Master Tracking Post: DONE!
Tracking courtesy of Charlie and Sunny, as always, of course! SPACES AND DICE ROLLS 1. Author is a woman — Patricia Wentworth: Pilgrim’s Rest (finished April 1, 2020) 2. Genre: mystery 3. Set in the twentieth century 4. Published in 2019 5. Published in 2018 6. Title has a color word in it 7. Author’s last […]
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February and Mid-March 2020 Reading Update
I never got around to doing this at the end of February, so what the heck … I might as well include the first two weeks of March, since that month is half over at this point already, too. But then, February was such a universal suck-fest in RL that I didn’t even make it […]
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2019 Reading in Review — the Nonstandard Edition, Part 2: The Bookish Academy Awards
The Bookish Academy Awards / Book Oscars is a questionnaire I found a couple of years ago on the Blogger blog of Ashley / Read all the things and decided to steal it for my then-recent and all-time favorites. Most of my “all-time” answers are still true; however, here’s an edition specifically for my 2019 […]
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My Favorite Books with Music as a Plot Element
24 Festive Tasks: Door 21 – Kwanzaa, Task 2: Music is an important part of a Kwanzaa celebration. Which is / are your favorite book(s) where music plays an important role in the plot? In no particular order, books (of all genres, except for artist biographies)* that I love where music plays an important […]
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My Rainy Day Reads
24 Festive Tasks: Door 5 – Bon Om Touk, Task 1: List / tell us about your favorite rainy day reads. Any- and everything that — with or without a mug of hot tea and some chocolate or other snacks — makes me feel all warm and comfortable (while still engaging my brain cells, […]
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Ellis Peters: The Rose Rent
24 Festive Tasks: Door 3 – Melbourne Cup Day, Book: Read a book about horses, with a horse or with roses on the cover, about gardening, set in Australia or by an Australian author. For this one, inspired by Moonlight, I decided to revisit one of my all-time favorite series … with a book that […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/01 (Day 1): Mystery or Horror?
Mystery, definitely. For one thing, I’m a total chicken — I can’t look at blood (not even, or rather, especially not my own, e.g. in medical procedures); and anything shocking, spooky, or otherwise unnaturally unsettling just has me running for the rafters. That’s particularly true at night — which is when I’m doing a […]
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More Favorite / Essential Historical Fiction: Towards the 200!
OK, so I did get to another full list after all. Here goes, without any further ado: Virginia Woolf: Orlando I’m happy I’m getting another shot for this book alone — could have kicked myself for leaving it off my first list. I’m not a big fan of either time travel or main character sex […]
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My Historical Fiction Essentials
Finally getting around to this — as per Chris’s invitation, here’s my list (in no particular order, and with major reliance on Chris’s dictum that it’s “fine to list a whole author’s work or series and have it count as one entry”): Hillary Mantel’s historical fiction I’ve yet to try her contemporary writing, but both […]
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BL-opoly: Dice Roll #13
Having finally finished the books from my June 25 roll, I’m allowed to roll again today: This sends me past GO“, where I collect $5, to square 2: Who? — Read a mystery or detective story or a book with the word “who” in the title … thus continuing the mini-tour of “question” squares begun […]
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Crowdsourced: More Books with a Difference – Fiction
You asked, Moonlight Reader? To quote from one of my additional entries below: “As you wish …” Without any further ado: Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies When Lillelara added A Place of Greater Safety to her list, I could have kicked myself — because Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books were definitely among […]
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My Personal Literary Canon, Part 2: “Veteran” Readership
24 Festive Tasks, Door 5, Task 3: Tell us: What author’s books would you consider yourself a veteran of (i.e., by author have you read particularly many books – or maybe even all of them)? The authors by whom I’ve read the most books don’t coincide exactly, but substantially with those that I’d also consider […]
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Six Characters Who Made a Career Change
24 Festive Tasks: Door 7 – Mawlid, Task 4: Muhammad was a merchant before becoming a religious leader. List 5 books on your shelves in which a key character makes / undergoes a radical career change. 1. Brother Cadfael: A career change can hardly get any more radical than going from crusading soldier to […]
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