Lord Peter Wimsey & Harriet Vane
Q1 / 2022 Reading Recap
Well, as it turned out 2022 began as 2021 had ended — all work and no play, albeit with the addition of a hospital detour to boot. (Nothing serious, just way more painful and, all told, protracted, than it had any right to be.) So I’m back to posting one summary post for the first […]
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Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh: Thrones, Dominations
Blurb: It is 1936, and Lord Peter Wimsey has returned from his honeymoon to set up home with his cherished new wife, the novelist Harriet Vane. As they become part of fashionable London society, they encounter the glamorous socialite Rosamund Harwell and her wealthy impresario husband, Laurence. Unlike the Wimseys they are not in love […]
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Dorothy L. Sayers: Busman’s Honeymoon
A Lethal Play, or, Sayers’s Last Word on Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane “PETER (frowns): You know, Harriet, this is one of those exasperatingly simple cases. I mean, it’s not like those ones where the great financier is stabbed in the library – HARRIET: I know! And thousands of people stampede in and out […]
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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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In Honour of Harriet Vane
24 Festive Tasks: Door 10 – Russian Mothers’ Day, Task 4 & Door 15 – International Human Rights Day, Tasks 3 & Door 16 – St. Lucia’s Day, Task 1: Door 10, Task 4: Forget-me-nots and handmade medals of honor are important Russian Mothers’ Day gifts. Create a medal of honor (with or without the […]
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A Book, a Mug (of Tea), and Chocolate Truffles
24 Festive Tasks: Door 24 – Epiphany, Task 4: In Ireland, Epiphany is also sometimes called “Nollaig na mBean” or Women’s Christmas. Traditionally the women get the day off and men do the housework and cooking! It is becoming more popular and many Irish women now get together on the Sunday nearest Epiphany and have […]
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Royalty Moonlighting as Commoners in Fiction
24 Festive Tasks: Door 10 – Russian Mothers’ Day, Task 2: Towards the end of the 17th century, there was a Russian apprentice carpenter and shipwright going by the name Peter Mikhailov in the Dutch town of Zaandam (and later in Amsterdam), who eventually turned out to be none other than Tsar Peter the Great, […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/12 (Day 12): Classic Crime and Classic Horror Recommendations?
Late to today’s party and most of my really big favorites have already made an appearance in other folks’ posts, so I figured I’ll just list mine and showcase at the top of my post some of the books that haven’t yet been highlighted by others. By bingo category, with suspense and mysteries together in […]
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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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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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Responding to Moonlight Reader’s “call for papers (= titles / authors)” — there are quite a number of excellent lists out there already; anyway, here’s my contribution … or a first draft, at least. Links go to my reviews (or status updates / summary blog posts / author pages) to the extent I’ve posted any. […]
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Golden Age Mysteries: Further Reading
With my Detection Club Bingo card now blacked out, I’m going to track my reading here. (Note: for purposes of completeness, this includes books by the below authors already read prior to the creation of this list.) My priorities are going to be: Arthur Conan Doyle’s / Sherlock Holmes’s adventures, biographies, contemporaries and rivals, as […]
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Bookish friends are the best: Thank you so much, BT!!
Hand-delivered by my postman this morning. Woohoo! I love the design, and I love how sturdy and yet lightweight it is. AND it’s even got a lid with an open / shut setting for letting some steam get out while still keeping the contents hot … thank you once more! Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1846798/bookish-friends-are-the-best-thank-you-so-much-bt As […]
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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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My Comfort Reads
24 Festive Tasks: Door 8 – Penance Day, Task 1: “Confess” your book habits. Dog-earring? Laying books face down? Bending back the spines? Skimming? OR: Confess your guilty reading pleasure, or comfort reads. It’s probably no secret that my comfort reads are Golden Age mysteries — I’m slowly making my way through the works […]
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Book Rescue, Book-Related Places of Pilgrimage … and My Personal Literary Canon, Part 1
24 Festive Tasks: Door 7 – Mawlid, Task 2: The Five Pillars of Islam almsgiving and the pilgrimage to Mekka. Tell us: Have you ever donated books or rescued them from (horror of horrors) being trashed? Alternatively: Is there a book-related place that is a place of pilgrimage to you? If I donate books, I […]
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Martin Edwards: The Golden Age of Murder
The early history of the Detection Club, told by its current president and first archivist. Martin’s knowledge of both Golden Age detective fiction and the lives of its writers is downright encyclopedic, and he tells a multi-faceted story very compellingly. At times I had the feeling that he was taking his own conjecture a bit […]
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REBLOG — UPDATED: Halloween Bingo Lists by square
Reblogged from: Murder by Death I posted a few days ago about the lists from last year, but I’ve since created lists for the new squares and I figured it would just be easier to re-do the post from scratch, using the list of squares Moonlight Reader posted in her game announcement. So by […]
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REBLOG: Halloween Bingo Lists
Reblogged from: Murder by Death For last year’s (Inaugural) Halloween Bingo, many of the participants contributed to lists by square, as a resource for anyone struggling to find books that fit. This year, several of the squares/categories are similar to last year’s, so I thought I’d post them here again. These lists can definitely be […]
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Dorothy L. Sayers: Strong Poison
“Except that the girl’s innocent.” Things are not going well at Harriet Vane’s trial for the murder of her former lover, Philip Boyes – hearing the judge’s summation, only the most unrealistic of minds could conclude that she is not guilty as charged. One such mind, however, is that of Lord Peter Wimsey – the […]
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