Patricia Wentworth
April 2021 Reading Recap
First things first: The persistent bug preventing followers / readers to comment on my posts straight off the post (i.e., other than by using the WP Reader) has finally been weeded out, thanks to my hosting service’s IT team … so you can, at last, comment even if you’re not using the WP Reader. (I […]
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Patricia Wentworth: The Key
Like virtually all of the Appointment with Agatha side reads so far (except for Ellis Peters’s Fallen into the Pit), The Key was a reread for me, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. This is a fairly early book in the context of Wentworth’s Miss Silver series and one of her first really solid books, chiefly relying […]
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2020 in Facts and Figures
I already posted my main 2020 in Review and Looking Ahead to 2021 posts a while ago — only on my new blog (separate post to come) –, but I held back on my 2020 reading statistics until the year was well and truly over. And for all my good intentions when posting my mid-year […]
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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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Patricia Wentworth: Miss Silver Comes to Stay
Yes — Still a Favorite I’m getting to the point where I’m beginning to revisit “Miss Silver” books because I’ve read almost all the books in the series at least once. (There are only some five or so books left that I’ve yet to read for the first time.) So I figured, I might just […]
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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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Books Published Under Two or More Different Titles
24 Festive Tasks: Door 14 – St. Nicholas’ Day / Sinterklaas, Task 3 St. Nicholas is a man of many names in English alone – Santa Claus, Saint Nick, Father Christmas … although in the English speaking world he only comes once (at Christmas, not also on December 6 – whereas in Germany and the […]
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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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Halloween Bingo 2019: Tracking Post — Blackout! (And bingos Nos. 12 and 13.)
Many thanks to Moonlight Reader and Obsidian Blue for hosting this game for the fourth year in a row, bigger and better than ever before! Witih today’s call, I’ve blacked out my card, in addition to collecting my final bingos (nos. 12 and 13). Somewhat to my surprise, after completing my books for my […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019: Tracking Post — Bingo No. 3 and Reading Blackout
* Triple Bingo Happy Dance * Well, that went by much faster than I had anticipated … Many thanks to Moonlight Reader and Obsidian Blue for hosting this game for the fourth year in a row, bigger and better than ever before! I’ll continue tracking my bingos of course — and since we now have […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019: The Second Week
A day late (though hopefully not a dollar short), here’s my “second bingo week” summary; and it’s a summary of a much better week than the first one turned out to be. (So, yey!) For one thing this is due to the books, all of which were either outright winners or at least enjoyable on […]
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Patricia Wentworth: Eternity Ring
Another book off to a great start; if for no other reason than the fact that we get to meet Frank Abbott’s family and learn why he didn’t become a lawyer — as had initially been his chosen career path — but a policeman instead. (Wentworth takes us back to Frank’s family home in a […]
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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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Detection Club Bingo: My Progress So Far
Whee — only two squres to go for blackout! The Squares / Chapters: 1. A New Era Dawns: Ernest Bramah – The Tales of Max Carrados; Emmuska Orczy – The Old Man in the Corner 2. The Birth of the Golden Age: A.A. Milne – The Red House Mystery 3. The Great Detectives: Margery […]
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Patricia Wentworth: The Gazebo
This is more like it. (More than The Alington Inheritance, that is.) — Still a bit too much of a whiny heroine, but at least we’re firmly back in true and trusted Maudie territory. And it has to be said, while the victim is no Mrs. Boynton (cf. Agatha Christie, Appointment With Death), by the […]
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Patricia Wentworth: The Alington Inheritance
If you thought Patricia Wentworth couldn’t go any lower than “Grey Mask” … … don’t go anywhere near this one. Whiny, immature, TSTL special snowflake heroine. Insta-love. Completely implausible, “fortuitous” (*major headdesk moment*) first encounter between hero and heroine. Weak plotline that is further weakened by an “inverse mystery” structure — it certainly does NOT […]
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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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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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Patricia Wentworth: The Clock Strikes Twelve
24 Festive Tasks: Door 24 – Epiphany, Book This came with high praise from both Tigus and Moonlight, so I knew I had a lot to look forward to — and I was certainly not disappointed! This is a New Year’s Eve story and the “family patriarch publicly announces ‘I know someone here has […]
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