Josephine Tey: Inspector Grant Series
Having already read two books from Tey’s Alan Grant series (The Daughter of Time and The Franchise Affair) as well as her nonseries novel Brat Farrar in past years, and Miss Pym Disposes at the beginning of this year, I took the combined (re)read of The Daughter of Time and the play Dickon during the pandemic buddy […]
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2020 Mid-Year Reading Review and Statistics
What with the pandemic still very much ongoing, BL acting up again, MR’s and Char’s resulting posts re: BookLikes, the BL experience, and moving back to Goodreads, this feels like a somewhat odd moment to post my half-yearly reading stats. I hope it won’t be the last time on this site, but I fear that […]
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Val McDermid: Broken Ground
So what happened at the end there, Val? Why that infernal rush? Did you suddenly become aware that you were on your way towards producing a minor brick, or did your publisher tell you to cut it short? There we were, sailing nicely along in the usual 4-stars-or-higher bracket into which this series typically falls […]
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Ngaio Marsh: Light Thickens
“Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further. […] Ere the bat hath flown His cloister’d flight, ere to black Hecate’s summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night’s yawning […]
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January 2020 Reading
January turned out a bit of a roller coaster in RL, continuing the course things had already taken in December: not quite whiplash-inducing, but with several sickness-prone twists and turns (for however much I’d expected them to materialize) surrounding one major glorious event (which was, however, truly glorious; even if this, too, was something I’d […]
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David Ashton / BBC: McLevy, The Collected Editions, Series 1 & 2
A substantial part of my reading in January was an exercise in Mt. TBR reduction: By far the best (audio)book of this bunch was the first installment of the BBC’s McLevy series, which is based on the real life diaries of Victorian Edinburgh police inspector named, you guessed it, James McLevy. It features a great […]
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Dorothy Dunnett: The Game of Kings
Clearly last month’s reading highlight was the buddy read with Moonlight Reader, BrokenTune and Lillelara of the first volume of Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, The Game of Kings; a tour de force piece of historical fiction set in the mid-16th century, during the reign of England’s boy king Edward VI (the son of Henry VIII) — […]
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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: Twentieth Extra Square – It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1973218/halloween-bingo-2019-twentieth-extra-square
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Halloween Bingo 2019: Sixth and Seventh Extra Square – Terror in a Small Town & Halloween
Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1964626/halloween-bingo-2019-sixth-and-seventh-extra-square
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Bingo call: 9/21/19 – Modern Noir
Reblogged from: Moonlight Murder Modern Noir: mystery with noir elements, including authors like James Ellroy, Ian Rankin, anything that falls generally under the category of Nordic Noir, Tartan Noir, Granite Noir, etc; Book list linked here. Mystery square. Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1955670/bingo-call-9-21-19
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/09 (Day 9): Book Suggestions for the New Squares? Part 1: “Paint It Black”
Today’s prompt is for favorite horror reads; that not being much of my thing (outside, perhaps, the gothic classics and anything more edifying or funny rather than scary), I think I’m going to leave that prompt to Char, Bark’s Books (aka Bark at the Ghouls), and the site’s other horror fans. Instead, I’m going to […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/07 (Day 7): Favorite Halloween Bingo Authors?
Going by the list of my favorite reads from years past, my favorite Halloween authors so far have been (in alphabetical order and not entirely surprisingly): * Raymond Chandler * Agatha Christie * Arthur Conan Doyle * James D. Doss * Daphne Du Maurier * E.T.A. Hoffmann * Shirley Jackson * Ngaio Marsh * […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/06 (Day 6): Favorite Seasonal Covers — Mysteries and Crime
Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1931388/halloween-bingo-2019-preparty-question-for-08-06-day-6-favorite-seasonal-covers-mysteries-and-crime
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/04 (Day 4): Favorites from Halloween Bingos Past?
Oh man. So many! Biggest new discoveries: * Fredric Brown: The Fabulous Clipjoint — huge thank you to Tigus, who gifted his Ed & Am Hunter omnibus to me. Where had Brown been all my life until then? * James D. Doss: Charlie Moon series (via books 6 & 7, Grandmother Spider and White Shell […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/02 (Day 2): Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies or Other?
Witches. One of my very first literary heroine was a little witch who manages to get the better of all the bigger, older witches after having been put down by them — the heroine of Otfried Preußler’s Little Witch. (In fact, I loved that book enough to write my very first fan letter to the […]
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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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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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Dennis Wheatley / J.G. Links & Q. Patrick: Crime Dossiers & Crime Files
Do-It-Yourself Crime Solving from the Golden Age of Mysteries You’d think that I get to read more than enough files (though not typically crime files) in my day job — but gluttons for punishment that some of us mystery lovers are, there’s nothing we […]
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