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Arthur Conan Doyle – Lioness at Large

Arthur Conan Doyle

Literature Reviews

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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Literature Reviews

Maurice Leblanc: Arsène Lupin

  Arsène Lupin: Gentleman cambrioleur (Gentleman Thief) The suave adventures of a gentleman rogue—a French Thomas Crown created by Maurice Leblanc during the early twentieth century, Arsène Lupin is a witty confidence man and burglar, the Sherlock Holmes of crime. The poor and innocent have nothing to fear from him; often they profit from his […]

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Fun and Games Lifestyle Literature Movies

Holiday Movies

Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 24 — Cherished Memories, Task 4: What’s your favorite Christmas/holiday movie that you can watch again and again? (This can be any movie that takes place during the holiday season, whether or not it’s in the ‘spirit’ of the season (i.e. Die Hard or Lethal Weapon). […]

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Fun and Games Literature Reviews

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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Fun and Games Literature

Festive Tasks: Door 2, Task 4 – Six Degrees of Literation

Master Update Post HERE Task 4: Let’s play Six Degrees of Literation! Start with the book that you are reading right now and make a chain of six books, linked in however you want to link them, to one of the classic holiday reads mentioned in this Guardian article. My brain started going into nonstop […]

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Literature Music Reviews

May 2021 Reading Recap

Still a lot of work on the back end of the blog, including on my “featured authors” pages (see the right column on the main Literature page and the introduction of my April 2021 recap post).  So, contrary to plans, still no new posts in my alphabet blogging series in May.  However, the time-consuming back end […]

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Literature Reviews

Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes

My May 2021 reading included one totally predictable binge: It’s Arthur Conan Doyle’s birth month, and I still had the complete Sherlock Holmes Canon as read by Stephen Fry that I’d acquired long ago sitting in my Audible app, waiting for the perfect moment to indulge … well, I figured this was it.  However, I […]

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Literature Reviews

Arthur Conan Doyle: Sir Nigel

I didn’t quite want to limit my “birthday boy” look at Arthur Conan Doyle’s work to the predictable Sherlock Holmes binge, so I decided to take a look at one of his historical novels in addition.  Well, I suppose I have to hand it to Sir Arthur for mastering, with panache, genres as diverse as […]

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Literature Reviews

Martin Edwards (ed.), Various Authors: Blood on the Tracks

The January “side read” — topic: Murder by Transport — for the Appointment with Agatha / Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration group read (blog master post HERE; Goodreads group HERE): For me, another reread after first having read this collection only last year, but decidedly one of my favorites among the British Library Classic Crime short […]

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Literature Reviews

January 2021 Reading Wrap-Up

I only finished eleven books in January, which isn’t a lot by my standards as of the last couple of years, even taking into account that two of the books were decidedly on the long side (all the more as I balanced out the two long books by two extremely short ones).  But I decided […]

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Fun and Games Literature

Posthumous Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Sherlock Holmes

24 Festive Tasks: Door 7 – International Human Rights Day, Task 1: Nominate a (fictional) character from one of the books you read this year for a Nobel Prize – regardless which one – or for a similarly important prize (e.g., the Fields Medal for mathematics) and write a brief laudation explaining your nomination.   […]

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Fun and Games Literature

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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Fun and Games Lifestyle Literature Movies

Classic Christmas Mystery Movie Binge

24 Festive Tasks: Door 21 – Christmas, Bonus Task #2: Watch a favorite Christmas movie. I binge-watched three of my annual favorite Christmas movies last night — Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, The Theft of the Royal Ruby (aka The Christmas Pudding), both starring David Suchet, and the Sherlock Holmes episode The Blue Carbuncle, starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke.   […]

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Literature Reviews

Arthur Conan Doyle: Round the Fire Stories

This is a group of stories originally published individually in Strand Magazine (and other magazines), and in book form first in 1908. A subset of seven stories were recently republished under the title Tales for a Winter’s Night, and I think overall the editors of the republication did pick the stronger bits of the lot. […]

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Fun and Games Literature

Arthur Conan Doyle: “The Leather Funnel” and “The Brown Hand” (from “Round the Fire Stories”)

24 Festive Tasks: Door 9 – Calan Gaeaf, Book: Read any of your planned Halloween Bingo books that you didn’t end up reading after all, involving witches, hags, or various types of witchcraft; or read a book with ivy or roses on the cover, or where a character’s name / the title of book is […]

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Literature Reviews

Arthur Conan Doyle: Tales for a Winter’s Night

This is a group of stories originally published individually in Strand Magazine (and other magazines), and in book form, together with nine other tales, first as as a 1908 collection named Round the Fire Stories.  Conan Doyle’s preface reads: “In a previous volume, ‘The Green Flag,’ I have assembled a number of my stories which […]

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BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

BL-opoly, Pandemic Edition – Roll #11

I rolled again yesterday after having finished my books from roll #10, but it was too late and would have taken too long to add the new books I’m planning to read, so I deferred posting until today.  So here’s where the dice are taking me in this round: (I was going to leave the […]

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BookLikes Imports Linked Items Literature Reviews

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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BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

Books Shipped Long Distance

24 Festive Tasks: Door 16 – St. Lucia’s Day, Task 4: The historic (3d century AD) St. Lucia was Italian; yet, like those of many other saints (including, e.g., St. Andrew and St. Nicholas), the most important celebrations of her holiday don’t occur in her place of origin but somewhere else in the world. List […]

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BookLikes Imports Fun and Games Linked Items Literature

2019: The Year’s Greatest Book Catches from my TBR

24 Festive Tasks: Door 12 – St. Andrew’s Day, Task 3: St. Andrew was a fisherman by trade: Which book(s) from your TBR that you read this year turned out to be the year’s greatest “catch”? Of my favorite reads of 2019, surprisingly few already were on my TBR at the beginning of the year, […]

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