Down Under
Peter Temple: The Broken Shore
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 1 — Southern Hemisphere: Read a book set in the Southern Hemisphere, or that has a beachy scene on the cover. This is the first book of Peter Temple’s second series, after the Jack Irish books (set in Melbourne); here, featuring a burned-out cop named […]
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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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Graeme Kent: Devil-Devil
This book (and series) had been on my radar ever since I first started to put together reading lists for my Around the World project. A mystery set in the Solomon Islands, with a Lau policeman as one of the major characters — and set in the time period immediately prior to the end of […]
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Graeme Kent: One Blood
My experience with book 1 of the Ben Kella and Sister Conchita series was encouraging enough to move on straight away to the second book, which started vigorously enough with the death (murder?) of an American tourist — or was he? — in the tiny church of the Gizo Island mission where Sister Conchita has […]
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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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Ngaio Marsh: The New Zealand Books, plus Grave Mistake
The first book by Ngaio Marsh that I ever read happened to be her very last one, Light Thickens, which is as much concerned with a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as it is with the murder of one of the cast members. To a mystery fan without any Shakespearean inclinations, this might have proved fatal, […]
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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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2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’re still a month away from the end of the year, but my reading will probably consist mainly of Christmas books in December, and I hope and pray that life won’t come up and throw anything else at me in the final month of the year, either. So I might as well post my “Year […]
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BL-opoly, Pandemic Edition – Roll #12
I actually rolled last night already, but BL was so buggy that I gave up on trying to post. And I’m glad it’s a simple roll again for once. So, off to Australia we go — and I’m wondering whether it’s a coincidence that this small-town mystery is called Goodwood, whereas one of my new […]
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Agatha Christie / Mathew Prichard (ed.): The Grand Tour
Letters and Photographs from the British Empire Expedition 1922 Agatha Christie’s letters, photos and postcards from the expedition to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Canada in which her first husband, Archibald, and she were invited to participate out of the blue shortly after the birth of their daughter Rosamund. Lovingly edited by her […]
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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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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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24 Festive Tasks, Door 3 – Task 1: Pick Your Ponies Results
Reblogged from: Darth Pedant Thanks to all who participated in Task 1: Pick Your Ponies. The race is over, results are in, and points have been won! Please be sure to record your task participation and any bonus points in the Task Reporting Form which can be found on any official Holiday post, such […]
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24 Festive Tasks, Door 3: SUPER OFFICIAL EXCLUSIVE TASK 1 PREVIEW!!!
Reblogged from: Darth Pedant CORRECTION: Cup Day is Door 3 this year, please pardon the goof and my further breaking of MbD’s spiffy formatting. Please excuse the caps. It’s my first Festive Tasks guest post. I’m a tad excited. Ahem! This is a partial opening of Door 3, Melbourne Cup Day, because there’s no challenge […]
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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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Trudi Canavan: The Magicians’ Guild
The first book of Canavan’s Black Magician trilogy and, while it started out enjoyable enough, another book that ultimately failed to live up to my expectations. (It’s by no means awful, but it also didn’t entice me to continue with the series, however much the ending may have be trying to do just that.) The […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019: The Third Week
Well, the third week really hit my bingo experience out of the ballpark this year — and not only Pbecause it finished with my first completed bingo; that was actually just the icing on the cake. But it included no less than three absolutely knock-out fabulous books, plus a fourth that was almost as good […]
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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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BL-opoly: Dice Roll #5
U P D A T E D ________________ Today is May 30 was a roll day for me, and having finished my previous book, I am was allowed to roll again. My first roll turned out to be the smallest of doubles, so I rolled again: My first roll put me on square 25: […]
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