Miss Marple
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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Agatha Christie: A Deadly Affair
Shout-out to WhiskeyintheJar for getting here first! So, HarperCollins’s latest ploy in cashing in on Christie’s undying fame seems to be to repackage her short stories roughly along seasonal lines: to date, we’ve had summer / vacations, Halloween / supernatural, Christmas / winter … and now Valentine’s Day / love and romance as a subtext. […]
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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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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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Agatha Christie: The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
As I already said elsewhere, this is one of my go-to comfort reading palate cleanser books; just reliably enjoyable: a mix of short stories featuring Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Parker Pyne, alongside a few nonseries short story mysteries. As I’ve also noted in the past, I could do without Simon Vance being one of […]
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Agatha Christie: A Pocket Full of Rye
As a detective protagonist, like Agatha Christie herself, I prefer Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot, and among all of the Miss Marple books, this is one of my all-time favorites. Needless to say, this was a (well, actually my umpteenth) repeat visit, courtesy (also on repeat) of Richard E. Grant’s narration as part of the […]
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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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Halloween Bingo 2020: The First Week (+1 Day)
This year’s Halloween Bingo started a lot more promising than last year’s with a strong joint entry in Michael Connelly’s Bosch and Ballard series, and in fact, not one of the books I read earned less than a four-star rating — with the standout being Nicholas Blake’s The Beast Must Die, which turned out to […]
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Agatha Christie: A Caribbean Mystery
24 Festive Tasks: Door 21 – Kwanzaa, Book: Read a book set in Africa or the Caribbean, by an African, Caribbean, or African-American author, with a green, red, or black cover, or with crops of the earth or a native African animal on the cover (lion, giraffe, cheetah, etc.). Well, that’s it. I’m no longer […]
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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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Miss Marple: A Limerick
24 Festive Tasks: Door 1 – Día de los Muertos / All Saints’ Day, Task 1: Compose a limerick or short poem in honor of a favorite book character. There once was a spinster named Marple Whose sleuthing skills were of the sharpest. Thus they did not need In St. Mary Mead Scotland Yard […]
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Agatha Christie: The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
I decided I needed a palate cleanser towards the end of the week, and there’s nothing better than a book by Agatha Christie to serve that purpose. (Since she is also one of my quintessential “go to” bingo authors, it seemed only fitting to use this collection for the center / raven square.) I know […]
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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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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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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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Books Featuring 70+ Year Old Characters
24 Festive Tasks: Door 16 – Human Rights Day, Task 2: This year is the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Find 3 books on your shelves with protagonists or other key characters who are — or can reasonably be assumed to be — 70 years or older. Admittedly fairly obvious […]
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Favorite Books Featuring Golf
24 Festive Tasks: Door 12 – St. Andrew’s Day, Task 4: The town of St. Andrews, where the saint’s bones ended up in the course of the spread of Christianity to Scotland, is also famous for its golf course and tournament. List your 3 favorite books where golf is key to the plot. Golf […]
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Agatha Christie: Miss Marple — The Complete Short Stories (audio)
24 Festive Tasks: Door 1 – Día de los Muertos, Book Audio revisit courtesy of Joan Hickson (who reads almost all of the stories), as well as Isla Blair and Anna Massey (who read one story each). Original review of the print edition HERE. The audio is excellent and contains an extra (and somewhat sinister) […]
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