Crime for Christmas: Five favourite festive reads
Crime for Christmas: Five Festive Reads: here they are in order of publication Dorothy L Sayers, The Nine Tailors (1934). Ok, so not Christmas exactly, but close enough. It is a snowy New Year’s Eve when Lord Peter Wimsey runs his car into a ditch near the village of Fenchurch St Paul. I regularly reread […]
Revisiting old friends
Recently I was asked to write about three books or writers that I return to again and again. It was hard to choose just three, because I do a lot of rereading, particularly at times of great stress or illness. And my house move certainly counts as one of those times. Anyway, this is what […]
What to read in hospital
Recently I had to have surgery and so the question arose: what should I take to read while waiting to go the operating theatre? It had to be something that I could easily pick and up and put down in the intervals of having my blood pressure taken, being briefed by the anaesthetist, and so […]
Who are you going to call?
It’s the 1930s and after making a will in your favour, your great-uncle has been found in the library with a dagger through his heart. You didn’t do it, but your fingerprints are on the hilt. Or maybe someone you love has been convicted of murder and condemned to death. You have only weeks to […]
A battle of wits?
Recently my old friend Pauline reminded me that when we were teenagers, we used to read Agatha Christie together and try to work whodunit. We must have been thirteen or fourteen years old. We would even draw up lists of suspects and clues. I had forgotten all about that. And I can’t remember whether we ever […]
Why I don’t want to be in a Ngaio Marsh
I have finished my Ngaio Marsh binge. I have not read all of them – nor do I intend to – but I have read a lot, around twenty. And a couple of things stand out. One is that by the end of my marathon read, I had a pretty good idea who the culprit […]
Judging a book by its cover
I was thrilled when my friend Moira over at ClothesinBooks.com gave me a copy of this splendid book which brings together Tom Adams’s original cover designs for Agatha Christie’s novels. They are works of art in their own right. If I am looking to buy a second-hand paperback of an Agatha Christie, I always prefer […]
Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse: funny AND scary
Mark Easterbrook goes to see his writer friend, Mrs Oliver, to ask her to open a church fête. Mrs Oliver “in a state apparently bordering on insanity, was prowling around the room, muttering to herself . . . ‘But why,’ demanded Mrs Oliver of the universe, ‘why doesn’t the idiot say at once that he saw the […]
Sheer bliss: Prunella Scales and Wives and Daughters
I haven’t been sleeping well these last six months or so – and I won’t need to tell readers of my blog why that is. I don’t usually have a problem getting to sleep, but I often find myself awake at four or five am. That is when audiobooks are such a godsend. I prefer books […]
Book-lovers! Serial monogamy or a more free-wheeling approach?
Are you a serial monogamist or do you like to have several books on the go at the same time? For myself, I am rarely reading just one book. Sometimes I must admit that I spread myself too thin. Here’s a snapshot of what I am reading at the moment. I am approaching the halfway […]