Ebooks or print? All or nothing?
Something that has surprised me a little bit recently: a couple of old friends who’ve told me that they have gone over entirely to ebooks. One is my dear friend, Pauline, whom I’ve known since we were eleven. Books and magazines were and are an important part of our friendship (Pauline is my most loyal […]
Christie’s Death Comes as the End
After I’d seen the splendid Egypt: Faith after the Pharaohs at the British Museum, I went to the London Library and got out Agatha Christie’s Come Tell Me How You Live. She published it in 1945 under her married name of Agatha Christie Mallowan, and it is an account of the trips to the Syria that […]
Two thirds of the way through my book moratorium
It is two months today since I began my book-buying moratorium – and I am still going strong. It was most difficult at the beginning, when I was trying to break the habit. There was a danger that I just would buy more DVDs instead – they too are so cheap in charity shops – […]
I am buying books in my sleep
Regular readers of my blog will know that I have decided to abstain from buying books for three months. I began on the 24th September and I have been more or less faithful to my vow (I’ve bought a book at a book launch and a friend’s newly published poetry collection – I wanted to support her […]
Surprised by Agatha Christie
I have just read Agatha Christie’s autobiography. Two things surprised me. One was that she couldn’t remember anything about writing Peril at End House – one of her most ingenious and highly regarded novels. The other was that she was favourably inclined towards the death penalty. I wouldn’t have guessed that from her novels. She […]
Martin Edwards and The Golden Age of Murder
One of the unexpected pleasures of becoming a crime writer has been the friendship of other crime writers. I first met Martin Edwards through the Crime Writers Association and we found we shared an interest in golden age crime fiction – though Martin knows far, far more than I do. We’ve had many absorbing conversations over the […]
The books that people leave in hotels . . .
I had plenty of books on my e-reader (and a little World’s Classics edition of Persuasion, just in case), but what I actually read during my first week in China was a book that I found at the splendid Red Wall Garden Hotel in […]
Miss Marple: Proto-feminist? Scarcely, and yet . . .
I’ve been reading with great pleasure Virginia Nicholson’s excellent, Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men after the First World War. In a chapter on the stereotype of the spinster I was interested to come across this as an example: ‘Agatha Christie’s knitting detective Miss Marple incarnated the spinster sleuth.’ Last week I was reading The […]
Eight of my favourite books set in schools
Today I am blogging about books set in schools and Moira at Clothesinbook.com is doing the same. Our tastes are similar but don’t quite overlap, so I’m always fascinated to see what she has chosen. There are very few fictional schools that one would like to have attended or to have sent one’s own children […]
My top five Agatha Christie’s
I’ll begin by saying right away that I am not suggesting that these are the five best Agatha Christie’s. I wouldn’t dare. I am not even saying that they were my favourites last week or would be next week. But right now I am choosing these as my desert island five (though even now at […]