Skip to main content

Reading report for January 2011


I made good progress with the challenges in January, finishing 7 TBR books, two Top Mystery Challenge books, and one What‘s in a Name Challenge book, and furthermore I reviewed a Buchmesse Frankfurt challenge book.

Of my two rereads, one I read to re-familiarise myself with a story that began in a book I read in 2008 and the other was my final reread in the Discworld Watch sub-series. Now I am ready for Snuff when it comes out in October. Both non-challenge books were what I like to call „memoirs of place“. One is an account of a stay in Marrakesh, Morocco, in the 1950s, and the other is a mixture of a memoir of place and a conventional memoir.

The books were:

  • Suzanne Brockmann : Hot Target (reread) and All Through the Night. Romantic thrillers
  • Elias Canetti : The Voices of Marrakesh. Memoir of place.
  • Raymond Chandler : The Big Sleep. Detective novel.
  • Jennifer Crusie : What the Lady Wants. Detective romance.
  • Hugh Greene ed.: More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. Short stories about detectives.
  • John Grisham : The Firm. Thriller.
  • Bill Holm : The Windows of Brimnes. Memoir of place.
  • Ed McBain : Shotgun. Police procedural.
  • Pete McCarthy : McCarthy's Bar. Travelogue.
  • Terry Pratchett : Night Watch (reread). Fantasy detective novel.

The annual report for 2010 is ready and will be posted some time in the next few days.

Comments

Wow- I just came across your blog and gotta say I am impressed with your reading! It also reminds me that I need to broaden what I read more. Thanks - lots of food for thought here.
Bibliophile said…
Thank you for visiting :-)

Popular posts from this blog

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Meme: Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations

This meme is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . To see more favourite book-to-movie adaptations, head over there to see which movies the other participants have nominated. I am going to cheat and interpret ‘movie’ as ‘film’, so I can include television adaptations. Oscar and Lucinda , from the book by Peter Carey. Apart from the changed ending it is an incredibly faithful adaptation, with every character perfectly cast. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , from the book by Stieg Larsson. This one actually improves on the book, which is well plotted but badly written. Cold Comfort Farm , from the book by Stella Gibbons. Perfect casting and quite faithful to the original. High Fidelity , from the book by Nick Hornby. Moving the story to America didn’t hurt it one bit. Fried Green Tomatoes (at the Whistle Stop Café), from the book by Fannie Flagg. Perfect casting and faithful to the story. Pride and Prejudice from the book by Jane Austen, the latest BBC adaptation. Incredibly f...