Skip to main content

Weekly Monday Round-up (October 31, 2016)

To those of you who celebrate it:

Happy Halloween! 


I'm writing a Halloween post that I plan to post later today, about how it is celebrated in a country where it has only recently taken hold.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week."

Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week.


Books I  finished reading last week:
I only finished two books last week, but began reading two more and made some progress on a further two I began reading some time ago. I expect to finish at least one of them this week.
Both books were rereads, or rather I reread one and listened to an audio book of the other - which I had previously read - for the first time.

  • A Precious Jewel by Mary Balogh. This was the first Regency romance novel I read that deviated from the mildly sensuous kisses-only formula of these novels, in that there were quite a number of (non-explicit) sex scenes in it, although all but one of them are quite unsexy. This is due to the fact that the heroine is a prostitute and all but that one sexual encounter between her and the hero are more in the way of being business transactions than lovemaking. Intrigued? Read it if you want to find out more.
  • The audio book was The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, which I first read way back in 2005. This was in an unabridged audio book version, read quite competently by Hugh Fraser. Here's the review I wrote back then.

I acquired 5 book last week.
One was the prize from the It's Monday, What Are you Reading prize drawing on October 17.
I chose this book:
It was immediately commandeered by my mother. I expect to retrieve it from her later this week, that is if she doesn't decide to take it with her on her trip to Washngton D.C. on Thursday.








I also bought:


More about them later in the week.

Other stuff:
On Wednesday I registered on Reddit - where I have been lurking for several months - to be able to reply to an AskReddit discussion that I wanted to participate in. I then found myself sucked into the boards and surfaced, slightly out of breath, on Friday and decided to take a break over the weekend.

I can definitely see myself becoming an active participant.

If you have any subreddits you can recommend - especially ones related to books and reading - please leave a comment and tell me about it.
Labels:

Comments

Beth F said…
Nice batch of acquired books ... have fun with the guitar! I have avoided Reddit mostly so no advice there. I need to hold myself back from yet more social media sites.
October 31, 2016 10:24 am
Greg said…
Ooh I'm very interested in your post on Halloween, I'll have to come back and check it out. Hope you have a great Halloween there! Agatha Christie seems like a good pick for this time of year. And I've just discovered a few Reddit boards myself but haven't jumped in enough yet...
October 31, 2016 12:40 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more