NinieB puts on her hiking boots

... to climb Mount TBR, of course. I planned to do this a couple of years ago but then was completely in a different head space by the time January arrived. By the time I got back in the right spot, I had missed a few months, so I didn't proceed. I also tend to do a lot of focusing on topics throughout the year, which I don't really expect. And they can end abruptly when a setback occurs (or life intervenes).

So, my approach this time is to use the various creative prompts that this lovely group invents. They tend to be very flexible. A few won't work for me, but mostly I'll be able to have the fun of finding a match in my heap . . . er, collection.

So, I have an entry for each month below, with that month's challenges ready and waiting.

November planner
https://www.librarything.com/topic/299268#6638560

December planner
https://www.librarything.com/topic/299268#6638562

BingoDOG card 2 https://www.librarything.com/topic/299268#6882742

Century of Books https://www.librarything.com/topic/299268#6899013

Pre-1920 https://www.librarything.com/topic/299268#6972821

JANUARY

CalendarCAT DONE
Under Capricorn - Australia Day, Capricorn
Pink Flannel - Australia Day

RandomCAT Your name in print DONE
I was thinking of reading The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis. The protagonist shares my first name, Nina. But then I got my hands on Death in the Blue Lake by André Bjerke. Bjerke is a family name for me.

SeriesCAT: Series in translation DONE
Thumbprint
Death in the Blue Lake

TBRCAT First in, last out - read one of the oldest members of your tbr DONE
I ended up reading The Computer Kill, which I have had for many years--maybe 20 or more.

AlphaKIT DONE
A: Death in the Blue Lake by André Bjerke
Q: The Sunburnt Queen by Hazel Crampton
R (1st quarter): They Rang Up the Police by Joanna Cannan
X (full year): X v. Rex by Philip MacDonald

ScaredyKIT NPR 100 Best Horror Stories List or 100 Killer Thrillers List DONE
The Maltese Falcon

SFFKIT Read an SFF you meant to read in 2018, but never started/completed DONE
Honeymoon in Hell--finished 1/2/19

BingoDOG
Short stories--Honeymoon in Hell by Fredric Brown
Made into a movie--The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Book has 2 humans on cover--The Computer Kill by Raymond Banks
Title with a homophone--One for the Road by Fredric Brown
Read a CAT--Under Capricorn by Helen Simpson
Author uses middle name or middle initial--The Strangler Fig by John Stephen Strange
Part of a series-- Thumbprint, by Friedrich Glauser
LT 4+ rating -- The Sunburnt Queen by Hazel Crampton
Siblings--Death in the Blue Lake by André Bjerke

FEBRUARY

CalendarCAT DONE
The 31st of February

RandomCAT DONE
Topic: We need a break!
Death on the Riviera by John Bude
I considered reading:
Quarantine in the Grand Hotel (Eastern Europe)
To the Heart of the Nile (6 words)
The Wake of the Prairie Schooner (6 words)
Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945
The Road to Oxiana
Southern Exposure: A Solo Sea Kayaking Journey Around New Zealand's South Island

SeriesCAT: YA/Children's DONE
Possibly The Maze Runner, The Tombs of Atuan, Up One Pair of Stairs of My Bookhouse, Mistress Pat, Five Little Peppers Midway, or A Girl of the Limberlost.

TBRCAT A book you borrowed to read and still haven't got to DONE
The Second Man.

AlphaKIT K, O DONE
A number of options for K. This may be a good time to read an Inspector Ghote mystery by H.R.F. Keating. Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg is next in the series and has food in the title.
O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1943.
Old Kensington by Anne Thackeray
Forever Dead: A Cordi O'Callaghan Mystery by Suzanne Kingsmill
The Organization of Knowledge in Libraries and the Subject-Approach to Books by Henry Bliss

ScaredyKIT The Corporeal Undead DONE
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead

SFFKIT Colonization DONE
I started to read The Martian by Andy Weir, but I did not care for either the large amounts of science or the writing style. Instead, I read Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor, which pretty much had everything Martian didn't.

BingoDOG
Prize-winning book: The Second Man by Edward Grierson (CWA Gold Dagger)
Book bullet: Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park (inspired by JayneCM)
Animals: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (animals on cover)
Medicine/Health: Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy by Barbara Paul (hypnosis)
Debut: Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
Childrens/YA: Five Little Peppers Midway by Margaret Sidney

MARCH

CalendarCAT DONE
Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and About Women in America, 1820-70 by Nina Baym, for International Woman's Day and Women's History Month

I originally planned to adopt an Irish theme for St. Patrick, as I have several books about Ireland that I've been meaning to read, such as A Concise History of Ireland.
Other Ireland options:
Absolution by Murder
The Cooper's Wife Is Missing
Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages
The Ghosts of Belfast
Girl with Green Eyes
Heritage of Ireland
Man and Environment in Valencia Island
The Rage
Skellig: Island Outpost of Europe
Some Experiences of an Irish R. M.

RandomCAT DONE
Topic: BREXIT/set in an EU country.
Some of the options (others tagged EU):
Stone Voices (Scotland)
The Crocodile (Italy)
Entanglement (Poland)
The Magician's Accomplice (Slovakia)
The Boy in the Suitcase (Denmark, Lithuania)
The Rage (Ireland)

SeriesCAT: Series by a favorite author DONE

Reality: Ruth Park, The Harp in the South.

TBRCAT Book acquired on/for trips or for a special occasion DONE
Books purchased in Canada spring to mind, such as Daggers and Men's Smiles, Blood and Groom, Forever Dead, and Queen's Park. I also have a book purchased in New Zealand (Murder in Fancy Dress).

AlphaKIT U, L DONE
The Little Less, or Lantana Lane
Unpunished
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (author)
Under the Cold Bright Lights

ScaredyKIT True Crime DID NOT FINISH
Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England; A Most Unique Ruffian; Studies in Murder; Deadly Encounters; The Cooper's Wife Is Missing; and Albion's Fatal Tree are all contenders.

SFFFKIT Mystery/police procedural/detective Science Fiction or Fantasy DONE
Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

BingoDOG
Book in translation: The Boy in the Suitcase (Danish) Bingo!
Fairy tales: Five Old Friends, and A Young Prince

Short Story Collection and Anthology Group Read: The Lock and Key Library: North Europe: Russian, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, anthology edited by Julian Hawthorne
Five Old Friends, and A Young Prince by Anne Thackeray

Other: What Did I Do Tomorrow by L.P. Davies

APRIL

CalendarCAT DONE
April Associations: Aries, diamond, daisy, sweet pea, Easter, Passover
Possibilities: Adrian Hyland, Moonlight Downs (original title Diamond Dove)
Other ideas: https://www.librarything.com/topic/304803#6769930
The Eldest Son by Archibald Marshall (Siblings Day)

RandomCAT: Tournament of Books book or an award winner DONE
Beast in View by Margaret Millar (winner of 1956 Edgar Award for best novel)
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2010 TOB winner)

SeriesCAT: Series You've Been Meaning to Get Back To DONE
A few ideas: Murder Is Academic by P. M. Carlson, Death Is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter, Elizabeth Lemarchand's The Wheel Turns, or Paul Scott's The Day of the Scorpion all fit this category. Some more options are Barry Maitland's Babel; Peter Corris's Casino; The Devil Loves Me by Margaret Millar; Ellery Queen in Halfway House; Aaron Elkins's Skeleton Dance; Alisa Craig's The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn; W. J. Burley, A Taste of Power; Christianna Brand's Fog of Doubt; Arthur Upfield's The Sands of Windee; Peter Dickinson's The Lizard in the Cup; Lesley Egan, Motive in Shadow.

TBRCAT Book originally acquired for an LT group read or challenge DONE
I have a couple of books acquired because of local community reads: Blasphemy, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and That Awful Mess on Via Merulana.

AlphaKIT B, M DONE
Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope
The Beth Book
Max Beerbohm
Barry Maitland
Beryl Markham
Bernard Maybeck: Artisan, Architect, Artist
The Billiard Table Murders
Blotto, Twinks, and the Bootlegger's Moll
Bug-Eyed Monsters
Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way
Manila Bay
Mathematical Berlin
My Brilliant Career
The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet
Conan the Barbarian {Gnome 1954} by Robert E. Howard
S (2nd quarter):
The Story of Elizabeth by Anne Thackeray
Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson

ScaredyKIT Chills and Thrills with Modern Horror/Thrillers (2014 - 2019) DONE
Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben

SFFFKIT Sword & Sorcery DONE
Conan the Barbarian {Gnome 1954} by Robert E. Howard

BingoDOG
Alliteration: Miss Mackenzie
6+ word title: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Food in title: Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg

Short Story Collection and Anthology Group Read
Conan the Barbarian {Gnome 1954} by Robert E. Howard

Other: The Washington Club by Peter Corris

MAY

CalendarCAT DONE
May Associations: Maia, emerald, lily of the valley, mayflower, Taurus, Gemini, Memorial Day (Civil War), Victoria Day
Louisa May Alcott, A Long Fatal Love Chase
Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Terry Reksten, More English Than the English: A Very Social History of Victoria (Victoria Day) BC
Emily Carr, The Book of Small (artist born in Victoria, BC)
Emily Carr, Growing Pains: An Autobiography
Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang, set in Victoria, Aust.
Tom Collins, Such Is Life, same
Daryl Tonkin, Jackson's Track, same
The Other by Thomas Tryon, about twins, Gemini

RandomCAT I could have danced all night... DONE
A couple possibilities:
Dance of the Assassins by M. Fagyas
Promenade by G. B. Lancaster
Skeleton Dance by Aaron Elkins

SeriesCAT: Newest book in a favorite series DONE
No Barrier by Eleanor Dark
Man Missing by Mignon G. Eberhart
Chain of Violence by Lesley Egan
Mistress Pat by L. M. Montgomery
Lamb to the Slaughter by Jennifer Rowe
The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey

TBRCAT DONE Book that I keep looking at, but never manage to open . . . in my case several books scattered on my nightstand:
The Omnibus of Crime (probably too long)
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Southern Exposure
Reluctant Dead

AlphaKIT H, V DONE
The Happy Highwayman
Visions & Visionaries
Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
Virginians at Home
Hannah Says Foul Play by Dwight V. Babcock
Murder at Volcano House by Chip Hughes
Keeping House: Women's Lives in Western Pennsylvania, 1790-1850 by Virginia K. Bartlett
Graven Images: The Best of Horror, Fantasy, and Science-Fiction Film Art from the Collection of Ronald V. Borst
The great American gentleman: William Byrd of Westover in Virginia, his secret diary for the years 1709-1712
Hong Kong Life and Culture: A Quick and Easy Guide for Expats and Visitors by Emily Chan
Complete Story of the San Francisco Earthquake, The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and Other Volcanic Outbursts and Earthquakes, Including all the Great Disasters of History by Marshall Everett
A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West by Mary Hallock Foote
Murderer's Vanity by Hulbert Footner
The Rough Guide to The Da Vinci Code by Michael Haag
The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
Venetia and Northern Italy: Being the Story of Venice, Lombardy, and Emilia by Cecil Headlam
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City's History by Eric Homberger
A High Wind in Jamaica; or, The Innocent Voyage by Richard Hughes
Into the Valley of Death by H. R. F. Keating
In Search of England by H. V. Morton
More English than the English: A Very Social History of Victoria by Terry Reksten
The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime: Forgotten Cops and Private Eyes from the Time of Sherlock Holmes edited by Michael Sims
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes by Vincent Starrett
Hawaiʻi's Early Territorial Days, 1900-1915: Viewed from Vintage Postcards by Island Curio by Keith Steiner
Son of the Tree | The Houses of Iszm by Jack Vance
A History of Private Life. Vol. 1, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium edited by Paul Veyne
The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Great Stories by Simon Winchester

ScaredyKIT Children's Horror (or Horrific Children) DONE
The Other by Thomas Tryon
Elizabeth: A Novel of the Unnatural by Jessica Hamilton
Our Mother's House by Julian Gloag

SFFFKIT International Sci-Fi/Fantasy by Non-US/UK authors Didn't Read
Demons of the Night
Aurora
The Hearing Trumpet

BingoDOG
The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka by Josef Škvorecky (Eastern Europe)
Death in Amsterdam by Nicolas Freeling (character is an artist)

Other:
Please Do Feed the Cat by Marian Babson
The Tudor Rose by Margaret Campbell Barnes

JUNE

CalendarCAT DONE
June associations: Gemini, Cancer, Junius, Flag Day, pearl, alexandrite, moonstone, rose, honeysuckle
Anna Fuller, A Venetian June
Robert van Gulik, The Emperor's Pearl
Peter Harkness, The Rose: An Illustrated History

RandomCAT Pick a card . . . DONE
I drew the seven of clubs.
Seven Alone, by Honoré Morrow—historical fiction about siblings without parents on the Oregon Trail.
Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen.
The Amaranth Club, by J. S. Fletcher—British Golden Age detection.

SeriesCAT: Series that are definitely complete DONE
The Black-Coats by Paul Féval
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau
A Strange Disappearance by Anna Katharine Green
Samantha at Saratoga by Marietta Holley
Titus, a Comrade of the Cross by Florence M. Kingsley
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. by Somerville & Ross
My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman
The Clue by Carolyn Wells
The Lone Wolf by Louis J. Vance
Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
Australia Felix by Henry Handel Richardson
Queen Lucia by E. F. Benson
Bat Wing by Sax Rohmer
The Matriarch by G. B. Stern
The Axe by Sigrid Undset
Jalna by Mazo de la Roche
Blind Corner by Dornford Yates
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Jenny Wren by E. H. Young
The Scandals of Clochemerle by Gabriel Chevallier
The Lake District Murder by John Bude
Mistress Pat by L. M. Montgomery
The Mysterious Mickey Finn by Elliot Paul
A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard
The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert
Guilty Bystander by Wade Miller
Appleby's Answer by Michael Innes

TBRCAT Book bullet (i.e. book suggested by someone else, not necessarily on LT) DONE
Elizabeth: A Novel of the Unnatural by Jessica Hamilton
The Gentlewomen by Laura Talbot
His Monkey Wife by John Collier
A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews
A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey
Emmeline by Charlotte Smith

AlphaKIT J, D
In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz
The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos
The Heathen School by John Demos
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
The House at Satan's Elbow by John Dickson Carr
Castle Skull by John Dickson Carr
Jalna by Mazo de la Roche
The Dante Game by Jane Langton
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Death in Clairvoyance by Josephine Bell
Death of a Poison-Tongue by Josephine Bell
Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno
Dickens-Land by J. A. Nicklin
Distant Land by Judah Waten
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado
Dover Three by Joyce Porter
Dr Priestley Investigates by John Rhode
Jackson's Track: Memoir of a Dreamtime Place by Daryl Tonkin
John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Mulock Craik
Fidelio: Based on the Opera by Ludwig van Beethoven by Sarah Cherry Jumel
Bring Down the Night by John R. Sansevere
Murder by Crowquill by Joe Zabel
A Kentucky Cardinal by James Lane Allen

ScaredyKIT Technothrillers
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

SFFFKIT Road-trip
Galactic Pot-Healer, Philip K. Dick

BingoDOG

JULY

CalendarCAT DONE
July associations: Julius Caesar, ruby, larkspur, water lily, Cancer, Leo, July 4, Independence Day, Canada Day, National Cousins Day
The Search for Ancient Rome
Aspects of Antiquity
The Ancient World: A Beginning
The Revolution Remembered
Liberty's Daughters
Drums Along the Mohawk
42 books tagged Canada
The Stillwater Tragedy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, about cousins

RandomCAT Birds DONE
Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness by David Casarett

SeriesCAT: Genre: fantasy DONE
Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce
The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman

TBRCAT Book by an author with more than one book on your TBR shelf DONE
Lots of these.
I read The Godwin Sideboard by John Malcolm.

AlphaKIT C, P DONE
A Cadenza for Caruso
Peter Carey
Peter Corris
Patricia Carlon
P. M. Carlson
John Cowper Powys
Changing Places
Christmas Pudding
Country of the Pointed Firs
The Crimson Patch
Parents and Children
Place Called Estherville
Prelude to a Certain Midnight
The Prophet's Camel Bell
The Obituary Club by Hugh Pentecost

ScaredyKIT Vacation Month (read horror/thriller of your choice) DONE
Some titles on the shelves that interest me are:
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales (Yōko Ogawa),
Night Freight (Bill Pronzini),
Songs of a Dead Dreamer (Thomas Ligotti),
Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder (William Hope Hodgson)
The Rim of Morning (William Sloane).
Fingers of Fear (J. U. Nicolson)

SFFFKIT Space Opera DONE
Son of the Tree by Jack Vance

BingoDOG
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (book mentioned in another book) (Fingers of Fear)
Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires by Richard Sala (graphic novel)
Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis (Eastern European setting and characters)
The Library Book by Susan Orlean (LT rating of 4.0+)
High Rising by Angela Thirkell (homophone—hi, hie)

AUGUST

CalendarCAT DONE
August associations: Augustus Caesar, peridot, sardonyx, spinel, gladiolus, poppy, Leo, Virgo
Possibilities:
Marco Vichi, Death in August;
August Derleth, The Shield of the Valiant;
Augustus Carp, Esq.;
one of the Rome books listed for July;
a book by Leo Bruce
Lantana Lane by Eleanor Dark (born 26 Aug 1901)
The Carpathians by Janet Frame (born 28 Aug 1924)
The Crimson Patch by Augusta Huiell Seaman
Other birthdays:
Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
Juliana Ewing, The Brownies and Other Tales
Emilie Flygare-Carlen, Wedlock
Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost
Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope
Ruth Park, Poor Man's Orange
Kerstin Ekman, Under the Snow
Nora Kelly, In the Shadow of King's

RandomCAT Back to School DONE
Digging Through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist by Carmel Schrire
In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz
Archaeology and the Colonial Gardener by Audrey Noël Hume
Digging for Carter's Grove by Ivor Noël Hume
Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England by Christopher J. Lenney
The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840 by Jack Larkin
The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

SeriesCAT: Series set in a country/region where you do not live DONE
While I won't rule out the possibility of reading a UK series, to really get in the spirit I should try something more exotic: The Missing Guests of the Magic Grove Hotel (Thailand), The Mind-Murders (Netherlands), The Bridge That Went Nowhere (Brazil), Big Italy, Flame Trees of Thika (Kenya), The House of the Arrow (France), The Magician's Accomplice (Slovakia), Death in Springtime (Italy), Prayer of the Dragon (Tibet). The series in translation from January are also possibilities: Adiós Hemingway, River of Shadows, Hotel Bosphorus, Entanglement, Death in Breslau, The Axe, Death in August, The Crocodile, The Scandals of Clochemerle, Segu, The Widow Lerouge, The Woman of Mystery.

TBRCAT Book purchased with great excitement and with plans to read right away that is somehow still on my tbr a year later. DONE
Kentucky by Design, by Erika Doss et al.

AlphaKIT N, I DONE
Never Call It Loving
Ivor Noël Hume
Guilty, or Not Guilty by Amanda M. Douglas
The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald

ScaredyKIT Gothic DONE
Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen
House at Hawk's End, Claudette Nicole
Case with Three Husbands, Margaret Erskine
The Music Master, Dorothy Fletcher
Crow Hollow by Dorothy Eden
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

SFFFKIT Alternate History DONE
If; or, History Rewritten
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

BingoDOG
Here to Stay by Mark Edwards (about siblings)
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Ffordey (debut novel)
Digging Through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist by Carmel Schrire (award winner)
Toasted English by Marghanita Laski (food in title)
Appleby's Other Story by Michael Innes (animal on cover)

Other
What You Did by Claire McGowan
The Whispering Cup by Mabel Seeley
A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen
Forgotten Bones by Vivian Barz
A Modern Magdalene by Virna Woods

SEPTEMBER

CalendarCAT DONE
September associations: Labor day, autumnal equinox, sapphire, forget-me-not, morning glory, aster, Virgo, Libra
Some possibilities:
Belle Yang, Forget Sorrow;
Howard Clewes, The Long Memory;
Janet Sandison, Jean in the Morning;
Kylie Tennant, Tell Morning This;
Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales;

September birthdays:
Quick, Dorothy, The Fifth Dagger
Broster, D. K., Couching at the Door
Jewett, Sarah Orme, The Country of the Pointed Firs
Renault, Mary, Promise of Love, The Last of the Wine
Austin, Mary Hunter, Western Trails
Mann, Jessica, Mrs. Knox's Profession
Christie, Agatha, The Grand Tour
Stewart, Mary, Thornyhold
Pilcher, Rosamunde, The Day of the Storm
Stubbs, Jean, Dear Laura
Bowen, Gail, The Glass Coffin
Deledda, Grazia, Cosima
Peters, Ellis, Funeral of Figaro
Muller, Marcia, Someone Always Knows

RandomCAT Equinox DONE
The Moon Was Red by Dana Sage
Witch's Moon by Giles Jackson
The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury

SeriesCAT: Genre: Mystery DONE
A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard
The Appleby File by Michael Innes

TBRCAT Classics I feel I should read DONE
Faust, Part One by Goethe
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Mastro-Don Gesualdo by Giovanni Verga
The Clue by Carolyn Wells
Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley
Joanna Godden by Sheila Kaye-Smith
The Judge, or Harriet Hume, by Rebecca West
Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rølvaag
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson

AlphaKIT F, W DONE
Funeral of Figaro by Ellis Peters
William Finnegan
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner
The Eye of Lucifer by Frederic F. Van de Water

ScaredyKIT Ghosts & Hauntings
Spectral options include Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder (William Hope Hodgson), Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo (Miyabe), and one of several ghost story anthologies.

SFFFKIT Series DONE
When the World Screamed and Other Stories, an anthology of Professor Challenger stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Houses of Iszm by Jack Vance
The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

BingoDOG
The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury (short stories)
The Fifth Dagger by Dorothy Quick (CAT)
Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley (artist character)
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (health-related)

Other
The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim

OCTOBER

CalendarCAT DONE October associations: Halloween, tourmaline, opal, calendula, Libra, Scorpio, Leif Erikson Day, World Food Day
Possibilities:
A.E.W. Mason, The Prisoner in the Opal
L. C. Tyler, Ten Little Herrings
Ruth Dudley Edwards, Ten Lords a-Leaping
Farley Mowat, Westviking
George Goodchild, Jack o' Lantern

RandomCAT Parodies and pastiches
R. Holmes & Co. by John Kendrick Bangs
Case for Three Detectives by Leo Bruce
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes by Maurice Leblanc
Murder in Pastiche by Marion Mainwaring
The Anagram Detectives by Norma Schier
Mr Fairlie's Final Journey by August Derleth
Grendel by John Gardner
100 Years of Oz by John Fricke

SeriesCAT: Historical Series DONE
I don't have a lot in this genre, but Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Sun Over Breda fits the bill. So does Anthony Horowitz's Moriarty, Simon Brett's Blotto, Twinks and the Rodents of the Riviera, Barbara Nadel's After the Mourning, Robert Morgan's Gap Creek, L. C. Tyler's A Cruel Necessity, David Stuart Davies' Forests of the Night, Robert van Gulik's The Red Pavilion, David Dickinson's Goodnight Sweet Prince, Michael Pearce's A Dead Man in Tangier, Peter Lovesey's Mad Hatter's Holiday, Peter Tremayne's Absolution by Murder, Maurice Druon's The Iron King, and William Marshall's New York Detective. OK, I take it back. I have lots.
A Cadenza for Caruso by Barbara Paul

TBRCAT DONE Book purchased because of its visual appeal (striking cover or colors, beautiful edition, etc.)
The Case of the Golddigger's Purse by Erle Stanley Gardner

AlphaKIT G, T DONE
Grifter's Game
The Garden Triumphant
Glimpses of Three Coasts
They Got Me Covered
Through a Glass Darkly
Treacherous Ground
T. R. Glover
The Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes
Topper by Thorne Smith

ScaredyKIT Monsters & Creatures
Grendel by John Gardner
Beowulf

SFFFKIT Comedy DONE
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lady Slings the Booze by Spider Robinson
*Topper by Thorne Smith

BingoDOG
The Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes (part of a series)
Topper by Thorne Smith (made into a movie)
Call Mr. Fortune by H. C. Bailey (author uses middle initial)

Other
"Found Drowned" by Eden Phillpotts

NOVEMBER

CalendarCAT November associations: Thanksgiving, Scorpio, Sagittarius, topaz, citrine, chrysanthemum, Veterans Day (World War I)
Possibilities: Josephine Johnson, Now in November
Printer's Devil by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson (some characters are World War vets)

RandomCAT Childhood Memories
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (royalty)

SeriesCAT: Series with a female protagonist
How about Forever Dead by Suzanne Kingsmill, Seneca Falls Inheritance by Miriam Grace Monfredo (this is yet another one for the historical series list), Nora Kelly's In the Shadow of King's, Michelle Spring's Nights in White Satin, Gwen Moffat's Miss Pink at the Edge of the World, Val McDermid's Dead Beat, a Mrs. Bradley mystery by Gladys Mitchell, Mark McShane's Seance on a Wet Afternoon, Zadok's Treasure by Margot Arnold, The Matriarch by G. B. Stern (not a mystery), E. H. Young's Jenny Wren (also not a mystery), and a few others. Some of the previously identified series books also fit this category.
The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn by Charlotte MacLeod

TBRCAT Book given to me as a gift
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

AlphaKIT S, Y
Sinister Shelter
Scott Young
Printer's Devil by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson
The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn by Charlotte MacLeod

ScaredyKIT Stephen King and Family
Will sit this one out.

SFFFKIT Award winners and nominees
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (finished in December)

BingoDOG
Re-Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson (mentioned in another book--Murder for Pleasure by Howard Haycraft)

Other
Quarry: A Nameless Detective Mystery by Bill Pronzini
The Case of the Famished Parson by George Bellairs
The Ampersand Papers by Michael Innes

=====================
Notes for finishing up BingoDOG
Book Bullets:
The Second Rider by Alex Beer -- also December SeriesCAT
Closed Doors by Lisa O'Donnell—also RandomCAT.
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion —also RandomCAT.
The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell —also RandomCAT.
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths -- also December SeriesCAT
Elizabeth: A Novel of the Unnatural by Jessica Hamilton
Our Mother's House by Julian Gloag
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell -- also December CalendarCAT
A is for Arsenic by Kathryn Harkup—will work best in 2020
The Gentlewomen by Laura Talbot
Mad Puppetstown by M. J. Farrell
Molten Mud Murder by Sara E. Johnson--NZ setting
The Commandant by Jessica Anderson
The Trail of the Serpent by M. E. Braddon
The Chuckling Fingers by Mabel Seeley
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
The Poison Thread by Laura Purcell

Done Graphic Novel
Murder by Crowquill edited by Joe Zabel would provide the AlphaKIT Z
several would provide the AlphaKIT R
Bring down the Night would be a series that's new to me; same with Plastic Man Archives Volume 1 and Kabuki: Circle of Blood and some others.
Plastic Man Archives Volume 1 is by Jack Cole, who was born in December.
The Magic Flute is an adaptation of an opera by Mozart, who died in December.
Cyclone Bill and the Tall Tales begins with a letter in December, so it works for RandomCAT

DoneFairy Tale
The Boy Who Drew Cats would be a quick and easy option. —also RandomCAT.
The Brownies and Other Tales would work for this square or for the Children's square. It includes some Christmas stories, so suitable for CalendarCAT.
Bluebeard's Keys and Other Stories by Anne Thackeray would be very enjoyable. —also RandomCAT.

Children's/YA
The Baby's Opera would be another very quick and easy option, and it would cover AlphaKIT's E-R as well.
A Wizard of Earthsea has an E.
Freckles, The House of Dies Drear, and A Wizard of Earthsea are all series new to me.

Translation
Ideas: Hotel Bosphorus, The Scandals of Clochemerle, Claudine at School, Segu, The Crocodile, The Iron King, The Blackcoats, The Widow Lerouge, Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, Grooks, Death in Breslau, Entanglement, The Emigrants, Havana Blue, Captain Alatriste, Alberta and Jacob, The Axe, River of Shadows, Death in August are all series new to me.

Done Weather
Fog of Doubt by December-born Christianna Brand

DECEMBER

CalendarCAT December associations: Christmas, Hanukkah, Sagittarius, Capricorn, narcissus, turquoise, zircon, tanzanite
Possibilities: Patrick Ruell, Red Christmas
A Hard Winter Rain by Michael Blair

RandomCAT: Season's Readings (book whose title begins with any of the letters in the month of December)
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

SeriesCAT: Series that's new to you
A couple of the book bullets listed in November would work; also several series in translation: and some graphic novels.
Adastra in Africa by Barry Windsor-Smith

TBRCAT A book I bought because it was so cheap (library sale, remainder table, etc)
I have many to choose from!
The Brownies and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing

AlphaKIT E, R
No Bones About It by Ruth Sawtell Willis
Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
The Brownies and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

ScaredyKIT Small Press/Indie (or catch up on a previous category)
Does a reprint by a small press count? I'm thinking of The Lady of Frozen Death and Other Weird Tales, from Necronomicon Press, but I also have some other options.

SFFFKIT End-of-the-Year Wrap Up
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick

BingoDOG
A Hard Winter Rain by Michael Blair (weather)
The Brownies and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing (fairy tales)
Adastra in Africa by Barry Windsor-Smith (graphic novel)
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths (book bullet)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (translation)
Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott (children's)

Other
The Black Box by Michael Connelly

Good luck with your reading!

Have a great reading year and enjoy the hike up Mt TBR!

I love how you have planned for each of the challenges over the year - this is exactly the set-up I may copy for next year! :)

Thanks everyone!!

Happy hiking on Mount TBR!

Welcome and happy hiking!!

Great job combing through your TBR heap to find lots of great reads for next year! I look forward to following along.

Looks like you are ready to climb mountain TBR with your setup!

I have been having lots of fun finding books in my library here on LT that fit the categories. The trick will be finding the physical objects!!!

This looks like a fun hike! I look forward to following.

Thanks, Vivienne! And thank you for getting the CalendarCAT started for January!

Good luck and Happy New Year!

JANUARY SUMMARY

I finished Honeymoon in Hell for this month's SFFKIT challenge (and a BingoDOG square). It's a collection of SF stories from the 1950s. I really enjoyed it, but it does have a very strong 1950s feel. Lots of atom bomb/Cold War stuff. Another reviewer described all this as dated--I prefer to think of it as "of its time". Fredric Brown has a conversational style that I particularly enjoyed.

So, I enjoyed my Fredric Brown short stories enough that I picked up one of his mystery novels from the same physical shelf and read it. One for the Road was also very enjoyable, although the plot depends upon a big coincidence. Only after I had read it did I realize it is a double homophone title. So that's another Bingo square!

My selection for this month's TBRCAT was The Computer Kill by Raymond Banks. I purchased this 1961 paperback original at a Salvation Army in Redondo Beach, California in the early 1990s, and yes, it's been waiting patiently ever since. It turns out that some of the book is set in Redondo Beach. I'm sure this isn't a coincidence, but I'm not sure how it came about. The story is a funny mashup of straight Spillane-type PI tale and parody of the same! Not one I'll be reading again--the RB connection was what kept me engaged.

The Maltese Falcon is on the NPR 100 Killer Thrillers list, so it counted for this month's ScaredyKIT. While there's plenty of killing (I lost count--3 or 4?), it isn't really a thriller so much as a novel. I read it with that expectation and it went well.

For CalendarCAT, I read Under Capricorn by Helen De Guerry Simpson, made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. I plan to watch it soon. A slow start but then engrossing. Set in Sydney, Australia, in 1831-1832, its focus is the relationship between Samson Flusky, an emancipist, and his wife Lady Henrietta Flusky, daughter of a Irish earl, who is succumbing to alcoholism when 20-year-old Charles Adare, who knew Lady Hattie in Ireland, comes into their lives. Four stars.

On the long MLK day weekend, with lots of snow, I read Thumbprint by Friedrich Glauser. It offers a complex plot, an interesting Swiss sergeant and setting, and for Simenon/Maigret fans it will be manna from heaven. It's not really my type of mystery but I enjoyed nonetheless. 3.5*.

Another long weekend read was The Strangler Fig by John Stephen Strange, whose real name was Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett. This mystery from 1930 is set on an island off the coast of Florida and offers an elaborate Golden Age plot. Somewhat melodramatic but fun.

My AlpaKIT Q read was The Sunburnt Queen, about an 18th century European girl named Bessie who is castaway on the southeast coast of South Africa and marries a prince. No, this is not fiction! The first half was five stars awesome; overall, four stars.

Great job filling all those challenges! I'm trying Glauser's The Chinaman at some point.

>30 rabbitprincess: Thanks, rabbitprincess! I have been having fun identifying books that fit the categories.

JANUARY SUMMARY part 2
I satisfied 2 CATs and a BingoDOG square with Death in the Blue Lake by André Bjerke. RandomCAT called for "your name in print," and Bjerke is a family name. André gets me the A for AlphaKIT.

Death in the Blue Lake is a great mystery story as well. I haven't made up my mind how I feel about the solution but no doubt it is a virtuoso performance. Four stars.

JANUARY SUMMARY part 3

Today I finished Pink Flannel by Ruth Park, an Australian author. I loved, loved, loved this book. It is the mid 1920s in the small town of Te Kano on the North Island of New Zealand. Jenny Hood, 8, lives with her four young aunts ages 17 to 23, the Misses Admiral. She narrates (as an adult) the story of about a year in her life, when she becomes friends with Pou, an elderly Maori magician and survivor of the Maori wars; when Auntie Louisa is in love with a young man who raises pigs; when Jenny goes to stay with her Aunt Fedora who sees f-a-i-r-i-e-s and her grandfather, who terrorizes the family; when Jenny humiliates herself by pretending that an aviator is her father. The story is hilarious, sweet, sad, happy. Five stars.

JANUARY SUMMARY part 4

My last January read was They Rang Up the Police by Joanna Cannan. This Golden Age mystery by an established English novelist offers a family of a mother and three "girls", actually middle-aged spinsters. They call each other "darling" all the time and boss around their cook and three maids. In fact, Delia, "the man of the family" (actually she likes men herself, like the mediocre but handsome groom she employs to look after her horses), fires one of the maids at the start of the book because the maid stayed out with her gentleman friend after 10 pm. The next morning Delia is missing. So what does the family do? They ring up the police. Four stars.

>33 NinieB: Have you read Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park? I got this when it was first published in 1980 and I attribute my love of time travel books to this book!

>35 JayneCM: No, Jayne, I have not. I live in the US and this is the first Ruth Park book I have read. I felt very lucky that Pink Flannel showed up at my local library book sale! Tell me more about Playing Beatie Bow. Is Beatie a name, by the way? I'm having trouble interpreting the title.

Happy February, everyone! I like February as it's my birth month. Anyone else get that little possessive thrill for your month?

I have completed my Calendar Cat read for the month and I'm sorry to report it did not meet expectations. The book was The 31st of February. It's a grim and dreary portrait of life in post-WWII London. Anderson's wife has died on February 4, three weeks previously, in an apparent accidental fall down the basement stairs. An advertising executive, he is performing poorly at work; things only get worse when the date on his brass desktop calendar keeps mysteriously changing back to February 4. . . . While admittedly I read this psychological novel in one sitting (i.e., it's quite readable), I can't say I enjoyed it.

>36 NinieB: The main character is 14 year old Abigail and she is transported back in time to colonial Sydney after playing a playground ghost game called Beatie Bow. Beatie Bow is the ghost of a girl that you invoke in the game (a bit like Mary, Bloody Mary, if you have ever played that!) and for Abigail the game actually works. Then, of course, she meets the actual Beatie Bow. I loved it and the movie.

>38 JayneCM: Sounds great! I love time travel to the past, as in Time and Again. Another less well known that I have read is The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser.

I checked and Playing Beatie Bow is available from my library. It's going on my TBR. Thanks!

>39 NinieB: Yay - two more books for my list! The Mirror sounds totally intriguing as it is not just time travel but inhabitating another person in the past.
Hope you enjoy Beatie Bow!

Time and Again is a classic. It was my Beatie Bow! And The Mirror really is great, as well.

FEBRUARY SUMMARY PART 1

My second CAT read this month (TBRCAT) was The Second Man by Edward Grierson. It's a very good courtroom mystery. The narrator, Michael Irvine, is a barrister in an unnamed Yorkshire city. His colleague, Marion Kerrison, is a female barrister--a novelty in the 1950s. Michael is junior to Marion in defending the accused, John Maudsley, at trial for the murder of his aunt. The problem: His aunt's companion, Jane Birman, will testify that she saw Maudsley descending the stairs at the aunt's house the evening of the murder. Grierson writes a compelling trial for the middle third of the book, and there's an interesting appeal scene as well.

This book also garners a Bingo square for a prize-winning book, in this case the CWA Gold Dagger for 1956.

>42 NinieB: I’ve wishlisted The Second Man on account of it having an appeal scene. My impression is that appeal scenes are unusual in crime fiction. I’m assuming you meant “appeal” in the legal sense.

>43 haydninvienna: Yes, a legal appeal. It takes place in the Court of Criminal Appeals in London. The procedure is quite different from American appellate procedure. And I agree, it's very unusual.

Edward Grierson was himself a barrister.

>44 NinieB: I’m an Australian lawyer myself. That’s why it’s so interesting. Appeals are usually unbearably tedious to non-lawyers, not to say incomprehensible. I’m interested to know how he made it interesting enough for a crime novel.

>45 haydninvienna: Well, he actually has witnesses testify. I know, I know, it seems crazy. But he has a legal explanation and it actually serms plausible given that it's the 1950s and there's a death sentence hanging over the defendant's head. I was an appellate lawyer (in the US) for a number of years, and the explanation makes sense in context.

FEBRUARY SUMMARY part 2

I just read another great Ruth Park book. This one, Playing Beatie Bow, is a juvenile/YA book recommended by Jayne CM--thanks Jayne!! I loved this book almost as much as the previous Ruth Park I read (Pink Flannel). Playing Beatie Bow works on several levels. First, it offers great entertainment just for the plot: Abigail, 14, a contemporary Sydney resident, travels in time back to 1873. There she becomes entwined in the life of a family from the Orkney Islands. Second, it is a coming-of-age novel that adults can enjoy as much as the target juvenile/YA audience. Abigail grows both physically and emotionally over the course of the story. Third, Abigail's thoughtful reflections on the differences in past and contemporary Sydney, both socially and physically, are fascinating.

>46 NinieB: Wow, that's brave of him. I wonder if it got reviewed in any of the legal periodicals? Just to see what was said about that. Best to just read the book, I suppose. On the list it goes!

>48 haydninvienna: I hope you enjoy it! I certainly did.

I'm also taking a book bullet for The Second Man! The courtroom aspect sounds fascinating.

>50 christina_reads: Me too, me too!

.... and I’ve just ordered a copy. NinieB, you must have increased Grierson’s current sales by quite a bit.

>50 christina_reads: >51 rabbitprincess: >52 haydninvienna: I hope you all enjoy it!

I've added it to my wishlist as well.

>54 hailelib: Great! we're forming a group!

FEBRUARY SUMMARY part 3

I have finished two books so far this week.

Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth, was an easier read than I expected. It has quite a bit of plot, and by the time I reached the third and last volume (my library copy was printed with the three original volumes in one), I was well and truly sucked in--I read compulsively to the end. My copy has two animals, a horse and a dog, on the cover, so that's a Bingo square.

Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy by Barbara Paul is an enjoyable mystery without murder. Megan wakes up on a golf course with no memory of how she got there or of the preceding 38 hours. Subsequent events show that she has been hypnotized in order to tinker with operations at her employer. But who is responsible, and what are they trying to accomplish? Because of the hypnosis plot, I'm claiming the medicine/health Bingo square.

FEBRUARY SUMMARY part 4

Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor was a one-evening read for me. I liked the character development that propelled the narrative. Bujold's writing is more than competent with some nice descriptions of nature in the different worlds. She also has a great sense of humor which she uses to great effect. The Machiavellian political strategizing I am less keen on--at a couple of points I did not have enugh explanation to keep up, but then I wasn't slowing down to make sure I got it, so that's on me. I will make sure more Vorkosigan is in my future.

I claimed the Debut novel square on my bingo card, and this is my book for this month's SFFKIT.

FEBRUARY SUMMARY part 5

I binge-read Living Dead in Dallas and Club Dead this weekend. Overall, I like the books better than True Blood, which I always found difficult to follow. Back in the 1990s, I really enjoyed the Aurora Teagarden mysteries (such as Real Murders), because they were a somewhat unusual (then) blend of "cozy" and Southern Gothic, although Harris wasn't always completely successful. The Julius House in my view had the best atmosphere. So when Harris struck it big with Sookie Stackhouse, I was glad that she was being appreciated by a wider audience. But while I eventually read Dead Until Dark, otherwise I just never followed Harris into the 21st century, until now for ScaredyKIT. I'm glad I finally did--Sookie is a great heroine.

FEBRUARY SUMMARY part 6

I finished Old Kensington (1873) by "Miss Thackeray", the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. Her given name was Anne; a couple of years later she married Richmond Ritchie, subsequently Sir Richmond, so today she is usually referred to as Anne Thackeray Ritchie or Lady Ritchie. I'm amazed that this very good novel has been mostly ignored for the last 100 years. A few scholarly articles have discussed it, and a British publisher reprinted it with another Anne Thackeray novel in the 1990s, but that's it. She does get rather Victorian in places--it's lengthy and full of the narrator's comments. I enjoy Victorian novels, but they do require patience. Nonetheless I loved this story of how Dolly Vanborough found the courage to follow her own course in the wake of grief. Thackeray's prose is lovely: her descriptions of natural settings are rich and exquisite. Moreover, the novel is a commentary on the place of traditional England in the face of advancing empire. I will be reading more Anne Thackeray.

>59 NinieB: Oh, this sounds intriguing! Off to investigate...

>60 MissWatson: I read a print book (from 1874!), but it is in text on Project Gutenberg, and InternetArchive has several PDFs.

>61 NinieB: Thanks, I downloaded a couple of PDFs from OpenLibrary.

>59 NinieB: BB for me too!

>62 MissWatson:, >63 christina_reads: I hope you both enjoy it!

FEBRUARY SUMMARY part 7

Five Little Peppers Midway is the first sequel to the classic Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. I did not find it as enjoyable as the original. Polly and Phronsie play a central role, with Mrs Pepper getting center stage parrt way through.

I read Five Little Peppers Midway for SeriesCAT's February topic, children/YA.

FEBRUARY SUMMARY part 8

I ended up reading Death on the Riviera by John Bude for RandomCAT--the theme this month is We Need a Break! While Inspector Meredith and Sergeant Strang are on the Riviera to find a suspected currency forger, they don't fail to notice that the Riviera in February is a heck of a lot nicer than London in February. An enjoyable 1952 murder mystery from British Library Crime Classics.

>39 NinieB: I've got The Mirror sitting on my shelves from who knows when - could've been something I picked up in high school! Thanks for bumping it up my TBR!

>67 LisaMorr: Awesome! I hope you enjoy it!

MARCH Part 1

I'm quite excited about the reading I have planned for March. This month has some great challenges which will keep me reading enthusiastically. I just finished my SeriesCAT book for this month:

The Harp in the South was Ruth Park's first published book; it won the £2000 first prize for best novel in a 1946 literary competition sponsored by the Sydney Morning Herald. While many readers found it unpleasantly sordid, as it depicts grim poverty in Surry Hills, Sydney, but more readers (based on the Herald's report of letters it received) supported it. I thought it was wonderful. Yes, we see grime, bugs, ignorance, cheap alcohol, and death; but we also see love, growing up, joy, and optimism. (Just a couple of warnings: one brief scene involves animal cruelty, and unpleasant racial epithets are used.)

This is my third Ruth Park book in three months. She has very quickly become one of my favorite authors.

I just read Under the Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher, for the AlphaKIT-- this month's letters are U and L. This Australian police procedural features Acting Sergeant Alan Auhl of Melbourne, a veteran who after retiring has returned to work on the Cold Case Squad. In this book he closes three cases, builds a friendship with Detective Constable Claire Pascal, and provides moral support for a young mother trying to protect her daughter from her husband. Disher's police procedurals always shine, and this one is no different in that regard. If you like procedurals but you haven't read Disher, you are missing out. I hope Auhl returns.

I read Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and About Women in America, 1820-70 this week, which dovetails nicely with yesterday's International Woman's Day. I do recommend this book to those who want to explore what American women were writing in the 19th century, as long as they don't mind lots of spoilers (I figure I'll forget all the details by the time I get around to reading any of the books).

The Boy in the Suitcase is a Danish thriller that is also a character study, and unlike many such stories it actually works in a most impressive way. Nina Borg's actions make complete sense based on her character, as do those of the other main characters. The suspense is intense and compelling. Highly recommended for lovers of Scandinavian crime fiction.

I read it for this month's RandomCAT as it is set in two EU countries, Denmark and Lithuania. It's also a Bingo square, a work in translation.

>71 NinieB:

That might be interesting.

Indeed, this book offers a gamut of possibilities for the historically inclined.

>69 NinieB: I also liked The Harp in the South and must read the rest of that trilogy soon. It's been waiting on my Kindle. She was married to D'Arcy Niland, who wrote The Shiralee, another Australian classic.

>70 NinieB: Have you read any of Garry Disher's Hal Challis series, police procedurals set on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne? I searched for a new one, just in case, but had to settle for the latest in the Wyatt series, The Heat, instead. It's an entertaining series too, but Wyatt is a criminal and, given a choice, I prefer goodies to baddies.

>75 pamelad: I will be reading the rest of the Harp trilogy soon; both are available at local libraries. And I'll probably plan to buy them when I come across them. And after I finish the trilogy I'll gobble up any other Ruth Park I can.

I love both Hal Challis and Wyatt--both are so well written! I'm not sure where I am in either series so I'll need to sort that out. While Under the Cold Bright Lights is more Hal Challis procedural, there's a little twist of Wyatt as well. I'm also looking forward to reading Bitter Wash Road, which is getting very strong ratings.

One for the short story list: I finally finished The Lock and Key Library: North Europe: Russian, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, originally published in 1909. This series has the subtitle "the Most Interesting Stories of all nations" and they are "interesting" in the plot-heavy sense. I did mot read the abridgement of Crime and Punishment since at some point I'd like to read the full novel. I think my favorite story was Steen Blicher's The Rector of Veilbye, a Danish story, sort of a precursor to the detective story. Apparently Scandinavians have always written great crime fiction. My least favorite was the Mór Jókai story, "Thirteen at Dinner"--a disappointment since he was THE big Hungarian author in English translation of the nineteenth century.

For TBRCat this month, I read Daggers and Men's Smiles, a mystery by a Canadian author (Jill Downie) that I bought on a trip to Montreal. The story, however, is not even slightly Canadian. Instead, it is set on the island of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. That, and the author's nice writing style, are probably the best features of the book. Otherwise, I had a number of problems: The story contains a lot of material that is extraneous to the murder plot; I couldn't keep the many different characters straight; the detection was of the "gut feeling" style--I can't imagine a real detective jumping to the conclusions that Moretti did. I might read another mystery by Jill Downie, but I'm sure not going to seek one out.

SFF-Kit called for mystery with sci-fi or fantasy, so I read Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris. Four stars.

Another book I read this weekend is What Did I Do Tomorrow? by L.P. Davies. Seventeen-year-old Howell Trowson, while pondering whether to go to Oxford or to join his father's pharmaceutical company, suddenly finds himself in an unknown office in London, five years later. Convinced he has something to learn about his future, he sets out to discover what has happened in the intervening five years. Turns out--a lot. I enjoyed this 1972 book a lot, as it's a quick, fun read: four stars from me. However another LT reviewer gave it 1 star, so your mileage may vary.

Just finished reading Anne Thackeray's Five Old Friends, and A Young Prince (1868), in which the five old friends are Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack the Giant-Killer, each told as a contemporary short story or novella. A Young Prince is a charming little fantasy of the subjects of art in a London house coming off the walls one night. All are told with the style I enjoyed so much in Old Kensington.

March ended differently than I expected with my husband gone for the last week of the month and not returning until mid-April. And somehow the result is that I've read much less than usual. Nonetheless—a couple of updates.

The Story of Elizabeth was my third Anne Thackeray work. Apparently it was a big hit in 1863 but the story of an 18-year-old girl whose mother marries a Protestant French minister didn't do so much for me. Nonetheless I am queuing up her second novel, The Village on the Cliff.

Enter Sir John was a 1928 collaboration in the detective story vein by two respected novelists, Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson. I liked it very much—I'm always a sucker for a Great Detective like Sir John Samaurez, a popular West End actor-manager (meaning he produced his own plays as well as some touring companies'). I'm starting to conclude that in the 1920s the conventions of the Golden Age were a bit more fluid in that publishers did not enforce a particular rhythm. Here the trial is in the first third, the true murderer is identified at about 75%, and the novelistic plot is still spinning itself out up to the end. That's not what I expected!

Neither book goes towards a challenge but there's plenty of April left for challenge reading. UPDATE: I have claimed both books for the quarterly S in AlphaKIT.

I have read my first challenge for the month, SeriesCAT (series you've been meaning to get back to. I went with Casino by Peter Corris, number 18 in the long-running Cliff Hardy series. Cliff is a private detective in Sydney, who inevitably gets beat-up, tailed, threatened, etc. over the course of a book, and just as inevitably returns the favors. These are rather classic hard-boiled tales, written in terse, clear style, with some Australian slang and frequent mentions of local landmarks. For example, Cliff shops in Gleebooks, longtime Sydney independent book store. (My used copy came with a Gleebooks sticker.)

In this outing Cliff recommends a friend for a job as the head of security at the new Sydney casino. Two months later the friend is dead; his widow hires Cliff to find out what happened.

Four stars.

I read my SFF-Kit challenge yesterday--it's Sword and Sorcery month.. My library has Conan the Barbarian {Gnome 1954} by Robert E. Howard. It contains 5 of the original stories written by Howard. Overall I was pleasantly surprised.

I completed this month's AlphaKIT challenge with Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope (also an alliterative title for the BingoDOG square). Miss Mackenzie is in her mid-thirties, and naturally good, when she unexpectedly inherits around £10,000, enough to live comfortably in 1865. She moves to a fashionable watering-place, where she joins an evangelical church with a squinting but ambitious curate. Her brother's business partner shows up asking for a loan. And she spends the Christmas holidays with her uncle, aunt, and cousins, all of whom believe that the money she inherited rightfully belongs to them.

Trollope is at his most humorous in this novel with a complex plot. He gives minor characters names like Fuzzybell and Frigidy, and Miss Mackenzie's lawyers are Slow & Bideawhile. Although the modern mindset might boggle a little at the form that Miss Mackenzie's goodness takes, if you enjoy ironic Trollope, you should enjoy this one.

>84 NinieB: I like Trollope but have never come across this title. It is now on my wish list!

>85 Tess_W: I hope you enjoy it too! If you have read any of the Palliser novels, Lady Glencora and the Duchess of St. Bungay make cameo appearances.

>86 NinieB: Lady Glencora? That clinches it. BB taken.

Miss Mackenzie is the first novel Trollope published after Can You Forgive Her?. Enjoy!!

For April's TBRCAT I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I gave it five stars as it really had everything: great plot, absorbing characters, fascinating psychology, and dark atmosphere. AndI thought the length was just right for the story. My copy was 146 pages, and I can't think of anything that seemed extraneous or, conversely, rushed. Sign me up for more Shirley Jackson, please.

I also got the Bingo square for 6+ words in title.

ScaredyKIT's challenge this month is to read a thriller or horror published between 2014 and 2019. The only suitable books in my TBR were volumes of short stories, and I wasn't sure I was prepared to tackle either one. So I looked at what my public library had available as an ebook and found Fool Me Once (2016) by Harlan Coben. This thriller was a quick read. For most of it, I was so underwhelmed. Mainly the writing was pedestrian enough that I didn't care what the real story was. The characters were straight from Central Casting, the protagonist (Maya) just seemed to keep running around New Jersey and Philadelphia... I was all ready to give it 3 stars or even less. Finally I got to the main twist, and I will admit it was a good enough twist that I gave it 3.5 stars.

For one of my few remaining BingoDOG squares, I read Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg (1970). In the 6th of this series, the Inspector is trying to prove that the most powerful man in a country town murdered his wife 15 years previously. In the course of the book, he has to overcome rioters, hidden witnesses, murderous goondas, a fasting swami, and more. His persistence and passion for his job carries him through.

I ended up reading The Eldest Son by Archibald Marshall for Siblings Day in CalendarCAT. This 1911 book is the second in a series called The Clinton Chronicles. Eldest son Dick Clinton, heir to Kencote, plans to marry Virginia Dubec, widow of Lord George Dubec. Problem is, she's an American, had a brief stage career, and her husband was a thorough blackguard. Dick's father, the Squire, can't abide the thought of such a daughter-in-law, and he refuses to meet Virginia. Before long the Squire declares he will cut Dick out of his will if he marries Virginia. The second son, Humphrey, who also wants to marry, sees an opportunity to improve his financial circumstances, and it's the relationship between brothers Dick and Humphrey that is of interest for Siblings Day.

Marshall, an English author, was frequently compared to Anthony Trollope both in England and the US. He pictures a conservative, country-life England, in which the landed gentry sense change coming but resist it, apparently with success. Based on reading two of his numerous novels, I think in some way he is missing the Trollope charm, but on his own merits he succeeds in writing novels that engage me. His plots and characterization were good, and he was a graceful writer who effectively sprinkled gentle satire throughout the story.

I started Skeleton Dance on April 30 and finished it this evening. I really enjoyed the Gideon Oliver series back in the '90s, but when I've read a couple more recent ones in the last few months they've seemed sort of mechanical. And sadly while the name fit the theme for this month's RandomCAT (I could have danced all night), no dancing occurred in the story.

I have finished Cold Comfort Farm (for TBRCAT) and it is a fun one (Flora, the heroine, would say it is amusing or diverting). I would now like to read one of the melodramatic, earthy novels that it parodies, as well as Mansfield Park, one of the Jane Austen novels that is name-checked. Four stars for two evenings of high-quality entertainment.

Some of the novels that are parodied:
The House in Dormer Forest, Mary Webb
Sussex Gorse, Sheila Kaye-Smith
Susan Spray, Sheila Kaye-Smith
Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
Mr Weston's Good Wine, T. F. Powys

From Hammill, Faye. "Cold Comfort Farm, D. H. Lawrence, and English Literary Culture between the Wars." Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 47, no. 4, 2001, pp. 831.

I loved Cold Comfort Farm and >89 NinieB: We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Currently enjoying >88 NinieB: Miss Mackenzie.

>94 NinieB: Three great novels! So glad you are enjoying Miss Mackenzie!

Well, I have finally finished my April reading by completing Wolf Hall this evening. I read it for April's RandomCAT. In addition to having won the Booker Prize, it was also the 2010 champion of the Tournament of Books.

I quite liked it, definitely 4 stars, even though I dislike extensive use of the present tense in novels. I also was slowed down by the confusing use of "him" and "he" for Cromwell even when another male was mentioned immediately previously. And my Kindle app kept telling me I would be done much sooner than I actually was. This book calls for a slower reading pace than I can manage with, say, a Sookie Stackhouse story.

For ScaredyKIT this month, I read The Other by Thomas Tryon. It is psychological horror, achieved without use of the supernatural. It also offers a fully evoked summer of 1935, in small-town Connecticut. And twins. While I had intended some other "May" reading for CalendarCAT, and I still might, for now I'm also using this for May, in reference to Gemini, which is the astrological sign for May 21 to June 21, and is represented by the twins Castor and Pollux. Who, I hope, were not horrific children.

Thanks to SeriesCAT, I have completed No Barrier, last volume in Eleanor Dark's Timeless Land trilogy. The trilogy is the story of the colony of New South Wales through 1815. I strongly recommend reading all three novels in order. I spread it out over a couple of years, because the three books as a whole are almost 1500 pages, but I wish I had read it a bit closer together so I could appreciate the character and theme development over the entire three volumes. A five-star trilogy, highly recommended.

>99 NinieB: I have the first book of that trilogy on my to-read list! Good to know that it benefits from each volume being read somewhat close together, and glad that it comes highly recommended!

>99 NinieB: I just put the 1st book in the trilogy on my wish list!

>100 rabbitprincess: >101 Tess_W: Yay! I was hoping some of you would be interested! The first novel, by itself, is a five-star read.

>99 NinieB: Great review, I've made a note of the author. Thanks for putting it on my radar!

>103 MissWatson: Thank you! I hope you find time to explore Dark's writing.

>104 NinieB: I just realised why the title Timeless Land sounded so familiar. It was made into a TV series which German TV showed in the early 1980s. I remember next to nothing, but that's an additional reason to go bookhunting.

>105 MissWatson: Yes! My copies of Storm of Time and No Barrier were tie-ins for the TV series, with color photos on the covers.

Hannah Says Foul Play is a paperback digest original from 1946. It is a solid detective story with Hannah Van Doren as the blonde, blue-eyed, tiny, feminine magazine journalist who solves the murder. She also knows jujitsu and loves the thrill of danger. Fair play is the order of the day. The 1940s slang and setting are fun and the Palm Springs setting is vivid. The story's main faults are having too many characters and dragging out the story during the first half or so.

I read this novel for AlphaKIT's letters H and V.

Another Bingo square—Eastern Europe—with the delightful The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka. The Lieutenant is a cop in Prague in the 1960s. In a linked series of stories, he solves locked-room mysteries and the like while we gradually grow to understand his character and get to know his family and his police colleagues. Clasdic mystery lovers will enjoy the references to Edgar Allan Poe, Vidocq, Ellery Queen, and others.

For the Artistic Character bingoDOG square: Death in Amsterdam, by Nicolas Freeling. The artist is the homicide victim. This book was Van der Valk's first outing. The portrayal of Dutch criminal procedure is quite interesting. Several mentions of Simenon and Maigret, and at least one Raymond Chandler quote.

After spending the first month of June reading Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle, which I will comment on later this month, I read Appleby's Answer for this month's SeriesCAT. It's the 27th in the Sir John Appleby series authored by the late Michael Innes, pseudonym of J. I. M. Stewart. (This is the number given by LT and includes two short story collections.)

As is common with Appleby novels, we have an English rural setting populated with traditional types, but improbabilities and whimsy predominate. Here, Miss Pringle, a moderately successful mystery writer, encounters what appears to be the epitome of an English gentleman in a first-class railway carriage, reading one of her own mysteries. This gentleman, General Bulkington, starts asking Miss Pringle about the possibility of their collaborating on a detective tale--except Miss Pringle thinks he actually wants her to come up with a good way to murder his neighbor. That same evening, at the London dinner of a detective writer society, Sir John Appleby, the guest of honor, hears a similar story from another mystery writer.

This mystery is something of an amuse-bouche, in that nothing very serious ever happens. Having read the previous 26, I'm now thoroughly accustomed to not knowing what to expect in any of Innes's books, and to letting the absurdity unfold (here we get, for example, an unfriendly billy goat in a midnight garden.

In 1844 a family of six children and two parents set out on the Oregon Trail. On the trail a seventh child was born . . . and both the parents died. A thousand miles from Oregon, the oldest of the seven children, John Sager age 13, determined to keep the family together and fulfill his father's dream of farming in Oregon.

This is the true story upon which On to Oregon!, a children's book published in 1926, is based. My copy was published under the title Seven Alone, and so I read it for this month's RandomCAT (I drew the seven of clubs). While the style of writing is rather old-fashioned, and some comments about the native Americans encountered on the Trail make this book not really suitable for contemporary children, for the historically minded who can place such comments in their historical context it can still be a good, enjoyable read, with some tension around the children's chances for success.

Those who prefer real history to fictionalized could try the memoir, Across the Plains in 1844 by Catherine Sager, John's younger sister.

In honor of the month of June, I read A Venetian June by Anna Fuller. This 1890s novel is relatively short--I read it in a couple of hours. Colonel Dan Steele and his nieces, Pauline and May Beverly, spend June in Venice after wintering in Rome. There, Colonel Steele meets again the woman he has loved unsuccessfully for 35 years, Mrs. Daymond. She and her son Geoffry, and Geoffry's friend Oliver Kenwick, see the sights of Venice with Dan, Pauline, and May. The magic of Venice is in the air.

I enjoyed this light novel. While love is an element, it's not the only emotion driving the characters. The novel is written in a somewhat elaborate style typical of its time.

So . . . I have been taking a vacation from reading. I have the best intentions but I seem to keep getting sucked into genealogy (mainly playing around on Ancestry) and knitting in my free time. I haven't finished anything since I posted about A Venetian June. When I find something I really want to read, I'll go for it even if it doesn't fit any categories.

>113 NinieB: Yeah, Ancestry can provide many hours of wasted enjoyable time. Any brickwalls we can help you crumble?

Knitting is good too! What have you been making?

>114 kac522: Maybe, if you can help me travel back in time to Culpeper County, Virginia, in 1774!

>115 rabbitprincess: A cardigan with some lovely silk Lana Grossa. Lots of leafy, cable-y texture.

I have done some reading, too. I'm part way through both The Library Book by Susan Orlean and The Obituary Club by Hugh Pentecost.

Yes! I have finally finished some books again!

First, The Obituary Club.



I picked up this 50s mystery for the good girl art cover by Robert Maguire. It's not a bad mystery either, but its 190 pages are stuffed with something like 13 major characters (including 3 detectives) and a bewildering amount of plot. Although it's set in New York city, Hollywood and anti-Communism play a role. Fuller review if you follow the touchstone.

Second, The Stillwater Tragedy. This 1880 murder mystery is honestly not worth reading for the mystery, although the opening is notable for 1880. What kept me reading was the setting in a factory village with lots of everyday life in the 19th century casually discussed. I gave it 3.5 stars but I may back that off to 3 stars . . . Again, fuller review at the touchstone.

The Obituary Club by Hugh Pentecost is my July AlphaKIT book. The Stillwater Tragedy has cousins at the center of the plot, and July 24 is National Cousins Day, according to some--so it's for CalendarCAT.

I've been out of pocket over the weekend for a conference. Now I'm on vacation (hallelujah). It's a staycation, which is sounding pretty much perfect right now.

I picked out a book for RandomCAT for my travel reading: Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness is a cozy mystery set in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. The protagonist, Ladarat, is the nurse ethicist at northern Thailand's best hospital. She is approached by a police detective (Wiriya) known for his honesty for help about a possible murder involving the hospital's emergency room. The author, David Casarett, is an American physician and medical school professor, who has spent a fair amount of time in Thailand working with Thai physicians and nurses.

I enjoyed this contemporary mystery; the setting is different and he offers some gentle humor along with several threads of story. Probably for those who enjoy light fiction with a touch of mystery. I have the second book in the series and I'm looking forward to getting to know Ladarat and Wiriya better.

I just finished reading The Godwin Sideboard by John Malcolm, an English mystery that is the second in a series. I should have read A Back Room in Somers Town first, as it is first, and also somewhere in my TBR, but couldn't find it and decided to just hope for no spoilers. It's sort of British hard-boiled, feels very 80s (published 1984), stars and is narrated by Tim Simpson, who is the investment advisor for the Art Fund, which invests in art, antiques, and so forth. Tim sets out to buy a sideboard designed by Godwin and should cost around 25,000 pounds. Turns out scarcity isn't the only problem with buying this piece, when the antique dealer winds up dead. Tim isn't just an art and antiques advisor, he's also ex-rugger, so we get some two-fisted action as well.

Finally finished another ScaredyKIT challenge! It was somewhat easier to pick than usual because this is vacation month--no constraints. I read Fingers of Fear, a 1937 horror thriller. Let me tell you, they don't write them like this any more, which I think is a shame but many would probably disagree . . . . I really enjoyed this haunted-house/insanity-in-the-family shocker. Narrator Selden Seaverns is down on his luck in the depths of the Depression (1933) when a college acquaintance, Ormond Ormes, asks him to ghost-write a history of the Elizabethan influence on colonial American literature at Ormond's family home, Ormesby, in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, so Ormond can get a $100,000 inheritance (very roughly $2 million in 2019). Selden doesn't get very much done before he discovers that Ormesby is haunted and the Ormes family members are keeping secrets. But Selden soon finds himself so enmeshed in the family's problems that leaving will be very difficult. The writing is really over the top, of the had-I-but-known type. Recommended for those who like good old-fashioned melodrama, sensation, and horror.

I just read Jane @ Beyond Eden Rock's review of Mad Puppetstown by Molly Keane, and I'm eager to read it now . . . . Another for the unowned TBR list.

For SFFKIT this month's theme is space opera. I didn't even know what space opera is, so I was happy to find this quote from Kingsley Amis:

"In space-opera, Mars takes the place of Arizona with a few physical alterations, the hero totes a blaster instead of a six-gun."

Anyways, using the LT tag *space opera*, I found on my shelf Son of the Tree by Jack Vance. It's from 1951, pure vintage SF. Joe Smith of planet Earth is on a two-year quest, the nature of which is not revealed until quite late in the story. So he's working his way from planet to planet, and now finds himself on Kyril, where 2 million of the Druid class keep 5 billion of the Laity in servitude through worship of the Tree. This novelette is a zippy 110 pages, so I won't try to explain any more, except to say that attitudes several thousands of years after humankind's settlement of galaxies are, in fact, remarkably similar to attitudes in the USA in 1951. Nonetheless engaging depictions of imagined worlds.

The Old Gods Waken is the first of the five novels Manly Wade Wellman wrote about John the Balladeer, also known as Silver John. John is a wandering folk singer and guitar-player (the guitar has silver strings) in Southern Appalachia. He also featured in a number of short stories over the years. In this book, he is visiting Luke Forshay when Luke's father, Creed, discovers that the new neighbors, the Voths, who have English accents, are trying to claim some of his land as their own. When Creed objects, the Voths respond negatively, but then John apparently has success convincing them to withdraw their claim. However, John recognizes that something unusual is in the air, and calls on his friend, Holly Christopher, a folklorist at Chapel Hill. Holly comes to visit and is immediately intrigued by the Voths. She recommends that the Forshays get in touch with Chief Reuben Manco, also a folklorist, and a Cherokee medicine man. It quickly becomes evident that all Reuben Manco's powers are needed to overcome the Voths' plans.

The story is told in a mountain dialect, and much folklore is included. It's something of a mix of fantasy and horror. I read it for SeriesCAT's July theme, fantasy.

Ethan Frome fills my next-to-last Bingo square. I'm going to read a short graphic novel for the last square, then start over. I'm hoping to fill a second card by the end of the year (although that does mean reading a second graphic novel . . .).

I looked through some of the graphic novels around the house and came up with Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires, which I read in no time flat. It's my very first GN, but my husband loves them so we have a lot. I admit that it was fun, with Edward-Gorey-esque vampires. However, many of the illustrations reminded me of woodcuts the New York Times featured in the Book Review in the 1930s. And the human characters were in a smorgasbord of other styles.

And this is a landmark—I have filled in all the squares on Bingo card number one! I plan to complete another one this year.

1. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
2. Here to Stay by Mark Edwards
3. Adastra in Africa by Barry Windsor-Smith
4. Topper by Thorne Smith
5. The Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes
6. Digging Through Darkness by Carmel Schrire
7. Appleby's Other Story by Michael Innes
8. Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
9. The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury
10. Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley
11. Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis
12. The Brownies and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing
13. The Fifth Dagger by Dorothy Quick
14. A Cadenza for Caruso by Barbara Paul
15. Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
16. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
17. The Case of the Golddigger's Purse by Erle Stanley Gardner
18. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
19. The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
21. High Rising by Angela Thirkell
22. Toasted English by Marghanita Laski
23. Call Mr Fortune by H. C. Bailey
24. Re-Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson
25. A Hard Winter Rain by Michael Blair

Congrats on completing your first Bingo card! Good luck with the second :)

>127 rabbitprincess: Thanks! I'm looking forward to filling the categories with different books!

Congratulations on completing your first Bingo card, have fun filling in the second!

Enjoy your new Bingo card!

>129 DeltaQueen50: >130 MissWatson: Thank you! I tried "teal" for the marker color and it worked!! Who knows what colors could be created?

Speaking of the new Bingo card, I filled the first square, having finished Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis last night. While the primary setting is Denmark, the story begins in Hungary, with perhaps a quarter of the action taking place there. So . . . Eastern Europe square filled. I found Invisible Murder just as enthralling as The Boy in the Suitcase, but with less Nina Borg, who I think is fascinating. Some reviewers find her irritating, but her involvement in difficult situations like the one here is very much character-driven, and I want to understand more about what drives her.

Last night I finished The Library Book by Susan Orlean for Bingo square "LT rating of 4.0+". I said a bit more in the review at the link, but basically, if you're interested in public libraries or Los Angeles history read this book! Just be aware that it's an outsider's portrait of the workings of a library, and thus some emphases and approaches are a little off.

it's my first time on this website.

How do I read a book contribution?

>133 student02: Just click on my link to The Library Book to see LT's information about the work and to read reviews that other users have left. Welcome!

For "homophone in title" Bingo square, High Rising (hi, hie) by Angela Thirkell.

I finished this morning Guilty, or Not Guilty, a short collection of stories from a nineteenth-century writer of women's and children's fiction. The title novelette dates from 1890, according to Wikipedia, but some seem much earlier. The stories are a strong dose of sentimentality and weeping women who don't know their own minds. Not recommended.

This evening I finished the second of the two Ethical Chiang Mai Detective Agency novels, The Missing Guests of the Magic Grove Hotel. This one had a variety of mysteries, none particularly baffling, to be solved. I enjoy the writing style and the characters, as well as the Thai setting, so I'm OK with the relative lack of mystery. The Thai setting also means it satisfies this month's SeriesCAT challenge, a series book set in a country/region where you do not live.

Two more read (can you tell I'm on vacation?):

* The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald, for AlphaKIT "I". I had read a little more than half in February and in an effort to reduce my Currently Reading Shelf I picked it up and finished it yesterday evening. I'm still mulling my review of this one.

* Here to Stay by Mark Edwards, for BingoDOG (about or featuring siblings). This was a free Amazon Prime First Read. Description and good reviews lured me in. It's a relatively short thriller of the suburban-nightmare type, here evil in-laws. Evil is the book's word. I found this a quick read (about three hours; I'm a fast reader). While I won't rave about it, as I found it somewhat predictable, it has a very brisk pace, an easy-to-read writing style, and lots of twists and turns to keep you flipping the (virtual) pages. I read it in one sitting. Don't start this at bedtime on a work night--unless you're very disciplined or fall asleep no matter what, you'll stay up late!

>138 NinieB: Hope you're enjoying your vacation! Sometimes I find I read *less* on vacation than when I'm at home, which is annoying and seems to be missing the point of a holiday ;)

>139 rabbitprincess: Thanks, I am enjoying greatly. The reason I'm getting lots of reading in is that we didn't go out of town--I've just had 2.5 lovely weeks hanging out at home, having some fun adventures locally and getting in lots of reading. Monday is back to work, and as I work in academia it will be an abrupt switch to ramping up for the arrival of the first students on August 12. But I feel refreshed and ready to go!

For SFFKIT's alternate history challenge this month, I read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. This novel has lots to like, including a lively female protagonist-narrator (Thursday Next), tons of bookish humor, crime, and of course alternate history. Most notably, it's 1985 and the Crimean War, of which Thursday is a veteran, rages on. Other aspects of world history are different but I was most amused by the existence of the People's Republic of Wales.

The book also features a lot of fantasy and some sci-fi. These aspects were, strangely enough, my least favorite aspects of the plot. I think I just enjoyed the other aspects more.

>135 NinieB: That one is in my TBR pile. I need to get around to it!

>118 NinieB: Intriguing setting. I'll have to see if my library has it. ETA: Knox County has it on Overdrive.

>142 thornton37814: I do recommend both! The Thai setting in Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness is really enticing.

The great Australian author Eleanor Dark was born on 26 August 1901, and in her honor I read Lantana Lane, her last book, for CalendarCAT. It's not really a novel in the traditional sense, but instead a collection of interdependent, connected short stories and vignettes about the inhabitants of the ten small farms on a dead-end road in rural Queensland. While pineapples ("pines") are the main crop, the farmers make ends meet with other crops as well, such as oranges, beans, and macadamia nuts ("Bopplenuts"). Some chapters are laugh-out-loud funny, others poignant.

Lantana Lane is light-years away in tone, structure, etc. from Dark's most famous novel, The Timeless Land, and its two successors. But like those it too has something to say--the differences just highlight Dark's skills and talent.

The 1985 Introduction by Helen Garner in my Virago Press copy of Lantana Lane helped me contextualize this book. It also provided the perfect description to entice new readers:

"Its tone is light, lively and benevolent. Its humour is benign. Its observations of human behaviour, while razor sharp, are affectionately knowing, and informed with an attractive, amused tolerance. Its wit is without malice, blackness or strain. Its feminism is no more vitriolic than a firm but gentle chiacking of men in their self-importance and laconicism. It is not a novel of conflict, of character development, of strain and resolution. It is a contemplation of a particular microcosmic isolated little farming community 'round the corner from the world'. It is a book written with pleasure by a mature artist in calm command of her craft." (page xiii)

Definitely taking a book bullet for Lantana Lane and I also am intrigued by her Timeless Land trilogy so have added those three books to my Kindle this morning.

>146 DeltaQueen50: Woohoo! Let me know what you think!

What You Did by Claire McGowan is a both a contemporary thriller (emphasis on contemporary) and a novel about any number of things: how we construct the world we want, oblivious to those things that don't match our specs; about the meaning of consent; and about all the things we do that change both our and others' lives.

The setup is six college friends gathering to celebrate knowing each other for 25 years. Their intense friendship has been bolstered over the year by two marriages within the group. After an evening of drinking and smoking weed, however, everything goes wildly awry, and the police are called.

There are twists and turns, yes, but really that's just window dressing for a deep, intense, novel. By far more interesting to me was the effect of the intense college friendships on subsequent lives.

I started reading The Whispering Cup by Mabel Seeley with the idea that it could count for this month's ScaredyKIT (challenge: Gothic horror), as the paperback publisher made it sound like a creepy-old-house kind of romantic suspense. It's not, and I'm not counting it for ScaredyKIT.

The Whispering Cup is in fact a murder mystery set in a small town in Minnesota. If anything's "Gothic" about the novel, it's the town itself. Seeley very effectively portrays a narrow-minded, uptight, judgmental population of Norwegian-Americans in the late 1930s. Is everyone in the town so judgmental? No, but the town, en masse, is a character just as much as the individuals.

Seeley's style is a little baroque (lots of rhetorical questions) and somewhat had-I-but-known, but if you don't mind these features of an 80-year-old book, this is a good one.

I spent a couple of weeks working my way through Kentucky by Design, a large art book that could bear pride of place on your coffee table, or as part of a scholarly collection on the WPA, Kentucky, decorative arts . . .

I was grabbed by the Kentucky aspect. The specific KY design in question is pieces selected by the WPA Index of American Design. To quote the Index's manual, reproduced in an appendix, its aim was "to compile material for a nationwide pictorial survey of design in the American decorative, useful and folk arts from their inception to about 1890."

The lucky reader gets several scholarly, interesting articles about the project itself and its Kentucky operation, and about Shaker design (the Kentucky index gathered quite a bit from the two major Shaker settlements in the state). Then about fifty of the chosen objects are presented in their Index-created watercolor renderings, as well as in photograph, which is occasionally of another but similar object, accompanied by a short essay. Finally, in the lengthy appendixes are transcribed oral history interviews from federal archives, and the above-mentioned manual.

The main work was the most interesting to me. These fifty objects tell quite a bit about everyday life in 18th and 19th century Kentucky, especially with the accompanying essays. The photography is beautiful and the reproduced WPA illustrations are impressive. Nobody bothers to make these kin$ of illustrations any more because a photograph seems so much more efficient, but in fact many lovely, interesting details were captured only by the illustrations and not visible even in the really excellent photographs.

My only complaint was that the oral histories took up way too much of the high-quality, heavy paper, where I would have preferred more illustration and discussion of everyday Kentucky objects.

I've become intrigued by the "Century of Books" challenges that bloggers and others have made and adopted. (I think Simon at Stuck in a Book may have originated it, but I'm not sure.) Since I tend to read a lot of older books, I decided to take a look at my reading year so far. In fact, I've read so much this year that I'm halfway there for 1920-2019! So, here's my scorecard. I'm not sure I'll finish this year, but no worries; I can finish it up next year.

1920: Call Mr Fortune
1921:
1922:
1923:
1924:
1925:
1926: Seven Alone / Topper
1927: The Eye of Lucifer
1928: Enter Sir John
1929: Jack o' Lantern
1930: The Maltese Falcon / The Strangler Fig / Printer's Devil
1931: "Found Drowned"
1932: Cold Comfort Farm / Re-Enter Sir John
1933: Mystery of the Dead Police / High Rising
1934:
1935:
1936: Thumbprint
1937: Fingers of Fear / Under Capricorn
1938:
1939: They Rang up the Police
1940: The Whispering Cup
1941:
1942: Death in the Blue Lake
1943: Victoria Grandolet
1944: No Bones About It
1945: The Case of the Golddigger's Purse
1946: Hannah Says Foul Play / The Egg and I
1947: The Fifth Dagger
1948: The Harp in the South / Tory Heaven
1949: The Case of the Famished Parson
1950: The 31st of February
1951: Son of the Tree / The Daughter of Time
1952: Death on the Riviera
1953: The Tudor Rose / No Barrier / The Golden Apples of the Sun
1954:
1955: Beast in View / Pink Flannel / A World of Love
1956: The Second Man
1957:
1958: One for the Road / The Obituary Club
1959: Lantana Lane
1960:
1961: The Computer Kill
1962: Death in Amsterdam / We Have Always Lived in the Castle
1963:
1964: The Houses of Iszm
1965:
1966: The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka
1967:
1968:
1969: The Andromeda Strain
1970: Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg
1971: The Other
1972: What Did I Do Tomorrow?
1973: Appleby's Answer
1974: Appleby's Other Story
1975: The Appleby File
1976: The Gay Phoenix
1977: Quartet in Autumn
1978: Woman's Fiction / The Ampersand Papers
1979: The Old Gods Waken
1980: Playing Beatie Bow
1981: Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy
1982:
1983:
1984: The Godwin Sideboard / A Cadenza for Caruso
1985:
1986: Shards of Honor
1987:
1988:
1989:
1990: Digging Through Darkness / The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn
1991:
1992: Quarry: A Nameless Detective Mystery
1993:
1994: Casino
1995:
1996:
1997: The Washington Club
1998:
1999: Adastra in Africa
2000: Skeleton Dance
2001: The Eyre Affair
2002: Living Dead in Dallas
2003: Club Dead
2004: Please Do Feed the Cat / The Sunburnt Queen / Dead to the World / A Hard Winter Rain
2005: Dead as a Doornail / Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires / The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
2006:
2007:
2008: The Boy in the Suitcase
2009: The Crossing Places
2010: Invisible Murder / Wolf Hall
2011: Daggers and Men's Smiles
2012: The Black Box
2013:
2014:
2015: Kentucky by Design
2016: Fool Me Once / Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness / Magpie Murders
2017: Under the Cold Bright Lights / The Missing Guests of the Magic Grove Hotel
2018: The Library Book
2019: Here to Stay / Blood for Blood / What You Did / Forgotten Bones

>151 NinieB: That's an interesting project! One to keep in mind for next year...

>152 MissWatson: Thanks! It appeals to my rather quirky sense of order.

I took up the RandomCAT challenge to go "back to school" by reading Digging Through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist by Carmel Schrire. I studied archaeology in college and took several courses with James Deetz, who worked with Schrire on work described in the book.

As the dust jacket explains, the author "combines autobiography, historical archaeology, and fictional reconstructions to explore the roots and consequences of colonial conquest in {South} Africa, Australia, and the Pacific." It's quite an unusual combination, one I had mixed feelings about. My primary interest was the excavations she undertook at a historical site north of Cape Town. This book is also the second I've read this year with a significant South African history component, so that was interesting as well.

A couple of weeks ago I dropped off a couple of books in a Little Free Library and picked up A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen. Now that I've read it, I'll confess to something of a "what the heck was that?" feeling. I did like her writing style, as well as the way she evoked the summer drought against which most of the book is set. But I found the dialogue hard to follow, and I'm not sure I really understood the characters. It's relatively short, so at some point I may try it again to see if it makes more sense, or I may just try a different Bowen (this was my first).

>155 NinieB: I have yet to read Elizabeth Bowen but I have three of hers on my shelf. I know my brother was left scratching his head after reading Eva Trout so I haven't been in any hurry to pick her books up. Along with Eva Trout, I have The Heat of the Day and The House in Paris.

>156 DeltaQueen50: Glad I'm not alone in puzzlement!

I've had a few goes at Elizabeth Bowen. The last one I tried was To the North and I'm pretty sure I gave up on it because the snobbery was just too much. If I remember correctly, she wrote the speech of the lower classes in dialect.

No, I haven't remembered correctly. To the North is the one with the bored young women who make their lives difficult for no apparent reason.

Ah yes, the older women in A World of Love had difficulties of their own making, as well.

Just finished a freebie from Amazon Prime First Reads, Forgotten Bones by Vivian Barz. It's billed as a "haunting thriller that walks the line between reality and impossibility." On the plus side, the main characters (apparently leads in a new series) are likable enough. The author also has a talent for writing comedy, on the evidence of the Prologue and some sequences in the book. In fact, I'd say most of the book is rather tongue-in-cheek. But as for impossible: the blurb is no doubt referring to the apparently supernatural elements in the story, but the plot as a whole is preposterous.

The Castle of Otranto was the first English "Gothic" novel--novella, really. It is now primarily of historical interest, but rather fun nonetheless.

And with that I have finished all the August CATS and KITS!

A Modern Magdalene was a realist novel published in 1894. It was quite a surprise to me. I had no idea that any American authors at the time (i.e. before Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899) and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900)) were writing serious fiction about middle-class women and men in sexual relationships outside of marriage, and the blatant double standard by which the men were judged so differently from the women, when these relationships became known.

Stella Merriam grows up in comfortable upper-middle-class affluence in Ohio. She has great musical and intellectual abilities, and by the time she is 19 she has lost the religious faith to which she was raised. Nonetheless because of her love of playing the organ, she continues as the organist at her church. When Allan Harold, a married man, a journalist, and a tenor, moves to town and joins her church, they fall deeply in love. Allan invites Stella to elope to California with him and live as his wife, and she agrees.

Most of the story is set in San Francisco, including Chinatown. This regional and ethnic aspect of the novel is by itself extremely interesting. But the experiences of Stella and her female friends in circa 1890 San Francisco will be of strong interest as well to anyone who wants to know about the social restraints on women of this time. (And the book is well written, too.) I was somewhat disappointed with the ending, but we can't have everything.

Marghanita Laski's satire, Tory Heaven, could also be categorized as alternate history. James Leigh-Smith, after sitting out most of World War II stranded on an island with four other Brits, is finally returning to England, where he expects to find a socialist Utopia. Imagine his surprise when he discovers that the Torys have taken power and have restored the class system with a (satirical) vengeance. James is classified as an A and thus able to live as a Man-About-Town supported by the government; to his dismay, though, not everyone finds life under the new regime so pleasant. Sharp, funny.

I claimed the food Bingo square because my American edition is entitled "Toasted English."

Somehow I picked up a Barbara Pym novel a few hours ago and now I have finished it. Quartet in Autumn is about four co-workers in a nameless office in London. All are nearing retirement; indeed, the company is phasing out their department as they retire, because a computer could do their jobs. One is a widower; the others have never married.

For the first two-thirds I was utterly depressed by the seeming purposelessness, or emptiness, of the lives under examination. Yet Pym's writing is so smooth and effortless that I kept reading . . . and I felt rewarded in the end.

It's my Thingaversary! I joined LT six years ago today. I have some recent acquisitions to celebrate the day:

Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Band of Angels by Robert Penn Warren
Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams
The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing edited by Rosemary Herbert

Happy thingaversary! Enjoy your haul!

>166 MissWatson: Thank you! I certainly will enjoy.

Happy Thingaversary! And congratulations on a great book haul! Quartet in Autumn goes on my wishlist.

>168 VivienneR: Thank you! I hope you enjoy Quartet in Autumn as well!

Some great BB's there!

>170 Tess_W: Awesome, Tess, let me know if you read any!

My last book for August was Appleby's Other Story, the 27th in Michael Innes's long-running series about John Appleby, who starts as an Inspector and for a number of entries has been Sir John, retired Commissioner of Scotland Yard. In this volume, he shows up at Maurice Tytherton's country home, thinking he is consulting about some stolen paintings, but Maurice was murdered the night before. The house is chock full of guests, family, and servants, most of whom have some reason to want Maurice dead.

This book has both a peacock and a dog on the cover, meaning I have filled another Bingo square.

I finished reading the stories in The Golden Apples of the Sun today. I have always thought of Ray Bradbury of a science fiction author, but based on this collection I have been thinking of him much too narrowly. Some of the stories are fantasy, some horror, some straight fiction, some in fact sci-fi.

One story that stood out is "The Murderer", because it was science fiction in 1953, when the collection was published, but would seem to have much more resonance now.

I read this collection for September's RandomCAT, Equinox, because the title comes from these lines from Yeats:

. . . And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

The poem is "The Song of the Wandering Aengus" in The Wind Among the Reeds.

Frederic F. Van de Water has just the right initials for this month's AlphaKIT (F-W), and he wrote The Eye of Lucifer, which I just read. This 1927 murder-mystery-thriller begins with the discovery 1000 years ago of a unique green diamond that then leads to the deaths of many who desire it. Cut to the present and wealthy retired manufacturer Ithamar Strake is murdered in his apartment in Oneida County, New York. The State Trooper heroes are Sergeant Dan Delaney and rookie Stephen Cameron. This thriller showed its age, and not very attractively.

Earlier this year I planned to read The Andromeda Strain for the June ScaredyKIT (the theme was technothrillers). I didn't get around to it. This month it was the right book at the right time--just the right speed for bedtime reading and then some airplane reading yesterday. I finished it somewhere over the Midwest. It was in fact more technical than I expected, despite planning to read it as a technothriller! But it was fun reading nonetheless.

I'm filling the "health-related/medicine" Bingo square with this title.

September hasn't been a great reading month for me. I spent a week visiting family and attending my nephew's wedding. While I did some reading in both directions, I barely read at all while there.

Nevertheless I have now finished a mystery by an author born in September, Dorothy Quick. Some interesting things in her life: She knew Mark Twain well in his older years, when she was a child; and she was a pioneer of science fiction who published stories in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. However, the book I read, The Fifth Dagger, was not great, just readable. It contained the following, somewhat astonishing sentence: "'Gangsters are sometimes doped up with heroin, or marijuana, which is almost the same . . . .'"

My September SFF read was The Houses of Iszm, in which an Earther botanist, Aile Farr, visits Iszm, a planet where houses grow as trees. Jealous of their cash crop, the Iszics keep a close watch on Farr. After an unpleasant incident involving a deep tree root holding cell, and upon embarking on his return trip to Earth, Farr learns that someone is trying to kill him. Descriptions of future Los Angeles are amusing. Like the paired novelette Son of the Tree, one could call this arboreal sci-fi.

>176 NinieB: Yes, totally the same thing! *eyeroll*

>178 rabbitprincess: And no gangsters, doped up or otherwise, showed up in the book.

The Appleby File successfully dealt with this month's SeriesCAT challenge.

But for the fact that Marlowe (the dead man's private secretary) has to explain what a car's rearview mirror is, one would think Trent's Last Case was written in the 1930s, when many standards of the genre had already been established. Nope, the Golden Age was yet to happen. Trent is an artist, a gentleman, and an enthusiast at reasoning out mysteries, to the point that a London paper pays him occasionally to investigate and report on newsworthy crimes. Thus he finds himself investigating the puzzling death of Sigsbee Manderson, wealthy American businessman. Required reading for Golden Age fans.

As Trent is an artist, I'm claiming a Bingo square. And it's a classic I've been meaning to read for a long time.

Just finished The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight. In this comic, satiric, novel of manners, Princess Priscilla has grown dissatisfied with life as a privileged princess in a German grand dukedom. Yearning for the simple life, she runs away to England accompanied by the palace librarian and a maid. The simple life is not anything like she expected it to be. Nor is she what the villagers in rural Somerset expected. Very funny with some moments of surprising darkness and intensity.

>181 NinieB: I really enjoyed Trent's Last Case -- glad you did as well!

>183 christina_reads: It's not just me, right? it seems very 1920s-30s.

I just took a look at my reading for 2019. I was surprised (and admittedly delighted) to discover that The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight was my 100th finished book of the year!

Congratulations on reaching the magic number!

>186 MissWatson: Thank you!

My first October book was The Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes. The title is the name of the boat in which, when the story opens, Arthur Povey is floating with the body of his dead brother Charles. While this book is part of the Appleby series, it's somewhat unusual both because it's inverted and because there's not really a traditional detective story crime.

For the last week my bus book has been Call Mr Fortune, a collection of short stories about Mr Reginald ("Reggie") Fortune. Reggie is a surgeon, hence "Mr" Fortune in British usage, and also a semi-amateur detective. In the first two stories he is a practicing physician whose patients are murdered, but in the other four he is more of a police consulting surgeon. Historically, leading critics like Ellery Queen, Howard Haycraft, and Julian Symons have considered him important in the development of the detective story. Hence, when I was looking for a 1920 ebook I landed here.

The thing is, Reggie and his colleagues talk in a sort of slangy manner that's hard to get 100 years later. They actually call each other "old thing" and the like. The narration overall is a little elliptical and hard to follow. And I'm sorry, but fair play was not really in evidence. Inevitably, Reggie throws out some facts when explaining the solution that were withheld from the reader.

On the other hand, I actually found myself growing fond of Reggie as I read on. Some past reviewers have found him conceited or unlikeable; I think this may be the British classism of 100 years irritating modern readers.

I just finished A Cadenza for Caruso, a light-hearted, funny historical mystery starring Enrico Caruso as the slightly bumbling amateur detective. It's 1910 and opera composer Giacomo Puccini is visiting New York for the world premiere of La fanciulla del West. A small-time impresario, who is trying to blackmail Puccini, is murdered; Puccini is suspect number one. Determined to clear the talented composer, Caruso investigates. Short, amusing, fun.

This book is the first in a historical series, for this month's SeriesCAT. And I'm using it for the "alliterative title" BingoDOG square.

The Case of the Golddigger's Purse is a classic Perry Mason, complete with Perry and Della skating perilously close to being accessories after the fact, and Perry doing some nice fistwork close to the end of the book. There's not much courtroom time, though. The plot itself twists continuously; I'm not sure I can explain it.

Because my vintage paperback has a snazzy cover, I'm using this for this month's TBRCAT.



I'm also using it for the six-word title Bingo square.

The name of the book I finished last night is perfect for October, and therefore CalendarCAT: Jack o' Lantern. It's a British thriller from 1929, and has a preposterous plot, stilted dialogue, and melodrama. I enjoyed it!

I recently made a special purchase of two older British mysteries, in their original dust jackets. Over the last few days I read one—"Found Drowned" by Eden Phillpotts. Phillpotts had a lengthy career both as a straight novelist and as a mystery writer. This title was published in 1931 and is the lucid tale, narrated by the amateur detective, of his investigation into the true story behind the corpse found in a seaside cave in Devonshire.

The focus is entirely on the logical steps and intellectual satisfaction the detective, Dr. Meredith, derives from his successful inquiry. It's quite in keeping with the Golden Age and its rules of "fair play." Those looking for witty banter or standard suspense, however, should look elsewhere.

This month's focus on the early 20th century continues with Topper (1926), the comic fantasy by Thorne Smith. It was also the basis for a popular Cary Grant movie of the same name. Cosmo Topper is a bored New York banker with a wife who has taken to permanent dyspepsia (indigestion). Until he buys a car and learns to drive. It's the car in which George and Marion Kerby, an unconventional, party-loving young couple, lost their lives one night when they hit a tree. When Topper out of curiosity drives by the tree, George and Marion in their ghostly form, join him in the car. Topper's life is never the same. It's a good story, if aimless much of the time, and the humor is enjoyable if not laugh-out-loud funny.

With this book I have completed the "T" half of this month's AlphaKIT as well as this month's SFFKIT (comedy). I've also filled the Bingo square "made into a movie".

I've just spent some time going through this month's reads, adding to the wikis, filling in my lists for the month . . . Even though it's felt like a slow month for reading--lots of other stuff going on--it turns out I have seven under my belt.

Right now it's book sale time. I volunteer at the local Friends of the Library sale, so that keeps me busy in October. And as one of those "why now?" events, our long-suffering car has given up the ghost. So car-shopping as well.

Good luck with the car-shopping, and much success for your library sale!

>194 NinieB: Loved the film, but only got a few pages through the book.

I see that Found Drowned is on the Barzun and Taylor Crime Classics list. Have you been working your way through it?

>195 NinieB: I'm sorry about your car, but had to laugh at the timing since you just posted your review of Topper. Hope the new car isn't haunted! ;)

>196 MissWatson: Thanks! Both are actually going as well as can be expected. Car-wise, My husband and I are basically in agreement on what we want and what we have liked when test driving. Sale-wise, we are on track to make our goal!

>197 pamelad: I want to watch the movie now--I actually don't think I've ever seen it. And I'm curious to see how the rather adult content of the book translated to the movie. My copy has the subtitle "A Ribald Adventure" but a more accurate subtitle would probably be, "An Alcoholic, Ribald Adventure."

>198 christina_reads: Probably where the "gave up the ghost" metaphor came from!!

>197 pamelad: I have in the past focused on the Barzun and Taylor list. But I read Found Drowned now because I came upon a reasonably-priced copy from 1931 with a dust jacket. I'm not really a collector, more of a reader, but I have been enjoying in recent years building up a small collection of nicer editions.

Reading-wise, October is ending with a whimper. Too much time and energy needed on other things. Early November is not looking much better, and the holidays will be here in no time. But I have to moderate my self-expectations for the next couple of months.

Of course, that didn't stop me from hauling home a number of books to read from the book sale.

Some of the highlights in fiction:
Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner
Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym
The Third Lady, Shizuko Natsuki
Emmeline, Judith Rossner
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Toads for Supper, Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike
The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence
Obasan, Joy Kogawa
Alberta & Jacob, Alberta and Freedom, Alberta Alone, Cora Sandel

And in mystery:
Words for Murder Perhaps, Edward Candy
The Case of the Missing Servant, Tarquin Hall
Death of His Uncle, C. H. B. Kitchin
Best Max Carrados Detective Stories, Ernest Bramah
several Maigret mysteries, Georges Simenon
The Murder of Miranda, Margaret Millar
Storm at the Hook, Richard Dimbleby

Hooray for book sales! And I think you're right -- it's best to moderate reading expectations for November and December, since the holidays seem to take up so much time!

I am on vacation for two weeks after Christmas, so I'll be able to read more then!

A few more mysteries from the book sale haul:

Auprès de ma blonde by Nicolas Freeling, and a Castang as well
The Spoke by Friedrich Glauser
Quarry: A Nameless Detective Mystery, Spook: A Nameless Detective Novel, Schemers, Blue Lonesome by Bill Pronzini
Vanished by Marjorie Carleton

Finally read a book! Quarry: A Nameless Detective Mystery is the 19th book in the series by MWA Grand Master Bill Pronzini. While I no doubt read this book about 15 years ago when I was reading the series, I just don't remember it. That's a shame as it offers great classic Pronzini.

Nameless is hired by worried father Arlo Haas in rural Central California to find out why his daughter, Grady, has returned home from San Francisco, apparently to hide. Grady's certainly not saying. While Nameless takes the case reluctantly, he soon realizes that Arlo isn't imagining things. Lots of good pavement-pounding detection on the streets of the City; trademark Pronzini descriptions of rural Central California; a lean cast of partly-to-completely unlikeable characters; the continuing story of Nameless's closest associates, including love-of-his-life Kerry; an exciting extended escape sequence. What's not to love?

The descriptions in LT are garbage; ignore them.

Reading the series in order is really mandatory. Like the best serialists, from book to book Pronzini builds a portrait of a man and his development both as a detective and as a human being. Readers new to the series would be utterly confused by the several plot lines that are carried on from the previous series entry.

>205 NinieB: Your review encouraged me to seek out the first in the series, The Snatch. Amazon told me I already had it (such a useful feature) so I've found it and am ready to start. Fits nicely into the AlphaKit.

You made some good finds at the book sale.

>206 pamelad: Oh good! I hope you'll become a convert!

Way back in early October I decided to read the second of the two books featuring Sir John Saumarez as an amateur detective, so I requested it (Re-Enter Sir John) from interlibrary loan. Then, I noticed that he was also in Printer's Devil, which predates it. To my delight, I was able to borrow an e-book version of Printer's Devil from Open Library/archive.org, so I started reading that. Unfortunately I read it a bit too slow so when the loan ended I wasn't done, and of course someone else borrowed it immediately after my loan ended. But finally it became available again, and I finished it up on the bus this morning.

Horatia "Horrie" Pedler is the owner of the successful publisher, Pedlar's Pack (yes, the two names are spelled differently). Marmion Poole is one of the authors who made her a success, but when he returns from years of living abroad and wants her to publish his tell-all memoirs, Horrie is in a predicament. This "elegant thriller" (Times Literary Supplement) is basically a light novel with some mystery and romance trimmings. I enjoyed it, but it's not (unfortunately) a detective novel.

Sir John Saumarez, the amateur detective in two other books by Dane and Simpson, makes a couple of appearances, but I wouldn't call this one part of his series.

However, I don't regret taking this little detour, as Dane and Simpson produced a high-quality, literate entertainment of a novel.

It's an AlphaKIT "s", and some of the characters are veterans of World War I, which is remembered in November with Veterans' Day.

PS: According to the OED, a "printer's devil" is a "young assistant (sometimes the youngest apprentice) in a printing office."

Having Re-Enter Sir John at hand, I launched into it promptly. Peter Varley, a young American actor, has a part in Sir John Saumarez's latest London production. Sir John likes Peter enough that he has put him up for membership at his club. When Peter is accused of cheating at cards, Sir John suspects that something is not right. The second of the two Golden Age detective stories starring Sir John Saumarez, Dane and Simpson once again serve up witty, literate light fiction.

I read much of Murder for Pleasure by Howard Haycraft a couple of months ago; Re-Enter Sir John is mentioned as being better than Enter Sir John, and is included in Haycraft's now famous list of Cornerstones of detective fiction, first published in this book. So, another Bingo square--mentioned in another book.

What do plastic flamingos, Siamese twins, Raggedy Andy dolls, and mincemeat have to do with each other? They all play a role in The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn by Charlotte MacLeod writing as Alisa Craig. Unfortunately, coming up with that list of wacky mystery elements was the most fun I had with the book, which is part of a series set in a small town in Ontario, Canada. The book has little to do with yarn and nothing to do with spinning.

I'm counting it for two categories: SeriesCAT because it has a woman protagonist, Dittany Henbit Monk; and AlphaKIT whose letters this month are S and Y.

>210 NinieB: I read the plot summary on the book's work page, and now I'm worried that the face I made in doing so will be stuck permanently. :-\

>211 rabbitprincess: Hah! I read it because I've already read everything else she wrote. That's the only reason I kept reading, certainly . . .

>201 NinieB: Nice acquisitions from your book haul!

>213 mathgirl40: Yes, I scored some good ones! Only read one of them so far, though.

I was a slightly weird kid—I was simply fascinated by the genealogical tables of British royalty in my family's Encyclopaedia Britannica! When I was looking for something to read for this month's RandomCAT (childhood memories), I came across The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, in which her Scotland Yard detective, Alan Grant, stuck in a bed with a broken leg, ends up examining the mystery of the princes in the Tower. A delightful book, even as a reread, especially for those of us with an avid interest in history.

>215 NinieB: I will join you in the weird club then! I too am fascinated by British royalty and who was who. And the princes in the Tower always particularly fascinated me. I haven't read this book for a while, may be time for a reread. I also have Alison Weir's The Princes in the Tower on my TBR.

>216 JayneCM: I read that one! It's a good book, too, but not as fun as The Daughter of Time.

>217 NinieB: I did not even know that The Daughter of Time was part of a series until recently. Have you read the others? And I also recently found the Josphine Tey series by Nicola Upson. I am hoping to get to them soon as well. So many books, so little time!

>215 NinieB: I guess I am part of the club too! I have been fascinated with British royalty since I was a kid. I have read The Daughter of Time too. I also have several shelves of books about British royalty!

>218 JayneCM: I read some of the others in the series at some point, many years ago, but I remember nothing about them. I am planning to read A Shilling for Candles soon because it is in Four, Five and Six by Tey, which I own (and is where I read The Daughter of Time). I read The Franchise Affair more recently, maybe last year, and while Grant appears he's definitely a minor character. I also read non-series Miss Pym Disposes and Brat Farrar last year-ish and they were great as well for those who like British mystery, like me. And they don't take up much of that precious reading time as they are quick 200-page reads!

>219 LadyoftheLodge: Yay, I don't feel like quite such a weirdo now! Although I was admittedly fascinated by the *tables*!

Pre-1920 Books I've Read This Year

1764: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
1778: Evelina by Frances Burney
1788: Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle by Charlotte Smith
1801: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
1863: The Story of Elizabeth by Anne Isabella Thackeray
1865: Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope
1868: Five Old Friends, and A Young Prince by Anne Isabella Thackeray
1870: The Brownies and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing
1873: Old Kensington by Anne Isabella Thackeray
1875: Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
1880: The Stillwater Tragedy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
1890: Five Little Peppers Midway by Margaret Sidney
1892: Guilty, or Not Guilty by Amanda M. Douglas
1894: A Kentucky Cardinal by James Lane Allen / A Modern Magdalene by Virna Woods
1896: A Venetian June by Anna Fuller
1905: The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim
1909: The Squire's Daughter by Archibald Marshall
1911: The Eldest Son by Archibald Marshall / Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
1913: Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley

In Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz gives us two full-length detective novels. The gimmick is that one is written by a character in the other. I would consider this book, in addition to being detective stories, also a novel about the writing of detective stories. It's all quite meta, in a good way if you like traditional detective novels, which I do. Agatha Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, even has a walk-on.

I received this book as a gift, so it's my TBRCAT selection for November.

I finished a longstanding bus book this morning. The Case of the Famished Parson by George Bellairs is one of the 57(!) Inspector Littlejohn books but the first I have read. I was mildly amused, and maybe, if I hadn't dragged out the reading over a couple of weeks on the bus, I would have enjoyed it more. As it was I was confused by the number of characters--I couldn't keep them straight. Bellairs' stylistic quirk of ending many sentences with ellipses grated a bit too. And fundamentally the solution wasn't that interesting to me.

>223 NinieB: I was also underwhelmed by this book.

>224 pamelad: Nonetheless, I took georgebellairs.com up on its offer of a free Inspector Littlejohn book, Corpses in Enderby!

And this evening I finished number 31 of the Appleby series by Michael Innes, The Ampersand Papers. Unlike the Inspector Littlejohn series, this is one I have been reading my way through, off and on, for the last 8 or 9 years. As a friend of mine said about Innes, despite employing the same series character in most of his books, he just writes whatever book he feels like writing. Sometimes it's detection, sometimes it's a thriller, sometimes it's close to fantasy. This one is tongue-in-cheek satire of English aristocrats, with detection, and it was pretty good. The Digitt family has owned Treskinnick, a stately home with a stone tower on the Cornish coast, for several hundred years. Lord Ampersand, the head of the family, puts a bunch of family papers in the tower mainly to frustrate scholars interested in the connections of Adrian Digitt to the English romantic poets. Then he finds out that the papers might be valuable, so he has his son, Lord Skillet, hire an archivist to investigate the papers. The archivist, Dr Sutch, manages to fall to his death on the Cornish beach on which Sir John Appleby just happens to be walking.

Innes is sort of an acquired taste, but definitely worth trying if you like traditional British mystery. And I think I have identified my book with a pun in the title for BingoDOG 2020; the next in the series is called Sheiks and Adders.

>226 NinieB: Great title!

>226 NinieB: I love Innes! To me a large part of the appeal is that you never quite know what sort of book you're going to get, even if they are billed as mysteries.

>227 MissWatson: I'm looking forward to seeing whether the game actually shows up in the book.

>228 casvelyn: So true!

My Thanksgiving was heavily focused on mysteries of the late '20s snd 30s. I have access to the NYTimes for that period, including its books reviews—4 or 5 or more a week. Great fun.

>230 NinieB: Sounds good. I petted cats, cooked, read, cross-stitched, and watched basketball and football. A fun day! Today I'll throw a little client research into the mix at some point. Instead of basketball and football, I'm watching Christmas movies. I plan to read a novella I won through GoodReads in a bit and probably begin another ARC. (I forgot to check out the books I'd intended so I'm trying to catch up on ARCs and books in my stash.)

>231 thornton37814: Lots of cat petting here too!

In November I started The Man in the High Castle for SFFKIT. Finally finished it tonight. Lots of interesting stuff happening that I couldn't follow; I felt a yearning for annotations to help me understand.

No Bones About It by Ruth Sawtell Wallis is set in 1932 in a New England town, where Mattie Peckham lives in an ugly Victorian mansion and her brother Virgil West in the chateau next door. A couple of younger family members, Duncan and Janet, return to town after 12 years away, at the same time that Polish-American neighbor Helenka Baluta, now movie star Mary Alden, also returns. Murder ensues. Not bad but not really compelling, either.

For the weather square in BingoDOG, and for this month's CalendarCAT, I read A Hard Winter Rain, which takes place in the month of December. This Canadian novel begins with a bang, literally, with Patrick O'Neill, Vancouver businessman, being murdered in a local restaurant. Joe "Shoe" Schumacher is an investigator employed by Patrick's boss, William Hammond. Hammond is a real jerk, we discover quickly, and as much dirty laundry about the leading characters is turned up, we dislike Hammond more and more. There's quite a lot of plot in this story; I wish it had been tightened and shortened up some, and also that Joe had discovered more actual clues to help him unravel everything that's going on. But overall I liked this PI story with its unusual setting.

The Brownies and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Ewing exceeded my expectations. While Mrs. Ewing usually included a moral in her children's stories, she also displayed a lively imagination and an excellent sense of humor. These tales could in many instances be classed as fairy tales or at least fantasy. I particularly enjoyed The Land of Lost Toys.

Adastra in Africa by Barry Windsor-Smith is a short graphic novel about a "disgraced princess", Adastra, who restores a starving, arid, desolate African village to health. She is a character in Windsor-Smith's Young Gods comics and this particular novel was created to be part of a comic book series called Lifedeath. So, I'm claiming this for SeriesCAT (series new to me) and the BingoDOG graphic novel square.

After some Christmas excitement, and some reading of books without much interest or desire to finish, I read a book bullet, The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths, and liked it quite a bit. I wish it weren't written in present tense, which always seems pretentious to me, but I like Ruth Galloway, the series character, very much.

>238 NinieB: I came to this series this year as well. I know what you mean about the tense. I, too, think I'd like Ruth in real life. I know the area, so I find myself recognising places or wondering where exactly she's located something. The main puzzler being where to put the University in King's Lynn!

>239 Helenliz: I've never been to Norfolk. But the strong sense of place was another thing I liked about the book--I really wanted to visit the kind of salt marsh she described because she evoked it so vividly.

So--I have wrapped up my second Bingo card with two ebooks selected for the purpose. I enjoyed them both!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the 36th most popular book on LT. I had managed to avoid knowing the plot, never having seen either of the movies or paid much attention. It's quite the page turner, even though it does have its share of nastiness and evil. I read it for the Translation square.

Pretty much the polar opposite, Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott is the first of two books about Rose Campbell, a 13-year-old orphan who goes to live with her great-aunts Plenty and Peace and her uncle Alec, her guardian. Nearby neighbors include a bevy of aunts and seven male cousins ranging in age from 6 to 16. The family is comfortably off, with several male members of the family being ship captains. Uncle Alec is both a doctor and a sailor. Rose is in rather mediocre health when the story begins but Uncle Alec has a plan, which includes lots of exercise, no patent medicines, no corsets, and no high-fashion garments that hobble the wearer and don't keep her warm in winter. The male cousins all love Rose and she exerts a good influence over them. I read the book for the children's square, and it also was another "E" book for AlphaKIT.

>241 NinieB: Two Bingo cards - fantastic!

I, too, have no idea what The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is about; I just seem to have in my head that it is not something I would like (nastiness and evil not my thing!)

>242 JayneCM: Thanks!

I can say that unlike some thrillers it does not wallow in gore!

>243 NinieB: I definitely cannot read those. I have tended to ignore thrillers as a category all together until this year when I read some for challenges. I have been surprised that I have enjoyed some but I cannot understand wanting to read totally gross detailed descriptions!

I've been inspired by others' year-end recaps to do a short one. What's apparent is that I rate almost everything 3, 3.5, or 4, with 3 being not very good. However, I did have three 5s:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Pink Flannel by Ruth Park
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

In the 4.5 range, I had nine titles:

No Barrier by Eleanor Dark. The last book in a remarkable trilogy.
Old Kensington by Anne Thackeray
Kentucky by Design, one of the few nonfiction books I read this year
The Harp in the South by Ruth Park
Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park (are you seeing a pattern?)
Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope
Under the Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher
The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis
Quarry by Bill Pronzini

Overall I read 122 books. I'm amazed I read so much and I'm hoping to keep up the pace in 2020. Please join me in the 2020 group.

>245 NinieB: Quite a few Aussie authors on that list! Lots of my favourites when I was growing up.

Playing Beatie Bow, both the book and the movie, were one of my absolute favourites growing up. I credit it with my addiction to books featuring time travel!

I also loved the Eleanor Dark trilogy when I was a teen. I have been meaning to reread them to see if they have stood up to my memory of them.

And The Harp In The South novels. I just bought a lovely new edition of them as it is hard to get the first book in the trilogy, Missus, except in the collection. Loved the TV mini series of this, made in 1987.

A great reading year! Looking forward to following along in 2020.

>245 NinieB: I only had 2 adult fiction/non-fiction books that were 5 star reads. I also gave several picture books, a cookbook, and a crochet book 5 star ratings. Surprisingly, I doled out fewer 4.5 star ratings this year than usual. I think I used 4 stars a little more often.

>246 JayneCM: I have you to thank that I read Beatie Bow, Jayne!! And I encourage you to rediscover Eleanor Dark's trilogy. Had I read The Timeless Land this year, it would have been in the list of 5 star books. I found the second book to be the weakest of the three but only relative to the others--on its own very strong.

>247 thornton37814: I use 4 stars quite generously, for really enjoyable, good books that don't have that extra something to push up to 4.5 or 5.

>248 NinieB: Of course! I knew I had mentioned it on someone's thread - it is so hard to keep track! So glad you liked it.
I am hoping my copies of the Eleanor Dark trilogy are in one of the boxes in my shed. Too many books to have them all on the shelves at once in our little house.