Monday Mash Up

Monday, December 11, 2023 ~~ Books & More... 

 

 THOUGHTS

It seasonal sale time all round, and, on the heels of its site-wide sale, Audible is now having a "Super Cozy" 2 for 1 credit sale on selected titles -- in other words around 500 or so titles. I grabbed two of the three Chet & Bernie mysteries in the pile. It's been a few years since I have read one, so a welcome addition to the TBR stack.

YeeHaw!!! The gifty thing is done except for one item going to my brother- and sister-in-law. No idea what we will send them! I wrapped 12 photobooks Thursday and they went in the mail Friday, heading to my sibs and their children. Everybody got the same thing. Easy! I'm done!

THE BOOKS

A fun week choosing which of the hundred plus titles in the TBR to read next! Cool knowing that it is going to take me right into Spring to get it done.

Crooked House by Agatha Christie

Good one! Not Marple. Not Poirot. Not missed. They would have detracted from the Leonides family and their saga. So happy Aggie realized it.
3.75 stars

 

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal -- read by the author

Did not quite do it for me. There were some fun things that kept me reading but on the whole, nothing special about this one. Kowal is a mediocre narrator, even of her own books. Her arsenal of voices is limited. Minus points for not hiring a pro.

I did get a kick out of the setting -- a LoveBoat cruise to Mars. Just like being on one of those 5000 pax cruise ships with all the phony atmosphere, manufactured "fun" and cruise staff from hell -- all 7 circles. Carnival in zero g's? Go in expecting sci-fi light and you will enjoy. The writing is good and the characters are fun. In other words, "Necessary roughage."
3.25

Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon
Holiday read for those looking for one

I am so glad that there were so many BLCC titles in the site-wide sale that were priced under $4. The library has some but not enough and never the ones I am looking for. Farjeon has been on my list since I read Thirteen Guests in the run up to the Christie Centenary read -- or was it one of the early side-reads?

Set on Christmas Eve, with a handful of nutters who decide that getting off a snow-bound train in the middle of a snow storm and trying to make their way to another train station on foot is a good idea. If you can get past the set up, the rest of the story is actually pretty good.
3.5 stars

The Right Mistake by Walter Mosley (Socrates Fortlow, Book 3)

This is a book that demands that the reader think. You cannot read this one for just the story; it won't let you.

MC Socrates Fortlow is an ex-con, a murder and rapist, released after serving 30 years of a life sentence. He is a very complicated character, demons and all. Now living in Los Angeles, he is trying to make amends by giving back to the community in meaningful ways and in doing so becomes a target of the police -- or at least one paranoid nutter* in high places. Nothing is ever easy for The Philosopher but he is willing to listen -- and that is how he works his magic.

Read book one (and two if you can get it) before you read this one. It gives you more background about Soco and his cohorts.
4 star Mosley
*-- word of the week?

Murder in the Mill-Race by ECR Lorac (pseudonym for Edith Caroline Rivett)

Another BLCC author I have wanted to read.

Really! What a bunch of nasty people! Village life at its best? What happens in the village stays in the village -- even if the villagers didn't really like what happened! I really enjoyed the story; sorry I was hesitant about buying more Lorac. BTW, I really do like the BLCC covers.
3.5 stars

The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox

Non-fiction about the decoding of an ancient script called Linear B. How do you take a collection of clay tablets taken from the Minoan Palace at Knossos and decode them when you have no idea what language they were even speaking? Yes, I like this kind of stuff and this was fascinating in a mind boggling sort of way. It is also a glimpse into the back-stabbing world of academia. It took over 50 years to solve and it was done by a woman, Alice Kober, and a 30 year old, uneducated (i.e., nothing more public school Greek and a few years studying architecture) amateur puzzle solver Michael Ventris building on Kober's breakthrough. What a slap in the face to the denizens of the ivory tower!
3.75 star

Murder by the Book edited by Martin Edwards

What a delight!!!!!! So much better than the two volumes of Bibliomysteries I suffered through in the last edition of MMMU. I definitely have to go back and read these again so maybe I will take the time to comment on at least some of the 16 stories. My only complaint is to the publishers of the audio edition for being so damned lazy and not providing a list of the story titles and for not making the file easy to navigate from one story to the next -- because that is what happens when the sections of the file are called Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc.

"A Lesson in Crime" by G.D.H and M. Cole
"Trent and the Ministering Angel" by E.C. Bentley
"A Slice of Bad Luck" by Nicholas Blake
"The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts" by S.C. Roberts
"Malice Domestic" by Phillip MacDonald
"A Savage Game "by A.A. Milne
"The Clue in the Book" by Julian Symons
"The Manuscript" by Gladys Mitchell
"A Man and his Mother-in-Law" by Roy Vickers
"Grey’s Ghost" by Michael Innes
"Dear Mr. Editor…" by Christianna Brand–
"Murder in Advance" by Marjorie Bremner
"A Question of Character" by Victor Canning
"The Book of Honour" by John Creasey
"We Know You’re Busy Writing…" by Edmund Crispin
"Chapter and Verse" by Ngaio Marsh