Book 8: The Body in the library

The latest book I have read for 2010 is another Agatha Christie but one I hadn't read for a long time. It was one of a batch of old paperpacks I was recently given: an old Pan edition printed in 1959 0f the originally published in 1942 The body in the library. You can read all about it here on Wikipedia. It's a Miss Marple and she comes up with the goods, of course. Her friends Colonel and Dolly Bantry wake one morning to the news that there's a body on the hearth rug in the library and Miss Marple is involved soon. It's a nice read, a comfortable Christie. The cover illustrated here is from the first 1942 U.S. edition where it was first published.

Book 7: Hit

Hit, the fourth in Tara Moss' Makedde Vanderwell series sees Mak back in Sydney again with her Ph.D. and living with her cop boyfriend, Andy. Mak has given up modelling and is trying to set up her forensic psychology practice but she needs cash to do that. So she starts working for a Sydney woman P.I. The case which, of course, intersects with police interests starts when Makedde is given a case to investigate the murder of a young PA Meaghan and takes her around Sydney but also gives some great vignettes of Melbourne including Leo's Spaghetti Bar in St Kilda where a scene is set. Melbourne Sisters in Crime will recognize it as the scene of many SinC events over the years, especially as special reference is made to the back room ;>) I found this another page turner and highly recommend it.

Book 6: Twitterature

As a Twitter addict (you can follow me here!) I was delighted to receive Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin's Twitterature: the world's greatest books retold through Twitter (Penguin) as a Christmas present. Starting with Paradise Lost and ending with Canterbury Tales the authors provide a pithy rewriting of seventy-five of the greatest works of Western literature.

A slight nag to me was that they weren't in chronological order. I wanted to start with the ancients and move through and I did just that picking about for Vergil and Homer and Euripides before I moved onto more recent works. I was originally having to ask my niece to translate some of the online acronyms until I was told there was a very useful glossary!

It did raise the issue for me (and cookbooks do it too) of when is a book read or not read. I read bits and pieces of this book over a few weeks and am sure that I haven't read it all. But it simply isn't the sort of book you pick up and read from start to finish. Can I count Twitterature as a book I have read if I potter my way in and out of it and graze on bits that interest me at the time?

Book 5: Covet

Covet is the third book in Tara Moss' Makedde Vanderwall series. I haven't read the second, Split, yet but it's on my to read list. It is probably better to read these in chronological order but I started with the fifth one and survived! I got hooked in fact. Of course, it provides me with the opportunity to get back and read them all again in sequence.

You will remember from the previous post that a sadistic Stiletto murder has been loose in Sydney. This book has as its scenario the return of Mak to Sydney for the trial of the killer. All should be going fine (apart from the lovelife). But the murderer makes a daring escape from the high security prison where he is held! Makedde is still his Fetish so she's on the run.

Book 4: Fetish

Well, I am certainly having a go at my blogging mojo after months of not doing much! I am also trying to finish writing about the books I read in January before the end of January. As well as the Agatha Christies, I stayed in that genre (or a slightly related one) and read a number of Tara Moss books.

Tara Moss is a Canadian now living in Australia and today celebrating eight years of Australian citizenship she says on Facebook. Congratulations, Tara! We love to call you our own :>). I hadn't read any of Tara Moss' books until late 2009 when I heard her speak at a Sisters in Crime event and bought a book that night. That one was Siren and you can see it pictured with Polyxena in the side panel. I had, of course, heard of Tara Moss as she had won the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto award in 1998.

Anyway, once started I couldn't put the book down and I was hooked! Fetish is Tara's first novel and introduces her street-smart glamorous detective Mak, the daughter of a cop, who is working as a model while she studies forensic psychology. The book starts when she travels to Sydney for a job and finds the friend she is meant to be staying with has been murdered. This crime is part of the "Stiletto Murders". I am sure that some of them were scarlet.

I won't say more as I don't want to do a spoiler! You will all just have to get her books and read them!

Book 3: Do not read any more Pt 2

Pat Moon's Do Not Read Any Further: Pt. 2: Finch's Top Secrets on Boys, Rabbits, Warrior Princesses, School, Guinea Pigs, Friends, Enemies, Worry Bugs, ... Wrinklies, Etc. (Finch's Secret Diaries) (Orchard 2003) was one of the other books I read in January. It was one of the books my niece Alex got for Christmas and I really enjoyed reading it this diary of a teenage girl. It's great writing which depicts the life of a girl and all the things happening around her. I must try to read Part 1 now and Part 3 and some of her other books. The illustrations are by Sarah Naylor.

Book 2: The man in the brown suit

And yes, Book 2 is another Christie! Whilst the first was a Miss Marple this is one of Christie's books that doesn't have Poirot or Miss Marple as the detective but is rather a stand-alone book with a redoubtable young female Anne Beddingfeld who heads off into the unknown as Agatha herself did. No doubt this draws on her own travels to South Africa but there is also some lovely archaeological images early on. I refer to the description of Anne's father and their household.

Again this was one that I hadn't read for years and it was fun to enjoy again! Thanks, Karen!

Book 1: A murder is announced

After all this phaffing around playing with BookJetty and then with Goodreads which has some things going for it over BookJetty but still has the same lack of Australian content, I think it is probably about time that I wrote about reading a book! I am not really sure of the order in which I read the first few books and may well have been reading them simultaneously while watching television with my mother over my January mother-sitting.

Anyway the first book that I am going to mention is one by that old favourite of mine, Agatha Christie. It's A murder is announced and the copy I read wasn't the one pictured above but an old Pan paperback that I recently got given when a friend was clearing out a house after a relative's death. Like all Agatha Christie A murder is announced has been published and printed and reprinted in many, many formats and languages.

I was glad to have it as I don't think I own it (?) and it was nice to read at a stressful time. Despite not having read it for years I remembered the solution in the first chapter and enjoyed myself immensely picking out the clues that Agatha had placed in the text throughout. It is probably quite appropriate that an Agatha Christie is my first book for 2010. I have been reading and rereading her since I was a teenager and cannot even start to count the number of hours of pleasure I have gained from her books (and the films of the books).

2010 Books

It has taken me a while to get back to this challenge I have set myself for 2010. A number of family issues have kept me away from blogging, though not necessarily reading :>) I have also been pondering what is the best way to keep a record of these books before I actually record them here. I have played with Evernote as I mentioned in the last blog post. I have explored GoodReads which my sister uses. I have vaguely thought about a couple of the Facebook applications that relate to reading books and remembered why I stopped using them before.

I also revisited LibraryThing and BookJetty which I have experimented previously. I am sure that GoodReads is as @LadyMidnight suggests very flexible and appropriate but I guess I just didn't want to signup for yet another book application. There are also others which I have experimented with in the past and I won't even go into them! At the moment I have made a choice to document my 2010 reading in BookJetty and then blog about them here. I have already struck an issue here and been in communication with BookJetty about it: Australian publications don't appear in any of the databases and although there are links to lots of Australian libraries at present titles can only be added from Singapore Library Board catalogue.
ah well, I'll see how I go.

A new challenge for 2010!

One of the challenges I have found over the last decade is keeping up with current reading - of books. Whereas once I really prided myself on my book knowledge now it is really not very good. Once when an event like the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards came up, I would have read all the short-listed books and had very clear views about them. Nowadays, whilst I retain my interest in books, writing, publishing and book-selling sufficiently to get me along to the PremLit Awards, I'm really pushing my luck to have read one of the short-listed titles.

There are a range of reasons that this has happened to me and exploring that could take a whole book in itself. One of the reasons is the way I source most of my information online and constantly read bites of information. I love things like Twitter and Facebook and the way one can keep so up to date. But I do still read books. I always have a couple of books on the go, but often they are comfortable old favorites. Maybe I read more than I think I do and there is just so much one can read.

So with 2010 starting I have decided to document my reading of books. I am setting myself the target for 2010 to read 52 books. I don't care if they are fiction, non-fiction, dearly loved old favorites or cutting edge just-off-the-press items. Reading books has always been pivotal to my life and I am really curious to know how many I read. Will it be easy to get to 52 or will it be a struggle? How many books do I actually read in a year? How will I change my habits to try to keep more up to date with what is being published?

It is now 7 January and I have read a few books already as I've been on leave. I'll write about them shortly now that I have got around to setting up this blog. In the meanwhile, I've been experimenting with Evernote and noting down the titles there so I won't forget them! Always a geek librarian but proud of it!!