#blog12daysxmas Day 10 Nine coaches waiting

On the tenth day of Christmas I hunkered down at home in the second day of near 40 heat and read: my second title for 2015. Not surprisingly I continued on my binge and it was another Mary Stewart.

Reviews I read referred to this title, Nine Coaches Waiting, as a mix of Jane Eyre and Rebecca meets Georgette Heyer. How could that mixture lose? It certainly held me enthralled through a ghastly Melbourne summer's day.

Where will my binge lead me next?

#blog12daysxmas Day 9 Goodreads 2015

Serendipitously, not long today after I had posted yesterday's post in which I speculated about what reading targets I would set for 2015, almost on cue I got an email from Goodreads suggesting I might like to set a 2015 target!  So I jumped onto their site and now I am locked into 52 titles for 2015.

And this evening I completed my first title, Mary Stewart's Gabriel Hounds, which I started reading as part of my post Christmas Mary Stewart binge. It was certainly just the thing for hunkering down in our near 40c temperature today. It's still in the 30s and not getting down to the low, 28c, until the morning. So I can predict more Mary Stewart reading overnight.

Which will I choose?

#blog12daysxmas Day 7 Mary Stewart

As I predicted earlier in the week I was certainly starting a Mary Stewart binge. That's what Christmas is really about: long, hot days indulging in reading. I moved on to her third Greek one, This rough magic set in Corfu. I enjoyed the suspense and the Greek flavour of it. I marvel at how she can keep the feeling of suspense up even though the reader knows that there will be a cosy ending. But she is a mistress of this. 

After finishing that I was at a loss but a look at a list of Stewart's books in chronological order sent me back to her first, Thunder on the right. If I had read it before, I had no memory of the plot or the book generally and probably won't be going back to it soon. A good first effort that shows promise? A young former colleague of mine was discouraged by being told something similar on NYE about her first attempt at a novel but maybe she should take heart about my comments here about Mary Stewart in the context of Stewart's long writing career. Every writer has to start somewhere.

#blog12daysxmas Day 4 The Moonspinners

As I predicted yesterday, my Mary Stewart reading has become a binge on her novels set in Greece:). So I downloaded The Moonspinners and started reading her Cretan tale published in 1962. Again, this novel is set in the post-war era in Greece and romance and suspense are married in a story of British visitors to the Crete of that era. 

This Rough Magic may well follow and take me into Shakespeare as well as the Ionian islands.

#blog12daysxmas Day 3 My brother Michael

On the third day of Christmas I finally finished Mary Stewart's My brother Michael. I can't remember how many times I have read this title before, but I remember that this time I started reading it months and months ago when I was thinking about our trip to Delphi in May 2013. 

Whilst I had my progress recorded on Goodreads from then, I really had to start it again this time. Stewart's writing just pours out Greece to me and was obviously written by someone who knew Greece well and loved it. 

The author, Mary Stewart, who was born in 1916, died this May aged 97 when I was in fact in Athens doing a Greek course at the Athens Centre. My brother Michael was published in 1959 and the Greece she describes is very much one in the aftermath of World War II and the subsequent civil war in Greece. 

Stewart is probably best known for her Merlin books but her Greek ones are not surprisingly my favourites. I may just be starting a binge.