Christmas books! #blog12daysxmas Day 1

I have often blogged about my lifelong pleasure in receiving books as presents for Christmas. This year will be no exception as I was the fortunate recipient of four p-books as well as a bookmark!

The four books are: Deborah Levy: Things I don't want to know (Penguin), Breaking out: memories of Melbourne in the 1970s (Hale & Iremonger), Maryanne Shearer: T2 the book (Lantern), and Catherine Itsiopoulos: The Mediterranean diet cookbook (Pan Macmillan).

Stay tuned for more about these over coming days as I read them!

#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 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.

#blog12daysxmas Day 2 Ikaria

I have posted before about the pleasures of books for Christmas:) I love cook books and cooking and I love Greece and things Greek. So the selection of Diane Kochilas' latest book, Ikaria, as a Christmas present for me was a wise choice by my sister. 

I have a couple of Kochilas' other books which make great reading - and have great recipes too. This one is no exception and focuses on food from the island of Ikaria in the east Aegean. Kochilas was born and bred in New York City but her cultural heritage was Ikarian as her father had emigrated from there to the USA in 1937. 

I have only dipped into this book as yet but know I am going to enjoy reading about the history of the island and its food as well as enjoying the evocative photos. 

Day 2 of the 12 days of Xmas was again filled with much eating and drinking and socializing (this time for Neville's birthday), but at least I am doing a bit of blogging and reading today and hopefully will meet my target of 10k steps:) as well as making progress on several of the books I am reading. Eating, drinking, socializing, reading, walking: these are many of my favourite things.

#blog12daysxmas Day 1 My present to me

I signed up to do #blog12daysxmas again and here I am a day behind already. This year I knew it was going to be a struggle as I faced Christmas Day still having no Telstra land connections. So that means no landline phone and NO INTERNET. 

My only connection with the world and online community is via my mobile. It is now over a fortnight since I have been in this situation and it is distressing. However, I will try to do some short blogposts via the Blogger iphone app. 

That brings me to the real topic of my post, namely my Christmas present to me. All my life I have really associated Christmas with being given books. As time has gone by, I have got fewer books and that is probably a good thing for my book-filled house. However, I always get a few and they will feature in a few of my posts.

The first one I want to talk about is my own present to me. A couple of days before Christmas I was heading to Readings in Carlton to collect some books I had waiting for me for Christmas presents. On a whim I checked their online catalogue to see if they had a book that I was interested in and joy!  They had a copy at Carlton where I was headed.

The book is Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons  which was published by Princeton University Press in 2014. This is a great and wide-ranging investigation into Amazons in antiquity. I had known about the research for this book for some time as I am part of a Facebook group that Adrienne Mayor set up to crowd-source information on Amazon-related topics. This has been a fascinating group to be part of and an example of the great use that social media can be put to.

I delved into Mayor's book the day I bought it and am really enjoying it. It is the sort of book that one can either dip into or read straight through. I have been doing both and gaining great enjoyment. I am so glad that on a whim I bought it as my Christmas present to me.

#blog12daysxmas Day 7 Flickr Friday Photos 2012

Nine Tailors 52/53/3, a photo by Hecuba's Story on Flickr.

Well today I posted my final photo in the Flickr Friday Photos 2012 Challenge and I thought it would be interesting to look back and see how many of my photos related to books, reading and by extension libraries.

And the answer is not very many! The challenge ran for 53 weeks and we posted three photos a week on a set theme. I just posted my last one today under the final theme of "Bells" and used the image of Dorothy L Sayers' great crime fiction novel Nine tailors.  A couple of weeks back I posted an image of School Friend Annual 1964 under the theme of "Friends".

In week 41 under the theme of "Chairs" there were three photographs of chairs in Camberwell Library.  Does this count?  In week 31 under the theme of "Numbers" I posted the Jerusalem Bible open at the Book of Numbers and a Latin missal featured under the theme of "Ceremonies" in week 24. For "Rainbows" in week 16 the Coles Funny Picture Books were an obvious choice

Hai Bao, the mascot of the Shanghai Expo, was photographed with the Lonely Planet Shanghai for the theme of "Eyes" in week 8.  And the theme for week 7 was "Reading" so that focused me in a bit and the three photos were: Dave O'Neil & PD Martin at the Boroondara launch of the National Year of Reading, the Baker & Taylor bag I got at VALA2012 and Boroondara National Year of Reading t-shirt and flyers. The week before that was VALA but as the theme was "Light" I only managed to have one of the three photos on books and libraries: Peter Stansfield as a shining light amongst the luminaries of public libraries.  And that's it!

So that means that out of the159 photos I posted there were only 13  photos which had a (sometimes very loose) connection to books, writing and libraries.  I think I am quite surprised by this but I will have to ponder what it means.  I always feel that books, writing and libraries are integral to my life and they are.  But maybe one of the reasons I really like these Flickr challenges is that they take me into other worlds. With fp2012 the theme focus may have contributed, but it is hard to imagine not being able to find a book relating to each of the themes.  When I review my 366 photos for the 2012 Photo A Day Challenge which is unthemed I will be keen to see if that makes a difference.

#blog12daysxmas Day 6 Reading targets

There has been a bit of discussion during the week on Twitter about setting reading targets.  I have done that on Goodreads the last couple of years.  But I have been modest in my goals and both years I set it at 52 books, i.e. my aim was to read at least one book a week. I am gobsmacked at people who can set a target of 366 books, or a book a day.   Really my aim was to document my reading and prove to myself that I actually do still read stuff even if sometimes I have felt that I had lost the art of recreational reading amidst lots of other necessary reading.

The first year I documented my reading on Goodreads in 2010 I read 62 books (or 10 above my target) and last year 2011 I read 89 (or 37 above my target).  What will happen in 2012?  Well, despite the extra day provided by the leap year I won't be anywhere near the 89 of last year. My "read 2012" folder on Goodreads stands at 69 today BUT of these seven are books that I still have in my "currently reading" folder.  Am I really going to finish these seven books before midnight tomorrow?  I doubt it.  So stay tuned!  My total for 2012 will be at least 62, so similar to 2010. But who knows? Forbidden fruit is one of those on the list.  It's a reread but I count rereads!!

#blog12daysxmas Day 1 Christmas books

 

It is true to say that ever since I was very little one of the real joys for me at Christmas was the books that I got for presents. For years they were Enid Blytons or Agatha Christies or Georgette Heyers.  Fortunately the prolific outputs of these writers allowed Father Christmas and other gift-givers ample scope. In more recent years, whilst the thrill of getting new books for Christmas has never waned, it is fair to say that the number of books I have received has waxed and waned considerably.

So what was Christmas 2012 like?  Well, I can report that it was a good year!  Despite the fact that many of us have moved from giving each other physical presents and choose instead to donate to Oxfam or the like, this year I got six shiny new books! And while I was buying presents for others, I just happened to buy myself another two.  So that makes eight new books for Christmas to my way of thinking.

So what are the shiny new books that I have waiting for my summer reading?  My friend Pat gave me Victoria Hislop's The thread. The main character in this novel is Thessaloniki and the book appears to marry my loves of Greece and family history.  The foodies' guide to Melbourne and Maureen McCarthy's The convent were gifts from Penny and Mark.  The former focuses on my interests in food and cooking and eating and the latter explores the past of the Abbotsford Convent in a fictional setting but based on true stories.  This taps into my interests in the local history of Collingwood and the history of the Catholic church and its institutions in Victoria.

"This book is all about women" proclaims the back cover of Sunscreen and lipstick, a collection of short stories by Australian women that Marg and TK sent me, drawing on their knowledge of my interest in Australian women's writing. And the other two goes back to the theme of food.  Clarissa Dickson Wright's A History of English food takes me right back to the Two Fat Ladies series.  I imagine that I will never want to experiment with any of the food she talks about but I will enjoy her inimitable style. And the other one? A new Stephanie!  It's the Stephanie Alexander book in the Lantern Cookery Classics. I am not sure how many of the recipes are new and how many have appeared in her other tomes but I will enjoy reading it.

The other two books that I just happened to buy during Christmas shopping?  My interest in Robert Gibson's Gallipoli eyewitness is probably self-evident to anyone who knows my interest in family history and in my grandfather who was at Gallipoli.  I actually bought this for a couple of presents and felt I needed one myself.  And the final book just leapt out at me from the Readings Carlton window.  Artemis Cooper's biography Patrick Leigh Fermor: an adventure is Greece and Paddy Leigh Fermor.

So plenty of reading pleasure awaits me during the 12 days of Xmas!

#blog12daysxmas Day 12 Reading 2011

Today is the day I finish my #blog12daysxmas blogging challenge and will take myself back to the beginning of the blog, Hecuba Reads. Two years ago around the same time of the year, I set up this blog in an attempt to recreate reading as a joy for me, or maybe as it turned out to document the reading I already did and the enjoyment it gave me. That year, 2010, I gave myself the aim of reading 52 books in the coming year. I also wanted to document them so that I had a record of my reading for pleasure. I have posted earlier in this blog about how I explored possibilities for this documentation and finally decided upon Goodreads as my favourite site to use. Goodreads records that in 2010 I read 61 books. So I met my target.

I have just been reviewing my achievements for 2011. That involved checking through the list of titles for 2011 and taking out the ones that are still also in my "to read" or "currently reading" shelves. So what did I end up with after that? Well, in 2011 I managed to read and record the reading of 87 titles.

These titles included a mixture of fiction and non-fiction but were predominantly fiction. There were in fact only seven non-fiction titles and they were a combination of cooking, travel and biography. Within fiction there were a lot of old favourites. I always do a bit of rereading of Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer and some of their titles, of course, appear.


Three retrospective rereads purposely undertaken are also there for 2011. I had undertaken to reread the complete works of Elizabeth Peters in 2010 and some of these titles, mainly the one-offs, spilled over to 2011. I also reread all the Dorothy L. Sayers crime titles (and few Wimsey books that others have written since her death). When Kerry Greenwood's most recent title, Cooking the books came out, I read that and then went back and reread the whole Corinna series - and the whole Phryne series. Interestingly I discovered that there were a number of the Phrynes that I had not read before. I am not sure how I missed out on them, but obviously I had. Now I am just waiting for Kerry to write and publish a few more titles and, of course, eagerly awaiting the Phryne TV series on ABC-TV this year.


This year 2012 is the first year that I have actually given myself a target on the Goodreads site and I didn't want to be too ambitious. I have just gone for 52 again. Hopefully I can meet that target again. How much is it to ask to read one book a week in 2012? And I wonder what I will read? I am happy to let my reading occur serendipitously I think. I like picking up old favorites and reading them, or coming across new items on the Hawthorn Library new books shelves, or talking to people about things they have liked. Maybe I will get some ideas this year from the National Year of Reading too.


But I am just going to keep it simple. Reading isn't a chore that needs to be done or for which I want to set commitments. Reading is just something that I do every day (or most days) for fun and enjoyment and relaxation.

#blog12daysxmas Day 7 Reflections on #2011PAD

For the last twelve months I have been participating in the Flickr group #2011PAD. We all posted a photograph every day (or some times in batches when we forgot or didn't have time). I really enjoyed myself doing it and felt I was just really getting into the swing of it. A little while ago I posted my last photo for 2011 and feel quite sad about it. However, the future is going to bring a new group Friday Photos 2012 and I am already starting to be quite excited about that.

I decided today for my reading blog to review what impact my reading had on my #2011PAD. I must confess that I was pretty amazed to discover that there were not more photos of books!



I always think that books are so integral to my life that I expected them to be an overwhelming theme. But if I leave out photos that have to do with libraries (with books on shelves in them) or things like Sisters in Crime events, how many actual photos did I take of books I was reading?




I only had ELEVEN photos out of 365 of books I was reading! I really must lead a more balanced life than I often feel I do. And what were the eleven books? Do I feel that they actually reflect my reading habits?




Non-fiction and fiction are both represented. One photo showed both: a book on Itouch and an Agatha Christie, perhaps summing up two main threads of my interest. Maybe I should have included photos of my iTouch (none in the 365 2011PAD) or my iPad representing ebooks as they should be represented.

Apart from the Agatha Christie, other fiction was all crime - Elizabeth Peters, Kerry Greenwood, Tess Gerritson, Jeffrey Siger and Elizabeth Peters again with a lone but fabulous Kate Grenville. Yes, this is probably a fair representation of my fiction reading I must say: crime with a bit of historical and Greece and Egypt thrown in for fair measure.

And the three non-fiction titles apart from the book on the iTouch? Two focus on local and family history and the other is a biography of one of my all time favourite writers who wrote primarily historical and crime fiction. Yes - I can live with that as a microcosm of my non-fiction reading.

#blog12daysxmas Day 6 Goodreads

Well, here we are at day 6 of #blog12daysxmas so I am halfway through and not behind at this point - unlike last year when I was rushing in the rear until the last minute. One of the jobs I will be doing in the early new year so as part of this challenge will be to review how many books I have read in 2011 and what they were.

A couple of years ago at this time of the year I set up this blog to try to encourage myself to read more - or maybe to document what I read as it turned out. I soon got sick of writing reviews on here of every book I read, though I do it occasionally. So I then looked at a range of online tools for documenting what I was reading. After trying out a few I finally decided on Goodreads and find it great and easy to use. It has a very comprehensive database where I have rarely been unable to find a book I wanted to add to My Books. And when this happened once I easily added the title. I can keep my books on a range of shelves and so I can easily see how many books I read in 2011 - or have read to date in 2011 as I have a few I need to finish off.

As it is a social network as well as a database I can read other people's reviews and ratings and get regular bulletins about what my friends are reading or want to read. When I was doing Frontline late this year, I found the reviews on Goodreads great for the task that used online reviews so bear that in mind if you are about to do or are doing Frontline.

There are book discussions and groups that I don't participate in much and recommendations as well, based either on genre or on books on your shelves. I could do a lot more with Goodreads but at present I am happy that it is a good way for me to document my reading, read ratings and reviews and get updates on what my friends are reading. You can set it up to automatically document your reading progress on Twitter and Facebook and embed widgets in your blogs and websites as I have done on this blog.

Do you Goodread? If you do, you can find Polyxena there.

#blog12daysxmas Day 4 Murder in Mesopotamia

I have spent many years reading and rereading Agatha Christies in the Christmas break. This year was no different as I yesterday reread one of my favorites, Murder in Mesopotamia. This Poirot story was published in 1936 and is set in an archaeological dig in Iraq and like many of Agatha's books draws heavily on her experiences on archaeological expeditions with her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. Some say that the character of the murdered woman was indeed based on Agatha's experiences on the excavation where she first met Mallowan.

The book is told in the first person by a nurse who is introduced into the expedition to care for the expedition leader's wife. This technique allows Christie great scope to describe the site, the characters, the archaeological practices and local customs and people with an outsider's view which is often incredibly funny. I love Christie's own account of life on a dig, Come tell me how we live, itself a very amusing account, but more from the inside.

#blog12daysxmas Day 2 Seven dials mystery

Agatha Christie is always a good Christmas topic. Her name almost says it (even if it was an assumed name) and she has been part of my Christmas for decades. How many Christmases can I remember when one of the books I eagerly unwrapped was a "Christie for Christmas"? She might have been writing them to combat her issues with British tax but I didn't care. Reading Agatha Christie was part of MY Christmas and my holiday reading.

Imagine my surprise last week when I was browsing the Hawthorn Library new books shelves as is my daily custom and I saw this cover! It is a reprint of the original 1929 cover so that made it stand out but when I picked it up I had no memory of the plot! Was this an Agatha Christie that had managed to escape my notice? I know I don't own all her books by any means but I thought I had read them all, even the Mary Westmacott ones. Needless to say I grabbed the book and borrowed it.

The Seven dials mystery was published in 1929 as one of a series of 7/6 novels by Collins. Others included detective and wild west stories by authors I have never heard of, or ones which have disappeared from popularity but that I can remember from my early days in public libraries mainly because they were being weeded. The book I borrowed is a facsimile edition that HarperCollins put out in 2010 and I enjoyed reading it for that reason alone. The cover artwork and the internal font and layout of the book were quite of their age.

The book is partly set in Chimneys, the scene of some of her other books, but it isn't a Miss Marple or a Poirot. Instead it features a couple of young people who come upon a mysterious death which is rendered curious by the seven clocks on the mantlepiece of the dead man's bedroom. The book is a definite cozy with a romantic interest, some of Christie's humorous characterization and a quirk to the plot at the end. I enjoyed reading it.

If I had read it before, I certainly didn't remember it though the investigator Lady Eileen "Bunty" Brent seemed to ring some bells with me. Maybe she appeared in another of Christie's books? Or maybe I need to do some Christie rereading? At any rate, I am very glad I found a "Christie for Christmas".

#blog12daysxmas Day 1 Christmas books

Am I mad or what? I have taken up the #blog12daysxmas blogging challenge and decided that not only would I do it for myself I would also do it for the City of Boroondara Library Service local history blog, Telling Tales! Amidst much todo on Twitter this morning I realized that I am already TWO posts behind! So fortunately it is a dreary, rainy day in Melbourne and I am hunkering down to get this on the road.

Last year I decided that I would focus on reading for my twelve days personal blogging, and I am going to start here again but you never know! I might move to food as there is certainly a lot of relevance to Christmas there or to technology as it plays a key role in Christmas for me and my connections both locally and around the world.

But to books and reading! One of the joys of Christmas to me for as long as I can remember has been the great pleasure I have got in getting new books for presents. As I said last year, these authors and titles have changed over the years and have reflected my current favorites. I have so many books (Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie immediately come to mind) which are inscribed with 25 December 19xx inside the cover. Some date back over 40 years and I often think as I read them and reread them what good value these presents have been to me.



But I have found increasingly that I get fewer books for presents though I certainly give them and book vouchers. What of this year? I gave Readings vouchers to all the Boroondara staff who were part of our Being The Best We Can continuous improvement project. I gave the Lonely Planet England to a friend planning a trip to the UK in 2012 and the Movida cookbook to a friend who loves Spain and cooking - what a great combination! My nephew got the latest Janet Evanovich, Kerry Greenwood's Cooking the books, and Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Prince and my niece the latest Elsbeth Edgar, On orchard road. My sister got a book on knitting cats and kittens - the purrfect present!



And me? Well although there was discussion on Christmas Day (not instigated by me) about Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie being my favourite Christmas authors, I didn't get a single book on Christmas Day! I hasten to add that this is not to say that I didn't like my presents! I did and they all reflected other things that I like. But no books on Christmas Day :(

However, I did get one fabulous book for Christmas - in fact it was the only book I actually got for Christmas this year. Thank you so much KC for the effort you took to get me Jennifer Kloester's Georgette Heyer: biography of a bestseller! I had noted it as an advance publication and hadn't even realized it was out. I have started reading it and will relish it over the 12 days of Christmas. How appropriate is it as a Christmas book, given that I used to love getting my new Heyers every Christmas!

#blog12daysxmas Day 12 12 drummers drumming

On the 12th day of Christmas I checked out the words to the song and realized it was 12 drummers drumming. I am not totally sure about what that signifies in any meaningful way for me today but I would like to attempt 12 reflections on what this blogging challenge has meant for me.

1. I found it incredibly challenging to blog every day for 12 days and in fact didn't! I have finished 12 blogposts on time today but there were a couple of days when I did two.
2. On the first day of Christmas I chose to blog on my Hecuba Reads blog because I wanted to talk about getting books for Christmas. Somehow this one-off decision morphed into blogging 12 days on the one blog - ie a blog about reading that I created last year to improve the documentation of my reading.
3. I have three active blogs on quite specific subjects, ie this one on reading, my food blog and my technology blog. Wouldn't it have been easier to spread the blogging amongst the three blogs? YES is the answer as I have several posts waiting for me on the others.
4. I think the reason I stayed put on this blog is that like last January I felt that it would be a good thing to document and explore my reading or lack of reading.
5. My technology blog is called Hecuba's Story and her story ended in November. My half-thought out Animoto tribute to her life is the blogpost I have been meaning to do since then. I planned to do it as part of this blogging challenge but.... The time is not right. So reading stayed as the theme (even though Heccie's name is part of this blog too).
   
6. I really admire the bloggers who stuck to the theme and talked about livestock and maids et al. I tried to do this occasionally but kept on being waylaid by the theme of my reading!
7. @jobeaz was great in outlining every day's action at the beginning of each blog.
8. Documenting books I got for Christmas and my birthday was a great exercise. I love getting books as presents and it is nice to acknowledge such gifts.
9. I love Agatha Christie and it was great to blog about my trip to her house in Devon - finally. Thanks for providing the trigger for this.
   
10. Local history is a particular passion of mine and the books whose publication I have been involved with in this area are very special to me. It was great to share them with you all.
11. My reading and rereading of Elizabeth Peters' works has been a significant reading task I set myself in 2010 so it was good to spend some time assessing where I had got to. I was so pleased that at least one person decided to read her books (or give them a go) as a result of this post.
12. We set up our #librarymysteryamonth challenge! That will be such fun and I am really looking forward to seeing what books Tara Moss comes up with and with sharing the books amongst us. Blogging once a month will be bliss after this daily effort :) Thanks to the 6-8 people who have put up their hands.

Thanks to all of you who participated in this #blog12daysxmas. It has been great sharing the days with you all! I have found myself looking forward to reading your posts even if doing it myself did become a bit of a chore.

In parallel to the #blog12daysxmas was the #twitterlibrarysecretsanta and this featured in some of the blogs. I have illustrated this post with a photo of my #twitterlibrarysecretsanta Christmas tree posing before a painting by Australian science fiction writer Sean McMullen of a fictional account of a Roman landing in Western Australia. This photo brings together lots of things for me and I used it today for my #2011PAD, a challenge I joined during the 12 Days of Christmas.

#blog12daysxmas Day 10 Elizabeth Peters

In 2010 one of the reading tasks I set myself was to read or reread all the titles written by Elizabeth Peters (under that pseudonym). As we both share a primary fascination in antiquity and archaeology how can crime fiction linked to that not be a pleasure for me? Both being ailurophiles makes it even better.


The award-winning writer was born in 1927 and has more than 50 novels to her names. Elizabeth Peters is one of two pseudonyms of Barbara Mertz who has published her archaeological titles under her real name. Her other pseudonym is Barbara Michaels under which she writes more gothic crime/adventure books but still often with an archaeological background.


Under the name of Elizabeth Peters, she was published three series (Amelia Peabody, Vicki Bliss and Jacqueline Kirby) as well as nine stand-alone titles. The stand-alone titles commenced with the Jackal's Head in 1968 and end (to date) with the C0penhagen connection in 1982. The non-series titles are as follows:

• The Jackal's Head
• The Camelot Caper
• The Dead Sea Cipher
• The Night of 400 Rabbits (Shadows in Moonlight UK & Oz)
• Legend in Green Velvet
• Devil-May-Care
• The Love Talker
• Summer of the Dragon
• Copenhagen Connection
  

The first series that I became acquainted with was the Jacqueline Kirby series. With my British School at Athens background I loved the Seventh sinner published in 1972 and read it not long after publication when I had actually visited Rome and the San Clemente site. Of course, I loved the librarianness of the books and the tracking of Jacqueline's life from small town librarian through to well-known romance writer. The titles in this series finish with Naked once more from 1989. Aside from the first one archaeology didn't provide the scene for this series but the library character sure makes up for that. They are as follows:

• The Seventh Sinner
• Murders of Richard III
• Die for Love
• Naked Once More
  

Peters' other small series is the Vicki Bliss series with six titles. The eponymous hero of the series, Vicki Bliss, is an American art historian but the titles are set in Europe and Egypt. Trojan gold, Night train to Memphis and the Laughter of the dead kings draw on archaeology. The Night train to Memphis is a fabulous take-off of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Nile but also has some great tongue in cheek connections to the Peabody/Emerson excavations. The final title, while not her best, pulls it all together. The titles are:

• Borrower of the Night
• Street of Five Moons
• Silhouette in Scarlet
• Trojan Gold
• Night train to Memphis
• The Laughter of Dead Kings
  

And then there are the nineteen Amelia Peabody books which are set in the late 19th and early 20th century against a backdrop of the developments of scientific archaeology and the struggle of women to be able to study and practice in their own right as professionals. What can I say? Crime fiction set in an archaeological environment? This is one of the joys of classic Agatha Christie for me, and of Peters too. There is Agatha Christie here and Rider Haggard and totally over the top plots and characters. But it is all set in a thoroughly researched background both for the contemporary history and settings as well as the archaeological sources. The Peabody series are as follows:

• Crocodile on the Sandbank
• Curse of the Pharaohs
• The Mummy Case
• Deeds of the Disturber
• The Last Camel Died at Noon
• The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog
• The Hippopotamus Pool
• Seeing a Large Cat
• The Ape Who Guards the Balance
• The Falcon at the Portal
• He Shall Thunder in the Sky (also: Thunder in the Sky)
• Lord of the Silent
• The Golden One
• Children of the Storm
• Guardian of the Horizon
• Serpent of the Crown
• Tomb of the Golden Bird
• A River in the Sky
  

And how did I go with the challenge? Well, I am still working on it. I read all the Jacqueline Kirby books; I am currently reading the final Vicki Bliss and I have one or two Amelia Peabody titles on reserve. Of the non-series books, I only reread the Dead Sea Cipher so I had better get on and reserve some of those. This looks like it is becoming a two year effort :)

#blog12daysxmas Day 9 Sisters in Crime

Yay! Today is Day 9 so I hope that this means that I am going to catch up and stay "catched" up :) I have several active blogs and for some reason started doing the #blog12daysxmas challenge on my reading blog. I can still swop around and do posts on different blogs but for the moment I am happy to take the opportunity to do a bit of reflection on me and reading and so this blog is the place to be.

As I have said in a number of posts, I think my book knowledge is not very good these days and also that I don't read enough new authors or even new books. I think one exception to that is women crime authors. I still don't read enough of them BUT most months I try to go to the Melbourne Sisters in Crime event where we are introduced to women crime writers. These are friendly casual events at Bells Hotel in South Melbourne on a Friday night. It seems to me sometimes that it is one of the few real efforts I make to keep my book knowledge current. If you want to come along any time, I would love to see you there. There doesn't seem to be a published schedule yet for 2011 but I am sure it will be out soon.

If you want more information on Sisters in Crime you can check them out on Facebook or on the Sisters in Crime Australia website. I just noticed that the website tells us that a series on Phryne Fisher is coming to ABC in 2011. That will be something I want to keep my eye on!!

#blog12daysxmas Day 8 #librarytwittermysteryamonth

On Day 8 we were all faffing around looking for new challenges for the New Year. Would it be a daily image of oneself on Flickr as @sirexkat was touting? Or would it be the #2011PAD on Flickr? I had really enjoyed looking at other people's PADs on Flickr last year so decided on that one rather than the image of me. We did a similar thing for a month at @restructuregirl's behest in 2010 and it made me really think every day about what photo I wanted to post. It also made me realize (grumble, grumble) that the Flickr i-Phone app doesn't do groups. Ah well, I shall survive using a proper PC or other work arounds. I am particularly happy to be doing PAD as there are very few of my friends on it so it means I will be getting to know a whole of new people! Yay! Of course, it will also be great if you all join as well. The more the merrier and many of you post images every day already!


And what might all of this have to do with a reading blog, you may be asking? Well, late in the day @Tara_moss posted a link to an online mystery book club where she would be recommending a mystery a month. She is starting with Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express for January. That seemed right up my alley! By this morning a group of us library people on Twitter had decided to go with it as #librarytwittermysteryamonth! We decided we would start with Tara's suggestion for January but were finding the website it was posted on a bit problematic. There is info there about Agatha and the book but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to post comments. So we will go with the book and perhaps work out some other way to communicate about our reading. We look forward to having lots of you joining in our #librarytwittermysteryamonth! Here's a link to the Wikipedia article as well to get you going! You can let me know either by Twitter @polyxena or by posting a comment below if you want to participate.