Weekly Reading Round-Up
Happy Friday, all! The tulips are blooming on Park Avenue, trees are casually flinging showers of pink petals across the street, and I’ve been trying to settle down and get to work on my very neglected next book.
After bouncing hard off a recent thriller (WHY are all the characters so unpleasant?), I abandoned my TBR pile and took refuge in some comfortable re-reads:
— Sarah Caudwell’s The Sibyl in her Grave (sadly, the last of her brilliant Hilary Tamar mysteries), in which Oxford don Hilary Tamar is called upon to untangle a mystery involving a succession crisis at a major merchant bank, the death of a fortune teller, and a missing Virgil frontispiece. It’s impossible to explain the sheer glorious erudite lunacy of these books. I wish there were more.
— Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds, a locked airplane mystery, in which Hercule Poirot must use zee leetle gray cells to determine how a woman was murdered in plain sight on an aeroplane, possibly with a dart dipped in obscure snake venom.
— Angela Thirkell’s High Rising, the first of her very long-running and charming Barsetshire series, set in the English countryside in the 1930s. Author of popular novels Laura Morland finds herself embroiled with village drama while trying to meet her deadlines and dealing with her maddening son, Tony.
What have you been reading this week?
p.s. next week the Pinkorama goes live! Starting Monday, I’ll be posting the entries in this year’s Pinkorama contest. I can’t wait to share them with you!
I agree. No matter how interesting or well-written, a book has to have at least one character the reader can care about.
Just finished “Dancing on Coals” – and it was fantastic!
Re-reading Claudia Gray’s Constellation series, Defy the Stars, Defy the Worlds & Defy the Fates, forgot just how good (and quick!) they are, very good series with satisfying end.
Next up, Mimi Mathews latest release, Return to Satterthwaite Court (Victorian romance)
I saw on Murder By the Books insta that the Sarah Caudwell books are being reissued, sadly without the amazing Edward Gorey cover art. I’ve been re-read Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, the plan was to re-read just the first… I think that I’m going to fail at that plan.
I’m doing some re-reads this week. I read They Came To Bagdad, one of Agatha Christie’s thrillers and The Clocks which is one of her later mysteries. I will start Return To Satterthwaite Court by Mimi Matthews which is the latest of her delightful historical romances.
Just finished Maureen by Rachel Joyce. A good ending to the Harold Fry trilogy, but so short 🙁
Can’t wait for Pinkorama on Monday!!!