30 September 2010

Agatha Christie Blog Tour 2010 - Day 30


Today our tour comes to an end with a post at Self-deprecating - Saro

When she volunteered Saro said  "I'd be curious to explore the dynamics of the relationships in AC's detective fiction in general."

Many thanks to all who have participated in the tour.
We have bounded from one great post to another and I hope many of you will proudly display the blog tour "badge" for a while at least.

Here again are the stops we made:
  1. Blog tour launch: MYSTERIES in PARADISE  - Kerrie
  2. Agatha Christie Mile
  3. Julia Mckenzie’s first on set interview as Miss Marple
  4. Read THE CAPTURE OF CERBERUS on line
  5. Dear Ms. Christie, I regret to say...
  6. A Library is a hospital for the mind - Sarah
  7. Caviglia's Cabinet of Curiosities
  8. Confessions of a Mystery Novelist - Margot
  9. Unfinished Person - Bryan
  10. Art Deco Inspiration
  11. David Suchet on the Orient Express
  12. Agatha Christie on AudioFile
  13. Miss Lemon's Mysteries - Elizabeth
  14. Mystery Fanfare - Janet
  15. Birthday celebration (special quiz) on Agatha Christie Carnival
    See also today's post at MYSTERIES in PARADISE for the birthday cake.
  16. The Game's Afoot - Jose Ignacio
  17. Poe's Deadly Daughters - Sandy
  18. Dial M for Marple
  19. Crime Scraps - Norman
  20. Overkill - Vanda
  21. Reactions to Reading - Bernadette
  22. Books Please - Margaret
  23. 2010: The Year in Books - Nancy
    Birdie's Nest - Birdie
  24. Endless Books - Beth
  25. Criminal Crafts - Shawn
  26. Books to the Ceiling - Roberta
  27. The Thrill of it All - Chris
  28. Joyfully Retired - Margot
  29. A Library is a hospital for the mind - Sarah
  30. Self-deprecating - Saro
In October we will resume the Blog Carnival, with the next edition due to be published around October 23.

29 September 2010

Agatha Christie Blog Tour 2010 - Day 29


Today's blogging host A Library is a hospital for the mind - Sarah is an enthusiastic reader of Agatha Christie and a participant in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge and our monthly carnival.

Sarah hosted the tour on Day 6 and we are pleased to welcome her back.
In a recent post about her "fall into reading" goals Sarah wrote

I plan to finish out the Agatha Christie Blog Tour, which ends on September 30. I have a final post set to run on the 29th. I'm very excited about this particular post. In addition to this I plan to finish out the year by participating in the monthly Agatha Christie Reading Challenge, which means if I am to stay on target I need to read at least one Agatha Christie mystery in September, October, November and December.

I know Sarah has been reading Agatha Christie's Autobiography  because she has been using quotes from the book in her Tuesday Teaser posts.

So, today, visit A Library is a hospital for the mind  for Sarah's latest contribution to the tour.

28 September 2010

Agatha Christie Blog Tour 2010 - Day 28


Today's tour host is Joyfully Retired.
Margot was one of the first to join the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge and her blog was the featured blog in our last Blog Carnival.

Like me Margot is trying to read the Agatha Christie titles in order, and we are more or less at the same point in our journey (we seem to have a slight disagreement on our lists) but we are both around 1935. We are both claiming 18 books.

On her post for Agatha Christie's birthday Margot wrote
"I will be one of the stops on the tour, on September 28th. You may recall that last year I was fortunate enough to snag an Interview with Miss Marple. Since then, she and I have become good friends and now Jane has invited me to attend one of her special Tuesday Night Murder Club meetings. I’ll be sharing with you all the goings-on that take place there. I am very curious. You won’t want to miss what I find out."

So meet Margot today at  Joyfully Retired

Library Art: Jay Walker's Library

Check out Jay Walker's Library of Human Imagination
See also Best Personal Library in the World



27 September 2010

Banned Books - How many have you read?

I was staggered when I was reading a post by a fellow Sunday Saloner to realise just how many books I have read that were at some stage, somewhere, banned.

How about you?
Try this list from Library Thing

Agatha Christie Blog Tour 2010 - Day 27


Our host today is The Thrill of it All

Chris Well is the author of  Nursing a Grudge (Barbour) What's a grouchy old man to do when two women drag him from his assisted-living apartment to a clandestine chili party? He almost has fun -- until someone drops dead. But Earl Walker is the only one suspicious of the way the partygoer met his demise. Can he solve the puzzle -- and figure out his relationship with his new lady friend -- before the state shuts down the home and all the suspects move away? READ THE FIRST CHAPTER FREE!

Earlier in the year Chris provided his readers with a complete list of mysteries starring senior sleuth Miss Jane Marple.

Chris lists the following as his "best" posts:
So pop over to The Thrill of it All  today and check out what he has in store for us.

I've noticed too that Books to the Ceiling also has a post about the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge today. Roberta has discovered some lovely original covers for Agatha Christie novels.

26 September 2010

Sunday Salon - 26 September - a long time between Sundays

I don't think I'll be sorry when September is over. It has been a very busy month for me, and I am looking forward to writing a few less blog posts.
Mind you, I do enjoy blogging and the resultant interaction with other readers and bloggers.

The coming week will see the final few posts in the Agatha Christie Blog Tour.
There have been a great range of posts from the participants, so if you like reading Agatha Christie novels check them out.

Yesterday I announced the winners in my BBAW giveaways. All my winners came from outside Australia, so it pleases me to be introducing them to Australian crime fiction in particular. It grieved me a bit that so many of the other BBAW giveaways were restricted to US/Canadian recipients, even when the prizes were being given by publishers. Still, I guess that is really out of the hands of the BBAW organisers. All I can do is make my opinions known.

If you are looking for some Australian crime fiction to read, check out my review this week of  SILK CHASER, Peter Klein This is #3 in a very readable series, and a couple of them are readily available outside Australia.

TBRN (to be read next)
  • now - A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE, Malla Nunn
  • then - WYATT, Garry Disher
  • now (on Kindle) - BLACKLANDS, Belinda Bauer
  • then on Kindle - THE LABOURS OF HERCULES, Agatha Christie
  • now on Audio - SINGLE & SINGLE, John Le Carre
  • next Audio - WHILE THE LIGHT LAST, Agatha Christie
  • then on Audio - THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN, PD James
My headlines
Blog posts this week

Weekly Geeks 2010 - 32 : Overly Critical Reader


This weekend, Weekly Geeks host Tara asks if we are OCRs:

O.C.R. = Overly Critical Reader
Symptoms:
  • not liking characters in the beginning
    • needing the main character to prove themselves before you'll respect them
  • rolling your eyes while reading
    • needing things to be completely realistic
  • shouting things such as "WTF?!"
    • needing every plot twist and turn to be foreseeable
Certainly book blogger/reviewers can be a critical lot, but often I think I am not critical enough.
I had an example of this yesterday when I was adding my most recent review SILK CHASER by Peter Klein to Library Thing. There was another review already posted by someone I know that gave the book a rating of 2/5. She made a criticism that never occurred to me. I gave the book 4.5.

There are some reading audiences where members see it as their obligation to be supercritical.
Newspaper book critics often take their "critical" role very seriously, and almost inevitably shoot books down in flames.
In some online communities that hold regular book discussions, to host a discussion of a book you have enjoyed can be the equivalent of being lined up in front of the firing squad, where some members see it as an obligation to point out in painstaking detail what was wrong with the plot, the characters, the print, and anything else they can think of. The final arrow is the DNF and the imputation that anybody who wasted their time in finishing this book must be somehow an idiot. By association the person who first suggested it for discussion must therefore also be an idiot.

I rate all the books I read.
I have a rating scale of 0-5 and it is possible to score anything in that range.
My general benchmarks are
  • 5.0 Excellent
  • 4.0 Very Good
  • 3.0 Average
  • 2.0 Poor
  • 1.0 Did Not Like
  • 0 Did Not Finish
See my review guidelines

However if you check the list of reviews I've posted so far this year, you'll see that I have very rarely resorted to giving anything below 4. Even in my full list of reviews, those scoring less than 4 don't even come to 10%, and you'll see that there are at this stage only two DNFs.

So what are my explanations?
  • First of all, I am basically reading books that I expect to enjoy. They come as a result of recommendations from those with similar reading tastes. In addition they are often the "cream of the crop", they have often featured on award shortlists.
  • Secondly, I am probably a bit more tolerant than most in my reading. I'm always cognisant of the fact that the book that I am reading was 12-15 months in the writing, and I am reading it in less than a week. When I chatted with Michael Robotham and Malla Nunn over breakfast recently we talked about what damage negative reviews can have.
  • Thirdly, I have recently begun refusing review copies of books that I don't think fit my reading tastes. My time is too precious to spend on reading something I'm pretty sure I'll hate.
  • Finally, the ratings I give are reflective of my reading tastes. After I've given a rating, then I do try to slot the book into my lists in what I consider is about the "right" place, particularly if I'm thinking about my "best reads" for the year. 
That doesn't mean that within a review, I still won't criticise aspects of a book that I didn't particularly like, but it does mean that once I begin a book, I will usually finish it, and secondly, that I will probably find something good to say about it.

There is still the conundrum of why someone reading the same book as me will give it 3 where I will give it 4.2. I've wondered if it means I am less critical, less demanding than they are. But I have come to the conclusion that where they are probably in reality operating within a rating range of  2 to 5, I am using fine gradations between 4 and 5.  We still both give 5 to the excellent reads!

Agatha Christie Blog Tour 2010 - Day 26

Our guest blogger today is Roberta at Books to the Ceiling

Roberta's post is titled: “An ingenious and amusing conceit!” – The Labors of Hercules, by Agatha Christie
When you read the post, you will understand why Roberta also says it was a "labour of  love".

Not only has she reviewed each of the stories in the book, but she has given us links to each of the original labours of Hercules, and images for each.

At the end of her post she comments
These stories work beautifully as cunning little puzzles and masterpieces of misdirection, but in a larger sense, they recreate an entire world. We are back in the early years of the twentieth century. England retains a certain smugness regarding its perceived superior status in the world. The aristocracy still holds sway, but the nouveau riche are fast encroaching on their territory. The revolution in psychiatry and the introduction of psychoanalysis, so revolutionary at the beginning of the century,  still have considerable influence on the way human nature is perceived.

I am very definitely inspired to tackle THE LABOURS OF HERCULES soon - I've bought a copy for my Kindle - and I'll be consulting Roberta's post for guidance.

25 September 2010

Agatha Christie Blog Tour 2010 - Day 25


And now for something little different.
We are visiting Shawn at Criminal Crafts.

When we set up this date on the tour Shawn said
"I’d be delighted to add a stop with a very easy craft tutorial “Make Miss Marple’s Tea Cozy”.  I write craft projects with mysteries, vintage espionage and pulp fiction as a subject."

Just recently she created a Double-Secret Agent Gift Basketand her project before that was Notorious the Cocktail.

So pop over to Criminal Crafts. and check out the Miss Marple Cameo Tea Cozy!

Review: SILK CHASER, Peter Klein

Pan Macmillan Australia 2010
319 pages
ISBN 9-781405-039765
Copy supplied for review by the publisher

Publisher's Blurb

A serial killer is stalking young, female strappers. No one knows who it is, why he's doing it, or who is likely to be next. The police and the race clubs seem powerless to do anything. The women are terrified and the union is threatening to go on strike and close down the entire racing industry unless security can be guaranteed and the killer caught.
Meanwhile, John Punter's got problems closer to home to worry about. There's a protection racket afoot and his restaurant Gino's is getting lent on. Then there's his new girlfriend Maxine. Everyone says she's trouble. She's the socialite daughter of a shock-jock announcer; the biggest rating name in radio and a major client of his father's stable. And he's made it clear he doesn't want Punter hanging around...
Back at the track, as the body count mounts, Punter finds himself involved in a desperate race against time to find a crazed killer.

This is #3 of Klein's Punter series, and I'm hooked. SILK CHASER is the best so far. Among the things that I like are the readability, the yarn that flows well, the continuing threads and characters from the previous novels, the authentic Australian flavour, and the believable scenarios.

My rating: 4.5

If you'd like to sample before you buy, the publishers have provided the first chapter online.

However, if you haven't read either of the others in the series, PUNTER'S LUCK and PUNTER'S TURF, then this is a series where you really should take advantage of the chance to begin on the ground floor. Peter Klein has avoided overloading each novel with back-story, and while there is just enough to help the reader  understand what has gone before, reading the series in order will show you character and plot development.

You can buy SILK CHASER as an e-book in pdf, .mobi, and epub, which really means you should be able to read it on the device of your choice.
The only thing wrong with the Macmillan e-book provision is that the price ($25.45) is pretty high (unrealistically so) in my opinion.
Amazon do have it for a lower price for Kindle but by the time you take the exchange rate into account, you might save a few dollars. PUNTER'S TURF is available for Kindle at a more "usual" price.

My BBAW giveaways: the Winners are..


I celebrated  BBAW with 5 giveaways this week, one each day, 4 books by Australian authors, and one related to Agatha Christie. All the books are related to crime fiction.

The competition for all my BBAW giveaways closed yesterday, Friday 24 September.
I used a random number generator to select each winner: http://www.random.org/integers/

The competition was open world-wide, the only proviso being that if the winner comes from outside Australia postage cost will determine whether the book is delivered by surface mail or air mail.

The winners are

#1: PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK by Joan Lindsay  - Teresa

#2: FRANTIC by Katherine Howell- Linda Kish

#3: AGATHA CHRISTIE by Laurel Thompson - hendy

#4: BABEL by Barry Maitland - jen7waters

#5: THE NIGHT FERRY by Michael Robotham - Theresa N.

I will attempt to contact each of the winners by email to get an address to send their prize to.

Many thanks to all who entered! 

24 September 2010

Agatha Christie Blog Tour 2010 - Day 24


Today on the blog tour we are with Beth at  Endless Books

Beth is attempting to read Agatha Christie's books from the 1920s in order of publication. Here is her progress report.
Beth says
Agatha Christie, the great mystery novelist, has long been one of my favorite writers. I discovered her when I was about fifteen...  I'm a sucker for publication order. There's something about it that satisfies all my inner "J" (that's the "J" that comes at the end of the Myers-Briggs personality type test) the same J'ness that loved doing shelf-reads when I worked in a library. I love seeing the order of things. In the case of an author's work, I love seeing the order in which they wrote their books, especially if they wrote a lot of them. That doesn't mean I will always go back and read their books in a certain order, or that I won't have favorites I return to disproportionately, but it's such fun to note the development of characters, themes, images and ideas when you read an author from start to finish.

Beth has celebrated the characters Tommy and Tuppence in a very engaging way. So do visit  Endless Books today.

Previous stops on the Agatha Christie Blog Tour
  1. Blog tour launch: MYSTERIES in PARADISE  - Kerrie
  2. Agatha Christie Mile
  3. Julia Mckenzie’s first on set interview as Miss Marple
  4. Read THE CAPTURE OF CERBERUS on line
  5. Dear Ms. Christie, I regret to say...
  6. A Library is a hospital for the mind - Sarah
  7. Caviglia's Cabinet of Curiosities
  8. Confessions of a Mystery Novelist - Margot
  9. Unfinished Person - Bryan
  10. Art Deco Inspiration
  11. David Suchet on the Orient Express
  12. Agatha Christie on AudioFile
  13. Miss Lemon's Mysteries - Elizabeth
  14. Mystery Fanfare - Janet
  15. Birthday celebration (special quiz) on Agatha Christie Carnival
    See also today's post at MYSTERIES in PARADISE for the birthday cake.
  16. The Game's Afoot - Jose Ignacio
  17. Poe's Deadly Daughters - Sandy
  18. Dial M for Marple
  19. Crime Scraps - Norman
  20. Overkill - Vanda
  21. Reactions to Reading - Bernadette
  22. Books Please - Margaret
  23. 2010: The Year in Books - Nancy
    Birdie's Nest - Birdie

Voices from the Past - Breaking News that was

It struck me yesterday that because I usually limit my Breaking News block on the right to 10 items, there is a lot of stuff sitting in there that is now hidden, and nobody, or a search engine, will never find an item that is in there ever again.
They go right back to mid 2008 as far as I can work out, and there is even a possibility that some of them have disappeared or been eaten by cyber slugs, but I am not checking!
The headings make quite interesting reading in their own right if you've a mind to do it.
There are over 600 of them.

So today I am exposing the lot here in this post.
It makes for a very long post, but at least it can stop preying on my mind!

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