MYSTERIES in PARADISE

7 February 2011

Crime Fiction Alphabet 2011 - Letter E - week begins 7 Feb 2011

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

Contributors to this series of the Crime Fiction Alphabet are already stretching their brains (and mine!). In the past week we have a 3D post, a triple D posts, a post with a misleading title, some authors to look for in the D shelves of your library, as well as some D titles.
Bernadette chatted about dogs in crime fiction, while Dorte asked who your favourite detective is.
It is not too late to join in and you don't have to post each week if reading (or life) gets in the way.

Letters already covered: A B C D

This week's letter is the letter E:

Here are the rules

By Friday of each week you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.
[Those who intend to participate regularly have signed up here.]

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname.
So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)

Please link your post for the week back to this page. (a letter image is supplied that you can use in your post as well as the meme icon if you wish).

After your post is published, put a link to your actual blog post in the Mr Linky that appears below.
(leave a comment if Mr Linky has disappeared)

Then come back at the end of the week to check to see who else has posted and visit their blog (and leave a comment if you can).

Please check each Monday for the letter of the week

Letters already covered: A B C D

Thanks for participating.

6 February 2011

Sunday Salon - 5 Feb 2011: Home is where the books are

Have you ever gone into someone's house and wondered where the books are?
No such problem in my house.

Book cases line the passages and there really is no room except for the laundry, bathroom and toilet that has no books.

And it seems that the books keep beckoning their friends in.

Those from the library and those on TBR call the loudest, and I know I shouldn't borrow or buy any more. And yet just today I bought 2nd hand another 3 Agatha Christie titles at a local market.
Review books positively shriek to be read.

We've got to the stage where there is literally no more room in the shelves and the books are arranging themselves on tables and even in piles on the floor. New books are always welcome though.

What I've posted about this week:

Headlines & News

Looking for Australian crime fiction? Check out Fair Dinkum Crime.

Coming this week: tomorrow Crime Fiction Alphabet explores the letter E.

Weekly Geeks - 5 : Blurry Book Disorder

This week's Weekly Geeks task asks

how we avoid BBD.: B.B.D. (Blurry Book Disorder) : When one can no longer keep characters and storylines straight. Often brought on by reading multiple books from the same genre in a short period of time.
and secondly how we avoid reading ruts.

First of all I must say that I am never really conscious of being in a reading rut, despite my tunnell-visioned devotion to the crime fiction genre. Perhaps from another's point of view it looks like a reading rut, but I find that there is so much variety within crime fiction that I am certainly never bored, although occasionally I do get characters and plots a little muddled. One ploy to avoid a reading rut is to join Reading Challenges which push me outside my comfort zone.

On the other hand, to avoid BBD is just one of the reasons why I decided initially to establish a database of my reading. In it I record brief descriptions of the plots of every book I read. The current record count is 750 and I've been doing it now for over 6 years. What I record is not particularly detailed but it does help me see at a glance what books I've read and what I thought of them.

But then I decided to go one step further and to write a review of every book I attempt to read. Hence MYSTERIES in PARADISE came about.
Again I focus on not including plot spoilers so I don't include lists of characters or plot points.
But the process of writing and explaining what I thought about a book helps me to clarify my ideas and also cements what happened in the book into my brain just a little further.
So now there are 370 reviews on MiP. You can see them all on the page All Reviews (ranked)
A mere drop in the ocean! - you might think. But from little things big things grow.

So does all this help me avoid BBD?
Well, even though I am often reading a hand held book, either a made-from-paper one or an e-book on my Kindle, at the same time (but not simultaneously) as an audio book, I very very rarely get their plots and characters muddled. On the other hand, if you ask me about a book's plot 12 months after I've read it, I'll probably only have a very general idea of the plot. I probably won't be able to name too many characters, or tell you about plot devices.

Does that worry me? Not a lot! I read for immediate pleasure. I don't have to remember all the detail and I can always use my records or even internet searches to help me with more.
If you don't believe me, have a look at my Friday's Forgotten Books posts, where I explore titles that I have recorded in my little green book that dates from 1975. It contains the titles of over 3000 books.

5 February 2011

Making my blog less bewildering

I've been playing with my blog today trying to make it a less bewildering experience for visitors.
But you be the judge!

Today I've brought the listings for all my reviews back into my blog - for the last couple of years they've been listed at Smik's Reviews which has actually attracted very little traffic.
So now across the top of this page, just under the blue header, you'll find a number of new pages which include

I love all the gadgets you can insert into the side column but I've done away with 3 or 4 today, and I bet you can't even see where they've gone!

So what do you think? Have I improved things or not?
If there really is anything you absolutely hate about this blog you can tell me - whether I'll do anything about it is another matter.

4 February 2011

Review: BURY YOUR DEAD, Louise Penny

Published: Minotaur Books, New York, 2010
ISBN 978-0-312-37704-552499
371 pages
Source: Local Library

Publisher's Blurb:
As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the most unusual case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city's oldest buildings - a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries...a mystery Gamache must solve if he's to apprehend a present-day killer.

My take:
Those who say this is a "must read" are not wrong. And neither are those who say this is Louise Penny's best novel so far aren't either.
But you do need to read this series in order! And in particular you must read THE BRUTAL TELLING before you read BURY YOUR DEAD.

Inspector Armand Gamache is recovering from an event that happened since THE BRUTAL TELLING but I'll let you find out from what for yourself. But let me tell you that in BURY YOUR DEAD he solves no less than three mysteries. And I learnt so much about Quebec's history! We learn too that Armand Gamache is not always right, and that he knows how to say sorry.
The whole book is such good reading. There is more than the police procedural and the writing is wonderful.

My rating: 5.0 and with that it slides to the top of my best reads so far this year.

1. Still Life (2005)
2. Dead Cold (2006) aka A Fatal Grace
3. The Cruellest Month (2007)
4. The Murder Stone (2008) aka A Rule Against Murder
5. The Brutal Telling (2009)
6. Bury Your Dead (2010)

THE BRUTAL TELLING was the winner of the Agatha Award for best novel of 2009. and I'll be very surprised if BURY YOUR DEAD does not capture a whole swag of nominations.
BookPage, in the US, named BURY YOUR DEAD their Mystery of the Month for October 2010
Check Louise Penny's Reviews page.

Other titles I've reviewed
4.8, THE CRUELLEST MONTH
4.9, A RULE AGAINST MURDER

Louise Penny's website.

I'm "counting" this novel in the Canadian Book Challenge 2010-2011

3 February 2011

Forgotten Book: READER, I MURDERED HIM, Jen Green (edit)

This contribution to Friday's Forgotten books, being hosted this week by Todd Mason, comes from my records of November 1991.

READER, I MURDERED HIM was the title given to two collections of short stories, the first edited by Jen Green and published in 1989. The second was edited by Helen Windrath and was published in 1995. Both were published by The Women's Press.

Blurb from Original Publication from The Women’s Press 1989
My mind went completely blank and I backed away rapidly. "Something’s wrong," I found myself saying. "I think he’s ill…" It was not exactly the word for what I thought had happened to Clarence…
Long-suffering wives, personal secretaries and ambitious editors may all be driven to murder… Sleuths can be hardboiled professionals or the vicar’s wife… And murders range from the premeditated to the entirely spontaneous… Reader, I Murdered Him introduces a host of deadly women as Amanda Cross, Sara Paretsky, Barbara Wilson and many more provide dramatic answers to the problem of the outgrown husband, the office bozo and the holiday bore…

Sara Paretsky's contribution was a short story titled A Taste of Life.
Val McDermid contributed A Wife In A Million.

Other contributors to the 1989 edition are listed as Amanda Cross Susan Dunlap Penny Sumner Barbara Wilson Margaret Yorke

Women's Press authors included Sarah Dreher, Joan M. Drury, Sharon Gwyn Short, Ellen Hart, Val McDermid, Marcia Muller, Meg O'Brien, Abigail Padgett, Manda Scott, Penny Sumner, Hannah Wakefield, Anne Wilson, and Mary Wings.

1 February 2011

What I read January 2011

I've had an excellent start to the year, mainly induced I think by the fact that I was on holidays for a couple of weeks.

I've read quite a range including three Australian authors** you should become acquainted with.

Again I had quite a bit to choose from for my pick of the month. THE BRUTAL TELLING and BAD INTENTIONS were both outstanding contenders, but the winner had to be THE RULE BOOK.

4.4, IN THE TEETH OF THE EVIDENCE, Dorothy L. Sayers (31 January) - audio
4.3, DEATH ON THE NILE, Agatha Christie (31 January)
5.0, THE RULE BOOK, Rob Kitchin (30 January)
4.5, THE HALF-CHILD, Angela Savage (26 January)**
4.9, THE BRUTAL TELLING, Louise Penny (24 January)
4.7, PRIME CUT, Alan Carter (21 January)**
4.4, THE PERICLES COMMISSION, Gary Corby (16 January)**
4.5, OUR LADY OF PAIN, Elena Forbes (15 January) - audio book
4.9, BAD INTENTIONS, Karin Fossum (13 January) - kindle
4.2, OF WILD DOGS, Jane Taylor (12 January)
4.2, THE SOUNDS OF CRIME, Maxim Jakubowski (editor) - audio book (10 January)
4.5, RAILWAY TO THE GRAVE, Edward Marston (7 January)
4.4, A COTSWOLD KILLING, Rebecca Tope (6 January)
4.7, THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (3 January)
4.5, DUMB WITNESS, Agatha Christie (1 January)
4.4, MAIGRET & the MAN on the BOULEVARD, Georges Simenon (1 January)
4.5, MIDNIGHT CAB, James W. Nichol (1 January)