Judy’s Comments (group member since Oct 01, 2015)

Judy’s comments from the Reading the Detectives group.

Welcome to the group! Please introduce yourself and say a little about your favourite classic detectives, authors and series.

This is a new thread as the old one had become rather long, but the previous thread is linked here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

This is a new thread for 2023. Please feel free to post Kindle deals from your part of the world.
The previous thread is linked here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

This is a new thread for 2023. A lot of us have other reading passions as well as mysteries. Have you been reading any other good books lately which you'd like to share with others? Please post about them in this thread.

The previous thread has been archived but can be referred to here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Are you reading a good Golden Age or more modern mystery at the moment, or have you just finished one? Please share your recommendations and reviews!

This is a new thread for 2023. The previous thread has been archived, but you can still refer to it for past discussions:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Happy New Year to all and lots of good reading in 2023!

It's time to nominate for our March 2023 group read.

Please only nominate books written and published in the Golden Age period, or a little earlier or later - if in doubt whether a title is eligible, please ask.

As usual, just one nomination per group member, and only one book by any individual writer can be nominated per month. Looking forward to seeing what everyone nominates.

Thank you for setting up the threads and our new 2023 challenge, Susan! After ending our previous challenge with an Agatha Christie classic, we're starting our new challenge with another one.

Who is reading this? I haven't started yet but am looking forward to it - this will be a reread for me.

The spoiler thread is linked below:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Happy New Year to all! Just opening up our first group read of 2023. Many thanks to Susan for the introduction and the list of stories.

Who is reading this one? I've started and so far have read just the first three stories, which I enjoyed.

The spoiler thread is linked below:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I have given up on the Detection Club's modern round robin The Sinking Admiral - I actually read more than half of it before giving up, but just wasn't enjoying it. The original book is a lot more fun despite the muddled plot!

Sandy wrote: "I have had a couple for a few years: read at least 12 non-fiction books and 24 that I own. It used to be 12 owned books, but I often buy more than that and I was making no progress. I really need to up it once again."

Great idea, Sandy. I need to think about a resolution like this - there are so many books on my shelves and my Kindle that I haven't read yet...

I've finished this now and enjoyed it a lot overall although I got a bit bogged down in the middle. I agree the melodramatic ending was great, even though it involved Bobby being lost in the dark, again!

I did work out who Anne's parents were, but then I thought Osman Ford's wife would be the culprit!

Thank you for the links, Ruth. I will take a listen.

I'm now getting towards the end and finding the book more gripping. There are lots of interesting suspects - I have a growing suspicion of what happened and am waiting to find out whether any of my thoughts are right.

Michaela, glad you liked this one. I thought it was beautifully written with some lovely descriptions of nature, though I have to agree the story was predictable.

Just posted this in the "White Swan" thread but thought I'd repost it here too:
I've started up a new thread about people's favourite books that they've read over the past year - please pop over to have your say:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I've started up a new thread about people's favourite books that they've read over the past year - please pop over to have your say:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I'll get us started off...

Which mysteries/crime books that you read with the group did you enjoy the most?

My favourite read with the group this year has to be Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles aka Anthony Berkeley, one of our challenge reads. I also really enjoyed another challenge book, The Missing Partners by Henry Wade.

Which personal crime/mystery reads did you enjoy the most?

I enjoyed Post After Post-Mortem: An Oxfordshire Mystery by E.C.R. Lorac, about an eccentric family full of writers, Suicide Excepted by Cyril Hare which was very clever and hard to put down, and the audible book of Death at Breakfast by John Rhode, a gripping Golden Age tale.

My favourite mystery by a current writer was The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey, the second in the Perveen Mistry series about a young Indian lawyer in the 1920s. I also have book 3 and am looking forward to that one. The Perveen Mistry books are also beautifully produced and I love the whole experience of reading them!

Which authors do you want to read more of?

There are so many. I want to read more by Anthony Berkeley, John Rhode, and many of the authors published by British Library and Dean Street Press. I was excited to see that more titles by Moray Dalton are being published by DSP next year - she is one of the many that I've really enjoyed discovering.

What were your favourite non-mystery/detective books in 2022?

I really liked Eileen: The Making of George Orwell by Sylvia Topp, a long biography of Eileen Blair, Orwell's first wife, who was very interesting in her own right and worked in PR for the Ministry of Food during World War Two. I also finally read the classic Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, which is just as brilliant as everyone had told me it was.

What were your least favourite books this year?

I mainly gave up on anything that I didn't really like. I was disappointed by The Rations Challenge: Forty Days of Feasting in a Wartime Kitchen by Claud Fullwood. I thought this would go into detail about her spending 40 days living on wartime rations, but in fact it turned out to be republished blog posts which I think were probably aimed at her fellow church members, and included a lot of rather vague advice, such as inviting people you don't know round for lunch.

Do you have any reading resolutions for 2023?

The main one is to continue enjoying my reading. I've mainly read quite light books in the last few months, as life has been busy, and realistically this is likely to continue in 2023, but I hope to fit in a few more demanding titles too.

As we come towards the end of the year, what were your favourite reads of 2022?

A few questions you may want to think about... (no need to answer all of them, just those you want to!)

Which mysteries/crime books that you read with the group did you enjoy the most?

Which personal crime/mystery reads did you enjoy the most?

Which authors do you want to read more of?

What were your favourite non-mystery/detective books in 2022?

What were your least favourite books this year?

Do you have any reading resolutions for 2023?

I'm over halfway through now and must say I'm finding the mystery rather slow to develop. I also wish that Olive would come into the book!

Great gift, Betsy. Glad to hear you are enjoying it.