It's time for another Bookshelf Travelling for Insane Times post which is being hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness.
The idea is to share your bookshelves with other bloggers. Any aspect you like:
1. Home.
2. Books in the home.
3. Touring books in the home.
4. Books organized or not organized on shelves, in bookcases, in stacks, or heaped in a helter-skelter fashion on any surface, including the floor, the top of the piano, etc.
5. Talking about books and reading experiences from the past, present, or future.
Whatever you fancy as long as you have fun.
This is my shelf this week:
As I've said before I specialise in random piles of books and here're a couple more, although they're vaguely crime and horror themed so not as random as all that.
The lefthand pile:
The Glimpses of the Moon, a 'Gervase Finn' vintage crime story by Edmund Crispin
Beware of the Trains, a short story collection by Edmund Crispin that I grabbed at RHS Wisley.
Brat Farrar, the only Josephine Tey book I've yet to read.
Silver Bullets, werewolf short stories selected by Eleanor Dobson
Thrones, Dominations - Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Welsh
The Crystal Egg & Other stories - H.G. Wells. That title story is superb.
Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L. Sayers. One of just a few LPW books I have left to read.
Murder in the Bookshop - Carolyn Wells
A Killing in Quail County - Jameson Cole, tbr for 'Oklahoma' (US states challenge).
The righthand pile:
Night Music: Nocturnes Vol 2 - John Connolly. Love his weird short stories.
Ten Year Stretch edited by Martin Edwards & Adrian Muller. A 10 years of Crimefest collection.
Mysterious Air Stories, edited by William Pattrick. The 'railways' version of this was excellent.
Forget the Sleepless Shores - Sonya Taffe. Supernatural short stories.
Covenant with a Vampire - Jeanne Kalogridi
Unnatural Fire - Fidelis Morgan. Murder in the time of Charles II.
Desirable Residences, short stories by E.F. Benson the author of the Mapp and Lucia books of course. Not sure what it's doing on this pile except that he wrote some brilliant ghost stories, a few of which are in this volume. Have moved this onto my 'current' pile as I fancy reading some of these soon.
These are all part of my TBR mountain which I haven't counted but which must run into the four or five hundreds, possibly more as I have a huge number on my Kindle and Nook too. Lockdown hasn't helped much either because, with the libraries still shut, if I've wanted a book I've just thought, 'What the heck' and bought it for my Kindle. Lost cause. Just as well I don't give a damn. LOL! (I know I should...)
12 comments:
Gads Sis.. you are going to be taking pictures of books "forever"!! Lol. I read ONE of those books lol Murder in the Bookshop... long ago. I guess I'd better put some books up! lol Mine are just on the shelves... I have to look to see if they are tbr or favorites that I've kept. love you!
I am pretty sure I've read some of E.F. Benson's ghost stories over the years. In fact I am positive I have because as soon as I saw that name on the spine of your bookshelf I was thinking that Benson wrote some ghost stories.
I've not read any Dorothy Sayers, but years and years ago on a trip Mary and I listened to a full cast audio recording of The Nine Tailors and it was brilliant. This is how long ago it was: we listened to it on cassette in the in-dash cassette player in our car. It had to have been nearly 30 years ago now.
Random piles of books are the best; you can always find something you're in the mood to read in them. And these days...you can never have too many books. Happy reading! :)
Oh gosh, Cath, I know what you mean about TBR stacks running into the hundreds. I was absolutely STUNNED to discover a week ago that I have a total of nearly 600 books on my Nook. Now yes, I have read a good many, it's true, but it seems I've read only about half of that 600. wowee.
Isn't it painful to tackle the one unread title by a favorite author? I'm thinking of Brat Farrar by Tey. I find it tricky. I keep putting that kind of thing off. I don't want the "Tey" experience or whichever author it is whom I love to be over.
Ditto for LPW by Sayers.
I recently put Daughter of Time on my Kindle, for a very low price. I read it when I was 20 years of age, and frankly, I remember very, very little about it. So will MUSH ahead.
I love the fact that you found an Oklahoma title--good for you! And not that easy to find, I'll bet. Do weigh in when you do get to it.
Enjoyed the bookshelf traveling with you!
Enjoy your garden for me!
Brat Farrar is one of my favorites. I am sure I have read it a dozen times - maybe more, I know some parts so well I can tell what is about to happen when I turn the page but it does not detract from my enjoyment. I think it is her best book. I like The Daughter of Time too. I even tried one of the mysteries about Tey and thought the author did a good job, although I usually don't approve of spinoffs/continuations.
I have read that Sayers too although it is not one of the ones I reread a lot. Someone recommended Unnatural Fire to me when it was new. I had forgotten all about it but maybe will move it higher on my list.
I have not read Benson but went to Rye on my last trip to the UK and really enjoyed it. I never got into the Lucia books - maybe it's a blessing that there are a few series that don't appeal to me!
I want to reread Josephine Tey's books. I have reread one since I started blogging, A Shilling for Candles. I think I prefer her Inspector Grant novels but most people seem to like the standalone books best.
I loved A Killing in Quail County, I hope you like it when you read it.
I have had some success with Edmund Crispin's books. I loved The Moving Toyshop but did not like The Case of the Gilded Fly. If I were to run into a copy of Murder in the Bookshop I would get it just based on the title.
I am working on my bookshelf traveling post but at the rate I am going I don't know when it will be published.
Pat: I know... no sign of lockdown ending here yet so lots more bookshelves to come, lol. Restrictions have been eased but Peter and I are not much affected as we'll continue to not go out very much because of his underlying health conditions. It's just not worth the risk, so we shop for groceries about once a fortnight and get bread from a local bakers and freeze it. We live so quietly normally that our routine has hardly altered at all. I would love to go out for lunch somewhere, that's the only thing, oh and the library is still shut and I wish it wasn't. You take care. xxx
Carl: Oh yes, I'd be really surprised if you hadn't read a ghost story by E.F. Benson, his stories are nearly always included in anthologies. I have a massive book entitled, The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson, which has over 600 pages in it so that shows you how many he wrote. They vary a bit but some of them are top-notch, one of them called 'Mrs. Amworth' springs to mind, a very unusual vampire story. And now I want to reread it!
The Nine Tailors is superb. All those bell ringing sequences with individual names... like 'the nine tailors'. Fascinating. I recommend Sayers' LPW short stories too, some of them are really quite spooky and *so* well written of course.
Lark: Nope, you never can have enough books... I might just have grabbed 'Beach Read' that you reviewed yesterday too. At 99p it was a no-brainer. LOL
Judith: Yes, I think I have around 400 books on my Kindle. Less on my Nook because I did try to control how many I transferred onto it from Calibre but you can imagine how long that lasted *coughcough*.
I see you understand about the last Tey book. Yes, ditto for Dorothy L. Sayers. She wrote a limited amount of books like Tey, and I'm edging towards having none left there as well. So I'm taking it 'very' slowly. Of course both authors are eminently rereadable. I *loved* The Daughter of Time, such an original idea to have someone try to solve an historical mystery from their hospital bed. Wonderful. I think my favourite of the Grant books is The Franchise Affair though, again a good idea to have a small town solicitor investigate a crime rather than the police who are really in the background with this one.
Thank you, the garden is being enjoyed but not today as it's wet, windy and cold. But that's fine, we've almost finished planting out all the veg, just the leeks to go, and the natural watering in the way of rain is excellent... no need to cart watering cans around. I approve. :-)
CLM: Yes, quite a few people have said to me that Brat Farrar is their favourite Tey. Perhaps that's why I've left it until last. So far I've loved, The Daughter of Time, The Franchise Affair, To Love and be Wise and Miss Pym Disposes. Such a tragedy that she died in her fifties.
Yes... you mean the Nicola Upson books I think. I've read a couple and quite liked them. I went to a crime panel locally - about 5 years ago - when my town had a literary festival and she was on it. Two other authors were there, the room was *packed* and my grand-daughter and I had one of the best afternoons ever. We were thoroughly entertained and the whole room laughed through two wonderful hours.
I'm a little different in that I like the early Wimsey books as much as the later ones. Clouds of Witness is one of my favourites for instance. I can't foget Wimsey and Bunter getting lost in the fog on the moors.
As for E.F. Benson, I read several Mapp and Lucia books and then wasn't sure I wanted to read any more. I may go back to them. His ghost stories on the other hand are superb. I have a fancy to reread a few and maybe a few from his non-ghost storie selction that I haven't read. Perhaps I'll do a post on them. Very envious that you've been to Rye as I've never been. Plan to do so when things relax a bit.
Tracy: I'm sure Tey's books would stand a reread and I will too at some stage. I have several favourites like The Franchise Affair that I was bowled over by, so beautifully written with original ideas and delightful humour.
Yes, I think I bought A Killing in Quail Country after reading your review. I will get to it soon hopefully.
Edmund Crispin's a bit patchy to my mind, but overall I like his tongue-in-cheek style with Gervase Fen. He wrote well too which is always a plus for me.
Good luck with your Insane post, I'm finding I have so many posts to do that I'm falling behind. Six Degrees will be next but I also need to do a book review post... or three!
What you said about your multi-hundred TBR stack got me to thinking about my own and why it never seems to go down in number no matter how many of them I read. The obvious answer, in my case, is that books are so readily available (even in the midst of this pandemic debacle) that it is impossible to make any real "progress" on a TBR.
Out of curiosity, I looked at the 48 books I've read to-date and see that only 9 of them came from my TBR. AND that 29 of them were published in either 2019 or 2020. Seeing so many brand new books on my list makes me realize that any really good 20th century books I missed out on the experience of reading are very unlikely to ever get read at this stage of my life. And that makes me kind of sad.
Sam: I've been reading so much from own shelves during lockdown - 28 of the books I've read in 2020 have been my own - that you might have thought the piles would decreasing. And they are... a bit. What's not decreasing is the number of books I've been shoving on my Kindle. Any excuse and there's a new one on there. Unlike you, I'm not that tempted by newly published books, I'm more likely to be grabbing older ones. Nevertheless, the problem is the exactly the same.
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