The World at War reading challenge

The host of this 'new to me' reading challenge is Becky at Becky's Book Reviews.

The sign up post is here.

Duration: January - December 2019
Goal: Get at least one bingo! (more are welcome, of course!)
Sign up in the comments!

The categories:

_ Any book published 1914-1918
_ Any book published 1918-1924
_ Any book published 1925-1930
_ Any book published 1931-1938
_ Any book published 1939-1945
_ A nonfiction book about World War I
_ A nonfiction book about 1910s and 20s
_ A nonfiction book about 1920s and 30s
_ A nonfiction book about 1930s
_ A nonfiction book about World War II
_ A fiction book set during World War I
_ A fiction book set 1918-1924
_ A fiction book set in the 1920s
_ A fiction book set in the 1930s
_ A fiction book set during World War II
_ A book set in the United States or Canada
_ A book set in England, Ireland, or Scotland
_ A book set in Europe
_ A book set in Asia or Middle East
_ A book set elsewhere (a country/continent not already read for the challenge)
_ A book focused on "the war"
_ A book focused on "the homefront"
_ Watch any movie released in 1940s
_ Watch any movie released in the 1930s
_ Watch any movie about either war

More information and rules are in the sign up post.

This is a Bingo! style challenge which are always enjoyable. And I know I have plenty of books which will fit into a lot of the categories. Should be fun.

~~~oOo~~~

Yet more crime fiction

A couple of crimefic reviews to catch up on today.


First up, Lord Peter by Dorothy L. Sayers.

This is a volume of all the short stories written by Dorothy L. Sayers about Lord Peter Wimsey. Like most anthologies it's a mixed bag but unlike most anthologies even the ones that're not superb are good, there are no duds here. I've actually been reading this since July so a few of those first stories are lost in the mists of time but these are a few of my favourites that I made a note of:

The Abominable History of the Man With Copper Fingers. The first story in the collection and one of those stories retold in a men's club by an actor about his experiences of a famous wealthy man and his penchant for revenge. Genuinely menacing and creepy.

The Unprincipled Affair of the Practical Joker. A phantom coach and horses with a headless driver story. Was not expecting that from Dorothy L. Sayers! Honestly, this was a 'cracking' yarn. I loved it.

The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head. Wimsey is looking after his young nephew who is recovering from an illness. He takes him to a bookshop where said nephew buys an old book of weird drawings. Then the owner tries to get them back. Why? This one was an absolute joy. Loved it.

The Image in the Mirror. A man is reading an H.G. Wells story, The Plattner Experiment, about a man who was blown into the fourth dimension and came back with all of his organs reversed. The man tells Wimsey that he was bombed in WW1 and also came back with his organs reversed. Absolutely fascinating story and I must dig out the original Wells' story.

The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey. An adventure set in the Pyrenees. A doctor is living an isolated and lonely life with his wife in the mountains. Village gossip has it that the wife's mental state is very bad but she was fine when she arrived. This one has Wimsey pretending to be a magician... great stuff and huge fun but also quite an air of menace about it too.

The final two stories involve Wimsey and Harriet Vane becoming parents.

The Haunted Policeman has Wimsey outside having a smoke after the birth of his first son. A policemen comes up and tells him a very weird story about a house numbered 13 in which he saw that a murder had been committed but on further investigation the next day turned out not to exist.

Talboys. Peter and Harriet now have three sons and are on holiday at Talboys. A female relative is staying with them who thinks the boys are not being brought up correctly and this seems to be confirmed when Bredon, Wimsey's eldest, aged six, is caught pinching peaches. When the tree is stripped the next day Bredon's accused but swears he didn't do it. The boy and Peter join forces to find out who did. Loved, loved, loved this. Particularly the snake named Cuthbert...

A really fantastic volume of short stories. Beautifully written as you might expect and, something I didn't really expect, quite weird. I absolutely loved this weird or supernatural tone to some of the stories and several had a real air of menace about them that was unexpected too. As I said before, even the average stories in this book knock spots off some by other authors. Terrific collection.


Lastly, The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill.

DCI Simon Serailler is in Venice on holiday when he gets a call from his father asking him to come home as his disabled sister is in hospital gravely ill. Having lost a colleague in a brutal manner in a previous investigation Simon is in Venice to recuperate, but answers the summons immediately. Not long after he gets back a young boy is snatched from the street outside his own house, with obvious results for the parents. And an ex-con returns to Lafferton, trying to go straight but will circumstances allow this?

Well it's quite a few years since I read the excellent first book in this series, The Various Haunts of Men. I planned to read this second book quite quickly but discovered it was about a missing child. I don't do children being harmed in books very well so I left it, and left it, and in fact it's now 10 years since I read the first book. And that's a shame. Yes, there is a missing child in the story and it is quite heart rending. But the book also focuses on Simon and his family. I won't call them dysfunctional exactly but there are problems, Simon gets on very badly with his father, his mother has always been distant, Simon himself does not treat women very well. The person Simon adores is his sister, Cat, and being with her and her lively family basically keeps him sane. Susan Hill does psychology extremely well, and I like that. She realises nothing is ever black or white and I thoroughly enjoy the manner in which she examines family relationships, crimes, people's motives, with a fine tooth comb. As a writer she is a class act. There is no firm resolution at the end of the book, reflecting life as it often is of course. I gather book 3 continues on with the investigation so have promptly reserved it from the library.


~~~oOo~~~

Mount TBR reading challenge, 2019

I had a break from Mount TBR this year but the tbrs have mounted up quite badly, despite my efforts, so I thought I'd do the challenge next year as all the books I bought *this* year will qualify of course. So here we go.

As usual the challenge is being hosted by Bev at MY READER'S BLOCK.

Challenge Levels:

Pike's Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s
Mount Blanc: Read 24 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR piles/s
Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books from your TBR pile/s
El Toro: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Everest: Read 100 books from your TBR pile/s
Mount Olympus (Mars): Read 150+ books from your TBR pile/s


For the various rules please visit Bev's sign-up post here. (I like the fact that rereads now count.)


At first I thought I'd just go for Pike's Peak - 12 books - and then I thought, 'Don't be such a wimp.' So I'm going for Mont Blanc, which is to read 24 books. As I have actually read almost 30 of my own books this year that ought to be achievable. In theory...

Looking forward to starting this, partly because it'll be the start of a new year and I always feel enthusiastic about what books I want to read. Right now, coming to the end of the year, my enthusiam is waning slightly. It will return.

~~~oOo~~~

More crime fic

Two murder mysteries to review today... it's all I seem to be reading at the moment, not that I see that as a 'bad' thing.

First up, Swiss Vendetta by Tracee de Hahn.

Agnes Luthi is an inspector with the Swiss police, but she has dual nationality, she's actually American who was born in Switzerland. She's just changed departments within the police, moving from financial crime to violent crimes. She's the sole parent of three boys as her husband has recently died. The storm of the century is almost upon Lausanne when the police get a call to say that a body's been found in the grounds of a local chateau. Agnes only just manages to get to the place before the storm hits and the group of police officers who made it with her are to be cut off for several days while they investigate the murder of Felicity Cowell, who worked for a London auction house. The Vallotton family who own the chateau are a very old, traditional Swiss family and are not giving very much away. Agnes has her work cut out to solve this one, not only because of the family but the elements are also very much against her.

I was ever so slightly underwhelmed by this. The first half of the book was really slow and I might have given up if I hadn't been reading it for a couple of challenges. As it was it did improve, more began to happen, and I did become interested in the case. But I still found the characters a little bit flat. There's a back story that concerns how Agnes's husband died and why, I found this distracting to be honest, although the truth when it came out was a surprise. The setting for the book was excellent and there is a strong feeling of Switzerland in a snowstorm and the aftermath - that I very much liked. All in all, this book was a bit hit and miss for me but that's OK, it's impossible to love everything.

Swiss Vendetta is my 5th. book for the What's in a Name reading challenge and covers the category, 'A Nationality'. It's also my 7th. book for The European Reading challenge, covering the country of Switzerland.


Next, Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand by Fred Vargas, book six in the Commissaire Adamsberg series.

No one on Adamsberg's team has any idea that he had a brother, Raphael. Years ago the brother was the main suspect in the murder of a young woman in the village in the Pyrenees where the family lived. The murder weapon had been some kind of trident, a fork for digging, and Adamsberg has, over the years since this happened, done some digging of his own, convinced as he was that his brother was innocent. His conclusion was that a serial killer is on the loose and that it is a famous judge who lived in the village. He comes to think of the killer as The Trident. No one, of course believes him - the judge is well respected - and when the judge dies that seems to be the end of that for fifteen years. Until Adamsberg spots a murder in the paper, a woman killed in exactly the same way as all the others. But the judge is dead... Various members of the team are off to Quebec on a DNA course. Adamsberg can forget about his dead serial killer while over there can't he? Well no, of course he can't.

Oh my goodness, how can Fred Vargas possibly manage to maintain the quality of this series like she does? This was so complicated, so many layers going on, the historical case or cases, the DNA course, Adamsberg's personal life interfering with those two things - his own stupidty, which is a bit mind boggling to be honest. You want to give him a shake at times. The Quebec setting is beautifully done, the cultural differences between the local Quebecois and their counterparts from Paris was beautifully illustrated and very funny. Every single character is so real, all with their different quirks and habits and failings. I love Clémentine and her friend Josette, the eighty year old computer hacker. Hilarious. I've loved every single book in this series and hate the thought that eventually I'll finish them all and have to wait for a new book to be written.

Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand is my first book for the 12th. Annual Canadian Book challenge which is being hosted by The Indextrious Reader.

~~~oOO~~~

Books Read in October

October was a pretty average reading month for me. Seven books read, all enjoyed, you can't ask for more than that.

The books:

50. A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

51. Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie

52. From the Depths edited by Mike Ashley

53. Hunter's Moon - Dana Stabenow

54. Black Diamond - Martin Walker

55. A Trick of the Light - Louise Penny

56. A Swiss Vendetta - Tracee De Hahn. To be reviewed.


The thing that sticks out for me is that there's no non-fiction this month and the one I'd just started I've put aside for the time being. Will have to do better than that next month. I've more or less majored on crime novels, surprise, surprise... five of those and two supernatural themed books. Sometimes you just have gorge on your favourite genre because nothing else will do, this is possibly because I've had a cold for a week and needed some comfort reading.

Favourite book? Well that would have to be this:

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny. Superb, the series just gets better and better. I've already reserved the next book from the library.

And here's what I've been doing apart from reading:

2,000 pieces, Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' of course. Quite tricky. Make that very tricky...

And this one was a 1,000 piece American puzzle entitled 'Hummingbirds'.

I'm hoping November will be a quiet month. I don't mind if the weather is bad because settling down in my favourite chair in front of the open fire with a good book is sheer luxury. I call it 'hibernating'. Happy reading.

~~~oOo~~~

The 12th Annual Canadian Book challenge

Inspired by Tracey at Bitter Tea and Mystery I'm joining the 12th. Annual Canadian Book challenge. I had a feeling that I had done this before but I can't find any record of it so maybe I'm imagining it. Anyway, some details:

The challenge is being hosted by The Indextrious Reader.


1. What is the Canadian Book Challenge?

Created by John Mutford at the Book Mine Set a decade ago and hosted by him for its first 10 years, the Canadian Book Challenge is an annual online reading challenge in which participants from Canada and around the world aim to read and review 13 or more Canadian books in a one year span: Canada Day to Canada Day. Reviews must be posted online and participants are asked to share links to their reviews with other participants. More on reviews below.

(It's also a lot of fun and collectively we've read and reviewed thousands of Canadian titles)

2. How do I join?

Send me an email (mkindrach (at) gmail [dot] com) with the subject line "Sign Me Up for the Canadian Book Challenge!" and I'll add you to the list. Consider yourself a participant even if you don't get a response from me right away. Come July 1st you can get started right away. As soon as I get your first link (see below), I'll add your name to the participant list on the sidebar of this blog.

3. Oh no, it's past July 1st, can I still join?

Of course! In the past people have joined even in the very last month. If you think you can realistically read and review 13 books in the time remaining, then why not? To join, just follow the exact same instructions as above.

4. What constitutes a Canadian book?

Canadian books can include any genre or form (picture books, poetry, novels, non-fiction, plays, anthologies, graphic novels, cookbooks, etc), can be written by Canadian authors (by birth or immigration) or about Canadians. Ultimately, participants must decide for themselves whether or not something fits the description of Canadian: however, if it isn't clear in your review as to WHY you are counting your read as a Canadian one, please add a line or two to explain :)

More details about the challenge are here.

~~~~~~~
The challenge runs from the 1st. July of this year to the 30th. June 2019, so I'm rather late to the party but that's OK, I'll read what I can, have fun and see where it leads me.

I have many ideas of what to read, More of Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series, Mary Lawson, Entry Island by Peter May (thanks, Kay!), Fred Vargas (book 6 of her Adamsberg series is set in Quebec), Kelley Armstrong, L.M. Montgomery, Vicki Delaney, Tanya Huff, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jo Walton, and I'm certain there are many more options which I will look into. Feel free to suggest any to me.

Non-fictionwise I have these:







I've started a Goodreads shelf of Canadian books HERE. (The ones I've already read won't count for the challenge of course.)

There's also a Goodreads list of Canadian non-fiction HERE.

And a fiction list HERE.

Looking forward to getting started on this and the nice thing is... I can!

~~~oOo~~~

Some crime fiction

The last week or two has been for reading from my ongoing series, ones I haven't touched for many months so it's been huge fun revisiting characters that feel like old friends.


First up, Hunter's Moon by Dana Stabenow - book nine of the author's Kate Shugak series.

Kate Shugak and her boyfriend, Jack, are acting as guides on a hunting expedition in the wilds of Alaska. Kate is an experienced guide. The hunters are a group of Germans from a German company that is in trouble financially in Europe. They're not a particularly pleasant group of men, plus one woman, and Kate has a bad feeling about them. This feeling is reinforced when one of their number is accidently shot dead. But was it an accident? I wasn't very enamoured of this one until about halfway through. The hunters were particularly obnoxious and I'm not great with situations where animals are killed for sport. But it really picked up later in the book and actually became rather exciting, plus, massive shock occurrence, *massive*, was not expecting that, so it got four stars on Goodreads instead of three.


Next, Black Diamond by Martin Walker, book three of the author's Bruno, Chief of Police series.

The Perigord region of France is famous for its truffles and large amounts of money change hands during the season in autumn and early winter. Bruno gets word that someone is interfering with the Perigord truffle when it's being sent off to restaurants in Paris and suchlike, inferior Chinese truffles being exchanged for the genuine article. One of Bruno's closest friends is found brutally murdered in the forest but is it to do with the truffle smuggling or his links to the French wars in Algeria and Vietnam? I quite like this series but in this book felt Bruno was bordering on too good to be true. But the plot concerning truffle shenanigans and tensions between the Vietnamese and Chinese communities in France was quite gripping and fascinating... I had no idea that the latter problems existed to be honest. Bruno's private life continues to be complicated but that's fine, the lovely details of life in Perigord continue to engage and I will definitely carry on with this series.


Lastly, A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny, book seven in her Armand Gamache series.

Clara Morrow has the first ever exhibition of her artwork in Montreal and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache goes to the vernissage with his wife and a couple of police colleagues. A BBQ party takes place in Three Pines, after the event, and a lot of people from the exhibition and village attend. The next morning the dead body of a woman is discovered in Clara and her husband Peter's garden. It's revealed that the dead woman is Lillian Dyson, a childhood friend of Clara's whom she fell out with in her early twenties. But Clara is not the only person who knew Lillian it seems. The dead woman had been an art critic, specialising in scathing reviews which ruined the careers of budding artists. Who among the guests at Clara's BBQ hated Lilian enough to kill her? Words can't express how much I like this series. It has improved with each book and reached a degree of excellence which many series never achieve. This one told me probably more than I thought I wanted to know about petty wars and alliances in the art community in Montreal. Whether this is true to life or not I don't know, but I suspect it's close... it's not at all my world but I was fascinated by it. And of course all the regular characters are so well drawn, all of them a mix of good and bad but growing and changing all the time. I particulary like the mad poet, Ruth, in Three Pines and her relationship with Jean-Guy Beauvoir. I feel like I haven't had enough of Three Pines to quell my thirst for it so have reserved book eight, The Beautiful Mystery, from the library... it's about a monastry in Quebec, can't wait.

It just occurred to me how much travelling I've done with these three books... Alaska, Perigord in France and then Quebec in Canada. And now I'm off to Switzerland!

~~~oOo~~~