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Topics - Becke Davis

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62
My husband came across this video about Eric Clapton's bookshelf and forwarded it to me. It was strangely appealing - I think you might be interested in it, too.

Give it a listen:

https://www.onthebookshelf.co.uk/2020/04/eric-claptons-bookshelf.html

Check out the Bookshelf blog - there are lots of other book-related topics here.

63
What I'm Reading / NO MIDDLE NAME by Lee Childa
« on: April 13, 2020, 07:09:17 pm »
I like mystery short stories in general, but I like these even  more than usual. These are Reacher stories, going right back to his teen years. I highly recommend this book to Reacher fans and to short story fans.

http://www.leechild.com/short-stories/no-middle-name.php

64
Thanks to Jay for the suggestion for a May feature focusing on sports-related mysteries. This conversation started on another thread (I'll copy those posts here), but I've been finding a lot of good book suggestions on Goodreads:

Troy Soos is a writer and teacher based in Winter Park, Florida. Soos is best known for his "Mickey Rawlings" series of historical baseball novels (seven books set from 1912 to 1923). He also authored a four-book historical mystery series set in 1890s New York featuring Marshall Webb and Rebecca Davies. Soos has written a nonfiction history of early New England baseball history, "Before the Curse," and two mystery short stories ("Pick-Off Play" and "Decision of the Umpire") now available as e-books. His newest release is "The Tomb That Ruth Built," the seventh in the Mickey Rawlings series (published March 2014).

Examples:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1535068.Murder_At_Wrigley_Field

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1535073.The_Cincinnati_Red_Stalkings

65
What I'm Reading / THE SUN DOWN MOTEL by Simone St. James
« on: March 27, 2020, 04:37:37 pm »
I love Simone St. James' books - she's my favorite (current) author of gothic mysteries.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45885644-the-sun-down-motel

I'm only about 100 pages into this book but it is spooky and as mysterious as I'd hoped. I thought I'd read all her books, but after checking out her book list I think there's one I missed.
 
Her first book, THE HAUNTING OF MADDY CLARE, made me a fan for life!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11832043-the-haunting-of-maddy-clare

66
What I'm Reading / DON'T LOOK DOWN by Hilary Davidson
« on: March 24, 2020, 04:28:42 pm »
I love the way Hilary Davidson writes! I read DON'T LOOK DOWN in one sitting - barely came up for air. She's a must buy/must read for me!

67
What I'm Reading / Quarantine Reading List?
« on: March 18, 2020, 12:28:42 am »
Are you isolating/quarantining yourself during the current pandemic? Are you using this time to catch up on reading? Do have a goal - a certain number of books to read? Of course, if you have school-age kids at home with you, you might have less time to read rather than more.

We don't have a feature for April yet - would it be creepy-slash-morbid to feature plagues/quarantines and the like for April? As mystery readers I'm guessing at least a few of us have a quirky sense of humor.

The New York Times beat me to this idea: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/books/coronavirus-reading.html

https://ew.com/books/quaran-reads-8-books-about-pandemics-coronavirus/

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-coronavirus-quarantine-reading-list-the-15-best-apocalyptic-books-1.8659385

68
Okay, we kicked off the year with a Sherlock Holmes Birthday Feature in January, a cozy mystery feature in February and a focus on mysteries set in Ireland and Scotland in March. These give us a topic of discussions, a place to share your favorite books and authors, and a place for authors who write related books to share their news with us.

What would you like to see as an April feature?

69
Welcome and General Discussion / Mystery Movies for Self-Quarantine
« on: March 15, 2020, 10:21:37 pm »
None of us have symptoms of coronavirus, but my granddaughters both have colds and I have a nasty respiratory tract infection, so we're all self-quarantining here. I'm just groggy enough that it's hard to focus on reading. :-(

Marty and I have been looking for mystery movies to watch, including a lot of old episodes of SILENT WITNESS. Last night we watched the new episode of Agatha Christie's THE PALE HORSE with Rufus Sewell. He's a good actor but the episode was disappointing. It wasn't far off from the book, but they approached a lot of the key incidents in a roundabout manner that took a lot away from the story.

Afterwards, we decided to watch the Geraldine MacEwan version (with the fabulous Pauline Collins) and while I don't really like MacEwan as Miss Marple, I did prefer that version to the newer one. (So did Marty.)

Have any of you seen any British or British-type mystery movies that you'd recommend?

70
Welcome and General Discussion / R.I.P. Laura Caldwell
« on: March 02, 2020, 05:08:34 pm »
I was very sad to see Janet Rudolph's post about author/lawyer Laura Caldwell's death. I wanted to share an obituary but since she only died yesterday morning, there don't appear to be any yet.

I knew Laura from the Mystery Forum at BN.com, where she visited with us. She talked about her books and the Innocence Project. She was an amazing woman and she died way too young.

https://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2020/03/laura-caldwell-rip.html

https://www.facebook.com/caldwelllaura

71
Happy Leap Day! As we transition from February into March, we leave our cozy feature behind (only chronologically - feel free to post on that thread as long as you want) and head into the month of clover and leprechauns. We started talking about this on the cozy thread, so I'll retrieve some of those comments and share them here.

Rather than stick to a St. Patrick's Day focus, I think we can extend the scope of this feature to include mysteries set in and around Scotland as well as Ireland, and even Wales. The feature is an excuse for us to talk about some of our favorite books and authors, so go ahead and dive in with your recommendations. If you are an author of books set in these parts, please tell us about yourself and your books.

I didn't plan this, but I just started THE LOCH NESS PAPERS by Paige Shelton, which fits in nicely. I have a couple shelves of Loch Ness related books, so I was excited to come across this title.

The next few comments/posts will be copied and pasted from the cozy thread, where we kick-started this feature several weeks ago.

72
Welcome and General Discussion / Backward books?
« on: February 28, 2020, 04:23:32 pm »
I'm kind of addicted to HGTV's fixer-upper-type shows. It bugs me that when the designers actually put books on display in the redecorated house, they almost always display them with the binding facing the wall. They do this whether the books are stacked on a table or in a bookcase, whether the books are old and worn or newish, with shiny dust jackets.

I don't know if there is a reason for this (if so, WHAT? I'll go search Google in a minute) or if they don't want to introduce different color books that might clash with their design. What do you all think of this trend?

From Google:

 https://www.today.com/home/backward-books-shelves-controversial-home-decor-trend-t119006

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliegerstein/omg-people-why-would-you-ever-do-this-to-books?
utm_term=.ooRXeP9yq#.edb2r3azZ

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article206003969.html

Wow, evidently this has stirred up a maelstrom! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5273879/Backwards-books-lifestyle-blogger-threatened-online.html

https://bookriot.com/2018/01/12/reasons-to-shelve-your-books-backward/

73
I have read several editions of the Malice Domestic short story anthologies, but the one I just finished is one of my favorites. Called MURDER MOST CONVENTIONAL, every short story features a convention of some kind, either as the setting or in some other key role. It was fun to see all the different ways authors worked this out. The anthology includes a lot of my favorite authors and the quality of the stories is exceptional. As an added bonus, at the end of the book - just before the author biographies - there is an article called, "Hello, My Name is Plot," by Max M. Houck, Ph.D., FRSC. This is a fascinating read, highly technical but at the same time really interesting. You may want to have some post-its handy to mark some of the memorable sections. (If you read it in paper form, that is.) Highly recommended!

74
What I'm Reading / Murder in the Monastery by Lesley Cookman
« on: February 23, 2020, 10:43:35 am »
I just finished MURDER IN THE MONASTERY by Lesley Cookman - a Libby Sarjeant Murder Mystery. It was the first book I read in this series, although I don't think it is #1 in the series. I often read books out of order, and I picked this one because the image on the cover reminded me of Tintern Abbey in South Wales. The ruins of Tintern are very photogenic (my husband and I visited the Abbey ruins several times back in the 1970s) but, sadly, when I Googled Tintern Abbey, the images did not match the image on the book cover. I didn't see a cover art credit so I'll need to do more image seaches to track this down.

The book covers in this series (all of which are included in thumbprint-size photos on the back of the book) are kind of dark, but this book had the "feel" of a cozy.  I'm going to keep an eye out for more books by this author.

I just started THE TRANSCENDENTAL MURDER by the late Jane Langton. It's book #1 in the Homer Kelly series. Now that I've read and liked a couple of the Homer Kelly books, I wanted to go back and see what I've missed. I got a kick out of the beginning, where Home and his wife meet for the first time.  I might finish this book today!

75
I thought of doing this as a poll, but there are far too many mystery duos and I don't want to limit your recommendations.

Some of my favorites:

Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James (Deborah Crombie)

Hercule Poirot and Capt. Arthur Hastings (Agatha Christie)

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (Rex Stout)

Roderick and Troy Alleyn (Ngaio Marsh)

Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane (Dorothy L. Sayers)

Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn (Tony Hillerman)

Jane Rizzoli and Dr. Maura Isles (Tess Gerritsen)

Inspector Rutledge and Hamish (Charles Todd)

Dalziel and Pascoe (Reginald Hill)

Spenser and Hawk (Robert B. Parker)

I could list another fifty or more but I'd rather see what detective duos YOU come up with!




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