Reaching for More Glory

The Day 7 challenge for Bout Of Books #22 is:

Stretch Goal

It's the last day of the readathon, so today's challenge is to take a look at the goals you set for the week (if you have them) and decide a) how you can stretch yourself to complete them or b) how you can revise them so you can meet them. Because yes, you can revise your goals! If you didn't set goals for the week, set a small one for yourself today!

My original goals were a) to read 3 or 4 books and b) to stay away from places where I can spend lots of time finding new titles to add to the TBR (To Be Read) pile.

Now, at the beginning of Day 7, I have read:

1.     "Excellent Women" by Barbara Pym
2.     "Red Bang" by Brandt Monroe
3.     "The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra" by Vassem Khan

and I am 1/3 through:

    "The Ladies of Missalonghi" by Colleen McCullough


Plus I do think I spent productive time reading books and not just reading more book reviews!

Revised goal: I might fit in another short novella, "Santal" by Ronald Firbank.

No Cuddly Bears Here

The Red House Mystery
A. A. Milne
E.P. Dutton, 1922
229 pages


I don't think of myself as a mystery reader, and yet for the last month I've been speeding right down the Mystery Lane, er, bookshelf - a couple of Agatha Christies, a Margaret Armstrong, and now a surprising entry from Alan Alexander Milne. Yes, that's A. A. Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame, writing for adults in his only mystery novel.

 

Before Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and the rest debuted in 1924, Milne had written stories for the British humor magazine, "Punch", several plays, and a few other novels. The title page of "The Red House Mystery" (1922) identifies him as the "Author of 'Mr. Pym Passes By,' 'The Dover Road,' etc.", which are both plays.

The book is dedicated to his father:

This is probably a cozy mystery, although the amateur detectives are men, and women dominate that genre these days. But it is set in a small English village, nothing very violent is described, and the amateur sleuths ferret out lots of gossip to help solve the crime and best the police at their game - all good cozy mystery attributes.

The plot is not overly complicated, but it is a devious and misleading one. Once again, I only half figured out who dunnit. Mostly I ruled out a lot of the suspects in my mind, but the ending was a surprise.

The main characters, Antony Gillingham, a gentleman of means, and his young friend, Bill Beverly, decide to play detectives and solve the murder of Bill's friend Mark Ablett. They approach this task in a rather light-hearted way at times, calling each other Holmes and Watson. The first Sherlock Holmes story was published by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, so this is not surprising in a 1922 novel. It also turns out that Milne knew Doyle. According to a story on the BBC website:

Peter Pan author JM Barrie, a cricketing fanatic, gathered the most famous writers of his day to play on his amateur team - the oddly-named Allahakbarries - between 1887 and 1913. The team members included Arthur Conan Doyle, PG Wodehouse, AA Milne and Jerome K Jerome.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8662375.stm

The dawn of celebrity sports teams! I love finding out that famous authors were, in fact, friends long ago. And it makes me wonder if there are other references to each other's work to be found? Some sleuthing required...

Milne made his fame and fortune from the books of Pooh stories and poems. However, I wish he had penned a few more mysteries as I enjoyed this one. It's my pick for the Back to the Classics 2018 Challenge - A classic with a color in the title.

Miss Trumble, Spinster Sleuth

Murder in Stained Glass
Margaret Armstrong
Pepik Books, 2015 (originally published 1939)
184 pages


I came across this novel in the same way I think a lot of people do these days, in a list of free Kindle books on Amazon.com. As a lover of stained glass, the title caught my eye, and it had some decent reviews online, so I gave it a try. It's a nice cozy mystery with a bit of the Had I But Known school of writing.

Miss Trumble, a spinster in her late forties, leaves her comfortable Park Avenue apartment in New York City for Bassett's Bridge, a small New England town, to visit Charlotte, a woman she knew in boarding school. When a famous stained glass artist dies in the town, suspicion falls on several people, including the artist's son, Leo. Charlotte's niece, Phyllis, is in love with Leo, so Miss Trumble starts to investigate to clear his name. She ferrets out a lot of the town's gossip, learning many secrets that might or might not be important. There are various plot twists right up to the end, and I must admit I did not see the solution coming at all.

The setting for the story is early 20th century America, and the scenes in the Fashionable Society of New York City are quite interesting. Ms Armstrong would have been writing about a time in the recent past, maybe 10 years out, so we get a good glimpse of how people lived then, urban and rural.

I liked this story as it reminded me of the Agatha Christie books I've read, as well as some other cozies I like. Unfortunately Miss Trumble does not reappear to solve another crime. This was Margaret Armstrong's first novel, published when she was 72. Two more appeared in the following years, "The Man with No Face" (1940) and "The Blue Santo Murder Mystery" (1941). But, alas, no Miss Trumble.

Margaret Armstrong was a well-known book cover designer in the days when the image was imprinted directly onto the cover of a book, before dust jackets took over. Some examples are shown in the nice biography of her found on The Passing Tramp blog:

Bout Of Books Favs

The Day 6 challenge for Bout Of Books #22 is:

Share Your Favorite Bout of Books Moment

With the read-a-thon starting to wind down, we want to see some of your favorite moments. These could be from past Bout of Books or the present one. Did you connect with someone who would later become your BFF and partner in crime? Did a favorite author retweet you? Were you recommended a book that changed your life? TELL US ABOUT IT!

I have really been enjoying my first Bout Of Books! Reading is so solitary. It's nice to see a large group of readers chatting excitedly about books! And I now have new connections in both the Twittersphere and Blogosphere. But I must admit that my Favorite Moment came during the Twitter Chat on Monday when I finally figured out how to use TweetDeck so I could actually see all the tweets! Tah-dah!! Victory is mine!

I'm 60% through my third book, "The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra" by Vaseem Khan. It's a cozy mystery set in India, where the detective's sidekick is a baby elephant.

Book Scavenger Hunt

The Day 5 challenge for Bout Of Books #22 is:

Space Scavenger Hunt

You all like a scavenger hunt, right? This one is space themed. Use the guidelines below. Participate as much as you can. This is a challenge, so you don't have to get them all to win. If you have fun, you win.

• Mercury - Favourite short story/novella - "The Pearl", John Steinbeck
• Venus - Favourite book with female protagonist - the Flavia de Luce series, Alan Bradley
• Earth - Favourite book about nature/nature word in the title - "Cod: a Biography of the Fish That Saved the World", Mark Kurlansky
• Mars - Favourite book with a red cover - "Illuminae", Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
• Jupiter - Favourite tome over 500 pages - "Moby-Dick in Pictures", Matt Kish
• Saturn - Favourite book with circle/ring on the cover/in the title - "Ring for Jeeves", P. G. Wodehouse
• Uranus - Favourite book set in winter - "Bury Your Dead", Louise Penny
• Neptune - Favourite book set at sea, on a boat, or under water - "Moby-Dick", Herman Melville
• Pluto - Favourite books featuring a dog/with a dog on the cover - "44 Scotland Street", Alexander McCall Smith
• Moon - Favourite book set anywhere other than Earth - "Foundation", Isaac Asimov
• Sun - Favourite book set in summer - "Playing for Pizza", John Grisham
• Space - Favourite book set in space - "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams

Rather a diverse collection of titles, eh? Try one, you'll like it!