The Plan for March 2009

It’s Health and Fitness Month here at the Azure Lion Inn. I recently joined a running club, partly to help myself get in shape and lose some unneeded pounds, and partly because I’ve always wanted to be able to run. I’ve never had the stamina to run more than 20 or 30 seconds at a time, not even when I was really young. Time to change that.

So this month I’m looking to read some inspirational and/or how-to fitness books. On the list:

The Courage to Start by John Bingham

The Principles of Running by Amby Burfoot

Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes

Heft on Wheels by Mike Magnuson

Built for Show by Nate Green

In addition, I’m working on Hallie Ephron’s Never Tell a Lie, my latest (and overdue) Early Reviewer’s book, and I hope to tackle Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Links.

A tall order this month, but I think I can do it.

I am not dead.

I’m not exactly sure what happened to the last month and a half. It’s been busy, that’s for sure! I need to get off my butt and post reviews I’ve got in the pipeline, and do a little housekeeping around here.

Stay tuned…

The Victoria Vanishes by Christopher Fowler

Have you ever seen the British comedy The Thin Blue Line? Well, imagine those characters taking over for the characters in CSI and you have an idea of what it’s like to read The Victoria Vanishes – puzzling, serious, quirky, funny, and uniquely British, all at the same time.

100 in 2009

Well, that didn’t take long.

I’d been thinking about it for a couple weeks, and the recent Booking Through Thursday post made me decide to take the plunge–I’m joining the challenge to read 100 books this year.

The details are here.

Booking Through Thursday – Resolutions?

Happy New Year, everyone!
So … any Reading Resolutions? Say, specific books you plan to read? A plan to read more ____? Anything at all?
Name me at least ONE thing you’re looking forward to reading this year!

I tend to not make resolutions, per se, but I’m always trying to read more. Specifically, I’d like to dig into my pile of Tudor history and tackle a few classics.

I’m also looking forward to reading Inkheart…I’ve heard so many great things about it. Shades of Michael Ende’s Neverending Story, perhaps?

Also, this blog needs work (or, more accurately, “lots more stuff”), so I’ve signed up for the 2009 Blog Improvement Project. There’s also my own personal Christie Challenge that I let fall by the wayside last year and intend to make some headway on. Other reading challenges may follow.

The Great Blog Overhaul of 2009

Okay, “overhaul” is an overstatement, because there’s too little content here to really overhaul anyway. But I want to turn this blog into something actually worthwhile, so I’m signing up for my first challenge, the 2009 Blog Improvement Project, hosted by Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness.

Maybe a little semi-monthly work will keep me from going 6 months between posts, like I did when I first started!

Mr. White’s Confession by Robert Clark

Years ago, I was very nearly addicted to the website MysteryNet.com, which features stories by well-respected contemporary mystery writers. I also read one of those mystery magazines – either Alfred Hitchcock’s or Ellery Queen’s, I don’t remember which – which had many of the same kinds of stories in it. It was then that I learned of a subgenre of sorts of the mystery oeuvre – the “crime story,” which basically documents the occurrence of a crime. No real mystery, no lack of knowledge (at least on the part of the reader) of the identity of the perpetrator…just a murder (usually) for whatever reason, and then the criminal’s attempt to cover his tracks.

Booking Through Thursday – Reading Time, or the Lack Thereof

(I’ve just discovered the “Booking Through Thursday” meme blog. Good stuff!)

1. Do you get to read as much as you WANT to read?

Never, but grad school makes it worse. Right now it takes me nearly a month to finish a book, reading a chapter at a time during lunch, etc. I have high hopes of amping up the book consumption over the holiday break, but there are lots of other things to do that may suck up my time as well. At the very least I’ll catch up on my Early Reviewer books and read a book for school.

2. If you had (magically) more time to read–what would you read? Something educational? Classic? Comfort Reading? Escapism? Magazines?

Classics and history. I have piles and piles of various Tudor books just waiting to be cracked, and my personal-edification-reading-list includes such things as rereading The Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights and tackling Tolstoy, Thackeray, and Dickens. Throw in some classic detective fiction in there too, as I’d probably knock back a few Christies and maybe some Doyle and Hammett.

Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland

I should have been tipped off by the cover.

Somehow, when perusing this book’s entry in the Early Reviewer program, I got the wrong impression about Any Given Doomsday, Lori Handeland’s first offering in her new series, The Phoenix Chronicles. It sounded like an interesting urban adventure story, perhaps with a bit of noir mystery thrown in.  I don’t know what gave me that impression.

A Dog Among Diplomats by J.F. Englert

A Dog Among Diplomats by J.F. Englert was my first Early Reviewers book from LibraryThing.  I’d never heard of this series before, of which this book was the second, so I picked up the first one to familiarize myself with the characters.  I thoroughly enjoyed Englert’s first effort in this series, A Dog About Town, and the character of Randolph, the extraordinarily intelligent Labrador, is as engaging here as he was in the first book. The storyline, however, is not – which is a disappointment because the stakes should be higher.