The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge is run by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. It’s an open-ended challenge to read all of Agatha Christie’s books. I’m not attempting to read them in order (as Kerrie is doing) but reading them as I find them.
Actually I don’t think of this as a ‘challenge’. To me a challenge should be just that – something that tests my ability to achieve a goal under difficult circumstances, something that needs effort and determination to achieve. Reading Agatha Christie’s books is pleasure, the only effort needed is finding the books and even that isn’t difficult these days. I’ve bought some and borrowed others from the library, although I still haven’t read some of the earlier books, I’m managing to fill in the gaps.
So far I have read her Autobiography, 30 of her full length books and 2 of the collections of her short stories:
Progress in publication date order (the links are to my posts on the books):
- 1920 The Mysterious Affair At Styles
- 1922 The Secret Adversary
- 1924 The Man in the Brown Suit
- 1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
- 1928 The Mystery of the Blue Train
- 1929 The Seven Dials Mystery
- 1932 Peril At End House
- 1934 Murder on the Orient Express
- 1934 Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (Aka The Boomerang Clue)
- 1936 The A.B.C. Murders
- 1937 Dumb Witness
- 1937 Death on the Nile
- 1938 Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
- 1939 Murder is Easy
- 1941 Evil Under the Sun
- 1942 The Body in the Library
- 1946 The Hollow
- 1848 Taken at the Flood
- 1949 Crooked House
- 1951 They Came to Baghdad
- 1953 A Pocket Full of Rye
- 1956 Dead Man’s Folly
- 1957 4.50 from Paddington
- 1961 The Pale Horse
- 1962 The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
- 1964 A Caribbean Mystery
- 1968 By the Pricking of My Thumbs
- 1970 Passenger to Frankfurt
- 1972 Elephants Can Remember
- 1975 Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (written in the 1940s)
Short Stories:
- 1932 The Thirteen Problems
- 1933 The Hound of Death
Autobiography/Biography
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
I’ll be reading these books in the coming months (linked to Amazon UK):
- Death in the Clouds – 1935
- They Do It With Mirrors – 1952
- The Moving Finger – 1942
- A Murder is Announced – 1950
- The Clocks – 1963
- Third Girl – 1966
- At Bertram’s Hotel – 1965
- Endless Night – 1967
- Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple’s Last Case – 1976 (probably written between the end of the 1940s and early 1950s), published after Agatha Christie’s death.
Short Stories:
- Complete Parker Pyne, Private Eye – an omnibus edition of Mr Parker Pyne stories
- The Golden Ball and other stories – 1971
- Miss Marple and Mystery: 20 short stories, published over 30 years
Biography:
- Agatha Christie at Home by Hilary Macaskill
Well done Margaret. For me the challenge is finding the time to read the books and finding the books although in reality there are plenty of ways of doing it. Even so I estimate I have about 4 years to go to finish reading them all.
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Yeah, I wish someone would come up with a new name for all ‘challenges.’ I only join the ones that are fun for me. Reading of all things doesn’t mean work to me. Of course, I’m still waiting for a nicer word for ‘blog’ too. :<)
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You’ve done well Margaret, I’m no where near that close. But you are right this is not so much a challenge as a pleasure.
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Kerrie, the time factor is definitely a challenge!
Nan, me too! Nicer words for ‘blogger’ and ‘blogroll’ would be good too.
Irene, I aim to read about one Agatha Christie book a month – which will take a long time. It’s not a quick undertaking! She certainly achieved a lot in her lifetime.
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