Just eleven days left to go before the end of March and the end of the TBR Triple Dog Dare. The basic idea of the Triple Dog Dare is to spend the first three months of the year cleaning house by reading only books in your TBR stack as of midnight, Dec. 31 and with a few allowed exceptions I’m still on track. But I’ve downloaded books onto Kindle and got some books from Barter Books over these last three months and I’m really looking forward to reading them from April onwards. I wrote about some of them in an earlier post.
Here are some more of the ‘physical’ books I have waiting not-so-patiently to be read:
- Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck – because I loved Cannery Row and this is the follow-up story. ‘Set in Monterey, on the California Coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that’s just naturally bad.’ I was really pleased to find this on the shelves at Barter Books – it just jumped out at me.
- The Last Girl by Jane Casey – because I’ve read good things about her books, crime fiction of the thrilling kind. It’ll probably be a while before I read this book as I haven’t read the first in the Maeve Kerrigan series and this one is the third.
- A Medal for a Murderer by Frances Brody – because I enjoyed the first Kate Shackleton mystery, Dying in the Wool. This is the second in the series, set in the 1920s in Harrogate where the leading lady in a play at the theatre is found dead in a doorway.
- The Day of the Lie by William Brodrick – because I’ve read two of the earlier Father Anselm books and enjoyed them. In this one Anselm investigates events in Eastern Europe in the grip of the Cold War.
The books on Kindle include these:
The one I’m most interested in is The King in the North: the Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria by Max Adams – because it’s history of the area where I live, set in the 7th century about Oswald, a prince of the Northumbrian royal house. He reigned briefly, from 634 – 642, but during that time he re-united and re-Christianized the North-East; forged a hybrid culture of Briton, Irish, Scot and Anglo-Saxon; and founded a monastery on Lindisfarne. He was the first British king to die a Christian martyr. Max Adams is a biographer, archaeologist, traveller and writing coach who lives in North-east England.
I think I’ll be reading this book very soon!
BooksPlease 
I might be wrong about this but wasn’t one episode of Tony Robinson’s latest series of walking programmes about Oswald and Northumberland? Whether it was Oswald or not it made stunning viewing.
A good haul of books there. Funny how these books just jump off the shelf at you. 😉 Keeps happening to me in the library…
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I missed that programme – I wonder if it’s still available? It’s a beautiful area, Cath – I love it.
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It was on C4 just a few weeks ago. Saturday nights I think. I expect it will still be available on C4’s version of iPlayer. It’s well worth catching, the Northumberland National Park looking ‘stunning’… took my breath away quite honestly.
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Thanks, Cath – I’ll see if I can find it.
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Catherine Russell liked this on Facebook.
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You have shown great restraint! Hope you enjoy Sweet Thursday as much as Cannery Row. My trip to CA got dereailed so no Monterey for me this year. 😦
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Oh, that is a shame and I was hoping to see your photos and how it has changed.
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Sweet Thursday is one I hope to get to this year. sounds good
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I hope you do – I’d like to know what you think of it.
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Stay strong. I’m very tempted to stray myself, but I’m not going to do with so little time left.
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Thank you James. I’ve been surprised at how many times I’ve wanted to read a ‘new’ book, but I’m enjoying reading the ‘old’ ones.
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Margaret – You have got such a nice lot of books waiting for you. 🙂 I hope you’ll enjoy the Casey series; I think it’s terrific.
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That’s good to know, Margot – I hope to start the Casey series later this year.
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‘The Day of the Lie’ is good, but I think Brodrick’s more recent, ‘The Discourtesy of Death’ is even better.
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Alex, I’m looking forward to reading more of Brodrick’s books – especially €˜The Discourtesy of Death’ now you’ve rated it so highly.
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I didn’t last this year 😦 but in my defence was lured off the straight and narrow by a big new project which you’ll hear about soon. Looks like you’ve got some wonderful reading lined up for April.
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The Frances Brody series looks interesting, I haven’t heard of it, so must go see if I can find it here. I read the first Maeve Kincaid book and really liked it, I have the next one on my Mount TBR and have to get to it as The Last Girl looks very good. Not that the middle one doesn’t, just that all the latest reviews are about The Last Girl….I hope you enjoy them when you get to them!
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