Monday, February 1, 2010

It's Monday! What am I reading?

sigh. Today I am reading two books. The first is The White Priory Murders, by Carter Dickson (whose real name is John Dickson Carr).  It's the second in the Sir Henry Merrivale series, which I'm reading in series order to get to one of my books for February, The Red Widow (#3 in the series).  This one was written some time in the 1930s -- during what's known as the golden age of mystery . I have tons of these really old books and love them.They're very verbose (meaning, the author loves to hear himself go on and on), but they all pretty much center on the old standard, the locked-room/impossible crime mystery.


The next book is kind of the bedside book, because I'm really reading it at night like right before I go to bed.  It's called The Yellow Sign and Other Stories: The Complete Weird Tales of Robert W. Chambers. Just like Kraft mac and cheese from the box is a guilty pleasure of mine (that stuff is so bad for you but it's so good!), so too are horror stories.  This particular set of stories centers on a book called The King in Yellow, which makes whoever reads it through the second part go insane. I love this kind of stuff and I'm loving this book. 

3 comments:

  1. Two great sounding reads. I dont think I have heard of either one of them. Enjoy!

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  2. Hmmm. A fan of colors? :-) Old books are definitely a favorite with me too, but I don't have any mysteries per se. Most of mine are just straighforward novels.

    Happy reading this week!

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  3. To Sheila: Thanks -- I will definitely have fun with these.

    To Hannah: Actually, I didn't mean to choose Yellow Sign intentionally for its color; I had just bought it and was really hankering for something scary at the time. I am glad to see someone else who likes old books!

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