In the meantime

What I've been doing, besides homework, is discover a lot of other blogs on reading. I linked the ones I'm now following to the side. It seems there are a lot of readers of old books!! Woo!!

I'm looking forward to reading Leavenworth Case, but waiting until tomorrow. From Breadcrumb Reads I learned about the Bout of Books. I don't think I'll be doing it this time around having already made my plans and I'm not putting off Anna Katherine Green. Nope. Tomorrow I'm sitting down and having my own bout of book. But I'm telling you all about it in case you want to sign up. I think I might do the one in August.

The other thing is some of the other bloggers had a picture along the side of their blogs that is Which Austen Heroine Are You? I had to take it. And I FAILED!!!!!!!

I got this:

What is wrong with this picture? It's not Catherine! I didn't try to skew the answers or anything. But seriously, I have no idea how that one ended up like that. I'll have to retake it.

Okay. Back to homework for me so that I can guiltlessly read about murder tomorrow.

Next Read!--Starting May 9th!

The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green.

I'd have more to say on this book but most of the stuff I can find on it is more about how Anna Katherine Green is the mother of mysteries and how she started this series with Detective Ebenezer Gryce 9 years before Sherlock Holmes. Another unsung woman author. Etc.

Not that I'm against lamenting the unfairness of unsung authors, but... Tell me about the book! So here is the synopsis that I know about.


Big millionaire Horatio Leavenworth is murdered in his library. The case is attended by Ebenezer Gryce with the help of a junior law partner. There are family members with motives, including daughters--one of whom said junior law partner falls in love with (of course!)

And that is what I know. Not much for a back of book blurb, is it? So I'll have to write a better one at the end. Remind me, please.

Anyway, here is where you find it.
Amazon--Free!
Barnes and Noble--Free!
Project Gutenberg--Free!
GirleBooks--Free!

So on May 9th I start reading and we'll find out how Gryce stacks up to Holmes.

Other Weirdos! Woo! (An Introduction to the Classics Club Challenge)

Trolling about for discussions on books--as usual-- I followed a link to another link to another link and wound up here-- The Classics Club. They have a little challenge where you read a list of classic books-- a list of your own making-- within a certain amount of time and blog about them. And they are un-fusty about what constitutes a classic. (I had to make sure of this before I decided to join, since most of the books I like to read tend not to land on the official classics lists.) Their whole purpose is to get discussions going about classic books and my whole purpose is to get discussions going about horrid books and mysteries. Wee!!

In order to join I must put a list of at least 50 books I intend to read here and give a date to have them finished by. I'm going to go with 3 years. It gives me a lot of room and I can always add more books. Here is my list. I make no promises that this is the order I will read things in.

Northanger Horrid Novel Collection

1.      Castle of Wolfenback- Eliza Parsons

2.      The Necromancer- Ludwig Flammenberg

3.      Horrid Mysteries- Marquis de Grosse

4.      The Mysterious Warning- Eliza Parsons

5.      The Italian- Ann Radcliffe

6.      The Midnight Bell- Francis Lathom

7.      Clermont, A Tale- Regina Maria Roche

8.      Orphan of the Rhine- Eleanor Sleath

More Gothic-ish Sorts

9.      Phantom of the Opera- Gaston Leroux

10.  The Monk, A Romance- Matthew Lewis

11.  The Phantom Ship- Frederick Marryat

12.  The King in Yellow- Robert Chambers

13.  The Lancashire Witches, A Romance of Pendle Forest- William Harrison Ainsworth

14.  Catherine: A Story- William Makepeace Thackeray

15.  The Cloister and the Hearth- Charles Reade

16.  The Castle of Otranto- Horace Walpole

17.  Lady Audley’s Secret- Mary Elizabeth Braddon

18.  East Lynne- Ellen Wood

19.  Moonstone- Wilkie Collins

20.  The Haunted Hotel-Wilkie Collins

21.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Anne Brontë

22.  Black Oxen- Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

23.  The Wind In the Rosebush and Other Stories of the Supernatural- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

24.  A New England Nun and Other Stories- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

25.  Melmoth the Wanderer- Charles Maturin

26.  Dracula- Bram Stoker

27.  Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman- Mary Wollstonecraft

28.  Vathek- William Beckford

29.  House of the Seven Gables- Nathaniel Hawthorne

30.  The Parasite- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

UPDATE!!
Varney the Vampire Or the Feast of Blood- Thomas Preskett Prest
Wagner the Wehr-Wolf- George W.M. Reynolds
Mysteries of London- George W.M. Reynolds

Mysteries

31.  The Woman In Black- E.C. Bentley

32.  Mystery of Cloomber- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

33.  The Man in Lower Ten- Mary Roberts Rinehart

34.  The Circular Staircase- Mary Roberts Rinehart

35.  The Bat- Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart

36.  Lady Molly of Scotland Yard- Baroness Orczy

37.  The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective- C.L. Pirkis

38.  The Avalanche: A Mystery- Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

39.  Monsieur Lecoq- Émile Gaboriau

40.  Dead Man’s Money- J.S. Fletcher

41.  The Paradise Mystery- J.S. Fletcher

42.  The Man Who Knew Too Much- G.K. Chesterton

43.  The Innocence of Father Brown- G.K. Chesterton

44.  The Red Thumb Mark- R. Austin Freeman

45.  The Mystery of 31 New Inn- R. Austin Freeman

46.  John Thorndyke’s Cases- R. Austin Freeman

47.  The Leavenworth Case- Anna Katharine Green

48.  That Affair Next Door- Anna Katharine Green

49.  The Circular Study- Anna Katharine Green

50.  Mystery of the Hasty Arrow- Anna Katharine Green

"the retrospect of all the dangers and misfortunes they had each encountered"

That sad feeling when you've finished the book.

I spent all day reading, to the point where all I've had to eat is an ENTIRE BOX of girl scout cookies and some popcorn. I know who lives, who dies, who gets married, and who is whose child. I know that the heroine fainted 14 times throughout the novel (and that half). I know what is behind the black veil. I enjoyed this book so so much.

Sorry, Pooh, we can't. We have more books to read.

And I'll leave you with the last line of the book, because it is awesome.
"And, if the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it--the effort, however humble, has not been in vain, nor is the writer unrewarded."

THE END

"where her last interview with Valencourt, before her departure from Tholouse, had taken place"

Which is interesting because on exactly another spot they said goodbye too. She's back at her late aunt's mansion and is mooning around thinking of Valencourt.

The book has gotten really exciting in volume 4 and I'm reading as fast as I can and then we come to full stop as she wanders gardens and weeps over the many places she saw him. I just want to yell, 'Shut up and get back to the cool shit!' Like where Ludovico disappeared to when he spent the night in the haunted chamber! Or what sainted St. Aubert had to do with the mysteriously dead marchioness! Or wtf is up with the crazy nun! Pleeeeeeeeease!

"the Chevalier's extravagance has brought him twice into the prisons of Paris"

OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD!

Fainting fit 11, but that isn't why I'm saying ohmygod. Something happened that I never expected.

While Emily was fighting for her life, trapped in torture chambers, kidnapped, and held prisoner, and making a daring escape, Valencourt has been gambling away all his money, womanizing, and getting himself arrested!

I never saw this coming. Never, never, never.

"the dread of superior beauty urged her to prolong Blanche's seclusion"

Alas! I've had an upcropping of real life to distract me from adventures. It isn't done yet! Tomorrow I score a 5k road race for a charity. Runners are so persnickety about their times and personal bests and all that and they wouldn't appreciate that I was reading rather than keeping track of their times.

So we've left Emily mid-escape (I know!!!! WTF?) and we still don't know what is behind the black curtain that terrified her so much.

I don't know what happened, where Emily is, or if she got away, because suddenly we are back in France at the chateau that creeped the locals out where the sainted St. Aubert (who should never work in child placement services) died. This place.

There we meet the new owner's family. He is a count. His daughter is named Blanche.
Blanche is a beautiful young woman who loves nature.

She has lived a secluded life (in a convent put there because her stepmother was jealous of her beauty) and is therefore all goodness and light and such.

And she has a vain and stupid woman (her stepmother) who doesn't like her and takes every chance to make her miserable.

Oh and Blanche writes poetry, so we get treated to stanza on stanza about a butterfly.

Wait a minute.... All this sounds really familiar. Like a variation of another character in the story...

Not sure where Emily and her little band of escapees fit in yet. Hope she is okay. And at least while running, she can't stop to write poetry!... I hope. Maybe lack of poetry opportunities is why Radcliffe put Blanche in.