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Book Chain, weeks 34, 35 & 36
Nov. 16th, 2025 05:49 pm#32: Read a book whose title starts with the letter that was the last letter in the previous book's title.
N or M? by Agatha Christie.
A couple of years ago, I set out to read all of Christie's Tommy & Tuppence mysteries in order, read the first one, and immediately got side-tracked. Getting a prompt for a title beginning with N seemed like a good opportunity to get back into it. (Strictly speaking, I've skipped the second book, which is the short story collection; I'm not keen on it for some reason and I think that's what was holding me back.)
N or M? was one of the ones that I've read before, a very long time ago. I didn't remember who dun it, though I did remember some of the people it wasn't, and I remembered one plot twist near the end which turned out to be less help than I'd anticipated in narrowing the suspects down. I've read enough declassified World War II history to know that Christie's speculations about German agents operating in Britain were wide of the mark, but as a pretext for a fun adventure story they worked well enough, and I had a good time with it.
#33: Read a book whose title is the same colour as the previous book's.
Imperium by Robert Harris (also the random book selection for October). A fictionalised account of the ascent of the Roman orator and politician Cicero in the first century BCE; apparently, it's the first book of a trilogy which covers all of Cicero's life and thereby all the big social upheavals he lived through. (I'd be tempted to compare it to Graves's I, Claudius, except that I still haven't read that -- but I have heard his "Epics Are Out of Fashion" read on the radio, and the narrative style is similar enough that that's the voice I hear in my head as I read.)
I haven't decided yet whether I want to read the rest of the trilogy, though I have gone as far as confirming that the local library has copies of both the sequels.
N or M? by Agatha Christie.
A couple of years ago, I set out to read all of Christie's Tommy & Tuppence mysteries in order, read the first one, and immediately got side-tracked. Getting a prompt for a title beginning with N seemed like a good opportunity to get back into it. (Strictly speaking, I've skipped the second book, which is the short story collection; I'm not keen on it for some reason and I think that's what was holding me back.)
N or M? was one of the ones that I've read before, a very long time ago. I didn't remember who dun it, though I did remember some of the people it wasn't, and I remembered one plot twist near the end which turned out to be less help than I'd anticipated in narrowing the suspects down. I've read enough declassified World War II history to know that Christie's speculations about German agents operating in Britain were wide of the mark, but as a pretext for a fun adventure story they worked well enough, and I had a good time with it.
#33: Read a book whose title is the same colour as the previous book's.
Imperium by Robert Harris (also the random book selection for October). A fictionalised account of the ascent of the Roman orator and politician Cicero in the first century BCE; apparently, it's the first book of a trilogy which covers all of Cicero's life and thereby all the big social upheavals he lived through. (I'd be tempted to compare it to Graves's I, Claudius, except that I still haven't read that -- but I have heard his "Epics Are Out of Fashion" read on the radio, and the narrative style is similar enough that that's the voice I hear in my head as I read.)
I haven't decided yet whether I want to read the rest of the trilogy, though I have gone as far as confirming that the local library has copies of both the sequels.
