I blame Tumblr for this now being a book cover, "How to Piss Off men" by Kyle Prue

Books on Shakespeare that looks interesting. Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life" by Fintan O'Toole and "Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare" by Will Tosh

I was wasting time at the train station and I think the Swedish cover for Victoria Dowds "The Smart Woman's Guide to Murder" is a little nicer. gives me more classic cozy vibes.

Looking through my old hard drive

On my old hard drive there's a few different things.

Screenplays

Angsty teenage stuff (I often even used a pen name for those, cringe)

Regency stuff (some is alright)

Obviously inspired by Sarah Dessen (ugh)

Thriller-ish things (some is alright)

Haven't looked through all of it but so far, I write best when I have no plan.

I would also add pics in the info documents and some were taken from peoples blogs and such, sharing pictures back in the day were different. Pretty sure some of these pics are from someone's Myspace.

Also, some of the documents are old. It's named my name so it's from the shared computer (those were the days) and it's locked (but I use the same password today so it's fine) and I would just work on everything in the same document and use different fonts for different ideas, what a mess!

I haven't dared open a document called, "Fan Girl Fantasy", what the heck is that? Do I dare...

Murder Mystery Book Club

My murder mystery book club of one have Medieval Mystery as a theme for April. Start with "A Morbid Taste for Bones" by Ellis Peters and second book if you manage is "The Alewives" by Elizabeth R. Andersen.

Same vibe from these covers. "Clear" by Carys Davies and "Great Expectations" by Vinson Cunningham.

Feel a little cheated by the cover and the blurb, "A witty, feminist mystery set in the heart of 19th century London, this daring adventure featuring an intrepid woman detective will thrill fans of Deanna Raybourn and Katharine Schellman." and "Unless Albertine can prove who murdered Lord Grendel and clear her name, her choices are step-mothering enough small children to start a school or hanging from the end of Her Majesty's rope." But this is actually a rom com.

BEST BOOK: Hard month… did I enjoy any of these books? Did I take anything from these books? A few what not to do but… Yeah I don’t think I liked any of them, a bunch of meh. Is this me? Is this what untreated depression does? If I had to pick one… “Hunt for the Shadow Wolf” but yeah, it was also so of meh. WORST BOOK: Maybe “The Murder of Mr. Ma” because I wanted it to be good, but I wanted “The Poisons we Drink” too be good too, and “Scorched Grace”, and “The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder”. But I think “The Murder of Mr. Ma” failed me the most. THOUGHTS: How do I find better books? Looking through the books I’ve read so far this year and books that was more than just a meh, might be 4 books out of 32 so roughly 10%. That’s not great. Out of those 4 books, 3 were non fiction. I can tick off India on my Read Around the World challenge. So maybe I should read more non fiction? I like to listen to non fiction when I work. Not sure April will be that much better, I already have a few books in the pip line… some Netgalley reads, fingers crossed. Maybe books will get better as spring and the sun shows up?

I keep coming across bookish books

I started this awhile ago... over a year probably and I just never got into it but so many people say it's good so I am going to give it another try. Will clear some books off and attack in possibly in April

So many guides to murder these days... there are so many more than this.

Similar vibe from these two covers, "The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder" by C.L. Miller and "The Treasure Hunters Club" by Tom Ryan

BEST BOOK: “Recipes for Love and Murder” by Sally Andrew. It was cozy and I’ll continue the series and bake some of the recipes at the end of the book. But I didn’t read anything brilliant. Will I ever?

WORST BOOK: Tricky, maybe “The Wharton Plot”, it was slow and sad. “How to Solved Your Own Murder” was a little disappointing and “The Highgate Cemetery Murder” wasn’t brilliant either. But I think I liked “The Wharton Plot” the least so we’ll go with that.

CONCLUSIONS: Most books I read are 3 stars and not great but I have stayed away from the covers of some books that I know are very flat so that’s nice. I also got 3 non fiction done which was nice. I did say I would read more diverse and I can cross off New Zealand and South Africa on my Read Around the World challenge.

I think I'll make an attempt to read the books targeted in the Cait Corrain drama. Missing here is "The Empire Wars" by Akana Phenix but there's no cover out for that one yet so... and there's a bunch of other author targeted because CC was a busy bee. But I'll start here.

Indian cozies, they all happen to be historical as well. I need to read more cozies that are set in other places and the UK and the US. Also be nice to get my hands on a few audiobooks as well. The last one isn't set in India but the main character is an Indian police.

"The Bangalore Detectives Club" by Harini Nagendra "The Widows of Malabar Hill" by Sujata Massey "The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra" by Vaseem Khan "A Disappearance in Fiji" By Nilima Rao

Reading Challenge "Around the World"

I really wanted to read a cozy from every country but... that's way too hard, maybe even impossible (maybe there's no one from East Timor that has written a cozy yet?). So we are changing it to read a book from every country instead. Without digging too deep it seems like I've read books from 10 different countries (embarrassing!). I will look to cozies or some kind of mystery but some countries I will be happy if I can find a book at all.

A BOOKS

Afghanistan: "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini. It was hard to find books that I was interested in from Afghanistan. War, war, war, and talibans. I would like something less heavy but... Picked this one as it was a book I found an audiobook for.

Albania: "Broken April" by Ismail Kadare. Majority of books that popped up was by this guy, he seems to be The Author from Albania. It's not too long so hopefully I can get through it.

Algeria: "A Bookshop in Algiers" by Kaouther Adimi. It looks like a cozy, cute cover. It's about a bookshop, it has to be an okay read, right?

Andorra: Can't get my hands on anything...

Angola: "The Book of Chameleons" by José Eduardo Agualus. It was kind of short so I picked it... yeah.

Antigua and Barbuda: "Annie John" Jamaica Kincaid. I've heard of her and I found an audiobook. Yay. Love it when I find a book.

Argentina: "Things We Lost in the Fire" by Mariana Enríquez. Quick pick because I found an audiobook but there's a lot to pick from here so I might look around later and find a mystery of some sort.

Armenia: "Sorry, Bro" by Taleen Voskuni. For now, just to have something, not perfect. American and a romance, I do not like romance. Israel, Russian, American... I struggled for find an Armenian author and/or not about genocide, not really something I want to read about.

Australia: DONE

Austria: "The Case of the Pocket Diary Found in the Snow" by Auguste Groner. A detective story from 1890. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are not. We'll see.

Azerbaijan: "Days in the Caucasus" by Banine. A memoire, 1905, a tale of East meeting West someone said.

I am not going to pretend that this will be done in a few months, there's no deadline on this one and some look like hard reads so... and maybe I need to find some new ones. We'll see how it goes. I might read some other countries elsewhere and that will of course count but I try to just pick them off one by one. Picking a few harder early might be easier than if you pick "fun" easy books right away and then have things that you don't feel up too left.