A Christmas Party (Envious Casca) - Georgette Heyer

I first read Envious Casca, a 1941 contemporary closed-room murder mystery, in 2010. I just finished a reread, not because I loved the book but because the GoodReads TrueBookTalk group was reading it this December and joining in for a reread would 1) enable me to participate with a group I enjoy but have been woefully absent from this year, 2) enable me to rack up another Back to the Classics book for the 2022 challenge, which I have been woefully neglectful of this year, and 3) enable me to inch closer to completing my GoodReads goal of 55 books in 2022.

Envious Casca is also published under the title A Christmas Party, which I think is a better title--more appealing and less esoteric, and I am always looking for good, non-schmaltzy holiday books for December reading.

The setting is pure Agatha Christie--a collection of people, some related, some not, but most are ill-tempered and chock full of motives for murdering the poor rich guy who ends up murdered in a locked room. I was about one-quarter into the book and not remembering it at all before I had a pretty good idea of who did the murder but not how. Even by the time I reached the end and the various clues starting falling into place I didn't recall exactly how the murder was done, which is always a plus. 

This is a great book for book lovers as...spoiler alert...a book does play a major role in the solving of the mystery.

It's not the best mystery out there, nor the best Christmas-themed book around, and I think Georgette Heyer was much better at Regency Romances than Christie-esque murder mysteries, but it was a fun 3-star read.

I hereby designate Envious Casca (aka A Christmas Party) by Georgette Heyer as my Wild Card book for the 2022 Back to the Classics Challenge. That puts me at only five for the year, but I am working on Winds of War by Herman Wouk and might finish it by December 31 at midnight! Wish me luck. I also have a bird puzzle to finish (with only white pieces left), a book on weaving to study so that I can start using the tabletop loom I got for Christmas, and zillion other odds and ends that need to be done before we ring in the New Year.

Happy New Year, friends, and stay warm/cool and safe, and happy reading!

March Madness

In a way, winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature. Edna O'Brien

As a short story writer, I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't heard of O'Brien before I spied this quote, attributed to her, in this morning's paper, but I've added one of her collection, A Fanatic Heart, to my Amazon cart. While she also has a number of novels out there, I think I might enjoy getting to know her as an author via short stories first. I've found that collections of stories are a handy way to break up a long read and try on new authors. I keep a few on my reading tables for just such occasions.

I'm frustrated that I didn't get another post done since last Monday, but it's been a busy time in our family and in my reading life.

Almost done with Why Shoot a Butler, just in time for Heyer month on the Classics Circuit. I'm finding this novel so much better than Envious Casca, the only other Georgette Heyer mystery that I've read. There's actually a protagonist, Frank Amberley, in this one, and I may be old-fashioned, but I like having a central character to focus on, cheer for, care about, and empathize with.

Almost done with Fever Pitch, and the movie at Netflix is waiting in the wings, and I'm evaluating which Nick Hornby to go with next. I will be really interested to see how they extract a screen play from this book.

On a mini-break from New York: The Novel, by Edward Rutherford. It's really good--much better than the last Rutherford tome I read, The Princes/Rebels of Ireland--but I didn't want to inhale it. We're taking a week long trip to New York later this month, and I plan to be done with it before I get on the plane, so I need to resume reading it this week.

More futures. I really need to get a copy of Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. I need to have it read before our April JASNA meeting. Of course, my backup plan is to read the graphic version in Gothic Classics, Vol 14, which I bought because of its terrific version of Northanger Abbey. Personally, I think the next adaptation of NA should just use this version as its storyboard.