It’s that time again, how quickly Bookshelf Travelling in Insane Times comes around. This meme was created by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness but I’m hosting it at the moment. Click on it to enlarge the photo.
This week the bookshelf is in a bookcase (Ikea Billy, so many of us seem to have at least one) which is in my reading/sewing/hobby/ironing room which is located in the smallest spare bedroom in our house. It’s very fair to say that it’s generally in a bit of a mess as I just have too much yarn, fabric and stuff in general.
It’s a shelf of vintage crime, it’s just a coincidence that the beginning of the shelf houses Elizabeth Ferrars books and the end of the shelf is home to Josephine Tey books, both Scottish writers who wrote murder mysteries. In between them is the very English Dorothy L. Sayers and the very American Rex Stout, I find his books are very thin on the ground in secondhand bookshops in Scotland, but I’ve really enjoyed the ones I’ve managed to get a hold of. Of those four authors Josephine Tey is my least favourite. Dorothy Sayers I love and I’ve really enjoyed the Elizabeth Ferrars books that I’ve read.
Are you Bookshelf Travelling this week? I’ll add any links below.
You have some of my favorite authors on this shelf. I am sure you know I love Rex Stout’s mystery fiction. I have read all of Josephine Tey’s books two or three times, and plan to re-read some of them again. I have liked all of Elizabeth Ferrars’ books that I have read. That is only three books, but I really enjoy the way she writes. I just purchased Something Wicked, the first in the Andrew Basnett series, in a new Felony and Mayhem edition.
tracybham,
I haven’t read any of her Andrew Basnett series. Her books are surprisingly difficult to find even here, which is strange as she wrote so many. I had no idea some of her books had been reprinted, thanks for the info.
It is funny that Katrina and I both did Tey and Sayers the same weekend!
I don’t recall ever hearing of Elizabeth Ferrars but my childhood library seems to own quite a few. If this link works, please tell me what to read first! https://find.minlib.net/iii/encore/search/C__Selizabeth%20ferrars__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=cobalt&fromMain=yes
Mind you, I just swore to read more from the piles on the floors and fewer from the library.
I have not read any Rex Stout but I seem to recall one of my Betsy-Tacy friends is in a Rex Stout group called the Wolfe Pack that meets regularly in NYC:
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/nyregion/fyi-023680.html
Constance,
I’ve had a look and I haven’t read any of those books! She did write a lot of books and I’ve enjoyed all of the ones that I have read, but that’s probably just about seven or eight of them. I have bought them at secondhand bookshops but might have to try the internet in the future. Thanks for the NYT link.
Josephine Tey is one of my all-time favorites — I disagree with some of her ideas (feeling that, for one, she based her entire “Daughter of Time” book on very shaky ground, a copy of a copy of a portrait that may or may not have been much like its subject in the first place) but she is otherwise sensible and her writing is so very good that I find it a pleasure read.
I also include Sayers on my all-time favorites list — have never read Rex Stout, though, or Elizabeth Ferrars …
Jeanne,
I want to believe that Richard wasn’t that evil but in reality his ambition probably drove him to dastardly deeds, on the other hand children died so frequently back then, the boys might have died from natural causes. When I worked in Witham, Essex, in the late 1970s the building was right at the back of Sayers’ home but by then she was dead.
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