My top 8 books for the 1929 Club

The 1929 Club

The #1929Club

For several years Simon, at Stuck in a Book, has been organizing club year events, usually in April and October, in which he encourages everybody to read books published in the same year.

Last April, the year was 1954.
This time, Simon chose 1929

The main idea is to draw a literary portrait of that year.
If you are curious, you can check which books were published during that year, on this Goodreads list or on this wikipedia page.

Before focusing on The 1929 club, it seems I had read 5 books published that year.
Three I read several decades ago:

  1. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
  2. Marius, by Marcel Pagnol
  3. Les Enfants Terribles, by Jean Cocteau

And two more recently:

  1. The Man in the Queue (Inspector Alan Grant, #1), by Josephine Tey: I never took time to review this one, but I was very impressed by Tey’s richness of vocabulary, displayed even in this mystery
  2. Some Prefer Nettles, by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1928/1929 on some lists)

With the #1929club in mind, I read the following:

The Roman Hat Mystery

The Roman Hat Mystery,
(Ellery Queen Detective #1),

by Ellery Queen
Published in 1929
239 pages
Mystery
Goodreads

A famous lawyer is found dead during a play at the Roman theater in New York. What puzzles the most Ellery (Inspector Queen’s son, a lover of mysteries and a mystery writer himself), is that the victim’s top-hat is missing. And obviously, every gentleman in the 1920s would have worn a top hat to go to the theater.
But why would the murderer have taken the hat with him? And where is that hat? Also, why choose a theater to kill somebody in the first place? And why kill this man?

This was the first mystery I read by Ellery Queen (the pen name for two cousins). Even though I partially guessed what was going on, I liked the way the investigation went, and the fun duo with the Inspector Richard and his son – with of course a few humoristic references to Holmes+Watson.
The dynamism and fun were enhanced by the narrator Robert Fass.
I definitely want to read/listen to more in the series.

The Picadilly Murder

The Piccadilly Murder
(Ambrose Chitterwick
#1),
by Anthony Berkeley
Published in 1929
352 pages
Mystery
Goodreads

All Golden Age mysteries are not born equal.
If I really enjoyed discovering Ellery Queen, this was not the case with this book by Anthony Berkeley.

I guess a lot of this novel, at least at the social level, is supposed to be entertaining. And I’m really not into social humor.
One funny element I did appreciate was the critics of “the English judicial system”.
But I really didn’t like at all the main character, the self-appointed investigator, Ambrose Chitterwick. He is a bachelor and lives with his aunt, 79 – and he has a hard time with aunts! To escape what he considers borderline slavery, he tries to help Scotland Yard with some investigations.
One day in London, he is having a drink in the Piccadilly Palace Hotel lounge, and believes he saw a poisoning happen right in front of him. The victim is old Mrs Sinclair and the perpetrator her own nephew Major Sinclair (another dangerous nephew-aunt relationship!).

I didn’t like Chitterwick’s social awkwardness, his lack of self-confidence, and his language.
I found the book way too long and even boring. It certainly didn’t help that I understood very quickly what was going on. The clues are really too obvious.
If I had not planned to read it for The 1929 Club, I would probably have DNFed it.

It looks like maybe I should have read another book Berkeley published in 1929: The Poisoned Chocolates Case.
This is with another investigator of his, Roger Sheringham. Though to present the series, Goodreads writes, “an obnoxious sleuth”!
Hopefully someone else read it, and I can see if I should definitely try it.

The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury,
by William Faulkner
Published in 1929
366 pages
Literary fiction
Goodreads

VERDICT:
Challenging novels are worth it! Stream of consciousness at its best?

So far, I had only read As I Lay Dying, by Faulkner, which I really enjoyed, but never dared to go further. One reason was a person who used to be in our book club and would heavily criticize The Sound and the Fury. But I was curious and finally decided to read it for The 1929 Club .And I am sure glad I did!

Click on the cover to access my full review.

My year 1929 recap:
I find it fascinating that the same year, we have a few representatives of the Golden Age of mystery, as well as a very avant-garde (for the time) narration technique, as displayed by Faulkner.
Thanks Simon for picking a most fascinating year!

HERE IS THE LINK TO ALL THE BOOKS
REVIEWED FOR THE #1929CLUB

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK PUBLISHED IN 1929?

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2022: June wrap-up

JUNE 2022 WRAP-UP

Reading many books (8 right now) at the same time is fun, but then while you are in the middle of them, the statistics don’t reflect the effort, lol. They will eventually.
I was expecting bigger numbers this month, but I have so many books in process right now…

The good news is I’m currently 9 books ahead of schedule (57% done) to read 120 books this year.

📚 Here is what I read in June:

9 books:
6 in print 
with 1,386 pages, a daily average of 46 pages/day
3 in audio
= 25H03
, a daily average of 50 minutes/ day

4 in mystery:

  1. The Red House Mystery, by A. A. Milne – audiobook, counts for The Classics Club
  2. Liberty bar (Maigret #17), by Georges Simenon – read with a French student,
    counts for The Classics Club
  3. The Bride Wore Black, by Cornell Woolrich – counts for The Classics Club
  4. Le Crépuscule des fauves, by Marc Levy – French audiobook

2 in nonfiction:

  1. Thomas Jefferson’s Crème Brûlée: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America, by Thomas J. Craughwell
  2. Beginning to Pray, by Anthony Bloom – Orthodox spirituality

2 in fiction:

  1. Le Horla et autres nouvelles, by Guy de Maupassant  – a reread, read with a French student, counts for The Classics Club
  2. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin – received for review

1 in historical fiction:

  1. So Big, by Edna Ferber – audiobook, counts for The Classics Club

This month, absolutely no hesitation to pick 2 winners:

MY FAVORITE BOOKS THIS PAST MONTH

The Bride Wore Black So Big

READING CHALLENGES & RECAP

Classics Club: 124/137 (from November 2020-until November 2025)
Japanese Literature Challenge: 9/12 books – During the year: 10
2022 TBR Pile Reading Challenge: 4/12 books
2022 books in translation reading challenge
: 16/10+

Total of books read in 2022 = 68/120 (57%)
Number of books added to my TBR this past month = 11

 OTHER BOOKS  REVIEWED THIS PAST MONTH

  Le voyage d'Octavio A Raisin in the Sun Stuart Little  

BOOK RECEIVED FOR REVIEW

Human Nature

Human Nature, by Serge Joncour
US publication date: 8th September 2022
by Gallic/Belgravia Books

MOST POPULAR BOOK REVIEW THIS PAST MONTH

In Praise of Shadows

click on the cover to access my review

MOST POPULAR POST THIS PAST MONTH
– NON BOOK REVIEW –

The top 8 books to read in June 2022

BOOK BLOG THAT BROUGHT ME MOST TRAFFIC THIS PAST MONTH

Julie Anna’s Books
please go visit, there are a lot of good things there!

TOP COMMENTERS 

Marianne at Let’s Read
Deb at ReaderBuzz
Greg at Book Haven
please go and visit them,
they have great blogs

BLOG MILESTONES 

2,533 posts
over 5,625 followers
over 252,120 hits

📚 📚 📚

Come back tomorrow to see the titles I’ll be reading in July

How was YOUR month of June?

2022-Monthly-Wrap-Up-Round-Up400

Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
has created a Month In Review meme
where you can link your monthly recap posts
Thanks Nicole!

Friday Face Off: White covers

Friday Face Off

The Friday Face-Off was originally created by Books by Proxy:
each Friday, bloggers showcase book covers on a weekly theme.
Visit Lynn’s Books (@LynnsBooks) for a list of upcoming themes.
Please visit also Tammy at Books, Bones & Buffy (@tammy_sparks)
thanks to whom I discovered this meme.

📚 📚 📚 

This week, the theme is “White covers”

As I read a lot of French books I encounter many white covers, as often French books don’t really have illustrated covers.
But it’s hard sometimes to find other editions and compare covers.
So I went with a delightful Japanese novel: A Cat, A Man, and Two Women, an awesome classic, and short too – great to introduce you to a famous Japanese author.

Click on the picture if you want to identify the various editions

WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?

Friday Face Off white cover

 

This was a fun exercise.
I read the book in its white cover the one listed first here. No other cover is white, but we do find a couple of white cats.
I’m amazed at actually all the various colors used for this book, with startling colors in #4, or a gorgeous landscape in #5.
I think my favorite is actually #8 (Romanian edition), with the focus on the cat’s eye, where you can guess that this cat is quite foxy! Fits perfectly with the story.

📚 📚 📚 

Have you read this book?
WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?
Next Friday: a scifi written on or before 1975