Friday Face Off: Black covers

Posted on October 28, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

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
“Black covers“

Last time I participated in this meme was a month ago! These past weeks have been super busy, and I thought I wasn’t going to have time this week either. But something got cancelled in my end of week schedule, so I used this extra time to prepare this post. It’s good to be back!

I thought right away about this book I read a few months ago and enjoyed a lot:
Confessions, by Kanae Minato
“This is a very smart story about bullying and revenge, with many twists. ”
Please come this way to read my full review.

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Click on the picture below if you want to identify the various editions
You can also right click and ‘open image in new tab’ to zoom in

My favorite cover is the Vietnamese edition.
I like the black, with the blur — intentionally low digital resolution — to feature both the students’ tables and the teacher’s. And that is very important for the story.

Have you read this book?
WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?
My next participation will be on Friday, November 4:
“Red skies at night – Covers that are red”

Friday Face Off: clocks

Posted on September 16, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

This week, the theme is
“Rage against the machine – anything, cogs, clockwork, AI“

I’ve gone simple with Clocks, and featuring here one of Agatha Christie’s novels:

The Clocks was published in 1963. I listened to it when I did my project of listening to all of Hercule Poirot. This is #30 in the series.

It’s great at the beginning, then I found it a bit slow. The plot was much more complex than it looked, despise what Hercule Poirot said.
The neat thing is the reference Agatha Christie makes to many authors of crime fiction – in Chapter 14.
There’s also a cool description of how books can take over your place or your world!

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“Sheila Webb, typist-for-hire, has arrived at 19 Wilbraham Crescent in the seaside town of Crowdean to accept a new job. What she finds is a well-dressed corpse surrounded by five clocks. Mrs. Pebmarsh, the blind owner of No. 19, denies all knowledge of ringing Sheila’s secretarial agency and asking for her by name — yet someone did. Nor does she own that many clocks. And neither woman seems to know the victim.
Colin Lamb, a young intelligence specialist working a case of his own at the nearby naval yard, happens to be on the scene at the time of Sheila Webb’s ghastly discovery. Lamb knows of only one man who can properly investigate a crime as bizarre and baffling as what happened inside No. 19 — his friend and mentor, Hercule Poirot. “

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Click on the picture below if you want to identify the various editions
You can also right click and ‘open image in new tab’ to zoom in

My favorite cover is the Dutch edition, for its cleverness. Funny that no other illustrator thought of that! Too bad it’s not more artistically done.

Have you read this book?
WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?
My next participation may be on Friday, September 23:
“Tough Travel Tropes – Coming of Age”

Book review: The Bride Wore Black

Posted on June 20, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

The Bride Wore Black,
by Cornell Woolrich
First published in 1940.
Read in this edition:
January 5, 2021
American Mystery Classics,
Penzler Publishers
Crime fiction / Noir fiction
288 pages
Goodreads

My tastes in literature are evolving, and right now I am really enjoying discovering old timers in mystery.
The Bride Wore Black had been on my Classics list for a while, and it turned out to be the latest Classic Spin.
I was planning to read it in July, but then I walked to the library, and the book called me from the shelf. I devoured it in a couple of days. It’s probably the very first time I tackle my classic spin so quickly!
Read on to know why. Click to continue reading