Sunday, July 19, 2009

My Agatha Christie Challenge


I went to bed last night thinking about a question a close friend of mine posed the other day. For as long as I can remember when the "Who is your favorite author?" question comes out I have always answered Agatha Christie.
Mainly due to the fact I fell madly, deeply in love with her writing style and her sense of tone and character. I was so infatuated with her books that for the Christmases of 5th and 6th grade, her books were all I asked for. As I got older my attention to her wavered a bit. Now that pendulum has been swinging back for the last few years and I know own more of her books that I ever had in my life.
Now you may be asking what is this question that kept him tossing and turning all night? Well here it is. She asked me, if Agatha Christie is my favorite author, why haven't I read all of her books. Which is a good question. As we all know Christie wrote over 80 mystery novels and quite honestly I have read maybe 20 to 25 of them. Many of those haven't been seen by my eyes for years.
Quite honestly I wish I could give a good reason for my lack of diligence in this matter. I can't though so I am going to challenge myself a bit. I am going to read every Agatha Christie mystery novel within the next year. So that gives me until 7/19/2010 to accomplish my goal.
Now I did give some thought to whether or not I should follow some sort of order in my Agatha Quest. I rejected going in publishing order for the simple fact I hate ordering books unless I have to and trying to follow publishing order may require me to wait for some books. I also considered going in some sort of timeline, especially with the Hercule Poirot books, but that was rejected due to how much time it would take in order to figure that order out.

So I'm not going to go in any sort of order.
It's going to be a free-for-all, willy nilly type of challenge for me to accomplish. I will be posting reviews of every single book I read as they are read. I hope this won't bore anyone to tears and I hope it causes some of you who haven't read a lot of her books to go pick one or two of them up and discover what you have been missing.

4 comments:

bookmagic said...

That's quite a challenge. I love her books, too. They make for good bedtime reading. I bought boxes of her books on ebay and saved a ton. I don't have them all, but maybe 60-65. I wish you luck on your quest. You have inspired me to read more of her. Good Luck

bookmagic said...

PS- love the picture, wasn't that Princess Deb's castle, where she has been locked up w/ her books for months?

Ryan said...

Thank you for the luck, I think I'm going to need it. I do believe that castle does belong to my wayward sister the Princess Deb. She has been reather silent lately but we love her anyway.

Krista said...

Wow...I agree, what a challange! I wish you luck on your voyage through Agatha Christie land as well. I read my first book by her because of you and loved it, so yeah I'm looking forward to reading your reveiws to find the next best one.