Decided I’m going to do monthly book posts rather than a big yearly one (which I realise I still haven’t finished). This month I managed to read/finish 3 books, which is an usually impressive number for me as it’s almost the equivalent of one a week.

1. Ruth Ellis, Victoria Blake

I read this over the course of my research for my Ruth Ellis commission. I can’t really fault it, only I think there was a particular one of Ruth’s letters missing, which I would have liked to read.

I learned a lot about her (that she hated wearing her glasses and once rescued her father from the wreckage of their bombed house during the Blitz) and about the case.

2. Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners, Steve Fielding

This I also read for research purposes (and it includes Ruth Ellis and Derek Bentley).

My one critisism of an informantive and obviously well and throughly researched book, is that, by default it was a bit repetitive, but a book chronicling years of the same thing is bond to be.

3. A Scandal in Bohemia, Arthur Conan Doyle

(I’ve decided that I’m going to count singular short stories as ‘a book’, make of that what you will).

This was my second piece of Sherlock Holmes fiction, having read the first book, A Study in Scarlet as the first book on my degree. I enjoyed it but it didn’t exactly make me hungry for more. This short story, however, did.

(Although to be fair, in December I also went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which was great and made me decide to read The Hound of the Baskervilles because it is, I learned, literally about a giant dog. I think you’d have to read some Holmes after going to that museum).

Sherlock is a genuis, but in this story he is outwitted by the only woman he ever loved. If that doesn’t make you want to read it, nothing will.

This isn’t relevant but it made me laugh:

It makes me very hungry for Cheerios.

I really should blog more often, it’s made me feel better.