Tracking courtesy of Charlie and Sunny, as always, of course!

 SPACES AND DICE ROLLS

1. Author is a woman -- Patricia Wentworth: Pilgrim's Rest (finished April 1, 2020)

2. Genre: mystery

3. Set in the twentieth century

4. Published in 2019

5. Published in 2018

6. Title has a color word in it

7. Author's last name begins with the letters A, B, C, or D -- Margery Allingham: Sweet Danger (finished April 2, 2020)

8. Author's last name begins with the letters E, F, G, or H.

9. Author's last name begins with the letters H, I, J, or K

10. Author's last name begins with the letters L, M, N or O

11. Author's last name begins with the letters P, Q, R, or S

12. Author's last name begins with the letters T, U, V, W, X, Y, or Z

13. Author is a man

14. Author is dead

15. Genre: romance

16. Genre: fantasy -- Marie Brennan: A Natural History of Dragons (finished April 6, 2020)

17. Genre: horror

18. Set in a school

19. Set in the UK

20. Set in a country that is not your country of residence

21. Set in Europe -- Joy Ellis: The Patient Man (finished April 7, 2020)

22. Set in Asia

23. Set in Australia/Oceania

24. Set in Africa

25. Snake - go back to 5

26. Part of a series that is more than 5 books long

27. Set during WWI or WWII

28. Written between 1900 and 1999

29. Someone travels by plane

30. Someone travels by train

31. Road trip -- Ellis Peters: A Morbid Taste for Bones (finished April 8, 2020)

32. Genre: thriller

33. Set in North America

34. Snake - go back to 1

35. Has been adapted as a movie

36. Set in Central or South America

37. Has won an award

38. Newest release by a favorite author

39. A reread -- Ngaio Marsh: Enter a Murderer (finished April 9, 2020)

40. Characters involved in the entertainment industry

41. Characters involved in politics

42. Characters involved in sports/sports industry

43. Characters involved in the law

44. Characters involved in cooking/baking

43. Characters involved in medicine

44. Characters involved in science/technology

45. A book that has been on your tbr for more than one year

46. A book that has been on your tbr for more than two years

47. Snake - go back to 19

48. A book you acquired in February, 2019.

49. Recommended by a friend -- Ngaio Marsh: A Man Lay Dead, plus Death on the Air and Other Stories (both books finished April 10, 2020)

(Rereading the first Roderick Alleyn mystery in honor of the friend who introduced me to them many years ago. -- ETA: Tagged on Marsh's short stories when I noticed that the audio of A Man Lay Dead runs just short of 5 hours 30 minutes.)

50. Has a domestic animal on the cover

51. Has a wild animal on the cover

52. Has a tree or flower on the cover

53. Has something that can be used as a weapon on the cover -- Ngaio Marsh: Scales of Justice (finished April 11, 2020)

(I used the present weekend buddy read for this one, as my print edition has fishing tackle on its cover -- hook, line and all.)

54. Is more than 400 pages long

55. Is more than 500 pages long

56. Was published more than 100 years ago

57. Was published more than 50 years ago

58. Was published more than 25 years ago

59. Was published more than 10 years ago

60. Was published last year

61. Cover is more than 50% red -- Anne Perry: Defend and Betray (finished April 16, 2020)

(Go figure, I could have used the audio version of Scales of Justice fo rthis one as well ...)

62. Cover is more than 50% green

63. Cover is more than 50% blue

64. Cover is more than 50% yellow

65. Snake - go back to 52

66. Part of a series that is more than 10 books long -- Ngaio Marsh: When in Rome (finished April 17, 2020)

(Nothing like Alleyn in Italy as a palate cleanser after the train wreck that Perry's book turned out ot be.)

67. Set in a city with a population of greater than 5 million people (link)

68. Something related to weddings on the cover

69. Something related to travel on the cover

70. Something related to fall/autumn on the cover

71. Involves the beach/ocean/lake 

72. Involves the mountains/forests -- Charles Portis: True Grit (finished April 18, 2020)

(I checked -- their trip takes them through the mountains, at least part of the way.)

73. Categorized as YA

74. Categorized as Middle Grade

75. Set in a fantasy world

76. Set in a world with magic

77. Has a "food" word in the title

78. Set in a small town (fictional or real)

79. Main character is a woman -- Sara Paretsky: Indemnity Only (finished April 21, 2020)

(Somehow I never got around to the first V.I.  Warshawski novel.  Now just may be the moment to make up for that.)

80. Main character is a man

81. Ghost story

82. Genre: urban fantasy

83. Genre: cozy mystery

84. Genre: police procedural -- Lee Goldberg: Lost Hills (finished April 22, 2020)

85. Written by an author who has published more than 10 books

86. Author's debut book

87. Snake - go back to 57

88. Comic/graphic novel

89. Published between 2000 and 2017

90. A new-to-you author

91. Snake - go back to 61

92. Reread of a childhood favorite

93. Author's first/last initial same as yours (real or BL handle)

94. Non-fiction

95. Memoir -- Anne Fadiman: Confessions of a Common Reader (finished April 22, 2020)

and Rafik Schami: Murmeln meiner Kindheit (My Childhood's Marbles) (finished April 23, 2020) (since Fadiman's book falls just a bit short of the game's minimum requirements).

96. From your favorite genre

97. Title starts with any of the letters in SNAKE

98. Title starts with any of the letters in LADDERS

99. Snake - go back to 69

100. Let BL pick it for you: post 4 choices and read the one that gets the most votes!

Poll posted separately -- BL community pick:

Val McDermid: Broken Ground (finished April 27, 2020).

RULES OF THE GAME:

 Everyone starts on 1. There are two alternative ways to move forward.

1. Read a book that fits the description on the space number as listed below and you can roll two dice to move forward more quickly.

2. However, if you can't find a book to fit the square, don't worry about it. You can read any book, and roll one dice on random.org.  This is to ensure that if a reader cannot find a book to fill the square, no one gets bogged down and can't move on.

All books must be at least 200 pages long. Short stories count, so long as you read enough of them from a collection to equal 200 pages. 

You do not need to hit space 100 with an exact roll. In order to win, you must complete space 100 as written.

ADDITIONS TO THE RULES

When you start on square 1, you need to read a book before you can roll. If your book fills the square, you get to roll two dice. If your book doesn't not fit the square, roll one dice only.

With respect to the ladder squares: You must read a book in order to climb the ladder. Once you finish the book for the ladder square, climb the ladder to the ending square. If you read a book that fits the ending square, roll two dice to move on, otherwise, roll one dice.

For audiobook substitutions, either check the print book to determine if it is more than 200 pages long, or any audiobook that is a minimum of 5 hours & 30 minutes qualifies.

This book is my sixth read in my "20 For 20" challenge to read twenty books of more than twenty hours length from my TBR pile.

This on is twenty-four hours and twenty-seven minutes long, so, although I've only listened to seven per cent, I've spent nearly two hours on it already.

Perhaps half of that could have been avoided if Theodora Goss had assumed that I'd had the wit to read the series in sequence and that I had not so poor a memory that I needed to be reminded of the backstory of every member of the Athena Club and a recap on the plot of the first novel.

She did gloss this with some humour, showing at least that's she's aware of how clumsy a start this is but, given how bold and innovative the writing style of the first novel was - it adopted a novel form and made no concessions to readers who might not be fully awake - I'm a little disappointed.

Now I've got that off my chest, I can get back to the book. I'm about to start chapter three, in which I hope to find out how Cat (my favourite character) came to end up being pursued by the police after blagging her way into a lunatic asylum.

I´m really enjoying the second book in the Lady Trent series much more than the first one. I think it´s due to the fact that the whole coming of age aspect of the first novel is absent in this one. And I really adore the empowering female characters in this story. 

And once again I´m listening to the wonderful narration by Kate Reading. 

I'm enjoying this book a great deal.

The innovative storytelling style, where all the women chip in and comment on the story as its being written, in a way similar to a character in a play breaching the fourth wall, is very engaging. It's also really a rejection of the traditional style of gothic story-telling which focuses on a single male's adventures, usually as he strives to achieve an objective or solve a puzzle.

Here's a quote where Mary interrupts Cat, who is writing the novel:

Mary: 

Cat, you're the one who insisted that we tell our own parts of it and now you're complaining that we're interrupting the plot. This isn't one of your thrillers. We're trying to recount how we all came together, describe who we are, That's not just the story of how we solved the White Chappel Murders. It's the story of us.

I can't remember the last time that I read a book that is focused on and written by (at least within the conceit of the book) believable women and where the women spend most of the time talking about themselves and each other rather than about the men around them.

It's a sign of the humour of the book that all these women, remarkable as individuals but astonishingly strong as a group, are monsters.

The true monsters of the book are Gentlemen. As Catherine explains to the destitute fifteen-year-old girl who has taken refuge with the Magdalene Society after being importuned in the streets by men wanting to pay to have sex with her:

"Ah, Gentlemen. Best avoid them,* said Catherine. "I haven't known a single one of them that didn't want to ruin a girl in one way or another."

The ways these attempts at ruin are wrought and the ways in which the women survive and help each other is the heart of the story. 

Wrapping it in a gothic version of Victorian London with every fictional fantasy figure you've ever heard of and seasoning it with equal measures of humor and suspense makes it fun to read but doesn't weaken the impact of the message.

I have only been thrown out of the story a couple of times when the illusion of Victorian London was fractured by the use of American English. Mrs Poole would not "go marketing", she would *go shopping" and Sherlock Holmes would never say he had found "footprints on the sidewalk" when he meant that he'd found "footprints on the pavement*. It's a shame that at least the editor or the English edition didn't catch these.