I read this as part of Halloween Bingo, so the fact that this book could reasonably be applied to about half the squares is woth mentioning. This is the first book I've read which used the singular nongendered they/their as pronouns, which slowed me down a bit at the beginning. But it worked, and never felt gimmicky. Z. was a plausible fourteen year old zombie who's entire family died in an auto accident: only Z reanimated.

There's werewolves and high school bullying and good teachers and bad teachers and a growing movement in favor of shooting all the monsters. As a metaphor, it is terrifying. But it's also the story of school misfits becoming friends, and of teens solving a mystery, so there is significant fun as well as the terror.

I'm delighted it was recommended to me, and I can't wait to read Shrieve's subsequent books. As good as this debut was the next one should be astounding.

Library copy

Task 1:  List the 3 books you’ve read this year you’re most “thankful” for (your favs) or the one book you’ve ever read that changed your life for the better.

The books above aren't necessarily ones I'm thankful for in any obvious way, but they're all 5 star reads and will leave an indelible mark in my memory.  They all brought me joy in one form or another too, so I suppose that's reason enough to be thankful.

The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars - Anthony Boucher:  This book just hit me in all the feels.  It was a serendipitous find for me, as I'd never heard of the title, or really, the author, before.  It's a story about people who love Holmes, it had cryptic codes, and it was a little bit slapstick.  This book represents the hidden easter egg of my reading year.

File on Fenton & Farr - Q. Patrick:  This is a book I first discovered by reading The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books by Martin Edwards, and I fell in love with the idea of an adult forerunner to Encyclopedia Brown; nothing but the clues and testimony and the reader tries to solve the crime, with the answer in the back of the book.  This book represented my childhood, revisited and all grown up.

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails - Sarah Bakewell:  This book is the one that keeps on giving.  Its philanthropy began by being a great, engaging read.  I listened on audio and the narrator was fantastic.  It kept on giving by engendering great conversations between myself, BrokenTune and Lillelara, and it keeps on giving because I'm still thinking about it and chewing over the concepts that Bakewell discussed, and will for the foreseeable future.

Task 2:  Describe your perfect meal.  What would you cook for the perfect celebration, or, what would you have your imaginary personal chef cook for you?

I have no idea.  Isn't that terrible?  My knee-jerk reaction is the traditional turkey/ham Christmas dinner, but honestly, none of those foods would actually make my top 10 favorites.   If I ignore the "meal" part of the question and stick to foods that make me roll my eyes heavenward and thank all that's holy, then the task becomes more manageable. These foods include, in no particular order:

Hush puppies:  deep fried balls of cornmeal with onions and green peppers. Because I'm a Southerner.  Also, cornbread.

Stone Crab Claws:  This is a species of crab native to Florida.  Its name comes from the extraordinarily thick shells that require hammers to break.  The meat is sweet and absolutely delicious.  But what I like even better than the taste is the fact that only their claws are harvested; the crab is never killed, and it's released back into the waters, where it regenerates new claws.  

One of the few things Florida has done right environmentally is strictly policing the harvesting of these crabs' claws; you must have a license, only a very limited number of licenses are released, and there are strict rules on the size of the claws that can be taken.  Loads of research was done to determine if one or both claws could be taken (both; as it turns out they use them only for show, not defence or hunting).  Ripping claws off a crab is still distasteful, but it's loads better than wiping out a population through over-harvesting.

Corn in pretty much any guise makes me happy.  On the cob, off the cob, creamed, grilled, buttered, whatever.  It's all corn.

Dessert-wise, if it involves vanilla custard I'm probably swooning.  Creme Brûlée, Portuguese custard tarts, vanilla custard slice, custard filled donuts (MT made a 'cake' for my birthday one year by piling custard filled donuts into a pyramid and sticking a candle on the top), whatever - it's all custard.  Last year I had a bowl of ice cream just so I'd have something to pour my sister-in-law's homemade vanilla custard (still warm) over.  The exception is flan - flan wobbles and it puts me off my custard love.  I do not like my food to jiggle.

Task 3:  Name a book you’ve read this year that you thought was full of “stuffing”.

I'm cheating here because it's not a book from this year.  

I read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco  in 2017, and I know I'll not be popular for this choice, but nothing on my shelves - nothing - comes as close to being as full of stuffing as this book was (for me).  The story was great but, oh my god, it never freaking ended.  The theologising just went on and on and on, until sometimes I'd forget what the chapter started out being about.  Again, brilliant story - just ... stuffed.  

Task 4:  Show us your 2018 book “harvest” – the books you newly acquired this year, regardless whether bought, received as gift or in whichever other way.

Really?  It's not that I'm unwilling to fulfil this task, but I'm pretty sure it's not possible in any practical way; not without putting myself in the doghouse with my husband for the foreseeable future for the mess and chaos it would create.

Instead,  I took the number of books added to my BL shelves in 2018 and subtracted the books on my To-Buy list, since theoretically I own all the rest. There are some audiobooks I checked out of the library that I didn't subtract because I didn't feel like trolling through my shelves to find them, and there won't be enough of them to make a difference.  Ditto a couple of borrowed books that I read for real life book club.

So, roughly speaking, my haul for 2018 was 357 books.  

Gracious, I outdid myself this year.  50+ of those were the bargain box of Agatha Christies, but that whole lunatic book buying spree through Florida accounts for most of it.  So, that's the pic I'll post, though you've all seen it now at least once.

I was just as shocked as anyone when I started to read "The Secret of the Old Clock" and found Nancy to be annoying. She and the other characters are sketched so thin and the whole story in this one was just off-putting. I also didn't think that Nancy was some great detective. She went snooping (those meddling kids) in order to find a missing will and also because she disliked the relatives who stood to inherit. 

"The Secret of the Old Clock" has Nancy Drew in her first stand alone mystery. Nancy is 16 in this one I think. She ends up driving along and almost hits a kid and ends up stopping to see to her. Doing that, she ends up meeting two sisters, (the Turners) who are poor and struggling to raise the kid (sorry about not remembering her name she was so unimportant though). The Turners not knowing Nancy at all tell her about the fact that they were counting on inheriting money when their rich older relative, Josiah Crowley passed away. They tell Nancy he promised to provide for them so they are confused now that he has passed, he left everything to the family he was staying with, the Topham's. 

There is very little development in any character in this book. We hear how attractive Nancy is, we know that Hannah is the housekeeper/mother figure who is always making Nancy her meals. Nancy's father, Carson Drew, is an attorney and is all yes my dear you must investigate, but do be careful. 

I also thought it was kind of gross that you had three separate groups of people aside from the Turners who were all pretty upfront about saying that Josiah was going to leave them money. It didn't seem as if anyone even cared that the old guy had passed away to me. And the shaming of the Tophams for wanting expensive things and Nancy and her father acting as if they were low-class for having expensive things was surprising to me. I read later on that this book was a slam on the noveau-riche class and I can definitely understand that. Apparently if you don't have old money, you just don't belong. 

This book also takes place in the 1930s so there is some definite language that is old-fashioned. And I maybe laughed at the idea of anyone talking about how expensive it was for singing and dancing lessons. The way the book is written, the aunts were going to need thousands upon thousands of dollars for that. 

The ending was okay, we have Nancy realizing pretty quickly were the will ended up and then it was her somehow dealing with a gang of thieves (as one does) in order to obtain the will. Everyone lives happily ever after, except for the Tophams. 

Ehhhhhhhhhhh

Definitely doesn’t work as an adult reader. Was it just me who got real sick of Nancy?

Either I was feeling generous, or I had a great reading month.  Since my RL wasn't as nice as my reading month, we'll go with great reading!

My total for March was 26 books.  Moonlight Reader's inspired reading version of the game Clue! (Cluedo to those in the Commonwealth), Kill Your Darlings, certainly helped keep my reading pace up, and as always, worked particularly well at getting the veterans off my TBR stacks.  

Of the 25 books, 2 were 5-star reads:

The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars by Anthony Boucher 

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong 

I had 8 4.5 star reads too:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 

Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs 

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters 

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett 

Miss Silver Comes to Stay by Patricia Wentworth 

Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions by Amy Stewart 

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin 

The House of the Cats: And Other Traditional Tales from Europe by Maggie Pearson 

Some stats, gussied up:

My TBR project:

I've set a book buying budget for each month that = 50% of the total books I read the previous month.  Any books not bought carry over to the next month.  

Last month I bought 11 out of the 15 budgeted, leaving me with 4 to carry over to April.  My total books read in March being 25 leaves me with a budget of 12 (I always round down; I figure this way, if I go over one month, there's a small error of margin). 

total books I can buy in April:  16