Here on wordpress blogging thingy there is a big star telling me that apparently my target is to make 10 posts. Well this is my 10th post so I’m looking forward to receiving my gold sticker to put on the wall chart I hope they also send me.
I wander if the 10th post is seen as some lucky charm? Maybe lots of people never get past 9, or maybe by the time you get to 10 all your readers have got bored and stopped bothering to check new posts (Obviously not my Mum and my Sister as they will keep reading, plus my Dad will still follow, although he probably hasn’t finished the first post yet!)
I always think that’s the downside of blogs. When I find one I like, I start off by being really interested in them and checking them all the time and then gradually get bored. This is my own failing, rather than any reflection on the writer or the content. I can be the same with books, and am often put off starting a book because it just looks too long.
Personally I think there are so many books I want to read that it’s not worth finishing one I’m not enjoying just because I’ve started, I’m not a contestant on Mastermind after all. I know many people will disagree, including one of my two remaining readers, who believes if you start a book you should finish it (This is the girl who once read the whole of War and Peace because someone who is still reading the first post bet her £10 she couldn’t)
I have however recently read the CJ Sansom series which are the exception to my particular rule. They are set in the time of Henry VIII. The four novels follow lawyer Matthew Shardlake, who the Guardian newspaper described as the ‘Tudor Morse’. They are pretty weighty tomes and the third in the series was given out as part of York Big Read a couple of years ago. I like history, I like York and I like mystery novels so I tried to start it about 3 or 4 times, never getting further than the first few pages.
A colleague then gave me the first in the series saying they thought I’d enjoy it so I felt duty bound to try and read a few chapters so I could at least fail with pride. However after the first couple of chapters the language and flow of the writing just fell into place and I’ve since read all four. They are excellent stories which I think cleverly mix historical fact with mystery and intrigue. Definitely worth the time and trouble to read!
Maybe I miss out on some good books by being easily put off, maybe the hefty looking Sepulchre by Kate Mosse is an excellent book, but on the whole I stand by my belief. As of today amazon has 160, 864 books in its crime and mystery section, that’s a lot of books to have a go at there’s no time for bad ones!
A crime readers blog 
I don’t usually read crime books, but I loved the Shardlake novels which are actually set in the reign of Henry VIII – not Henry VII……don’t give up the blog its great!
Whoops thanks for the proofing!
I averted my eyes at the proofing errors. Tsk. Do you suppose CJ Sansom will do a series of books about the “Tudor Lewis”, an annoying sidekick who gets all of the rubbish jobs and can’t wait for his boss to keel over? Not much of a narrative, I admit, but I’d read it anyway.
What a great idea, I’ll write it and you can proof it.