Jemi's Brownie Muffins, the Great Agatha Christie Reread, and Paris Review Interviews

ame Agatha Christie!

I came across the Agatha Christie "Read Christie 2021" challenge the other day. I was already in the middle of rereading some of the books (I'd decided to reread all the Captain Hastings stories in order), and then when I saw how, er, minimal the 2021 challenge was, I decided to reread every single book.

I ordered the 10 books left that I don't own copies of (and forgot one, so I need an excuse to put in another order, possibly with the next birthday gift we need to get!) but I'd already started reading, so I'm kind of reading out of order a bit, which is mildly upsetting. But I've gone too far to restart properly!

Last year, I read and/or reread all the Miss Marple novels, all the Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot short stories, and all of the poems:

1. Sleeping Murder (reread)
2. The Moving Finger (possibly a reread?)
3. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (reread)
4. What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw (reread)
5. The Murder At the Vicarage (reread)
6. At Bertram’s Hotel (reread)
7. Nemesis (reread)
8. They Do It With Mirrors (reread)
9. A Pocketful of Rye (reread)
10. A Murder Is Announced (reread)
11. The Body in the Library (reread)
12. A Caribbean Mystery (reread)
13. Miss Marple and Mystery (all non-Poirot short stories; reread)
14. Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories (reread)
15. Collected Poirot Short Stories (reread)
16. Poems (1973) and The Road of Dreams (1924)
17. Star Over Bethlehem
18. Hercule Poirot's Christmas (reread)

Now, this year, I've started with the Captain Hastings books, in order:

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (reread)
2. The Murder on the Links (reread)
3. The Big Four (to reread when it comes)
4. Peril at End House (to reread when it comes)
5. Lord Edgware Dies / 13 At Dinner (reread)
6. The ABC Murders (reread)
7. Dumb Witness (reread)
8. Curtain (to reread when I've reread the others)
9. all stories in Poirot Investigates (reread)
10. Black Coffee (to read when I get it (not ordered yet))

For the rest, I'm currently proceeding in chronological order by first UK publication date, but if the books I've ordered come soon, I may stop and reread certain other groups in order, such as the Tommy and Tuppence stories, the Mr Quin stories, and all the Mary Westmacott books.

This Agatha Christie exhibit took place at Pointe A Calliere museum after we'd left Montreal, unfortunately! My mother visited it and took this photo of her typewriter:

The other day, Jemi shared a yummy recipe for muffin-sized brownies. And I made them!

I halved the recipe, but I also added baking soda. This is the first time in my life I've managed to bake muffins with an actual muffin top! So exciting. Thank you, Jemi!


I haven't been doing well on my ROW80 goals. I didn't enter this month's Furious Fiction contest, I haven't participated in the February writing exercise (yet!), I've printed Druid's Moon but haven't started re-editing it...but I have been cleaning up my emails here and there, and came across this list, which I once meant to blog about, having first found out about these interviews on The Literary Lab:

TS Eliot
Dorothy Parker
PG Wodehouse
Robert Graves
EB White
Evelyn Waugh
PL Travers
Seamus Heaney
Naguib Mahfouz
Paul Auster
Julian Barnes
Stephen King
Orhan Pamuk

I hope I can access them all!

Have you tried any new recipes lately?