You may have gathered elsewhere on this blog that I am a complete Agatha Christie obsessive and have been for decades. So when I saw on the Agatha Christie website that the third Read Christie challenge was to take place this year, I jumped at the chance to get involved.
The Read Christie 2021 challenge involves choosing and reading a Christie story each month, based on a list of predetermined criteria chosen by the lovely folks over on the Agatha Christie website. For example, the January challenge is to read a Christie story which is set in a grand house.
There are certainly some options there, as one of the frequent traits of Golden Age mysteries was the setting of the country house. This narrowed both setting and cast of characters for the detective who was solving the puzzle. Had it been December, my immediate choice would have been Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. To be fair, I still could, as could you! But more on my personal choice shortly. As you can see, I’ve got plenty of books to choose from!
My immediate thoughts for this challenge are Christie’s very first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Style, and Styles house also features once more in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. I also think Crooked House and Peril at End House are excellent options. You could certainly also include The Secret of Chimneys in this, as well as maybe the other Chimneys novel, The Seven Dials Mystery, and possibly The Sittaford Mystery, too.
If you want to get involved, you can find out absolutely everything you need to know about the Read Christie 2021 challenge at www.agathachristie.com. There you will find a complete list of monthly challenges, including a suggested list of books relating to each topic and the Agatha Christie team’s monthly choices, too. There’s also a hashtag to use on Instagram and Twitter, if you’re posting about your reads: #ReadChristie2021.
If you do join in, I’d love to hear from you. I’ll be blogging about my monthly choice (without spoilers) here, towards the end of each month, and announcing what my following month’s read will be.
My January read, which has to be set in a grand house, is Crooked House.
Happy reading (Christie or otherwise)!
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