melannen | FMK #38: History Mysteries

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FMK #38: History Mysteries

Last week's F winner was the Tiptree, but commenters were unaminous that it is the wrong Tiptree to start with, so now I'm undecided whether to let than win or to fallback to second place ("Empire of Bones"). There was also a tie for K, and I broke it in favor of the one with the less boring title, so Castaways of Tanagar goes away.

Also, I missed that the last poll was the one-year anniversary of FMK! Folks, I have been doing this since last February, and with that in mind, it's not that bad that I only have 18 still in the backlog to read. Right? Right. (It also means that if I'd managed a poll a week, as originally planned, we would now be done! Instead there are about three months' worth left. Oops.)

(I am considering what to do if I finish this. Options include: stop already; start over again with the Ms; poll one section of the Dewey Decimal System a week in my 1200 NF unreads; or read & review all my unread comics, which would probably not require voting because there's only a couple hundred of them and they read fast.)

Anyway, since I finally finished the cat mysteries books, it's time for Mysteries 2: History Mysteries!

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

Poll #19605 FMK #38: History Mysteries

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 31

View Respondents

The Pericles Commission by Gary Corby (Republican Athens)

F
9 (69.2%)

M
1 (7.7%)

K
3 (23.1%)

The Pendragon Murders by J. M. C. Blair (Arthurian Britain)

F
9 (75.0%)

M
2 (16.7%)

K
1 (8.3%)

Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee by Buti zhuanren trans. Gulik (Tang China)

F
14 (70.0%)

M
6 (30.0%)

K
0 (0.0%)

The Doublet Affair by Fiona Buckley (Elizabethan England)

F
6 (50.0%)

M
1 (8.3%)

K
5 (41.7%)

Consolation for an Exile by Caroline Roe (medieval Spain)

F
8 (66.7%)

M
2 (16.7%)

K
2 (16.7%)

Three Victorian Detective Novels by Wilkie Collins, Israel Zangwill, Everett Bleiler (Victorian England)

F
9 (52.9%)

M
4 (23.5%)

K
4 (23.5%)

The Novel Currently Known As "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie (1930s England)

F
14 (60.9%)

M
6 (26.1%)

K
3 (13.0%)

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy Sayers (1930s England)

F
8 (42.1%)

M
6 (31.6%)

K
5 (26.3%)

The Floating Admiral by Sayers, Christie, Chesterton, etc (this was a round robin, 1930s England)

F
9 (69.2%)

M
1 (7.7%)

K
3 (23.1%)

The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett (1930s USA)

F
5 (38.5%)

M
3 (23.1%)

K
5 (38.5%)

The Black Gloves by Constance and Gwyneth Little (1930s USA)

F
3 (42.9%)

M
2 (28.6%)

K
2 (28.6%)

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn (1950s USA)

F
6 (54.5%)

M
0 (0.0%)

K
5 (45.5%)

Rose Gold: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley (1960s USA)

F
7 (53.8%)

M
2 (15.4%)

K
4 (30.8%)

The Dead Man's Brother by Roger Zelazny (1960s Americas) by K. M. O'Donnell (Ace Double)

F
4 (36.4%)

M
2 (18.2%)

K
5 (45.5%)

Queens Full by Ellery Queen (short stories, mid-20th century USA)

F
4 (36.4%)

M
3 (27.3%)

K
4 (36.4%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It would be tricky, because the nature of my non-fiction collection (and DW) is that there would be a lot fewer books, proportionally, that people have heard of. And you don't have to know the book to vote on it, but most people seem to want to!

I'm thinking maybe instead of voting on books, you would vote on a section of the Dewey Decimal System, and then I have to pick one book out of that section to read & respond (and decide if there are any I should get rid of.)

I guess my motivation here is to learn of interesting non-fiction books that I may not have heard of. But yeah, following the discussion about what people think of various books is part of the fun, and I see how there might be less discussion for non-fiction.

Also, a lot of my non-fiction books are not ones that I would certify as "interesting" without having read them first! Most of my fiction is bought based on "I have heard of that somewhere, it must not be awful" and most of my NF is based on "I may want to know more about that topic someday and I bet the library doesn't have anything". So there's that.

I suppose I could pull out the ones that I'm pretty sure people have heard of - more Henrietta Lacks, fewer 19th century monographs about the life cycle of invertebrates - but that would really cut down the number of books in the pool.

Ha, well, I know a lot more about the life cycle of invertebrates (although I guess I don't read 19th century monographs on it) than about Henrietta Lacks, whom I have never heard of. So it would probably be hard to judge people's knowledge/interests!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a popular science book that was on all the recommended reading lists a couple years ago (in the US).

The 19th century monographs are fun as objects but sometimes tough going to read through. (I went to the natural history association's library clean-out sale, I have a BUnch of weird old natural history books.

...I could just limit it to, say books that are owned by more than 500 people on LibraryThing; that would at least up the odds that people would have heard of one or two of them.

I've not read the book Melannen mentions but Henrietta Lacks was the real name of 'Helen Lane', the cervical cancer patient from whose HPV-18 +ve tumour biopsy arose the HeLa cell line.

Thanks! I did check Wikipedia to see who she was.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only