Here I go again with a 2025 Deal Me In Challenge. I skipped a year but this year I have someone to keep me company and push me to actually accomplish something. So we’ll see how it goes.
2025 Deal Me In Challenge
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Monthly Archives: December 2024
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?: “Bobby Jones teed up his ball, gave a short preliminary waggle, took the club back slowly, then brought it down and through with the rapidity of lightning.”
Alternate Title: The Boomerang Clue
Detective: Lady Frances “Frankie” Derwent & Bobby Jones, childhood friends
Published: September 1934
Length: 351 pages
Setting: Wales & Hampshire
A Christmas Supper in the Marais & Other Christmas Stories by Alphonse Daudet
I’ve always wanted to read Alphonse Daudet, Lettres du mon Moulin, but time to plod through it in French hasn’t materialized. However, given the season, and coming across this compilation of Christmas stories in English translation, I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Place Royale, Paris – Augustus Pugin
~ source Wikimedia Commons
I just have to summarize the whole stories as they’re so good, so I’ll give a spoilers warning here.
Reginald’s Christmas Revel by Saki
And now we arrive at the ninth story included in the 20 Christmas Stories volume of Everyman’s Pocket Classics, Reginald’s Christmas Revel.
I’ve always been intrigued with Saki but hadn’t read any of his stories. In fact, I lacked even the cursory knowledge that his real name was Hector Hugh Munro and he was British, not Asian as I had thought. So with a lively curiosity, I began this story with relish.
A Chaparral Christmas Gift by O. Henry
“The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.”
A Chaparral Christmas Gift is the eighth story in the Everyman’s Pocket Classics Christmas compilation of 20 short stories.
The story begins on Christmas Eve with a tale of unrequited love. Rosita McMullen, daughter of the owner of the Sundown Sheep Ranch, was courted by numerous men, however only two held her admiration: Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy who is later called the Frio Kid. Rosita chooses Madison and on their wedding day, McRoy appears, tries to shoot both of them but is prevented, then shoots an innocent man and flees, screaming of his vengeance and hatred. He thus becomes the Frio Kid.
The Burglar’s Christmas by Willa Cather
I believe this is the third Christmas that I’ve continued reading the Christmas short stories from Everyman’s Pocket Classics. The stories are written by well-known classic authors and each one so far has been excellent. This is the seventh story in the compilation, written by Willa Cather, and is set on a cold Christmas Eve in the city of Chicago