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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Author Archives: Cleo
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
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
“A rather handsome, light traveling carriage on springs rolled into the gates of an inn in a certain provincial capital, the kind of carriage that is favoured by bachelors: retired lieutenant colonels, second captains, landowners possessing a hundred souls or so of serfs — in a word, all those who are called the fair-to-middlin’ sort.”
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born in Sorochyntsi, Poltava Province in Tsarist Russia, which would now be part of the Ukraine. His earlier works included short stories such as The Overcoat, The Nose and The Diary of A Madman. His later works, including Dead Souls, satirized the political corruption and laziness of government workers and how they abused their positions in Imperialist Russia.
Classics Club Spin #39
Good heavens, I almost missed this spin. I was going to change up my Classics Club list as the list I had wasn’t really targeting my top reads but there’s no time to do it now, so I’ll go with the original.
The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
“When the course of civilization takes an unexpected turn — when, instead of the continuous progress which we have come to expect, we find ourselves threatened by evils associated by us with past ages of barbarism — we naturally blame anything but ourselves.”
I suspect that you would call The Road to Serfdom F.A. Hayek’s magnum opus. It was written in 1944 towards the end of the Second World War, when countries had been exposed to various socialist political experiments and the effect they had on the countries that adopted them were very, very evident. But Hayek did not take for granted that people’s common sense would see the dangers. He was well aware of the hazards socialism still posed with its pernicious ideology and promises of a better future where everyone would be equal, the rich would pay their fair share, and all would be secure within the society.
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? Dollars, Money and Legal Tender
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? by Richard J. Maybury
4. Dollars, Money and Legal Tender
There is no subtler, or surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debase the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which only one man in a million is able to diagnose. ~ John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946, Economist
We think that the slip of paper that says “One Dollar” (or coin, in Canada) in our wallet is actually a dollar but we are mistaken. The one-ounce silver ingot the author has on his desk is actually a dollar. Why? Well, let’s see where the dollar came from ……