Leisure reading or pleasure reading?

Trying to define my leisure reading – or should that be pleasure reading – is tricky – maybe it’s because I have broad interests, yet still feel the very real need to improve my literary knowledge.

I read a lot of Graham Greene when I was younger.

I reread all the Poldark novels by Winston Graham last year (12 in all). Ross Poldark is the romantic hero beyond measure.

Before that I went through an Agatha Christie phase.

And I’ve read Australian history recently.

And of course, Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic)

Most recently I decided I should understand what constituted a Pulitzer Prize winner so I read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I respected the book, rather than loved it.

So looking for something else – believe me, there is no shortage of books waiting for my attention at my house – they come in all shapes, sizes and types – but I picked up a paperback I bought second-hand in New Zealand earlier this year.

Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime by Joanne Drayton.

I certainly recognised the name and felt sure I’d read Ngaio Marsh books years ago, in my first Queens of Crime phase – which included Dorothy L Sayers and Agatha Christie, which then led on to P D James.

For anyone interested in Ngaio Marsh, here is the Wikipedia link. 

What I find most interesting is how in the late 1930s and well into the 1940s, unable to travel from New Zealand to England because of the war, she still managed to forge a highly successful career as an author, with international success, well before the days of social media and the internet.

OK, it’s back to the salt mine ….