The Project: An Introduction

I was looking for a list of the most prolific female writers, as one does, and came across a list of best selling authors of all time. Third on the list, bested only by William Shakespeare and the Bible, is Agatha Christie.

This surprised me. What surprised me more is that I, as a voracious reader, have never read one of her books! And because I just started grad school and need something to help with procrastination, the idea for this blog was born. I'm going to read every book-length work written by Agatha Christie and take you on the journey with me. Here are my parameters:

• Book length refers to her novels, short-story collections, and stage works. I may also cover her BBC radio and television works, depending on their availability.
• I will be reading mostly eBook versions, based on what is available at my local public library (because public libraries rule), and searching by the UK title versions. (Except in one case, which will be addressed when we get there).
• I am committing to reading one to two chapters a day, keeping a journal along the way. Once a week I will publish those journal entries here.
• I will be reading in my best estimation of publication date, oldest to newest. My initial source for titles and publication date was Wikipedia, due to their information layout being easier to plop into a spreadsheet than the official Agatha Christie website. However, I will use her official site as an accuracy check when looking at publication years. Her website only lists the year a work was published, so for months and dates I googled each title and took the UK publication date where available. If I could only find a month and not a day, I defaulted the publication date to the first of the month. So her second novel, The Secret Adversary, was published in January 1922, thus in my spreadsheet it is listed as 1/1/1922.
• In order to keep my mind as fresh as possible, I have avoided reading too much about the life of Agatha Christie. I know I'll learn a bit about her in her autobiography, and I plan to cap this venture off with a little tribute to the actual woman behind the bestsellers. But for know I only know she was born at the end of the 19th century and died in the early 1970's.

I'm excited to dig into some fun mysteries and see how often I can guess whodunnit correctly. I loved Nancy Drew as a kid, and I anticipate the bulk of these stories being similar but for an older audience. First up and the inspiration for this blog name - The Mysterious Affair at Styles