As usual, when preparing for the year club, hosted twice a year by Stuck in a Book and Kaggy’s Bookish Ramblings, I look to see what I have already reviewed for that year. For next week’s club, the 1937 Club, I had quite a few previous reviews. I listed them at the beginning of my first review for the club, and then I saw that She Reads Novels, in a similar situation, had done a separate post for hers. What a good idea! So, I’m copying her.
Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson tells how an elderly spinster from a wealthy family ends up living on charity. It makes striking points about the education of women in the late 19th century.
Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers begins on Lord Peter Wimsey’s honeymoon with Harriet Vane, when they discover the body of their landlord in the basement.
Death of Mr. Dodsley by John Ferguson finds a bookstore owner, Mr. Dodsley, dead in his shop. Oddly, the death follows the plot of a recently published murder mystery.
Death on the Nile is one of Agatha Christie’s most well-known books. Hercule Poirot’s pleasure trip down the Nile is interrupted by arguments between former lovers and then the murder of one of the lovers’ new wife.
The Lady and the Unicorn is Rumer Godden’s story about an Anglo-Indian family in Calcutta. One of the daughters falls in love with a young English gentleman, but it’s a doomed romance that is echoed by a haunting in the family’s old house.
Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary by Ruby Ferguson is a bit similar to Rachel Ferguson’s Alas, Poor Lady, but it’s about the fall of the aristocracy, and its heroine, Lady Rose, is married, not a spinster.
Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon takes place after a train is snowbound during Christmas. Some of the passengers try to find their way to the nearest town but end up taking shelter in an abandoned house. They think something bad has happened there, and then they learn that someone was murdered on the train.
Summer Half is the fifth novel in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series. Before starting in the law, Colin Keith takes a summer job teaching at Southbridge School, where he is a witness to the romance of another teacher and the headmaster’s idiotically beautiful and selfish daughter. Later in the series, she improves.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about the struggles of Janey Crawford in her relationships with men. It is also about a town in Florida founded by black people, in which I learned later, Hurston grew up, making me wonder if the novel was based on the story of her mother.
They Found Him Dead is one of Georgette Heyer’s few mystery novels. First, a businessman is found dead at the bottom of a cliff and then his heir is shot. Will someone go after the next heir?
They Were Found Wanting by Miklós Bánffy is the second book of Bánffy’s Transylvania trilogy. Along with a love affair, it documents the failures of the Hungarian parliament as Europe heads towards World War I.
World Light by Halldór Laxness is about how the world treats a gentle soul. Although I enjoyed other books by Laxness, especially Independent People, I couldn’t finish this one once I knew where it was going.
whatmeread 
I read Alas, Poor Lady years ago but forgot to put that one on my list! I’ve also just read They Found Him Dead for the club and will be reviewing it next week.
You can still edit your list and republish it! Usually when I am preparing for a club, I do a search for books published that year. Goodreads gives you the most popular and Wikipedia gives you the most literary, but that means I always miss some that I’ve already reviewed (and also some possibilities to read for that year). This year, to make that list, I did a search through my read books in Goodreads and Storyboard, and I found a lot more than I usually do. I am actually thinking of transferring my Storyboard stuff back to Goodreads, because even though I’m mad at Goodreads, the other program is missing key functionality in that in order to look at what I’ve read, I mean all my To Reads, or all my Read books, I have to export spreadsheets. I used that functionality in Goodreads a lot more than I thought. I’ve asked for it in the other program, but I think they’ve just made more charts available, which isn’t what I want.
I mean StoryGraph.
The other problem is that Goodreads sometimes gets it wrong and, I think, lists the year a different edition came out. One other year club, a year before World War II, I found it listing At Bertram’s Hotel, which is a post-war book. So, who knows what else it might get wrong.
I’ve read a few of the vintage crimes ones, and obviously my pick of them would be Christie. Otherwise I’ve only read Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I thoroughly enjoyed and was also fascinated by the black town – something I’d never heard about before.
She talks about it in her memoir. I wish I’d read the memoir first, though.