An Agatha Christie Assortment

I've been on one of my periodic Christie binges lately, so here's a scattering of comments on various books:

The Man in the Brown Suit: I really enjoyed this one, which is unusual with an amateur-detective Christie (her amateurs usually bumble so much it gets irritating!). Anne is likable & fun-loving & makes mistakes out of zest rather than stupidity. The romance is a touch unrealistic, but Christie's always are, and this one is lighthearted enough to be fun.

The Unexpected Guest: I know, I already commented on this earlier. It's disappointing--not a new Christie or even a new novel, just a play written out.

Parker Pyne Investigates: I like the premise of the Parker Pyne stories--he's not a detective, he's a retired statistician in the business of selling happiness. The stories themselves vary, from the enjoyably light to the so-so predictable.

They Came to Baghdad: Another amusing non-professional detective. Really, this one is more spy stuff. It's light & fun to read without being a big puzzle.

Murder is Easy: Fantastic title and overall a fun read, though it sags a bit in the middle and is an example of the less-succesful non-professional. Luke is supposed to be a retired policeman, yet he makes all kinds of basic, irritating errors in his investigation.

The Hollow: One of my favorite Christies. It has an elegant puzzle & there's a good reason everyone falls for the red herrings. Poirot shows well, too.

The Labors of Hercules: A good collection of mysteries, spanning a whole range of types, including dognapping, which makes a nice change from a steady diet of murders.

Elephants Can Remember: Not one of my favorites. Ariadne Oliver just doesn't fit as a friend of Poirot's and is rather too stereotypically scatty to be much fun on her own. Sure, there are biographical reasons for that, but if you have to look to the author's life to enjoy a story, well, it just isn't as much fun. Also, by the time you've read a few Christies, there are patterns that emerge, and this one fits squarely in the pattern.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas aka A Murder for Christmas aka A Holiday for Murder: This one features entirely familiar Christie family situation + murder, andI had the distinct feeling of being cheated at the end. It is possible that one might have noticed the clues leading up to the killer's ID, but only just. Poirot can literally see something we can't.

Cat Among the Pigeons: Yeah, Hercule cheats a bit here, too, but not so badly, and it is, overall, an enjoyable read & a departure from many of her standard patterns. I like it!

The Pale Horse: The Amateur is middling-annoying, the mystery fun, the red herrings amusing and suitably misleading. I liked it.

After the Funeral: Good, solid Christie.

***
And now, off to ride a carousel!





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The Book of Hebrews

Is gorgeous.

Why hadn't I noticed it before? It's intricately layered, marvelously reasoned, and pure poetry.

To think, I spent years not-particularly-liking the epistles.

Followup on Bartlett's Park (1)

Ok, a careful search turned up a Drainage & Storm Water Quality report (or minutes of a meeting? Somesuch) for this year, and the city authorized an "Evironmental Assessment and Conceptual Plan to determine

e possible uses and development of Bartlett Park for passive, recreational use, preserving native habitat and vegetation."

What that has to do with cutting some of the trees down, or why the park has been left an almost-entirely unsupervised mess, or how long it has been this way (at least 10 years, from searches), I don't know. I may actually have to call someone and ask. Imagine that!

From the Garden

I haven't talked about the garden lately.

It's doing very well.

What's Happening with Bartlett Park?

So does anyone know what is happening with Bartlett Park/Hidden Valley? I was down there a while ago, and there was a lot of tree-cutting type equipment. I visited again a few days ago, and, sure enough, several of the trees had ben reomoved. On the other hand, so had the heavy-duty machinery, and the park looks just as ragged and unkempt as ever, and still has all the "Unpatrolled" signs and a rather battered bit of paper saying that a year ago the Boy Scouts did their level best to clean the place up. Web searching has turned up nothing--just some old posts by BMX bikers.

And I'm curious.

It could be a really beautiful park, if anyone cared--a pocket nature reserve--but no one (except perhaps the bikers)does care, so it retains in its messy, abandoned lot look, with dog poop left in piles and pieces of glass everywhere.

And, no, I'm not starting a campaign or doing anything about it myself, I'm just wondering--what happening with Bartlett Park?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie and Charles Osborne

This is, theoretically, a novelization of a play by Agatha Christie.

The problem is Osborne hasn't really novelized the play, he's simply rewritten it in novel form. There are no thoughts, emotions, or ideas, only descriptions of actions.

Anyone who's read much Christie will be able to figure out what's going on well before the end, too.

The Broken Hourglass

Whew!

Just spent another few hours editing banters.

Talked with jcompton for a while about them yesterday, he revised a few, I revised a few...

Today's toll: 20-odd revised and tightened, 7 axed, 2 roughed out.

The revised ones, by the way, are much improved, much tighter, livelier, and more suited to characters.

For the moment, though, I'm beat. Time to head to the library for the weekly concert series and maybe a bit of html practice (Yes, I'm trying to learn to make web pages. It seemed time).

A Pictorial History of the Carousel by Frederick Fried

This seems to be the book on carousels, one all the later books quote from and admire.

It is by far the most in-depth and informative of the carousel books I've read so far (and really, there are far fewer non-fiction books available than I would expect).

It does suffer from its age, however. It was published in 1964, so most of the photographs are in black and white, which is a great pity, given the colorful nature of the carousel.

Also, it's not particularly lively; it's worth reading if you already like carousels, but unlikely to inspire a cover-to-cover read if you don't.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

I wasn't sure about this one at first.

It wasn't the concept, which delighted me, nor the cover, which, while gruesome, is absolutely perfect. It was the fact that it wasn't a complete rewrite: Grahame-Smith had the temerity to leave a lot of Austen's words in, intact, which sets him the daunting task of matching his skills against one of the masters, and I didn't think he was up to it.

He isn't, not all of the time. Early on, I found the conversational revisions jarring; instead of insulting one another in subtle, overtly polite ways, people were downright rude in a very modern fashion. I almost gave up.

But when it works, it works very well: The scenes where Austen's text is left pretty much alone and contrasted with the zombie mayhem are marvelous fun. My favorite occurs when Elizabeth visits Lady Catherine de Bourgh and the latter goes into the familiar examination of household minutia while apparently oblivious to the fact that Charlotte is slowly turning into a zombie.

And the discussion questions are hilarious.

A book for the ages? Probably not--but then, no one at all is expeccting it to be, so that hardly matters. Fun? Definitely!

Am I looking forward to Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters? Oh yes.

And Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer? Oh, I'll give it a try.

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl

Marvelous food descriptions, great character, beautiful writing. Made something I had never thought of before interesting.

I listened to the audio version of this, and Bernadette Dunne was the perfect narrator, varying her voice just the right amount to suit each persona Reichl took without ever becoming intrusive.

Book Reviews: Short & Simple

Ok, so one of the things I was going to do with this blog was write book reviews. I have not done very many, partly because I keep jotting stuff down and then planning on turning them into "proper" reviews "later." "Later" never happens. So, skip the proper reviews. I'm going with the jotted-down. We'll see whether or not I stick with that.

Warehouse 13 Another look

So, a tired day plus embroidery thread in need of sorting, and I thought I'd give this another chance. I watched Claudia and and Elements.

The show has gone from painfully generic (pilot) to merely generic.

I might give it another try, a few episodes down the road, if there is more embroidery thread in need of sorting.

Claudia is pretty generic rebellious-intellectual-teen, but she's lively. Artie is fun. The main characters--I still can't believe them as top notch Secret Service agents. The plots were--average. Strikingly average.

Edit to add: I took a look at a couple of other reviews. Rob Vaux reviewed Claudia and Elements and pretty well said the same, only with more detail than I troubled with. Oh, and I disagree with him about the agents' interaction being a plus: So far, the writers haven't worked out how to balance that "odd couple" vibe they're going for. So far, the show's saving grace is Mrs. Frederick, and she's barely on.

Please to Note the Difference

This is a garden






This is a garden.




This is an ashtray.










The one is a place of beauty, contemplation, and a ceaseless war against aphids.

The other is a place to throw cigarette butts.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

The book trailer.

Girl Genius

I love this bit from Girl Genius and the following two episodes (panels? What is each day's offering called, anyway?) that go with it.

More Birdhouses

I hadn't been to the birdhouse place for a while, so I decided to walk by two days ago & took some pictures. It's a lovely little oasis, and the gardener keeps adding new houses.

From what one of the neighborhood kids tells me, they are encouraged to make them as well.