Summer Project: London -- Update Two

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My summer London project is winding down now but I have a few more London books to share with you that I read this summer --

I finished Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens in a fairly short time. It was full of coincidences and unfortunate events that strained belief but I thought Dickens did a very good job of portraying the lives of the poor and the orphaned and those who either attempted to help them or used them to their own benefit. Though one of his more "issues" based novels, it was surprisingly not very preachy or wordy. There is definitely quite a bit of sarcasm in it (which I enjoyed). The portrayal of London as a place where one can just as easily be found as lost was also fascinating. Though a more violent novel, I think it's also one of Dickens' more accessible ones and I'm happy to now understand many of the references to this novel that I've encountered over the years.

Next I moved forward in time to Consequences by Penelope Lively, a journey through generations from the 1920s through modern days. With many different personalities and relationships, I thought this was a fascinating story. It was my first Penelope Lively and if her books are all as quiet and touching as this one, I'm sure I'll find my way back to her soon. As for London, it was interesting to see how a home and a neighborhood changed over time in what was once an affluent area.

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson was one that I was going to save for the RIP challenge but then I was in the mood for something more modern after all of this summer spent mostly with a London of the past. What I got was one of the most "YA" books I've ever read. It took me a while to get into it, into the teenage awkwardness and drama, but once the supernatural part of the story started, I was hooked. There was a very terrifying villain and the main character, Rory, was interesting and convincing in all of her "teenness". This story took me back into the underground areas of London but also gave me a look at boarding schools and pubs. Quite fun and I look forward to the next book in the series, The Madness Underneath.

Finally, I had a hankering for some Agatha Christie and I still have a couple of unread novels sitting on my TBR, mostly those that feature Poirot and were made into tv films. I had to wait long enough until I couldn't remember the solution anymore so that they would be interesting reads. Hickory Dickory Dock is a boarding house mystery full of unlikeable twenty-somethings. With plenty of mentions of race relations (and some of Dame Agatha's own questionable descriptions of those non-white characters), this was a look into the workings of the succotash (please tell me a better word for it if you have one!) that is London.

This might be the end of my London reading for the summer. It was a really interesting experience to see so many different ages and sides of a single city and its people. One day I'll get to visit London and hopefully fill in the gaps that must exist after only learning about the city from books. I can't wait.

Letting my anglophilia shine,
K

New Re-Release: An Autobiography

It's been a week or so since I finished Agatha Christie's An Autobiography (newly re-released by Harper and including a cd of Christie's own voice as she recorded this book for her typist). It took me almost a month to get through it because there was just so much in it that I had to read it in short bits and then spend some time absorbing each section. I apparently also spent quite a bit of time having feelings of intense jealousy. I spent a lot of November feeling dissatisfied with my life for no apparent reason -- and then I realized that I was jealous of Agatha's world travels and her multiple marriage proposals and her plethora of houses. She lived an adventure-filled life and she worked hard for everything she had. Some of her views on women were quite Victorian but she actually lived a rather pioneering life. There are few writers who lived lives that rivaled their novels in excitement but she is certainly one of them.

Some of the highlights of this book for me turned out to be entirely coincidental. The three books that I chose to re-read last month were most of the ones featured in the book and it was fun to get an expanded view of the stories. The best was probably The Man in the Brown Suit. Most of the travel and location portions were actually taken straight from Christie's own sea voyage to South Africa and her time there. I was happy to have the novel fresh in my mind while reading of Christie's own adventures.

Fans of Agatha Christie's novels will probably enjoy reading this book and learning all sorts of things about this amazing woman -- like the fact that she wrote her first detective story on a bit of a dare and that's when she created Hercule Poirot. Sadly, she doesn't speak at all of her disappearance after her first husband's infidelity so that remains a mystery. But seeing as she is the Queen of Mystery, it seems somewhat fitting that she left us with one that will never be completely solved.

In awe,
K

Christie November: And Then There Were None

from Wikipedia

First published serially in 1939 under a very offensive title that most of you have probably seen at some point and then released in book form in 1940 as And Then There Were None, this is one of Agatha Christie's most shocking and well-known stories (and this cover is fantastic!). The title refers to the last line of a poem in the vein of Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed except instead of a little head-knocking, each "Indian" in the poem ends up dead. So when ten seemingly unrelated people end up stranded on a mysterious island under false pretenses, their lifelines all start looking rather short.

Though the outcome of the story is pretty obvious from the title, the way it unfolds is anything but obvious. With an unknown murderer loose and no way to escape, the psychological tension comes through on almost every page as we see into eight increasingly disturbed minds. Though this was a rare re-read where I did remember most of the ending, I couldn't remember the exact course the story took and I was hooked again from start to finish.

This is the last day of the month and should be the end of Christie November but I am still working through Agatha's autobiography. It's a great read but is so jam-packed with stories and tidbits that it's taking a while to get through. I hope to finish it in the next couple days. Therefore, Christie November will bleed a bit into December.

Still counting,
K

Christie November: The Mysterious Mr. Quin

First UK edition, from Wikipedia

One of my favorite Agatha Christie character pairs is the mysterious Mr. Harley Quin and the elderly Mr. Satterthwaite. When I was choosing stories to re-read this month, this was one of the first to come to mind. These twelve stories were as good as I remembered, with some of them being among Christie's best writing.

I have become more familiar lately with the Harlequin character, especially through my Neil Gaiman readings this fall. It lent a different perspective to my reading this time through. Mr. Quin shows up when there is a mystery to be solved or a fate to be changed and acts as a catalyst for the discovery or solution. Mr. Satterthwaite is his willing accomplice, someone who has lived his life on the outside-looking-in and is especially adept at seeing things that others do not. This book has a dozen stories that were all written separately and then collected later and published together in 1930.

For readers who are not fans of the typical Christie detective stories, these tales might be something different to try. They feature some of her best writing.

In awe of her mind,
K

Christie November: The Man in the Brown Suit

Image from Wikipedia - first UK edition

The Man in the Brown Suit was first published in August 1924. It's a stand-alone mystery that starts in England but quickly moves onto the Kilmorden Castle, an ocean liner destined for South Africa. The reason for this change of scenery is the adventuresome nature of Anne Beddingfeld. Anne, who has lived for years with her archaeologist father in a mentally stimulating but still dull existence, is set free when her father unexpectedly dies. She has only a few pounds to her name and isn't sure what to do next in life until she sees a man accidentally fall and die on the underground train rails. A mysterious doctor, who happens to be on hand to tend to the man immediately, drops a cryptic note on his way out of the station and Anne takes it as a sign that she is meant to set out and follow the clue -- which leads her to the Kilmorden Castle. What follows is a quest for not only a murderer but also a master criminal and a parcel of stolen diamonds.

The reviews when it was released were mixed. Some reviewers thought the plot was far-fetched (which it is), some lamented the absence of Poirot (which could have worked but wasn't necessary) and some thought it was a good fun story (which it also is). There are a few small bits here and there that make the modern reader cringe a little but nothing too terrible. More than anything, I think that the story reveals Agatha's fondness for South Africa (where that wonderful piccie of her with a surfboard was snapped) and for the social changes that allowed women to become more independent. Anne even takes a detour while on her way to an appointment and tries her hand at surfing -- which I'm now thinking could be a lightly-veiled autobiographical tale!

Taking the waterway less traveled,
K

November is Agatha Christie Month (On This Blog)

A recently-released photo of Agatha in her surfing days

There's nothing significant linking Dame Agatha Christie to the month of November. She was born in September and died in January. But I have three non-fiction books here about her (two of which will be released in November, right before the 85th anniversary of her mysterious disappearance for eleven days) and sixty-one of her books (only three unread) and I'm not quite ready to leave the RIP season behind so I'm declaring this my own personal Agatha Christie Month!

I will be reading:

An Autobiography by Agatha Christie (1977, to be re-released by Harper Collins on 11/22/2011)
Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making by John Curran
Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets from Her Notebooks by John Curran (also being released by Harper Collins on 11/22)

I believe that the three unread books I have are all Poirot stories so I will try to get to those and will surely re-read some of my favorites, like the Harley Quin and Parker Pyne stories. I may also re-watch some film and television adaptations of her work this month. Murder on the Orient Express is always a good choice on a gloomy fall night.

If you would like to join me this month in an Agatha Christie reading or watching, please do! She was such a prolific author that there ought to be something in her catalog for almost every reader. The official Agatha Christie website also has a great page that lists her own ten favorite books and has a "Where to Start" article if you aren't sure what to try first.

Embarking on a treacherous but highly enjoyable journey,
K

"Hercule Poirot came out of the Vielle Grand'mere restaurant into Soho."

When I need a filler read, I have a long list of Poirot stories left. This one, Mrs. McGinty's Dead, was quite a good one. A man is scheduled to be executed for murdering his landlady but the superintendent that collected the evidence that convicted the young man isn't sure of his guilt. He asks Poirot to look into the case. Poirot goes to the small village where the murder happened and of course finds the one miniscule piece of evidence needed to lead him to the truth.

The clues in this case could lead to a few different conclusions so it was actually a good one for trying to guess the ending. Sometimes in Poirot stories I feel like his conclusions just come out of nowhere. Yet while this was one of the best Poirot mysteries, Christie uses her fictional author, Ariadne Oliver, to deliver lines that are obviously Christie's feelings about her own detective.

"How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad. Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? ... Why all the idiotic mannerisms he's got? These things just happen. You try something--and people seem to like it--and then you go on--and before you know where you are, you've got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that ... Finn in real life, I'd do a better murder than any I've ever invented."

Learning to pay attention to the details,
K


Buy Mrs. McGinty's Dead on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Ruining the Mystery

Apparently it's not a good idea to watch a mystery movie before reading the story. I have watched most of the Poirot series on PBS and it happens that almost every one of these fourteen story in Agatha Christie's Poirot Investigates has been made into a television film. Therefore, when I started reading these stories, I would get through about the first page or two and think "oh yeah, this is the one where it's the wife" or "geez, the one on the oceanliner".

Though I normally like Christie's short stories for their paradoxically complex mysteries, this was just a painful experience! Next time I will pay more attention to which stories are in the book I choose.

Still thirsting for some mystery,
K


Buy Poirot Investigates on Amazon or find it at your local library.

A Trip to Devon

I have just this moment decided that I need to take a trip to Devon.

"The holiday home that was once described by murder mystery writer Agatha Christie as “the loveliest place in the world” is opening to the public for the first time this week, as a £5.4m restoration returns it to how it looked in its 1950s heyday.

Among the rooms being opened to the public at Greenway House in Devon is the drawing room in which Christie used to spend summer evenings reading a chapter from whichever was her latest novel – described as the “Christie for Christmas” – to family and friends, who had to guess “whodunnit”."

The Independent also has an article about the appeal of Agatha in modern days. Can you believe she still sells millions of books a year?



Booking an imaginary flight as we speak,
K

"'Books!' said Tuppence."

I just finished reading the last Agatha Christie book in the Tommy and Tuppence series, Postern of Fate, and sadly, I was disappointed. This was the last novel that Christie wrote and I apparently am not the only one who didn't enjoy it. At the time of its publishing, the critics thought it to be some of her poorest work.

In this book, Tommy and Tuppence are in their seventies. They have moved to a new house which of course turns out to have a mystery attached to it. The mystery itself is okay but the dialogue is scattered and extremely hard to follow. The main characters themselves rarely finish a train of thought. They also neglect to follow up on some pretty obvious leads that they get. You never really gain any information pertinent to the case except for the main clue which is painfully obvious yet they don't figure it out until almost the end. Also, Tommy and Tuppence vacillate between being sprightly and bright to arthritic and forgetful constantly.

I honestly couldn't tell if they were supposed to be written as if they were elderly and on the edge of their rockers or if the author was the one in that state. This book had dog conversations (translations of what the dog's barking must have meant) and repetitive references to the past. It just made me feel a bit sad.

I would love to hear from anyone else who has read this series or this book. Did you feel the same way? Was this final book in the series -- and in the Christie canon -- a disappointment to you?

Wishing things could have ended differently,
K


Buy Postern of Fate on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Book v. Movie: By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Agatha Christie's shortest series is the five book Tommy and Tuppence series. The fourth book is By the Pricking of My Thumbs, when Tommy and Tuppence are nearing retirement age. I had this book sitting on my TBR shelf and then I happened to see a tv movie version was showing on CBC. I recorded the movie and read the book first. I wish I had stopped there.

In the book, Tommy and Tuppence go to visit Tommy's elderly aunt in a rest home and Tuppence ends up talking to a batty old woman who talks about a dead child in the fireplace. They leave without a second thought but when Tommy's aunt dies a few weeks later and they have to return to the rest home, Tuppence decides to follow up with a nagging feeling about the old woman. When they find out the woman has been moved out of the home, Tuppence becomes suspicious and sets off on an adventure to locate the missing woman. This book was enjoyable, especially as Christie does a great job of writing bright and capable older characters.

Then I turned on the movie. The first obvious difference was the fact that they had somehow turned the story into a Marple script. I wondered how they would accomplish this. Apparently the only way they could manage it was to turn Tuppence from a strong, bright and adventurous woman into a simpering, alcoholic nag. Instead of showcasing Tommy and Tuppence's loving and fresh relationship, the movie version decided that they should be all but estranged. This was such a ridiculously bad mangling of this story.

Book versus Movie Verdict: Read the book, skip the movie.

Hoping to be the brilliant sort of retiree,
K


Buy By The Pricking Of My Thumbs on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as 'The Styles Case' has now somewhat subsided."

Agatha Christie's first Hercule Poirot mystery was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written in 1920. Not only are we introduced to Poirot but also to his friend and sometimes companion, Hastings, who acts as narrator of this story, and Inspector Japp, his Scotland Yard contact. This is a locked-room and poison murder mystery with a simple motive of inheritance. However, there is a large cast of characters each with their own secrets and missing alibis. I enjoyed the characters and didn't quite discover the solution although I saw past some of the dead ends that came up during the course of the story.

In reading this book, I was somewhat surprised to find how young Hastings actually was. In this first story he is only thirty. I always thought he was just slightly younger than Poirot himself based on how he is portrayed on television. Anyway, the best thing about Poirot stories is that you can read them in any order so go ahead and pick one up if you haven't before. Even though Agatha herself found Poirot insufferable, you will hopefully enjoy his wit and intelligence.

Avoiding all greedy hangers-on,
K


Buy The Mysterious Affair at Styles on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Poirot, In Short Form

One of the things that is missing from most of the pages of Poirot novels is Poirot himself. The story unfolds without him until the point where he is invited in or happens upon the crime and then he works his effortless magic. The best thing about Poirot short stories is that there isn't time for that so he is present in the whole story. The book I read recently, Murder in the Mews, is a collection of four short stories. These have all been made into tv episodes by the BBC. In this book we have murder for inheritance, the theft of state secrets, a locked room murder and a love triangle murder.

The best story of the bunch is Triangle at Rhodes where a love triangle forms leaving jealous spouses and someone with murder on his or her mind. It has a nice little twist at the end that you can anticipate if you really pay attention and know where Poirot's sympathies lie. This book is a nice little short read and is great for a story before bedtime.

Using the little grey cells,
K


Buy Murder in the Mews on Amazon or find it at your local library.

31 Books for Fall Spooks

I made this list of 31 books from my own collection that I think are befitting the spooky season that is autumn. Fall has already made an appearance here in the Pacific Northwest as we've had the hints of a chill in the air and plenty of rain. Halloween is a favorite time of year in our house and these books are some of my favorites. I don't expect anyone to read a book a day in October but feel free to use this list to find some good horror, mystery and suspense reads.

1. Murder on the Leviathan – Boris Akunin
2. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
3. The Pale Blue Eye – Louis Bayard
4. Lady Audley's Secret – Mary Elizabeth Braddon
5. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
6. The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories – Tim Burton
7. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
8. Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot) – Agatha Christie
9. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories – Susanna Clarke
10. The Haunted Hotel – Wilkie Collins
11. The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly
12. The Meaning of Night: A Confession – Michael Cox
13. Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories – Roald Dahl
14. Best Ghost Stories – Charles Dickens
15. The Stolen Child – Keith Donohue
16. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
17. The Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux
18. The Dream Stealer – Gregory Maguire
19. Lost: A Novel – Gregory Maguire
20. The Lighthouse at the End of the World – Stephen Marlowe
21. The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl
22. The Portrait – Iain Pears
23. The Raven and Other Stories – Edgar Allan Poe
24. Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography – Victoria Price
25. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
26. The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield
27. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
28. Into the Mummy's Tomb – John Richard Stephens, editor
29. Dracula – Bram Stoker
30. Brat Farrar – Josephine Tey
31. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

If you choose any of these books to read this season, come back to this post and let me know what you thought of them!

Boo!
K