gw
Junior Member
@gw
Posts: 1,519
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Post by gw on Jun 21, 2020 22:45:17 GMT
Just finished the short stories in Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths and I'm about to start Ted Chiang's Exhalation.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jun 22, 2020 15:07:34 GMT
After the rereading disappointments of Ellery Queenโs The Four of Hearts and The Origin of Evil, I was kind of wary to reread some other detective stories I lovedโparticularly some Agatha Christies Iโd only read once. I shouldnโt have been worried: the book I picked up, Christieโs Five Little Pigs (1942), is excellent. It deserves full marks both as a detective story and as a novel of character. The only reason itโs not better known, I guess, is that the solution doesnโt really have a gimmick, the way that, say, those in Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd do. That just makes it stronger, though: gimmick-twists in books (not just mysteries) tend to date, often being groundbreaking when they were written but obvious as the years go by. Because thereโs no gimmick here, though, you have less of a chance of knowing or stumbling on (โhuh, what if X did itโฆ?โ) the solution, which is rooted in character above all. Itโs remarkable that Christie can do all that and still come up with a whopper of a solution that feels both surprising (WHAT!) and inevitable (OF COURSE!), especially as she only has five suspects and keeps our suspicions evenly dispersed among them. She did something similar with four suspects in Cards on the Table (1936), a mostly good book that suffers from some weak clues (the most interesting of which turns out to be a red herring). Here, the cluing is brilliantโon par with Death on the Nileโs. Early on, we should be able to figure everything out, but we donโt because weโre not thinking that way. Everyone just accepts the story naturally, so we donโt realize just how odd, how unlikely, some of the actions taken (or supposedly taken) the day of the murder were. โEverything tastes foul todayโ has to make the list of greatest mystery clues ever, along with the nail polish in DotN, the sundial in The Simpsonsโ โWho Shot Mr. Burns?,โ the tango in John Sladekโs Black Aura, and a few others not coming to mind at the moment. Speaking of which, this is a book in which the murder (Plot B) takes place 16 years before Poirotโs investigation (Plot A), which consists entirely of suspect and witness interviews. Iโm usually bored to tears by suspect-interviewing in detective stories, but here Christie makes it work beautifully because the characters are so strong and are revealing new things, new suspicions, new insights. As a character and as a detective, Hercule Poirot is at his strongest here: shorn of the โcomic foreignerโ routine that Christie used to make up for his lack of character in the early books, he comes across as wise, warm, and sympathetic, with his foreignness emphasizing how much he cares for the outsider and the downtrodden. Here, he feels compassion for the murderer (cf. Lt. Columbo in โTry and Catch Meโ), but he does his job because so many innocents were and are suffering (that perennial Christean theme). Unfortunately, Christie made Poirot more and more colorless as time went on, but in the โ40s books, particularly this and Death on the Nile, heโs actually an interesting character. (That characterization, by the way, the Poirot TV show picked up on and wisely developed.) The murderer, meanwhile, is one of Christieโs best characters, and the last revelation that sheโs constantly being punished/punishing herself for what she did is actually quite moving. As Nick Fuller wrote, โone is reminded of Tiberiusโ belief that death is a merciful release, to live is to be punished.โ Elsaโs characterโthe seemingly worldly femme fatale whoโs actually sentimental and immatureโis reminiscent of Evil Under the Sunโs Arlena Marshall, and Christieโs equally sympathetic to both. My only complaint, really, is that the nursery rhyme device is pointless, and even distracts from the emotion of the storyโbut thatโs minor. This is one of the best detective stories ever written, and I enjoyed reading it just as much this time as the first.
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Post by WullieFort on Jun 22, 2020 16:58:58 GMT
TOKYO YEAR ZERO by David Peace , Opens on the day when The Emperor surrendered to the USA. It kicks off with the discovery of a murdered female that is being investigated by two detectives, but in describing the surroundings, it made me aware of how much destruction was inflicted on the city by USA's campaign of "firebombing" in the last days of the war. Like a lot of other people, I only know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targets for aerial attacks but in fact, Tokyo suffered more casualties than either of them .with estimates of approx 100000 and at least as many again injured. It's strange that I have never been aware of those numbers, the "Headlines" focusing only on the atom bombs, which made more noise but had fewer casualties than Tokyo
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Post by darknessfish on Jun 25, 2020 15:23:23 GMT
I guess this is what happens when Father's Day coincides with lockdown, supermarket dad-lit desperation. It's not too bad having said that; Matthews clearly isn't a professional writer, and there's something quite charming about his posh amateurism, as he tells jolly anecdotes about Guernsey under a brutal occupation. Only just started it, whether it becomes tiresome remains to be seen.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jun 28, 2020 20:19:00 GMT
Now hereโs an odd one. I just finished Trial and Error (1937), by Anthony Berkeley, andโฆyeah, odd is the optimal word. The plot: Spinsterish Mr. Todhunter is told (by a hilariously cheery doctor) that he only has a few months to live and therefore decides to murder a horrible person. Things donโt go as planned. For the first half, this is excellent: amusing, clever, smooth, witty-bitchy as Berkeley tended to be. It has many of Berkeleyโs favorite themes: fallible detectives, the impossibility of certainty, the likability of murderers. It culminates in the most ridiculous murder trial ever, which would seem like itโs spoofing Agatha Christieโs Witness for Prosecution if it hadnโt preceded it by 16 years. While most of the characters are sketched only superficially, prissy Mr. Todhunter himself is a great character-portrait. And yetโฆ Itโs never quite as funny as Berkeley seems to think it is. I had more appreciative chuckles than guffaws. When Mr. Todhunter is trying to prove his own guiltโparodying most detective storiesโthe pace goes a little slow, a killer (no pun intended) in black comedies like this.
Worse, however, is the ending: Berkeley has a major twist up his sleeve, but I anticipated it, and I think most readers, at least nowadays, will. Thatโs unfortunate, because it deprives the ending of real power: I kind of feel the book should have ended when Todhunter slugged the hangman. The trial itself hangs on a point of British law that will be lost on most non-British readers (and is actually illegal in most of the U.S.), though you can hardly criticize Berkeley for that. All in all, fun but a bit of a disappointment. Would have made a splendid Hitchcock, though. ( Suspicion was based on one of Berkeleyโs psychological thrillers under pen name โFrancis Iles.โ)
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Post by jackspicer on Jun 30, 2020 21:03:21 GMT
Some light reading.... When I was taking a criminal justice class at college, this was one of several optional books to read and do a report on. I opted instead to read/report on a book about wrongful executions, but the title of this one was memorable, so I'm reading it now, over a decade later.
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Post by Marv on Jun 30, 2020 21:34:13 GMT
Picked up Doctor Sleep again. Iโm determined to get thru my unfinished list and Iโm 100 pages into this one already so Iโm gonna stick it out til the end.
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Post by theravenking on Jul 1, 2020 20:24:36 GMT
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Post by Captain Spencer on Jul 2, 2020 18:13:16 GMT
Shoot by Douglas Fairbairn from 1973. Friends go on a hunting trip and get into a gun battle with another group of hunters, escalating the conflict into warfare. This was made into a movie in 1976 with Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine, which was pretty good. I'm curious about how the novel turns out.
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Post by darknessfish on Jul 2, 2020 20:41:25 GMT
I'm hoping to get to a bookshop this weekend, and break the lockdown literary malaise. This was borrowed from my mum, such are these dark, desperate times.
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Post by nutsberryfarm ๐ on Jul 4, 2020 8:58:47 GMT
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Post by Morgana on Jul 4, 2020 10:17:27 GMT
Are they true stories? If so I might try and get it.
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Post by Morgana on Jul 4, 2020 10:19:34 GMT
Some light reading.... When I was taking a criminal justice class at college, this was one of several optional books to read and do a report on. I opted instead to read/report on a book about wrongful executions, but the title of this one was memorable, so I'm reading it now, over a decade later. From the title, I'm surmising that it's explaining why they do what they do? To be honest though, I don't think what they do can be explained or excused.
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Post by Morgana on Jul 4, 2020 10:23:59 GMT
I'm having trouble finishing one book straight through, so I am jumping around between these 4: I, The Sun by Janet Morris, Ghost on the Throne by James Romm, A Certain Justice by P.D. James, and The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.
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Post by theravenking on Jul 4, 2020 10:27:29 GMT
Are they true stories? If so I might try and get it. No, it's all fictional. I'm already halfway through and only one of the stories by Martin Edwards was any good. It's a disappontingly weak anthology so far.
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Post by Morgana on Jul 4, 2020 10:30:14 GMT
Are they true stories? If so I might try and get it. No, it's all fictional. I'm already halfway through and only one of the stories by Martin Edwards was any good. It's a disappontingly weak anthology so far. Sorry to hear that. It is such a let-down when a book you have been looking forward to reading, disappoints.
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Post by jackspicer on Jul 4, 2020 13:22:50 GMT
Some light reading.... When I was taking a criminal justice class at college, this was one of several optional books to read and do a report on. I opted instead to read/report on a book about wrongful executions, but the title of this one was memorable, so I'm reading it now, over a decade later. From the title, I'm surmising that it's explaining why they do what they do? To be honest though, I don't think what they do can be explained or excused. Pretty much. Another aspect is that the author is a victim of molestation, and she is looking for answers.
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Post by Morgana on Jul 4, 2020 15:42:35 GMT
From the title, I'm surmising that it's explaining why they do what they do? To be honest though, I don't think what they do can be explained or excused. Pretty much. Another aspect is that the author is a victim of molestation, and she is looking for answers. If that's the case then the title makes even less sense to me. I don't understand what she is trying to get out of proving that people that do such things to others are human beings like the rest of us.
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Post by nutsberryfarm ๐ on Jul 5, 2020 16:55:02 GMT
Gore Vidal - The Golden Age It's been a while since I last read this, and it's tone of somewhat embittered yet cheerfully feisty cynicism seems quite appropriate reading in the light of current US political shenanigans. this was fun:
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Post by SuperDevilDoctor on Jul 6, 2020 11:48:18 GMT
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