After the Funeral by Agatha Christie

#3/2012:


After the Funeral by Agatha Christie

This is the 48th AC mystery I've read since I started trying to reread all her books in chronological order three years ago. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920, and this current novel was published in 1953. There are 22 full-length novels left to go (published right up until she died in 1976) and 17 more books of short stories (some of which were/are only published in the UK, so I might not be able to get my hands on them). This list doesn't include plays or the two or so novels that were finished by other authors after her death.

I may read those too, but we'll have to see if I'm totally sick of her by the time I get to the end! I doubt it though because I've actually already read most of these books before. They never get old! However, I do, so I can't remember the conclusions to half of them even if I recall the characters and settings. It's convenient.

After the Funeral is post-WWII, so much of the world that provided the settings of Christie's earlier novels is fully on it's deathbed - the stately homes, the servants, the jet-setting leisured aristocracy, the Empire upon which the sun never set. In just a few years, all those Gothic Victorian mansions are going to be bought up by working class blokes who hit it rich as members of British Invasion bands, and they'll use the libraries to smoke hash and practice the theramin instead of poisoning the butler. All the characters in the book spend a lot of time complaining about taxation and the impossibility of finding affordable maids, and the family manse is going to have to be sold off to become some kind of institution since the old patriarch has died suddenly (was it or wasn't it murder???). I always love the history lesson and period atmosphere these novels provide, but the '50s were a gloomy decade in England and After the Funeral is a pretty straight-forward, middling quality, all-in-the-family style Christie mystery.

Next up is Pocket Full of Rye, and I do prefer a Miss Marple to a Hercule Poirot.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

#2/2012:


The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

In the introduction to my copy of this book, Dennis Lehane (author of many Boston crime classics such as Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, and Shutter Island) writes:

You hold in your hands the game-changing crime novel of the last fifty years. It is also quite possibly one of the four or five best crime novels ever written. It casts such a long shadow that all of us who toil in the genre known as American noir do so in its shade. Same goes for all of us who write novels set in Boston. How can a slim book with minimal description and no heroes lay claim to the status of modern masterpiece?

That right there is all you need to know about this book before you read it. Go read it.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

#1/2012:


The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

My first book of 2012, already finished! My friend Wendy, pusher of kiddie lit, sent me this book for Christmas, and once AGAIN, she was right about it being a perfectly great book on it's own for adults as well as teenagers.

When I first started reading, I wasn't so sure about The Book Thief because:
* it's YA. (I know, I know, I'm learning to love it.)
* it is set in Nazi Germany, and I'm not the only one who suffers from quite a bit of literature fatigue concerning Holocaust books, even if that makes me sound callous.
* the narrator is Death - that's right, Death. He says he doesn't really carry a scythe.
* the prose is kind of flowery and artsy at times, and I was afraid it was going to get very old very fast.

However, I kept reading and it was well worth it in the end. The plot is actually quite good; Death himself says he doesn't enjoy trying to work up the suspense when you probably kind of know what the outcomes are likely to be anyway, so the story ends up not feeling like forced excitement but just kind of spins out in a nice way. The journey is more enjoyable than the destination, which seems kind of rare in fiction pacing these days. The characters are the best part of the book: relatable and real and still lovable. Death ends up making some quality points without being too heavy-handed, and the poetic posey of words serves the voice and atmosphere more than it distracts. A quick read and a good recommendation for people who love words.

2011 Year End Roundup

I've actually finished a handful of books in the last month or two, but being a total slacker and bogged down by holiday goings-on, I haven't recorded them here. So here we go:

#14/2011:


The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
This was a recommendation from my brother-in-law Roger, who felt I would be interested in it even though it was a harrowing book for him to read. The Dust Bowl is in my blood as a fourth generation Okie, and I certainly didn't escape from it majoring in history at the University of Oklahoma, but that never makes it any easier to confront the stories of what happened to people in the Dirty Thirties. Egan does a great job of telling anecdotes that the reader can approach on a human level.

#15/2011:


The Doll People by Ann M. Martin & Laura Godwin
Proof that sometimes juvenile fiction books really are just for kids. I probably would've loved this book when I was eight or ten. I'll hold on to this copy for Mags.

#16/2001:


The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Another brother-in-law story here: this book was given to me by my other BIL, Jeff, and his wife Jeannette (I don't know which of them, or if both, read it first). I had heard of this book as it was fairly popular when it was published in the '80s, and then it was made into a mini-series for TV in the '90s. A great page-turner and interesting take on the Arthurian legends from the point of view of the women, especially Morgan le Fey.

#17/2001:


They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie
The next book in my quest to conquer Agatha's library. This one isn't my favorite. The twist was fairly clever, but the setting in a school for juvenile delinquents was pretty odd. On to the next!

18/2001:


SoulPancake: Chew on Life's Big Questions by Rainn Wilson, et al.
I've been very interested in this project of Rainn Wilson's (the guy who plays Dwight on The Office) since I read about it somewhere. The book is mostly just a collection of art and questions gleaned from the website project with a few interviews and guest columnists thrown in, but it is still an interesting and brain-stimulating read. Definitely check out the website - it's an entire day's worth of time-wasting internet browsing.

#19/2001:


Bossypants by Tina Fey
The first book I read on Mike's new Kindle and new iPad. Now I'm trying to decide if I prefer the e-ink or the backlit color touch screen. But regardless of whether you read it on a tiny iPhone screen or over someone's shoulder on the bus, who doesn't love Tina Fey??