January 2021 Reading Round up

 Hello Dear Reader,

I have been on an Agatha Christie kick recently I really enjoy mystery books, particularly ones that you feel like you could solve. So I have been taking a trip back to the first half of the 1900s with the little Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. 

I started with Murder on the Orient Express as the BBC adaption with David Suchet was one of my favorites when I was younger (1). After that went back to the beginning and started to try to read through it all in order as best I could based on what was available from the library. I looked up a list of all of Christie's work so that I could be sure I did not miss any books and found she was much more prolific than I had thought and realized that this was going to be a bit of a challenge to read them all but a challenge that I think I am up to. I have listed the ones I have read this month below in publication order rather than the order I have read them. When I started to write up this post I skipped ahead to the most recently published books so that I could get a better idea of how her writing and ideas evolved with time.

• The Mysterious Affair At Styles (1920)

• The Murder on the Links (1923)

• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

• The Big Four (1927)

• The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

• Black Coffee (1930)

• Peril at End House (1932)

• Lord Edgware Dies (1933)

• Three Act Tragedy (1934)

• Murder on the Orient Express / Murder in the Calais Coach (1934)

• Death in the Clouds (1935)

• The A.B.C. Murders (1936)

• Dumb Witness (1937)

• Murder in the Mews  (1937)

• Appointment with Death (1938)

• Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938)

• Sad Cypress (1940)

• Five Little Pigs (1942)

• After the Funeral (1953)

• Dead Man's Folly (1956)

• The Clocks (1963)

• Elephants Can Remember (1972)

Rather than review each of her books I have read this month I will instead give you a general review of her as an author.

The Good: She writes well, her books are engaging and easily accessible through the library system at least. I listened to or read all of these books through the Libby App for free with my library card.  The books are fairly bite-sized, I got through most of them in a day, and pretty easy to read or listen to. Her characters are engaging and she does a very good job of providing all of the clues for the reader while still keeping you guessing as to the actual villain until the end in most cases. Her main characters are fun and interesting and if not deeply developed as people they are engaging enough to be believable within the confines of the narrative.  

The Bad:  Because of the brevity of the books and the volume written the characters in these books are common caricatures known to the British of the time. The country squire, the impassive butler, the bored wealthy young man. As a result, many of them are at best a slightly inflated version of a 2-dimensional stereotype and at worst a 2-dimensional racist, sexist, ableist, or another harmful stereotype. These characters also express ideas that are bigoted or classist and that go unchallenged in the narrative for the most part except for a few very rare instances of snarky humorous critiques of Britain that are scattered throughout her work.

The Ugly: Mrs. Christie grew up and started writing during a time period that the racist "sciences" that were the core of the eugenics movement were openly discussed and commonly believed. While the references to these sort of beliefs fade out of her work over time it can be unsettling and upsetting to have references made to the Prussian shape of a skull or and inherent behaviors of an Italian and to have these things treated as evidence and clues, as science. This is particularly disturbing in the works set and written before the second world war knowing the terrible things these beliefs will lead to in the rest of the century. 

Other books I read in January:

The Monogram Murders (2014) by Sophie Hannah

This is a Hercule Poirot mystery featuring the famous detective. This book is longer than any of Christie's and as such gives us more character development on the part of our narrator, a Scotland Yard detective, and a few more twists and lies than the older Poirot stories offered. I found after a little while I was tired of it, this may be attributed to the fact that I read this in the last days of January and had consumed quite a lot of strange murders solved by the eccentric Belgian in recent weeks or it could just be that it went on a little too long with too many clues and red herrings that left the reader feeling less like puzzling it out and more like just pushing through to the end to get some answers.

Pyramids (1989) By Terry Pratchett

Another series I am reading through is Terry Pratchett's Discworld this month I read the first book in the Ancient Civilizations novels. Like all of Terry Pratchett's novels that I have read this one was funny, engaging, and provided clever critiques of the excepted standards of the world. In this case, ancient Egypt and ancient Greece stood in for tradition verses questions. Where is authority derived from? How do we know what we know? Is science (and change) inherently good or bad? Is there a point where pursuing new ideas is harmful? What about maintaining the old? A new generation seeks to find a place for themselves and their ideas in the unchanging traditions of the past. 

Death and What Comes Next (1992) by Terry Pratchett

A short story in which Pratchett's Death comes to collect a philosopher, who attempts to reason his way out of his final moment. I really enjoy Pratchett's Death who speaks in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and approaches his job as the harvester of souls in a very matter of fact sort of way.

All in all I have read through a lot more than I expected this month due in no small part to my health keeping me in bed more than I would have liked but audiobooks allow you to do so much while reading regardless of my health so I am hoping to tackle many books throughout the year.

Ex Libris,

  

Footnote:

1) I was surprised to learn when looking up the IMDB link for this post that it was a whole TV show with 70 episodes and I am looking forward to watching it all very soon.