Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by Loosheesh

I think this is my first time posting here, and I might as well say what I'm currently reading, which is Agatha Christie's The Big Four. From my lurking around here I know HarryT has been reading Agatha Christie lately so I'm hoping he'll stop by and comment on whether this one of hers is any good. I'm not that far in (just started the 3rd chapter) but I'm getting the feeling it'll be overly melodramatic or something.

I completed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd yesterday (finally; I only bought the book in 2010 ) and I enjoyed it immensely. It's gone on the shelf of my top favorite mystery novels. I feel almost sad I can't read it again for the first time

I didn't like The Big Four. But The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was awesome. These are the first adult books (well non childish) that I read in my life and I have fond memories from reading them.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Loosheesh

I think this is my first time posting here, and I might as well say what I'm currently reading, which is Agatha Christie's The Big Four.

IMO, The Big Four is her worst by far, while several of her works are on a par with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

IMO, The Big Four is her worst by far, while several of her works are on a par with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Exactly. It's weird because TBF was written during Christie's golden age. One or two Marple books are just as good as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, IMHO, such as 4:50 from Paddington, and Sleeping Murder.

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Great book. I read it before we went to Antarctica in 1999->2000, and went to NYC to see the exhibit there, which included a replica of the James Caird, the boat they used to get to South Georgia. Incredible. Simply incredible.

The book is great so far. I don't know anything about the 1914 Antarctic Expedition so the information I'm reading is all fairly new to me. I find it amazing how calm they all were!

Originally Posted by Loosheesh

<snip> I completed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd yesterday (finally; I only bought the book in 2010 ) and I enjoyed it immensely. It's gone on the shelf of my top favorite mystery novels. I feel almost sad I can't read it again for the first time

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is an excellent book. You should read And Then There Were None if you haven't already done so. Fantastic book.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by Luffy

Exactly. It's weird because TBF was written during Christie's golden age. One or two Marple books are just as good as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, IMHO, such as 4:50 from Paddington, and Sleeping Murder.

Yes, the Big Four is pretty weak. It's in the thriller style that Christie occasionally uses, and it's really out of place for Poirot. It's a fix-up of 12 short stories, and actually takes place immediately before Roger Ackroyd.

Its main redeeming feature is that it's short.

[HarryT]

I've recently finished two books:

"The Pale Horse", by Agatha Christie. This was her 63rd book and was originally published in 1961.

A dying woman gives a confession to a Roman Catholic priest, and the priest is subsequently murdered because of what he's been told. Mark Easterbrook, a friend of the police surgeon who examines the priest's body, gets drawn into an affair in which people are murdered for payment, seemingly by supernatural means.

I really enjoyed this book. An excellent and well-written story. Ariadne Oliver, the writer of detective stories who appears in many Poirot novels, and is Christie poking fun at herself, appears as a minor character in the book. Highly recommended.

"Privateer", by James Doohan and S.M. Stirling. The second book in the "Flight Engineer" trilogy, and just as good as the first, which I praised a few days ago. I bought this from Baen in September 2000.

Description from Baen:

Peter Raeder was an ace pilot in the Commonwealth's war against the secessionist Mollies until a battle cost him his hand—and his right to fly the fighter ships he loved. So he became Flight Engineer on the fast carrier Invincible, a crack new ship with a picked crew, ready to fight the fanatical Mollies and their spiderlike alien allies. On his first mission, he faced pirate raiders, attacks by Mollies and a hidden saboteur on board who came close to destroying the Invincible before Raeder unmasked him.

Unfortunately for Raeder, his heroism didn't follow the rulebook, and his reward for saving the ship was a reprimand from an admiral who didn't trust him, and a deskbound assignment—a fate worse than death for a born spacehound like Raeder. Then a less rulebound Marine General offered Raeder an escape: command of a hidden base deep in Mollie-controlled space from which ships, posing as space pirates, will harry Mollie shipping, like the seagoing privateers of Earth's past. And Raeder finds a dangerous mission preferable to exile to an office cubicle . . . even if his chances of surviving this assignment are very nearly zero.

The only thing I found slightly grating about the books are the not terribly subtle "Star Trek" jokes scattered through it. Eg, there's one scene with two pirate ships, one commanded by "Captain Wesley" and the other by "Captain Crusher". I really think the book would be better without these.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

IMO, The Big Four is her worst by far, while several of her works are on a par with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with you about "The Big Four", Paul. Yes, it's a largely unsuccessful attempt to combine the two genres of "thriller" and "detective story" which Christie wrote, but I didn't dislike it as much as you did. It's certainly not a book I'd recommend, but I don't think it's the worst of her books. I'd reserve that for her last books, written when she was clearly failing in her abilities. Christie's last novel, "Postern of Fate", for example, is truly awful, with the same conversations repeated several times throughout the book, and the characters in one chapter seemingly forgetting what they had done in the previous chapter! It really shouldn't ever have been published.

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'd reserve that for her last books, written when she was clearly failing in her abilities. Christie's last novel, "Postern of Fate", for example, is truly awful, with the same conversations repeated several times throughout the book, and the characters in one chapter seemingly forgetting what they had done in the previous chapter! It really shouldn't ever have been published.

I wonder why that is. All of the books I've read by her so far I've enjoyed immensely. So reading this is quite surprising. Doesn't seem like Christie at all.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Gazella

I wonder why that is. All of the books I've read by her so far I've enjoyed immensely. So reading this is quite surprising. Doesn't seem like Christie at all.

Quite simply because she wrote it when she was 83 years old, and very probably suffering from some form of dementia. Unfortunately that clearly shows in the her writing.

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Quite simply because she wrote it when she was 83 years old, and very probably suffering from some form of dementia. Unfortunately that clearly shows in the her writing.

Oh she suffered from Alzheimer's. I had no idea. Didn't she have an editor?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm going to respectfully disagree with you about "The Big Four", Paul. Yes, it's a largely unsuccessful attempt to combine the two genres of "thriller" and "detective story" which Christie wrote, but I didn't dislike it as much as you did. It's certainly not a book I'd recommend, but I don't think it's the worst of her books. I'd reserve that for her last books, written when she was clearly failing in her abilities. Christie's last novel, "Postern of Fate", for example, is truly awful, with the same conversations repeated several times throughout the book, and the characters in one chapter seemingly forgetting what they had done in the previous chapter! It really shouldn't ever have been published.

I will admit that perhaps I should have qualified my opinion with "... of the one's I've read (about half)".

[ATDrake]

Finished a trio of non-fiction artbooks from the library all on the same subject:

The Art of the Aloha Shirt by DeSoto Brown & Linda Arthur, the latter of whom is a Professor at the University of Hawai'i and the curator of one of their museum collections, was a nice light intro to exactly what it says in the title.

Lots of pictures sprinkled throughout a good recounting of the origins, history, and rise to popularity of the Hawai'ian shirt (which the locals call the "Aloha shirt") throughout the decades, some sidebars on printing technology and famous persons associated with the shirt such as celebrity athlete Duke Kahanamoku (Wikipedia), who parleyed his fame into a media licensing empire, and other forms of modern Hawai'ian dress based on hybridization of the respective cultures of the natives and the immigrants from the United States and East Asia.

The Aloha Shirt by Spirit of the Islands and Dale Hope, a garment industry Creative Director, with Greg Tozian, a part-time journalist, is even more in-depth, with info that builds considerably on some things that were briefly mentioned in the Brown/Arthur book.

This also has nifty sidebars with profiles/interviews of print-designers, Hawai'an culture promoters, and other creative types, as well as working conditions and trade connections in the early garment industry. Really quite nice, though not quite as quasi-scholarly in tone as Brown/Arthur.

The Hawaiian Shirt: Its Art and History by H. Thomas Steele was much lighter than the others. A few pages of introductory background for each section before going into the photogalleries of different kinds of shirts and prints and advertising posters and such.

Overall, these were quite nice to read, with some interesting facts and fun trivia (and reproduction vintage racist advertising used to promote the shirts, even when they were being sold by an actual Japanese-descended shirtmaker, because apparently it was thought they wouldn't sell unless they were marketed that way; ah, Values Dissonance).

Apparently the TGIF "Casual Fridays" business culture undress code of the US can be traced back to late-40s "Aloha Week" promotions where Hawai'ian government officials would wear their aloha shirts to work on Fridays. And the explosion of actual aloha shirts on the mainland can be directly traced back to WWII and the military personnel stationed in the islands sending souvenirs back home, which Hollywood then picked up as a fad, with the encouragement of the Hawai'ian government, who'd send people to the mainland to promote stuff like that.

Also, it used to be the fashion for entire families to wear matching prints for their Hawai'ian clothing, which must have made them look weirdly cult-like. (But then, this might have been a tourist thing, like the stereotypically loud shirts, whereas native Hawai'ians favour muted prints made by turning the fabric inside out so that the more subdued, faded-looking "wrong side" would be the visible bit. And the sign of a truly quality aloha shirt is if the pocket matches the shirt pattern entirely, being near-indistinguishable from the background, even when the rest of the print goes unmatched at the front and sides.)

Recommended highly for the first two books if you've any interest in Hawai'ian modern history or popular fashion culture.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Last night I finished reading Ready Player One! An engrossing story with great characters, and it's happening in a fantastic and interesting environment. Couldn't put it down!
Now I'm finally getting back to The Paper Magician.

And after that I'll finally get to begin reading Mr. Mercedes!

Today I completed reading The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #1) by Charlie N. Holmberg. I discovered that it deals with a quite unusual premise that requires a reader to really suspend their disbelief, which I was able to do, but only the protagonist is a fully rounded character, enough for the reader to really care about. Still, for me anyway, it was a quite enjoyable read.

Now on to Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1) by Stephen King (one of my all-time 3 favorite authors).

[Luffy]

I have 9% left on my current book, About A Boy. Then I'll be reading, today itself, Memoirs of A Geisha. I'm slightly nervous about it. I think it's going to be less clear than the clearly worded AAB.

[DrNefario]

A cold three-day weekend here in Britain, so I did a lot of reading:

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin. I was expecting this one to be a bit slower-paced than my earlier reading this month, and it did take me a while to get going, but then I read more than half the book in one night, although it's under 200 pages, so that wasn't really a lot. It's quite an interesting story about a man whose dreams can change reality, and his shrink who tries to make use of that. Also notable to me for starting off in a world suffering from the Greenhouse Effect. The book was written in 1971, which I thought was earlier than popular awareness of the Greenhouse Effect.

Stealing Speed by Mat Oxley. A non-fiction book about motorcycle racing, but what a story. It's about a racer, Ernst Degner, who defected from East Germany in 1961, taking the secrets of high-performance 2-stroke engine technology to Suzuki. The East German MZ factory never competed internationally again, while the technology they invented went on to dominate motorcycle GP racing for decades.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This was a big seller at the time, and I thought it was great. It's about the consequences of a young girl's murder on all those affected by it, particularly her family. It's unusual in that it is narrated by the dead girl.

And I've just started Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Another short SF Masterwork. I'm enjoying it so far.