Book Review: Nemesis

Nemesis by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For me, 1970s Agatha Christie is just not as good as 1930s-50s Agatha Christie. Since I was alive in the 70s, the romance of the era is gone. Christie's books are much more fun when they are also describing a world that no longer exists.

This one is kind of a shattered cozy; limited set of characters but not limited enough. Limited locations but not limited enough. Miss Marple is front-and-center finally, but I found myself actually wishing she was back in St. Mary Mead being visited by flummoxed investigators and dispensing seemingly non-sequitur wisdom.

But I do admire her pluck. When I am old, I shall wear a pink shawl and call myself "Nemesis."


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Book Review: At Bertram's Hotel

At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

*** Spoiler Alert ***






It broke my heart that Bertram's Hotel was just a front for a crime syndicate because I really wanted to go stay there. And eat "well-buttered muffins," whatever those are since what I know as muffins are derided as a "kind of tea-cake with raisins in them. Why call them muffins?"



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Book Review; Library of Souls

Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though it had about four different denouments at the end, I'm glad the real ending is the one that sticks. We have time

And though I was, at best, a lukewarm fan of the series, the whole thing was made worth my while with this beautiful little snippet of writing;

"She had a heart the size of France, and the lucky few whom she loved with it were loved with every square inch--but its size made it dangerous, too. If she let it feel everything, she'd be wrecked. So she had to tame it, shush it, shut it up. Float the worst pains off to an island that was quickly filling with them, where she would go and live one day."


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Book Review: A Caribbean Mystery

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Miss Marple is IN this one! Like an actual character! Not an afterthought!

AND she is confused! Not sure of herself! Not the magical all-seeing crone she usually is!

AND I figured it out! I feel smart!


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Book Review; Hollow City

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really don't like creepy vintage photos. They give me an unexplainable whiff of anxiety and disquiet.

So I shouldn't like these books.

But I do. Kind of.

The first one I read without knowing that it was partly inspired by the photos contained therein. Though Riggs has said that, this time, he wrote the plot and then chose the photos, the book still felt mechanized, as if forced to rally around the collection of pictorial oddities.

Or maybe it was that it was just a publisher-forced sequel (why do publishers make everything trilogies now?) that made it feel a little forced and mechanical.

Regardless, I enjoyed it enough to want to read the third one. So off I go.



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