klcthebookworm

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. Christie's first novel (1920), classic "country house mystery" which established many of the genre tropes. I liked it much better than Ngaio Marsh's first novel, A Man Lay Dead (1934), largely because Christie keeps her detective, Hercule Poirot, central to the story, and her narrator is an outside observer rather than one of the suspects. Like Dorothy Sayers - the first Peter Wimsey novel, Whose Body? was published in 1923, the shadow of WWI is present, albeit more in the background and nobody has PTSD about it.

Prior to this, the only Christie book I'd read was And Then There Were None, which is notable for not having a central detective figure. Thus far, I don't really care much for Poirot, and Hastings grates at me, but credit where credit is due: it's skillfully done.

Christie is so essential to the genre, I feel compelled to read as much as I can in order to see how it's done. So far, her narrative voice is good, but I don't love the period-typical racism.

Snake-Eater by T Kingfisher - The author has a favorite formula - woman with dog confronts ancestral issues in a haunted space - and acknowledges it in the afterward. The usual blend of witty banter, feel-good moments, and quirk characters. There are a few tense moments, but mostly not scary - the story attempts to be a blend of horror-fantasy-romance(ish) but doesn't really manage the horror part. I read the whole thing in one sitting and was entertained but not excited by it. "Characters who are interested in the same things as the author" is fine, but I wish it were slightly less obvious here. I like this better than A House With Good Bones, which is the East Coast version of this formula.

The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama - Stories of various denizens of an apartment complex encountering the superstition that a child's ride in a playground can heal their ailments, though the solutions are ultimately more mundane than magical. Fine, but I don't have strong feelings about it.

RuriDragon v2 - Ruri's mom continues to be the most interesting character, so it's a shame that the author wants us to focus on her still-not-very-differentiated friends group. I guess that's my age talking, because this is published in Shounen Jump and thus its target audience is roughly the same age as the characters, but it's hard to get excited about Ruri organizing the school sports festival when there are so many other interesting tidbits that remain unexplored. In any event, I love the relationship Ruri has with her mom, and how her mom ends up being her mentor in this volume; that was great.

Everyone continues to take Ruri's dragon stuff in stride, including complete strangers in public, which feels more aspirational than realistic. Is she the only demihuman or are there others we don't yet know about?? This is what I mean when I say the sports festival stuff isn't nearly as interesting - Ruri just takes everything in stride as it comes and tries to go about her daily life rather than seek out answers. Which is fine, but as a reader, I'm chomping at the bit to get some more worldbuilding and it's the magical dragon bits rather than the slice of life bits that are the primary appeal for me. So I will continue reading and see if we get anything on that front.

Hirayasumi v3 - I forgot to mention earlier than this manga has a recurring narrator, which is a device I don't typically see in the manga series I read, and is kind of refreshing - it feels like we're getting inside the character's heads in ways that aren't otherwise possible. Rather than follow a single person's viewpoint, we're taking in the bigger picture as we follow different people from chapter to chapter, and we also learn stuff out of chronological order, so that we learn about the past as well as the present. Took a while to get used to, but I'm enjoying the surprise of not knowing who or what is coming next.

The Story Girl - lesser-known LM Montgomery novel hitting the same themes (Prince Edward Island, childhood, Presbyterianism, autobiographic details, etc, etc), this time with a male first person narrator visiting from Toronto, who doesn't have much of a personality; the eponymous Story Girl (that is literally what everyone calls her because there is another girl with her original name in their friends group) steals the show. Similar to Rainbow Valley except less angst because WWI hadn't happened yet.

This book covers spring, summer and fall and stops just short of winter (Montgomery's least favorite season) with numerous plot threads unresolved. I guess you could say it's realistic, but I kept expecting the Awkward Man and Peg Bowen subplots to pay off and they never really did. I thought this was a standalone, but apparently there is a sequel, The Golden Road, published two years later in 1913, so maybe they get resolved there?

Also there is an episode involving measles and I really wish that was a historical thing instead of something that is happening in the world right now.

Death of a Doxy - A later Nero Wolfe novel in which Orrie Cather's sidepiece gets murdered and Archie steps in to help. This was unexpected given that Orrie ends up playing such a major role in A Family Affair, though this book ends more happily. There was one character that I thought was going to play a major role since the murder victim claimed to be pregnant, but nothing came of it and the plot veered in a different direction.

Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street by William Stuart Baring-Gould is a fictional biography/compilation similar to the author's Sherlock biography, published just after Death of a Doxy. A good reference for "when did [x] happen?" but marred by the author's obsession with making Nero Wolfe Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes's son (no) and Marko Vukcic Wolfe's twin brother (no) and Archie Vukcic's son (please no). Also, the note about how Stout gives a different number for the brownstone address in almost every book - including some that would be in the Hudson River - and various other details are a great reminder that continuity is overrated. A good resource for fic writers, with a map of the first floor layout, timelines, character studies, book summaries, and a detailed bibliography.

Manga:

Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You volumes 5 and 6 - The slow burn continues, and it's more of the same; thank goodness for the supermarket employee drama to balance it out. To be clear, I'm enjoying it and curious to see how long the author can drag this out, but I can only take so much slow burn at a time.

Hirayasumi volume 1 - slice of life story about a 29-year old chilling in his inherited house and enjoying life while living with his 18-year old cousin struggling to fit in art school. Very laid back, but I'm curious to see where this goes.