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Second attempt at a blog and back up of my old account, ferningur.
So far this book isn’t really pulling me in, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. It’s a perfectly okay start, the prose is more than competent and the location is interesting. I’ll go through a few more chapters, and see.
Themis-Athena, onnurtilraun, and I are planning to start a buddy read this weekend and we'd like you to invite you to join us. Sorry for the late notice but we were wavering on which book to pick. I definitely mean to spread this read amongst other books so feel free to join in whenever.
We're planning to read L'Enigme des Blancs-Manteaux by Jean-François Parot because we're trying to encourage ourselves to read more French books, but it's been translated into English as The Châtelet Apprentice, so feel free to join us even if French isn't your thing.
Later on, we're thinking about reading L'homme aux cercles bleus by Fred Vargas (English: The Chalk Circle Man) if you can't join in this time.
Hopefully I'll be able to use this for one of my game squares at some point.
Suggested tag: French buddy read
At the end of the previous post, I mentioned how the official title of the Italian translation of Agatha Christie's "Cat among the pigeons" is "Gruesome Quiz". themis-athena wondered in the comment what could have pushed the translator to pick a title like that, given how there really aren't quizzes in the story. The answer itself isn't anything too criptic (marketing, basically, more on that later), but while googling for pictures of covers to explain myself better, I found a few fun images I just wanted to share.
Even if I joined in pretty late in the game, the three weeks during which I managed to follow the Reading Away the Pandemic Buddy Read were a fun experience. I've done some Buddy Reads with other people in read life, but never online, and it went better than I would have imagined.
The only thing I regret was that I wish I had been more active, but the fact I'm a bit of a slow reader and real life issues didn't really help; while I finished "Tenant for death" in time, it took me a bit longer to get through "The daughter of time" and "Cat among the pigeons". Not that it was that huge an problem, since that way I did manage to enjoy them with more calm - as I said in another post, I have the bad habit of rushing through the last few pages of a book.
The BR was also a new experience for me in another way: I'm the kind of person who prefers watching my cozy mysteries in movies and TV shows, rather than reading them, so this was an interesting change of pace for me. All in all it was a very fun experience that I'll definitely try again, though hopefully at a time when I'll have fewer things to deal with, so that I can fully concentrate on it.
Now, on to the book itself, Agatha Christie's "Cat among the pigeons". While I'm familiar with Poirot and the general concepts and atmosphere of her works, especially those with Poirot, I haven't read much written by her - I remember reading a couple of her books as a kid, during the summer holidays, but I don't have a clear memory of them.
All in all, I found the book very enjoyable, even though it I didn't find it as good as the other two we went through during the buddy read. Solid mystery, even if some of the details and twists were predictable. I didn't mind Poirot entering the story that late, since it gave time to build up a very interesting background, and the international intrigue angle was very well done.
That said, I found the pacing really sluggish at points, and like I mentioned above some elements were easy to predict, which didn't fully pull me in. For me, this was the least interesting of the three books I've read - but it wasn't a bad book, at all.
Fun fact: the official title of the Italian translation of this book is "Gruesome quiz". Weird choice.
It's been almost two weeks since I started the book, and only managed to get through one chapter, so let's just start it over again.
It's been a tiring few days, so I haven't been able to concentrate on reading as much as I would have wanted to. I still have a few thoughts about "Cat among the pigeons", but I'll have to leave them to another time, when I'll be able to concentrate better.
It’s going to take me a bit longer again, like last week, but I’ll get to it.
Enjoying the story, even if it took some time to get going.
It took me way longer than I would have imagined to get through this collection of very short stories; despite being titled "Unbranded parent-and-children stories", there really isn't much originality in these stories.
All the stories are about the relationships between female protagonists and their parents, and most of them just have a small twist or punchline to it (one has a young woman finding out about how her strict, old fashioned father is actually a much more silly man with his co-workers) or are more straightforward but with a humorous side (the first story is about a woman grappling with the fact that her mother, who's pushing sixty, still behaves as if she's at least fifteen years younger, for good and for bad). And sadly most of the twists and punchlines can be seen coming from miles away, which made the read really boring. And the writing too isn't anything to celebrate.
That said, the way the writer manages to create a nice, cosy familiar atmosphere when describing the characters or their situations is genuinely enjoyable, and one of the two reasons why I decided not to drop the book. A real pity there was no substance to back that up.
It was a very unexpected read, I must say. When I joined the buddy read, I wouldn't have imagined I would have stumbled upon a story like this, almost experimental in the way it plays around with expectations, and at times doesn't take itself completely seriously.
At the same time, I'm the kind of reader who often jokes that I'd love to read a famous detective busy with an armchair treasure hunt, and I guess this pretty close to it.
I took a bit longer than I should have just to get to the end of the book with calm, enjoying the dialogue and the investigation with as little pressure as possible (I have this annoying habit of rushing through the last pages of most books I read, especially when it's just the epilogue. I try to make up for it by going back to those pages later, but obviously this way the enjoyment of that last part isn't the same, having spoiled some elements).
The only thing that didn't really work was how, at times, the quotations supposedly lifted from the reference books are very dull, which I guess was the intent but they still stick like a sore thumb among the rest of the beautifully written book.
Before this I wasn't familiar with Tey, and what a great introduction this was. I imagine that the other books starring Grant will be more traditional detective stories, I just hope I'll enjoy them as much as I did this book.
Picking another book while I'm still reading the fourth, Unbranded parent-child stories. The book turned out to be a bore; I'm not going to drop it because I need to practice my Japanese, but I'll get another book to read along with it.
RULES OF THE GAME:
Everyone starts on 1. There are two alternative ways to move forward.
1. Read a book that fits the description on the space number as listed below and you can roll two dice to move forward more quickly.
2. However, if you can't find a book to fit the square, don't worry about it. You can read any book, and roll one dice on random.org. This is to ensure that if a reader cannot find a book to fill the square, no one gets bogged down and can't move on.
All books must be at least 200 pages long. Short stories count, so long as you read enough of them from a collection to equal 200 pages.
You do not need to hit space 100 with an exact roll. In order to win, you must complete space 100 as written.
ADDITIONAL RULES
When you start on square 1, you need to read a book before you can roll. If your book fills the square, you get to roll two dice. If your book doesn't not fit the square, roll one dice only.
With respect to the ladder squares: You must read a book in order to climb the ladder. Once you finish the book for the ladder square, climb the ladder to the ending square. If you read a book that fits the ending square, roll two dice to move on, otherwise, roll one dice.
For audiobook substitutions, either check the print book to determine if it is more than 200 pages long, or any audiobook that is a minimum of 5 hours & 30 minutes qualifies.
Further personal rules:
- Don't read two books in the same language in a row.
- I can drop a book and pick a different one how many times I want, if I find that a certain book is too difficult for my language level. Books I dropped earlier can be picked up later in the challenge.
For the dice roll, I'll be using Random Dice Roller.
Rolls:
Start: 1. Author is a woman - The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - Finished on April, 5th. Worth two rolls:
8. Author's last name begins with the letters E, F, G, or H / In a language other than English - Cherokee by Jean Echenoz - Finished on April, 10th. Worth two rolls:
14. Author is dead / In a language other than French - Legends of the Condor Heroes: A hero born by Jin Yong - Finished on April, 23rd. Worth two rolls:
22. Set in Asia / In a language other than English - 無印親子物語 (Unlabelled parent-and-child stories) by Youko Mure. Worth two rolls:
26. Part of a series that is more than 5 books long / In a language other than Japanese - His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik.
Trailing behind a bit this week due to a sudden load of housework, but I should be able to catch up.
As for my impressions so far, I can say that I see why this book received so much praise, and that I definitely agree with it. There should be more novels about what happens to the main character of a detective series in their downtime.
A mixed bag, with the good outweighing the bad, but the weirdness was still noticeable enough to pull me out at times.
On one hand, I really enjoyed the prose, the banter between Mallett and Frant, the satirical edge in the characterisation, the mystery is solid and how in the end things are wrapped up in the end, in a surprisingly dark choice.
On the other, at times the pacing slows too much, to the point I found myself distracted and thinking of other things, and at least in this book Hare doesn't seem to have a deft touch for working in the satirical aspects. It might just be me, but while reading the first few chapters I had issues telling if the satire was supposed to be in the way the characters acted and spoke, of it the whole story was supposed to be a parody that just happened to have an investigative plot. Going further on in the book cleared up that doubt, but it was still slightly confusing.
Still, it was a very enjoyable read, and in the future I might pick up other books by Hare, if only because of the prose.
Still genuinely enjoying the prose, but the pacing is getting a bit slow and dialogue of some characters at times is so peculiar I’m starting to wonder if this is supposed to be a parody.
I barely started this book, but I can already say I'm hooked. I'm really loving the prose and enjoying the build up so far. I'll save the rest for after dinner, right in this moment there's too much noise in my apartment.
RULES OF THE GAME:
Everyone starts on 1. There are two alternative ways to move forward.
1. Read a book that fits the description on the space number as listed below and you can roll two dice to move forward more quickly.
2. However, if you can't find a book to fit the square, don't worry about it. You can read any book, and roll one dice on random.org. This is to ensure that if a reader cannot find a book to fill the square, no one gets bogged down and can't move on.
All books must be at least 200 pages long. Short stories count, so long as you read enough of them from a collection to equal 200 pages.
You do not need to hit space 100 with an exact roll. In order to win, you must complete space 100 as written.
ADDITIONAL RULES
When you start on square 1, you need to read a book before you can roll. If your book fills the square, you get to roll two dice. If your book doesn't not fit the square, roll one dice only.
With respect to the ladder squares: You must read a book in order to climb the ladder. Once you finish the book for the ladder square, climb the ladder to the ending square. If you read a book that fits the ending square, roll two dice to move on, otherwise, roll one dice.
For audiobook substitutions, either check the print book to determine if it is more than 200 pages long, or any audiobook that is a minimum of 5 hours & 30 minutes qualifies.
Further personal rules:
- Don't read two books in the same language in a row.
- I can drop a book and pick a different one how many times I want, if I find that a certain book is too difficult for my language level. Books I dropped earlier can be picked up later in the challenge.
For the dice roll, I'll be using Random Dice Roller.
Rolls:
Start: 1. Author is a woman - The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - Finished on April, 5th. Worth two rolls:
8. Author's last name begins with the letters E, F, G, or H / In a language other than English - Cherokee by Jean Echenoz - Finished on April, 10th. Worth two rolls:
14. Author is dead / In a language other than French - Legends of the Condor Heroes: A hero born by Jin Yong - Finished on April, 23rd. Worth two rolls:
22. Set in Asia / In a language other than English - 無印親子物語 (Unbranded parent-child stories) by Youko Mure.
I've been wanting to try out a wuxia novel for a while, so after learning that there was an English translation of "Legend of the Condor Heroes", one of the most renowned and adapted stories of the genre, I picked up a copy.
As pointed out in other reviews, the comparison to "The Lord of the Rings" on the cover is very misleading - "Song of Ice and Fire" is more like it, in that while Tolkien was clearly trying to write high literature with LOTR, as he set out to rewrite a modern epic based on the classic Nordic ones that, as a philologist, he had studied through, Martin seems to have started what turned out as his own magnum opus mostly to have fun, and at most to make a more ambitious tale than the ones that were available when he started writing.
To me it seems that, while some parallels and callbacks are inevitable, Jin Yong didn't set to rewrite "The Romance of Three Kingdoms" with this story (at least from what I can tell from this volume alone), as much as he wanted to create a fun romp, one that stands out for the number of characters, the complexity of their relationships and the level of intrigue, political and not. And it makes for a really enjoyable and fun read, in a not completely mindless blockbuster kind of way.
So if you enjoy martial arts movies or anime where characters casually level mountains as if nothing were, you'll enjoy this novel. I docked a few points because of the translation; the translator is going for some old style pulp novel narration here, and while at times it works, in other point it makes the action a bit too wordy, and even dull. And the way the names of the characters get translated literally in English can get silly, especially for certain characters that have obviously meaningful names, and take the reader out of the flow.
Aside from that, it's a solid recommandation if you're into it. I'll definitely get the second volume as soon as internet book stores will start delivery to my country again.
RULES OF THE GAME:
Everyone starts on 1. There are two alternative ways to move forward.
1. Read a book that fits the description on the space number as listed below and you can roll two dice to move forward more quickly.
2. However, if you can't find a book to fit the square, don't worry about it. You can read any book, and roll one dice on random.org. This is to ensure that if a reader cannot find a book to fill the square, no one gets bogged down and can't move on.
All books must be at least 200 pages long. Short stories count, so long as you read enough of them from a collection to equal 200 pages.
You do not need to hit space 100 with an exact roll. In order to win, you must complete space 100 as written.
ADDITIONAL RULES
When you start on square 1, you need to read a book before you can roll. If your book fills the square, you get to roll two dice. If your book doesn't not fit the square, roll one dice only.
With respect to the ladder squares: You must read a book in order to climb the ladder. Once you finish the book for the ladder square, climb the ladder to the ending square. If you read a book that fits the ending square, roll two dice to move on, otherwise, roll one dice.
For audiobook substitutions, either check the print book to determine if it is more than 200 pages long, or any audiobook that is a minimum of 5 hours & 30 minutes qualifies.
Further personal rules:
- Don't read two books in the same language one after the other.
- I can drop a book and pick a different one how many times I want, if I find that a certain book is too difficult for my language level. Books I dropped earlier can be picked up later in the challenge.
For the dice roll, I'll be using Random Dice Roller.
Rolls:
Start: 1. Author is a woman - The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - Finished on April, 5th. Worth two rolls:
8. Author's last name begins with the letters E, F, G, or H / In a language other than English - Cherokee by Jean Echenoz - Finished on April, 10th. Worth two rolls:
14. Author is dead / In a language other than French - Legends of the Condor Heroes: A hero born by Jin Yong.