Mal: Take your people and go. Captain: You would have done the same. Mal: We can already see I haven't.

'Out Of Gas'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


sj - Feb 10, 2022 7:59:04 am PST #27300 of 28067
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

I haven't been able to properly hold a book open while lying down for very long since I injured my neck a year ago. So, I mostly read on my tablet/kindle, which are much easier for me to hold without pain or weakness.


-t - Feb 10, 2022 8:04:26 am PST #27301 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Listening at 2x or higher can be good in that situation. I've got myself into that many times - I really want to stop reading because the book is just bad but I do have to know what happens because I can't stand not knowing. It's a curse.


sj - Feb 10, 2022 8:06:07 am PST #27302 of 28067
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

-t, I've never tried that. I'll give it a try. My new to me car has bluetooth. So, I've been able to listen to my books through the car speakers while I'm driving, which is super nice.


sj - Feb 10, 2022 11:50:28 am PST #27303 of 28067
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

Thanks for the suggestion, -t. I found I could listen to the book at 1.3 speed without it sounding like the Chipmunks were reading it. It’s still not a good book but I’ll get to the end faster this way.


-t - Feb 10, 2022 12:43:30 pm PST #27304 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Sweet.

One of the doohickeys that let's me know there are even more books out there I might want to read advised me that I might like something called The Belt. Sounded like some kind of exciting accessory-themed something or other, so I checked it out, but it's just set in an asteroid belt, which might also be good but wasn't what I was hoping for by then...


-t - Feb 17, 2022 10:53:28 am PST #27305 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

So, a while back I just gave up on The Mystery of Edwin Drood (trying to figure out which edition or version or whatever to read was Too Hard I will try again when I have more brain capacity for that kind of thing), read enough of The Circular Staircase to decide that while I think I will enjoy it, it is not really a detective story as such and therefore I could skip ahead to Agatha Christie.

There is way too much Agatha Christie.

I have now read all of Miss Marple in order, because that was manageable, and enjoyable! I'm even watching what adaptations I can easily find because I have become interested in adaptations in an abstract way - like, why do they make these choice to change things? Some of them have been very faithful to the original, some have made changes I approve of, and some seem to just make random changes for no apparent reason and some of those make me sad.

Anyway, what I was coming here to say was that because I cannot possibly read all the rest of Agatha Christie without breaks, I have sidetracked into the Detection Club collaborative books. I read a sample of The Floating Admiral a while back and decided not to go any further with it, but I gave it another shot and while the Prologue remains terrible (wtf, Chesterton, why so racist?) and I cannot really say I enjoyed it as a mystery novel as such, as a dialog between writers it's really interesting. So I added some authors to my spreadsheet to look into. And I've started Ask a Policeman, where I guess authors have traded detectives? Three people I've never heard of and Dorothy Sayers (plus some foreword and the like). So the first detective is Mrs Bradley, who I have never heard of, and while this version was written by not-the-author I was intrigued enough to see what books were available. There are 65 in Kindle Unlimited! Sixty-five! I don't know how far into them I am really going to get but that is a pretty good pile.


Dana - Feb 17, 2022 10:55:09 am PST #27306 of 28067
"I'm useless alone." // "We're all useless alone. It's a good thing you're not alone."

Happy to recommend specific Poirot books, if you like. There are...a lot.


-t - Feb 17, 2022 11:15:51 am PST #27307 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I would like that, Dana. So many! And I vaguely remember a lot of them but not clearly enough to decide whether I want to read them again or not. I have actually read all the early ones through [checks spreadsheet] Lord Edgeware Dies because quite a few of those I don't think I read before, somehow, and the ones I did remember I wanted to read again. And I'm going to read Murder on the Orient Express because while I know I've read it when I watched the Branagh movie I couldn't remember a lot of the details. But after that, it's kind of overwhelming.


Dana - Feb 17, 2022 11:41:25 am PST #27308 of 28067
"I'm useless alone." // "We're all useless alone. It's a good thing you're not alone."

After a quick look at Wikipedia, I like:

  • The ABC Murders
  • Cards on the Table
  • Dumb Witness
  • Death on the Nile
  • Hercule Poirot's Christmas
  • Sad Cypress
  • Evil Under the Sun
  • The Hollow
  • After the Funeral
  • The Clocks
  • The Third Girl
  • Halloween Party
  • Curtain

And the short stories are generally fun.


megan walker - Feb 17, 2022 12:14:42 pm PST #27309 of 28067
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist

I have actually read all the early ones through [checks spreadsheet] Lord Edgeware Dies because quite a few of those I don't think I read before, somehow, and the ones I did remember I wanted to read again. And I'm going to read Murder on the Orient Express because while I know I've read it when I watched the Branagh movie I couldn't remember a lot of the details. But after that, it's kind of overwhelming.

-t, I'm in the middle of a long-term project to reread Christie (I have the entire Bantam set), but I've only gotten through the 1930s so far. Of those past Edgeware (a dozen or so), my favorite Poirots are Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Hercule Poirot's Christmas. The latter being essentially the basic plot of Knives Out. I'd rank Cards on the Table and Death in the Clouds just below those. I also really liked Why Didn't They Ask Evans? but that is a stand-alone, not Poirot. Sadly, I didn't like The ABC Murders as much as I remembered liking it as a teen.