octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This is a short guide to creating a garden that will attract a diverse range of wildlife - what to plant to lure in birds, butterflies, and other animals. Tufts uses his own garden as an illustration of what to do, and so the book's best directed at readers who live in (I think it's Virginia, in the US) similar environs, with similar species. There's not a lot here that's specifically relevant to someone like me, who lives in New Zealand, for example, but it's still interesting to read about different ecologies and a lot of the broader lessons here are transferable - e.g. making sure there's a range of available seed types to appeal to different species of bird.

I understand the the book's a collection of previously published gardening columns, and it shows. Each section is short, simple, of very similar length, and is essentially geared to interested beginners. There is a bit of repetition, but the main strength of the book is that it's both encouraging and accessibly written... it invites readers to wander around their gardens and have a go. I like that. 

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this! There's six issues in this series, so I'm going to read one a day, I think, in order to spread out the enjoyment.

This is Frankenstein updated for the modern world, and it follows both the monster - brought back from the Arctic and absolutely murderous - and a scientist who has lost her young son to a police shooting. Clearly, she's trying to bring him back in the same creepy resurrection way as old Victor did, and equally clearly, the paths of scientist and monster are about to cross. (Hopefully in the next issue.) And for all that the story's horrifying, it's mostly just sad, in a horrifying sort of way. I tend to enjoy sad horror; it makes me sympathetic to the protagonists, or at least it generally does. And this is just done so well! 

This is the first of the Gilbert and Sullivan collaborations, and it's terrible. I understand the music's been lost, or most of it, and if it was no better than the prose then that loss is a lucky escape for the rest of us, I say. This tedious little play concerns the gods on Mount Olympus - they're old and cranky and tired of their jobs, so they swap roles for a year with a troupe of actors, and everything goes pear-shaped.

I know it's old, but mostly this just seems tired and not especially funny. Maybe it was fresher back in 1871, but I read it now and all I think is stale. 

My first reaction, when reading this, was that the end was quite abrupt, not especially foreshadowed, and not especially clear either. After thinking about it for a bit, though, I'm certain that those first two reactions are dead wrong. Reading back over the text, there are any number of places where the climax has been carefully, quietly prefigured. It's both clever and subtle, and the twist regarding the first wife was something that I didn't see coming. It's also something that, reading the book over again (and picking up on the clues better this time round) is still surprising but not shocking, if that makes sense. The horror here is so everyday, so seeping and domestic, and so wrapped up in characters who look away and don't want to deal with their issues, that it passes, much of it, for normal. Or at least for unremarkable, until the whole seething insanity comes together at the end.

It's just very well done. I still feel that those ending panels are a little unclear as to what actually happens between the two wives but that's a deliberately chosen ambiguity on Carroll's part, I think. 

Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. It took me a while to get through this, because I wasn't that interested in any of the characters - there seemed an awful lot of them, and so many red herrings that the book felt kind of scattered. I liked it, but I wasn't terribly excited about it... it seemed a solid three star read to me.

Then came the end. I said I wasn't that interested in any of the characters, but there was one. Bits had been seeded through the book that were moderately interesting, concerning this person, and the book concludes with a letter they write to Poirot explaining how and why they performed their crimes. And that short letter is a masterpiece of characterisation, and makes the entire book more entertaining for the villain alone. Those two or three pages dragged up the rating all on their own. If only the rest of it had been so compelling! 

 

I'm so glad to know that this book was a major success - apparently there's even a film coming, and I want to see it! - because it means financial security for the couple in question, and it was very hard to read and not worry about them. 

Winn and her husband Moth are flat broke, unemployed, and newly homeless, after an investment with a friend goes bad and strips them of their life's work. To make matters worse, Moth has just been diagnosed with a terminal disease. In their place, I'd want to lie down and die, I think, but the two of them decide to go for a long walk, instead, on England's South West Coast Path, which has been on my own bucket list for quite some time. With little money and very basic, often inadequate supplies, they stumble along the path, trying to recover some sense of self and stability while on their bones of their arses and barely avoiding literal starvation. They're braver than I am, but this was such an inspirational read. 

Quite by chance, last year (I think it was last year) I read one of Simon Armitage's books, set in the north of England, about his long poetry walk, so I knew what was going on there before Winn and Moth did. I'll have to check the library, and see if it has the sequels to this book and Armitage's south west adventure. 

I love this! It's the most interesting poetry collection I've read in ages: prose poems about an apocalyptic future, and the poems coalesce along three strands. First is a sentient artificial submarine womb (exactly as strange as it sounds), second is the extinction of different species, and third is the history of women's reproductive healthcare. The whole is very quietly brutal, a meditation on a world where the ability to reproduce is nearly entirely destroyed, and then rebuilt in odd and transformative ways. 

I'm already slated to write a review of this for one magazine, but I can see myself coming back to it again and again, especially for academic work. There are some fascinating comparisons to be made with other examples of speculative fiction... 

Talk about death by chocolate! I suppose this is why stuff like cough medicine always has that disgusting fake cherry taste - or worse, that putrid banana. If it tasted like chocolate people would mistake it for sweets and it would be easy to guzzle down. Or, you know, poison someone without them suspecting it... even if they deserve it. This is why we can't have nice things, I guess.

Nice to see Poirot being absolutely fooled for once, though. 

I tell you, if the government of Great Britain ever wanted to shut down the backstreet opium dens of London, all they would have needed to do would be to make Poirot give a public interview to the papers about his experiences there. That'd be sure to suck all the interest out of it. "Poirot goes to an opium den" should not be dull, but it is. And the speech patterns of the Chinese characters are just painful to read; at least it's over quickly.

I have a strong feeling that I'll have completely forgotten this story by tomorrow morning. Fair enough too. It's not interesting enough to remember. 

Ha! I am entertained by the idea that even criminals hire Poirot when they get stuck in their criminal plans, but aside from Poirot twigging what was going on there, the purported mystery was a little dull. As with the last of these short stories that I read, it was based around searching for a document in a house, but while Poirot found the missing will by using his little grey cells, the letter was found through a very thorough search. That makes it less interesting. I was about to say "anyone could have done it" but then remembered that "anyone" includes Hastings and that even a thorough search was beyond him.