octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I like this more for the conclusion than anything else. For once, I'd come to the same conclusion as Poirot - not on where the will was, but on why he was asked to look for it. Sod off, Hastings, there's a reason that we use experts when we need to, and when Violet Marsh first appeared and explained her problem, I knew exactly what she was doing and why. 

Sensible woman. 

I really enjoyed this. I'll have to get a copy of my own, I think, as this one goes back to the library tomorrow. There's this really effective sense of seeping horror, of ghostly dislocation, as the protagonist isolates himself in a small house in the Swiss Alps, trying to create a book that's deliberately inspired by Frankenstein - a novel which he considers to be "abysmal" - only to be interrupted by apparitions of Mary Shelley and her characters. I like the exploration of monstrosity, particularly through the lens of what it means to create a monster as a horror writer.

I do think it fell down towards the end, unfortunately. The presentation of Frankenstein as misunderstood is accurate to some extent, but the interpretation of it as a book about responsibility to what you have created is neither new nor original... which wouldn't be a problem, except The Monsters We Deserve seems to present the responsibility interpretation as a moment of climax. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together who is even passingly familiar with the source novel will have come to this conclusion before their first read of Frankenstein is over. Furthermore, the eventual conflation, at the end of the book, of the author and the monster was, honestly, a little bit expected. 

So, yeah. Really great up until the last quarter or so, at which point it stumbles into the obvious and never quite recovers. I still want a copy for that first three-quarters, though. 

The small community of street cats photographed here live in a colony and are fed by the authors, who try to catch them, have them neutered and vaccinated, and then either find them homes or release them as part of the catch-spay-release programme that's going on in Atlanta. They're ordinary moggies made special by the ongoing observations of their lives, which Knox captures in a series of mostly pleasant photographs (there's the odd one of a sick or dead animal, which can be distressing, although in fairness they do warn you of this in the introduction).

Some of the cats here are given little profiles of their lives and personalities, but this book is 90% pictures. And honestly, given that the text is white on a black background, which tends to give me headaches, I'm okay with that. It's awful to read about how many of them have terrible deaths, though - especially those attacked by coyotes. I've just read a picture book on coyotes - one of the Smithsonian's Backyard books - and the main character there is hunting for his dinner and readers are clearly expected to sympathise as he goes after mice and quail. I did sympathise - but then I read this and all my sympathies are on the other furry foot. It's a horrible fact that carnivores have to kill to survive, and my vegetarian self may not like it... but it's an inescapably conflicting experience reading these two books in quick succession.

Poor moggies.

Anyway: readers who are interested in a more text-based exploration of the catch-spay-release programme, again in an American context, may appreciate Nina Malkin's memoir, Unlikely Cat Lady which I read a couple of years back and which was quite good. 

I find it very hard to get the image of a coyote settled in my mind. I think it's the size. Not living in a country that has them - or which has foxes or wolves for that matter - I picture them looking a little like a wolf and I think I inflate their size somewhat, and then I remember that I'm inflating and shrink them down until they're probably smaller than they actually are. The book says "between a small collie and a German shepherd" but the German shepherd who lives next door is HUGE (and delightful) and the only collie I really know is a border collie, and they vary. So I'm stuck, even with a picture book in front of me.

It's a nice picture book. I'm more interested in the landscape, to be honest, because it's so different from anything we have in NZ and the illustrations really bear that out! Lovely colour palette, anyway. 

When I finished reading this story, I had to flip back a few pages to the dinner menu. Soup julienne, sole à la Normande, beef tournedos, and rice pudding. Then I had to look up beef tournedos. Anyway: four courses and three guests. Admittedly, not all of the rice pudding was gone, but that's still the best part of twelve plates of food... and I'm not including the coffee and port.

And Poirot surmises it was all eaten by one person, and that this person devoured the lot in the space of half an hour or so. This is why I'm not a detective. I like my food, but that's unfathomable. 

This was really clever - despite the use of (yet again) disguises, although this time I'm inclined to give it a pass because said disguise was so considered and long term. Despite my appreciation for the plot, though, what really entertained me on this one was Poirot fussing with his breakfast eggs, and his bet with Japp (particularly the mournful response). Two little character moments that impress me much more than the rabbiting on about little grey cells, which is basically background noise at the moment because it happens so often. 

Poirot is an entertaining little drama queen, isn't he? For someone who insists that brains can solve anything, and that all that's needed is for him to sit quietly and think until a solution appears, he notably does not try this method until he's been ferried all the way across the Channel. He could have saved a lot of time and potential seasickness and stayed at home. 

It's not exactly a wild goose chase on his part, but it is a waste of energy. Otherwise, the story's clever and fun... although given Christie's penchant for disguises, I figured we had another one in the offing as soon as the facial bandage was mentioned. 

I cannot say that I am a great fan of dusting. Of all the household chores, it's one of the most tedious - an argument against all those little ornaments that people like to have. It is also, according to this story, the clue on which all else hangs. If my choice is to dust and get away with a stolen, expensive necklace, or to not dust and go to jail, I choose the third option: not dusting and no necklace. 

There's nothing wrong with costume jewellery anyway. 

I am working my way through Poirot Investigates (again) and this is the best of them so far. Tempting as it is for my horror-loving self to believe in ancient curses knocking off a series of archaeological scholars, it did seem more unfortunately likely that someone was using the idea of an ancient curse as a cover. So it proved. 

I'd like to say that normally people wouldn't be so credulous, but not so long ago there was a pandemic and a run on horse medicine, so curses all round, I say. 

This was excellent - approachable, concise, and very interesting.

In the period up to and including WW2, a number of Jewish educators in Germany and Austria were sacked from their universities; efforts were made by those outside these countries to find them work. (It's not relevant to this book, but one of the places I found about this wider effort was through learning about Ernest Rutherford, who is New Zealand's greatest scientist - hence my interest - and who was involved in trying to find placements for many of his scientist colleagues.) In an American context, however, a number of these scholars ended up employed in US institutions. I understand from this book that some studies have already been done in this area, but From Swastika to Jim Crow focuses on the traditional Black colleges and universities, and how they welcomed Jewish refugee scholars.

There is, one can understand, an obvious point of commonality, as both Jewish and African American populations were marginalised in some absolutely horrific ways. Sympathies between the two communities were natural. It's a fascinating relationship, and I'd like to read more about it. If only the book were longer!