Another fun Sherlock entry! The brilliant detective is tasked with securing a compromising photograph for the King of Bohemia from the clever and tricky Irene Adler, whose beauty and cunning causes the usually-stoic Sherlock to show some actual emotion.

The plot of this story isn't that compelling by itself, but the rare chance to see Sherlock somewhat out of his element brings additional fun to the usual fare of his effortless deduction.

I read a collection of Poe's Dupin Tales a couple years ago, and as I reread this story for a class, I was surprised how much had stuck with me, probably due to the sheer absurdity of the murders.

C. Auguste Dupin and his unnamed companion/scribe/man who exists solely as a receptacle for Dupin's brilliant monologues meet, exchange intellectual pleasantries, and decide to live together and read all day. First of all, this is the lifestyle that I want. Secondly, I don't really understand their relationship. Poe is unconcerned with character development, preferring instead to present All The Facts for Dupin to thoughtfully unravel aloud, and the narrator figures in as little more than a placeholder.

Before long, the new roommates hear about a mysterious crime and decide to investigate. Two women have been murdered with extreme force and violence in a room that was locked from the inside. The younger of the two was stuffed up the chimney, while her mother was found on the lawn with a nearly severed head. The police force has essentially given up any hope of solving the ridiculously unusual case, but Dupin can figure it out.

I wasn't a huge fan of the way the information was presented; Dupin gets most of his evidence from a newspaper, meaning that the story involves very little action or in-person detection work. The resolution is so strange, though, that this story has unique lasting power.

HOW was this one published???

Dupin and his companion are on the case again, this time trying to figure out where a young Parisian girl disappeared to for the day and how she then ended up dead in the river. There is NO detective work done within this story. Dupin hears the evidence secondhand, reads some newspapers, analyzes them (in great, unnecessary detail) to the narrator, and then makes a guess at a possible circumstance for the crime. AND THEN THE STORY ENDS. There is NO RESOLUTION. The narrator casually reveals that Dupin's hunch led to the crime being solved, but the actual solution is never described.

This story had me bored, confused, and then very dissatisfied. While I remembered reading [b:The Murders in the Rue Morgue|3301759|The Murders in the Rue Morgue|Edgar Allan Poe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1409105459s/3301759.jpg|18440614], this story completely disappeared from mind after my initial 2015 reading - this is incredibly unfortunate, because maybe if I had remembered it, I wouldn't have bothered with a reread.

Lord Peter Wimsey, a British, aristocratic sleuth of the Golden Age, sits at the trial of Harriet Vane, a young woman accused of killing her ex-boyfriend. Harriet, a detective novelist, and her former paramour, Philip Boyes, lived together as an unmarried couple, provoking negative reactions from their highly mannered community. After they broke up, Boyes began to experience episodes of gastritis, culminating in his death shortly after a final meeting with Harriet. Upon testing, the cause of death was found to be poison, correlating exactly with the subject of Harriet's newest mystery novel. Watching her on the stand, Peter Wimsey instantly connects with Harriet and feels sure of her innocence. With the trial postponed, Wimsey has a chance to collect evidence and prove his suspicions (and maybe win Harriet's affection in the process).

Sayers's writing is lighthearted and fun, with plenty of good-natured banter between the characters. Wimsey is presented as a bit of a playboy, but he is nevertheless incredibly kind to his family members, friends, and coworkers. I was impressed by the quantity of well-developed and engaging women characters, especially given the male-dominated nature of detective fiction at the time. I loved the pacing of the novel; I felt as if I were right there with Wimsey in terms of finding clues and working out the mystery. I really enjoyed Strong Poison and would likely pick up another of Sayers's novels for a light yet puzzling read.

Representation is so important. Kids with minority identities need to see themselves in the books they read. I'm so glad that this book exists purely for that reason.

That being said, the actual content of this book is very disappointing. I think it's a case of an author trying to accomplish too much in too few pages (and far too few words, as the graphic novel format significantly limits the book's word count). In the space of fifty-six pages, here's what happens:
- princess Amira saves princess Sadie from tower
- a sorceress tries to prevent the escape but fails
- Amira and Sadie save a prince from a tree
- the prince talks about how he struggles under parents' expectations
- Amira, Sadie, and prince stop an ogre, teach him how to dance
- Amira describes her backstory
- the sorceress plots to get back Sadie, captures Amira
- Sadie resolves to save Amira, recounts interpersonal conflict between herself and her sister, the sorceress
- Sadie returns to home kingdom, interacts with townspeople, confronts sister
- verbal argument between sisters
- Sadie's small dragon somehow causes sister's curse to backfire, turning sister into a pig
- Sadie becomes queen, Amira decides she needs to get more experience in the field. Asks Sadie to "wait for" her (not a fan of this. they hung out for like one day)
- years pass
- Amira returns to Sadie's kingdom, the two get together
- epilogue: Amira talks about how easy her past quests have been compared to getting married, wedding occurs.

It's just too much!!! The sheer amount of plot overwhelms the characterization and prevents realistic connection between the princesses. The consequence of this is that by the end of the story, Sadie and Amira's happily ever after seems contrived. Additionally, I fail to see the point of the side characters, particularly the sister and the prince. We would have had more than enough examples of characters not fitting their prescribed molds without these guys, who seem to exist solely to hammer this point home for the reader.

I don't know, guys. This book may be important, but it's not very good.

Super silly and fun. A young kid comes in contact with a radioactive lollipop and gains the power to bestow "enlightened orgasms" on sexually frustrated women everywhere. What follows is an account of his adventures bringing women pleasure, which can motivate them to save themselves from negative situations of all kinds. There's an issue with consent here, but it didn't sour my experience of the book. What I did dislike was the lack of coherent plot and the ending- I wanted Lick-It Man to reveal his secret identity to the main female character.

Anyway it's, light, a bit dirty, and enjoyable.

Heidi Fiedler's "grammar guide" actually encompasses parts of speech, grammatical rules, and literary devices, accompanying each brightly-colored rule page with a whimsical illustration. I absolutely adored the format of this book! I appreciated the consistency of the page layout, which varies only in color, and I thought the illustrations were fabulous. Seriously, this is the type of kid-geared art that I would put on my walls.

I didn't appreciate the actual rule-related content so much, though. First of all, I was frustrated by the presence of a few comma errors throughout the book- you'd think a work like this would be exempt from that kind of mistake. It's definitely not something that a kid reader would notice, but I have a problem with it nonetheless. Speaking of kid readers, I'm not totally sure that this book would actually work for a younger audience. I found some of the rule descriptions confusing, and I worry that this book will do more to overburden kids with complicated information than to actually help them improve as writers.

For example, here's the description for metaphors:
If they look like birds, tweet like birds, and fly like birds, then Andrew and Luke are probably birds. But as a metaphor, Andrew is a person who likes to wake up early, and Luke is someone who stay up late. Metaphors pack a punch because they make direct comparisons. In a metaphor, Andrew isn't like a bird that chirps when the sun rises, he is an early bird. Metaphors create vivid mental images and help readers quickly understand your ideas. And unlike analogies, they usually don't require any extra explanation.

I don't think that this description would have made any sense to me as an elementary school kid; it hardly makes sense to me now! Why doesn't Fiedler lead with some kind of suggestion that Andrew and Luke are being described as an early bird and night owl? The first sentence complicates the explanation by trying to connect it to a cliche that kids probably won't recognize anyway, and it fails to establish the situation clearly. I will allow that metaphors are hard to describe, but I'm SURE that there's a clearer way to explain the "like" vs. "is" difference between similes and metaphors than by simply stating that Andrew is a bird- the whole point is that he isn't a bird but is being compared to one with a specific figurative device.

Other rules are explained more clearly, but overall I found this book very inconsistent in terms of its efficacy.

Art gets an A+++, though!

I received a digital review copy of this book from Edelweiss.

There's been a murder! On the Orient Express! Specifically, one coach car of the Orient Express, and the train's stuck in a snowdrift, so it's basically just a locked room mystery. And that's fun! Or, at least, it should be.

So why is this treasured classic so devoid of tension? I think the problem might lie in detective Hercule Poirot's aloofness. From the start of the story, he sets himself apart from his fellow passengers, preventing the establishment of any dynamic relationships or genuine investment in the other characters' lives. Through the act of the crime and the subsequent witness interviews, the reader sees the case through Poirot's eyes alone. Of course, this allows objectivity, but I would have much preferred to watch the story unfold while viewing the other passengers' reactions to events. It didn't help that there was no threat of continued violence on the train beyond the first death, so the motivation to solve the case was purely intellectual and legal in nature, rather than stemming from a time limit or need to prevent another murder. Everything about the investigation is cool, calm, and collected, but I had expected Excitement and was disappointed by its absence.

I was fascinated by the crime and resolution of this novel, but it just didn't resonate with me as the particularly exceptional story suggested by its status as a revered touchstone of the mystery fiction genre.

Kevin Henkes' 50th published book uses simple language and vibrant illustrations to capture the story of an unlikely friendship. Three differently colored eggs hatch, revealing three baby birds. One egg does not hatch. The juxtaposition of the baby birds' growth compared to the final, green egg creates humor--three panels of excited hatching and the word "Surprise!" come up against the same, unmoving "egg."

Spoiler

When the last egg finally does hatch, the baby birds are shocked to see a baby crocodile emerge. They scatter, afraid of being eaten. This abandonment prompts the crocodile to feel "sad" and "lonely." These words are simple, but they work. Along with the trademark expressive facial features that readers have come to expect from Henkes' picture books, these words convey the crocodile's unhappiness and melted my heart. The baby birds' return is all the more fulfilling as a result.

I don't think I completely understood the ending, which shows the sun turning into an egg that may hatch. What is this supposed to mean? I was lost.

With Egg, Henkes has created yet another emotionally impactful story, which also happens to be incredibly simple and accessible to a very young audience.

Jen Lee's Garbage Night chronicles the shifting dynamics between a group of animal friends trying to survive in a dark, menacing world. Since he was abandoned by his owners, a dog named Simon has worked together with Cliff, a raccoon, and Reynard, a moose, to collect food and stay alive. When their town's garbage supply has almost entirely run out, the animals are pressured into an uneasy alliance with Barnaby, another stray dog. Whereas Simon, Cliff, and Reynard are genuine and kind, Barnaby is shifty and street-hardened. Simon instantly gravitates toward his fellow dog, trying to impress Barnaby while Cliff and Reynard look on, feeling betrayed.

Barnaby leads the friends on a journey to find a new, inhabited town, where they can once again enjoy the feast that follows weekly garbage night. This adventure tests the friends' relationships with each other, and eventually they must reevaluate their priorities.

I'm a little bit unsure what this book was intended to be. The artistic style implies an intended audience of children, but the themes of abandonment and betrayal seem too advanced for a young demographic. There is no real conclusion to the story, but perhaps there will be another volume (there is a first volume, [book:Vacancy|23129889], which I had not read before picking this one up). Garbage Night presents a fascinating psychological journey hinging on the characters' experience of constant hunger and paranoia. I just can't figure out what I should be taking away from this reading.

I received a digital review copy of this title from the publisher through Edelweiss.