classic

Book Review: Fireside Reading of A Christmas Carol

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A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
Read by Gildart Jackson

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Classic Christmas fiction

Most everyone knows the story about Scrooge and the Christmas ghosts, even if they’ve only seen it portrayed by Mickey and Scrooge McDuck. I’ve never read the book, but when I found the Fireside Reading version on Hoopla, I knew it would be a perfect addition to my Christmastime reading. Hearing the source material for so many adaptations and parodies was really interesting. And hearing it read by Gildart Jackson by a fire, with his various extra comments in between sessions made it all the more enlightening.

As for the story itself, it’s a little difficult to gauge it on its own after knowing the story so much of my life, but I did enjoy the time spent listening. Though there were a couple of specific things I noted. One is that it seemed like Scrooge actually starts to think very differently after the second of the three ghosts, so why does he need the third one? I guess it sort of tipped him over. But also, during the Christmas-past section, his transition from a poor, lonely kid to a Gain-loving young adult was kind of sudden. It took me a little bit to follow the scene with the Belle, the woman he was engaged to, as she told him that he was putting his pursuit of wealth in front of her. I guess that was supposed be the indication to us that he had become so fearful and changed, but it was abrupt to me. Overall, though, I enjoyed listening to this story and especially liked the narration. It’s fairly short, so if you’ve never read the original and find yourself interested, I recommend it.

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Book Review: Dawn and the Impossible Three

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Dawn and the Impossible Three
The Baby-Sitters Club #5
by Ann M. Martin

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

For complete transparency, I’ll say up front that I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen. And at the time, my name was the same as the founder of the BSC (with the first name spelled slightly different). Nostalgia will hugely affect my reviews for this series, and I have no plans to try to be objective.

Dawn was always my least-favorite of the main five kids in the club, and that might just be because her health-food, California ways are pretty foreign to me. But I also feel that she isn’t quite as developed as the original four, at least in this first book from her perspective. Maybe that will come with future books. The title of this book is a little misleading, since, though the three main kids in this story did tend to be impossible for the other babysitters, Dawn didn’t really struggle with them that much and she did most of the sitting for them. Their mom was really the impossible one, but even there, once Dawn talked to her directly about the way she was making Dawn’s job more difficult, things smoothed out. Overall, the story was a good one for the series.

Whether or not this book will translate well to kids and pre-teens now, I couldn’t say. I wish I had thought to start reading this series to/with my daughter when she was around 8-10, because I think she would have enjoyed it, and we could have discussed the good and the bad of the books.

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Book Review: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

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Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Hercule Poirot #20
by Agatha Christie
read by Hugh Fraser

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

I think I’m starting to get burnt out on this series. I spend a lot of time while listening to these books guessing at reasons why each different character could be the murderer. But not using logic and reason within the story, rather I try to figure out which is the least likely or the one that will surprise the me the most, and then try to figure out how and why they might have done it. I’m usually wrong. I’m not sure if enough information is given to the reader to allow us to truly use logic and reason to pinpoint the killer, but even if it were, I’ve never been great at guessing mysteries correctly anyway. That said, I did have a correct guess about the killer in this book, but that’s partly because I’ve been waiting for this particular outcome for several books now.

I did like the overall mystery in the end, and Poirot is in fine form. I miss Hastings though. And I’m noticing more and more than he goes through several “possible” reveals before he gets to the final one, and by the time he gets to the final one, I’ve got mental whiplash. I think he’s telling us the truth, but that’s not it…then maybe it’s this, but no…it’s not. Because of the aforementioned waiting for this type of killer to come up, I know I’ll never forget the outcome of this book, but with others like that, I can’t really remember who ended up being the bad guy. In the end, I liked the book, but maybe I would’ve liked it more if I weren’t listening to them all so closely together. Still, I think this story is worth reading—or listening to the narration by Hugh Fraser, which is as great as ever.

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Book Review: Appointment with Death

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Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot #19
by Agatha Christie
read by Hugh Fraser

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

This was not my favorite Poirot, and I’m not sure I can pinpoint the reasons. It reminded me of some of the earlier books in the series that I didn’t like, in that it felt a little bloated. We’re given a ready-made cast of suspects, which of course made me look more carefully at everyone outside of that group. I’m not sure we’re given enough clues to figure it out for ourselves (though I suppose I can see some hints toward it when looking back). But then we’re sort of jerked around, all the way up through the reveal, with Poirot talking to someone as if they had done it, and then clarifying that it wasn’t them. I remember that happening in past books as well, and I couldn’t tell you who the murderer actually is in those books, because by the time they were revealed, I was a bit weary from explanation. The same thing happened here, and though I can remember the culprit right now, I’ve already had to remind myself that it wasn’t one of the fake-outs on the way to the real one. And yeah, just like one of the characters in this book pointed out, I don’t particularly appreciate Poirot’s hypocrisy in letting the culprit(s) go free in a previous book but insisting on justice in this case. Not that I think he should have let it go here, but that never really felt great about him doing so in the previous instance. I’m also not a fan of the “there’s not enough evidence to convict, so I’ll just get the murderer to kill him/herself” that happens too often in this series. Anyway, all of that combined to keep me from enjoying this book as much as I did previous ones. Though Hugh Fraser’s narration is still great.

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Book Review: Death on the Nile

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Death on the Nile
Hercule Poirot #18
by Agatha Christie
read by Kenneth Branagh

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

I really enjoyed this Poirot novel; I think it was actually one of my favorites. Of course, part of that might be the fact that I actually pegged the bad guy for once. I may have come up with alternate theories a time or two, but that’s just because Christie still does well with the obfuscation. I even correctly guessed the why, but not exactly the how. I also really liked it when Poirot is involved from the start, rather than coming in halfway through the book. And when he has someone else to work with, even if it’s not Hastings. The setting in Egypt doesn’t really play into the story as much as one might think, since most of the story takes place on a boat, though that aspect does provide some interesting aspects to the plot and mystery. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Kenneth Branagh, which was unsurprisingly really good. I did struggle a little to understand his Poirot accent early on, but it seemed to even out as I went. Overall, this was a great addition to the series.

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Book Review: Mystery Ranch

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Mystery Ranch
The Boxcar Children #4
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Read by Aimee Lilly

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

This one really left me scratching my head. The mean, old aunt is instantly won over by the too-perfect kids, and apparently minors were able to own property in the time this was written, without needing an adult to be the trustee or anything like that. When the aunt talked about some men trying to get her to sell her ranch to them, it started to feel like a Nancy Drew story, but it resolved far too quickly and easily. In fact, though I didn’t compare the length of this to the previous stories, it felt super short in general. Also, the narrator for this book was even less enjoyable than the previous, who I already didn’t care for. Maybe if I had a young child to read these with and discuss the good and bad, it would be worth continuing with the series, but I don’t really have any motivation to do so.

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Book Review: Dumb Witness

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Dumb Witness
Hercule Poirot #17
by Agatha Christie
read by Hugh Fraser

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

This story was a bit different than the rest of the series so far, in that the death that starts it off is billed as natural. However, the dead woman had an accident not long before, chalked up to her tripping over the ball that her dog left at the top of the stairs, but something about that scenario leaves her suspicious of her family. She writes to Poirot, who doesn’t get her letter until it’s too late but is still compelled to investigate the original attempted murder. The large cast of suspects is standard fare, though, as is the path we go down with Poirot and Hastings on the way to the solution. And as is the fact that most of my many theories about whodunit and why turned out to be wrong. It was overall an average Poirot for me, not as slow as the early ones but not a stand-out either, except for Bob the dog (whose ball was blamed for his owner’s fall). Any time Poirot and Hastings are at the house and encounter Bob, Hastings tells us what the dog is likely thinking, and it’s hilarious, especially the way Hugh Fraser narrates it.

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Book Review: The Yellow House Mystery

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The Yellow House Mystery
The Boxcar Children #3
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Read by Tim Gregory

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

I really think Warner needs to branch out from missing people being re-discovered in this series. Three books, and that’s been a theme in all of them. That and the repetition of the kids “roughing it” in one way or another. Overall, I did like the story here better than the previous book, but I had some issues with the plot. For example, if it’s important for a letter to not be seen by anyone but the recipient, why instruct the recipient to hide it? Wouldn’t destroying it be better? But of course, destroying it would have meant that no one could discover it decades later and start off an adventure. I know this was written for kids and written in a very different time, and I really can’t know what I would have thought of the story if I’d read it as a kid. I suppose most kids, even nowadays, wouldn’t take issue with the things I did, but that doesn’t make some of what happens in this book okay.

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Book Review: Surprise Island

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Surprise Island
The Boxcar Children #2
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Read by Tim Gregory

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

I don’t have nostalgia to fall back on with this book (if I read more than the first book in the series as a kid, I don’t remember any of them), so I’m sure that plays a big part in my review. Maybe as a kid I would have enjoyed this story, but as an adult, I was too distracted by some strange choices by the author. First, the grandfather, who searched for a while for his grandkids after their parents’ death and finally found them and took them in, sends them off to an island (basically) by themselves for the summer. I don’t know how long it’s been since the boxcar days, but I’d think he’d want to spend the summer with them. Then, there is a strange man living on the island, which the grandfather owns, that he doesn’t even attempt to meet before he leaves his grandkids there, where they’ll live in a leaky barn. The island is apparently in the ocean, which I would think would make the shoreline dangerous, but these kids are basically left on their own. And even though I enjoyed the ingenuity the kids showed setting up their home in the first book, it seems less fun in this book, I think partly because it’s repeated so quickly after the first and partly because the lack of necessity somehow makes it less special. I also can’t help but wonder how many missing family members one old man can have…

I was not a fan of this narrator, which didn’t help. His way of voicing the younger kids grated on me. I don’t know how far into the series I’ll go, but I’m hoping the narrator changes soon. Maybe this book would be enjoyable by younger kids even today, but I am definitely too old for it.

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Book Review: Murder in the Mews

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Murder in the Mews
Hercule Poirot #16
by Agatha Christie
read by Nigel Hawthorne & Hugh Fraser

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

As I said in my review of the previous book of short stories from this series, there’s something to be said about the succinctness here. Oftentimes, what I dislike most about a Poirot novel is how bloated the plot feels, so it’s nice to get to the point a little more quickly. Though at least one of these stories felt too short, so there’s that. The story that I remember thinking was a little too short, though, is also the one that stood out to me the most. Though the ending seemed a little rushed, I liked the plot and the twist. Overall, I find that trying to guess at what’s going to surprise me at the end of a Poirot story (long or short) is what I enjoy most, and it takes less time to get there with these shorter stories. I was not a fan of the narrator of the first story, “Murder in the Mews,” which was Nigel Hawthorne, so it was a huge relief when it changed to Hugh Fraser, who has been my favorite narrator throughout this series, for the last three.

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