What I Read and Watched in October

Thanks to Agatha Christie, I'm finally out of my 2020 reading slump! It makes me so happy to have several books going at once when for so long it's been hard for me to get through just one.

I finished listening to book one of the Tommy and Tuppence series, The Secret Adversary, which I enjoyed immensely. I also listened to Jane Eyre while reading along in an annotated version that  was very helpful with the French phrases and obscure literary references. My other pick for Victober was Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. I am overly sensitive to relentless suffering, so this was not an easy read (even though there was an eventual happy ending). 

I finished Knowing God after many months of careful reading. I am not a Calvinist so I saw more areas of disagreement than when I read it three decades ago. Still, it's a Christian classic for good reason. I've also been working my way through an old hymnal this year - one or two hymns per day - and finished it up early in the month. I read and enjoyed P.D. James Talking About Detective Fiction. Serendipitously, I read it at the same time I was reading book two of the T&T series, Partners in Crime, which was also a nod to the golden age of detective fiction. 

As far as movies go my husband and I watched the original True Grit with John Wayne. We liked it, but it lacked some of the haunting beauty of the recent remake. We also watched the Netflix program called The Social Dilemma about how internet platforms are designed to make us tech addicts.

I watched a few Hallmark mysteries: Aurora Teagarden: A Bone to Pick, Death on Duty: A Hailey Dean mystery, 15 min of Dead Over Diamonds (terrible acting) Mystery 101: Dead Talk, Emma Fielding: More Bitter than Death (both male leads were awful actors). I'm used to bad acting in the romance movies because the actors and sets are more eye candy than anything, but in general the mysteries have been far superior in that department. 

Anybody else read any Victorian lit this month? Watched any good, clean movies?

Blessings,

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

I read By the Pricking of My Thumbs (book 4), before I read The Secret Adversary (book 1), but it made little difference. Still, I relished this more complete introduction to Tommy and Tuppence who turn to sleuthing because they are desperately in need of money. (Their conversations about this are hilarious.) 

I enjoyed Agatha Christie's fine characterization of young Albert, the elevator operator, the enigmatic Mr. Carter, the boisterous American millionaire, and the mysterious Mr. Brown to name a few. While Tommy and Tuppence "bow before the energy" of Julius Hersheimmer (the American), you sense that Christie is poking fun at him and his no-nonsense pragmatism. 

The writing is good: The Laurels was a dilapidated house standing back from the road with a few grimy bushes to support the fiction of a front garden. The banter between the characters is fun. Watching Tommy and Tuppence (who have been friends for years) come to the realization that they love each other is delightful, and not the least bit syrupy.

At times it seems that Tuppence is the smarter of the two crime solvers. One character describes Tommy by saying, It is quite impossible to lead him astray through his imagination. He hasn't got any. He worries things out slowly and when he's got hold of anything, he doesn't let go. The little lady's quite different; more intuitive and less common sense. They make a pretty pair working together. I couldn't agree more.

There was more swearing in this one than I remember from book 4, but I think most of that came from Julius, the loud-mouthed American. I listened for free on YouTube, but was delighted to see that all five novels are available for $1.99 at the time I wrote this blog post.  

Blessings,

By The Pricking of Her Thumbs by Agatha Christie

I stumbled across By the Pricking of Her Thumbs while searching for something to listen to during my morning workout. (I use the word "workout" rather loosely since I just do a half hour of simple exercises for folks over fifty) 

The opening chapter describes a middle aged couple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, chatting together amicably. When I heard their names, a faint memory stirred in my head of a couple of young sleuths Agatha Christie had created early in her career. Sure enough this was the same couple many years later. 

Overview: The Beresfords plan to pay their yearly visit to Tommy's Aunt Ada who is in a nursing home. They go out of a sense of duty since Aunt Ada is unappreciative of their attentions. While they are there, Tuppence meets another elderly resident, Mrs. Lancaster. Later, when she hears that this woman has disappeared, she is determined to find out why.

I loved so many things about this book: the delightful dialogue, the literary references from Shakespeare (the title), the Bible (a major clue), and a sprinkling of references to fairy tales and latin phrases. I loved the wonderful narrator (Alex Jennings) who got the voice inflections and inside jokes perfectly. Then there was the snoopy but lovable butler, the town busybody, the absent-minded cleric, and the friendly witch (to name just a few of Christie's great characters.)

As a pastor's daughter and a missionary I thoroughly enjoyed the references to Tuppence's upbringing as a vicar's daughter, jabs at modern translations of the Bible and Tuppence's declaration in Chapter 16 of "I'm glad I'm not a missionary!"

The identity of the killer took me completely by surprise. And the gruesomeness of their crimes seemed out of keeping with the light-heartedness of the rest of the novel. Still, I am smitten with this couple and plan to listen to the other books as soon as possible. (This was book 4 of 5.)  I listened for free on YouTube.

Blessings,

Victober Book Plans

Kate Howe is a delightful Booktuber whose channel has great reviews of mysteries, fairy tale retellings, and classic literature. Every October she hosts a reading challenge of her favorite genre, Victorian literature. Since my last few months of reading have been heavy on theology, I'm looking forward to joining her for some lighter books.

First, I'll be doing the read-along of Jane Eyre. (My 12th time to read it.) In addition I've combed through my Kindle to see if I have any books from that era that I might tackle. Here are the top contenders:

A Dish of Orts - Essays by George MacDonald

Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot (three of her early novellas)

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (or Gaskell's bio of Charlotte Brontë)

Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Spiritual autobiography of Cardinal John Henry Newman (or his novel Loss and Gain)

I'd like to explore at least two of these Victorian poets: Francis Thompson (GK Chesteron was a fan), Thomas Hood, John Clare, Mathilde Blind (who wrote poems in protest of Darwin's view of man), William Ernest Henley, Jean Ingelow or Algernon Charles Swinburne.

I'm also considering a book of love letters between Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Should be fun!

The link to Kate's introductory video is here. 

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in September

I watched an insane amount of movies this month. My only excuse is that I had an intense teaching schedule that took up all my days and three of my evenings. When it came time for R&R, I did not want to read. But when I realized that I'd watched 10 movies in the first TWO weeks of September, I put an abrupt halt to my film watching and made myself tackle a few books on my TBR stack.

Two of the movies were Dan in Real Life and Courtship of Eddie's Father. (Normally my husband won't watch romantic comedies with me, but consented to these two favorites for my birthday weekend.) Six were Hallmark mysteries, the best of which were the Hailey Dean Mysteries: Killer Sentence and Murder with Love. They were a little edgier than normal (hence the PG rating), but the writing and acting were good. The interracial friendships were satisfying because according to the American media, blacks and whites are doomed to never EVER being able to get along. I don't buy that.

We watched True Grit (the Cohen brother version) twice since my husband loved it so much. Then I had to read the book, of course, which was almost word-for-word as same as the movie.

In addition to True Grit, I read Little Britches by Ralph Moody which was pretty good, but not quite as winsome as the Little House books. Seaboard Parish by George MacDonald had a lot of good quotes, but the characters were not as interesting (nor the story as compelling) as Book One, The Quiet Neighborhood, had been. True Grit by Charles Portis was engaging, but the book I could not put down was Agatha Christie's By the Pricking of Her Thumbs. (Reviews for both of these will be posted soon.) 

I'm picking out a few books to read for Victober with Kate Howe. Her youtube video explains more about it.

Blessings,