More Business Trip Reads
This time, it was short trip to Los Angeles, but it did involve airports and flights, ergo, reading, ergo, here are my reviews:
Closed Casket (by Sophia Hannah)
Airplane fluff for sure. This is an "authorized by the estate of Agatha Christie" mystery with Hercule Poirot at the center. I saw it in the airport bookstore and then checked to see if it was free via my library app. IT WAS. (Still not over it.) So it was easy to take a chance on, and a fun, breezy mystery. It doesn't approach classic Christie (obviously) and really reads more like really excellent Poirot fanfic (yes, it exists). But I enjoyed it enough to download the other Hannah/Christie novel, The Monogram Murders (see below) for the flight back.
City of the Lost Monkey God (by Douglas Preston)
A non-fiction pick for my work book club. This is the story of the search for a lost city in Honduras, the titular city of the lost monkey god. The author's time spent at the site (on two occasions) was fairly brief and the story wouldn't really work chronologically, so the narrative was choppy as a result, lacking the tension, depth, or pacing of Into Thin Air. (I immediately downloaded and reread Into Thin Air, one of my all-time favorite books to reread, as you may remember.) It's interesting nonetheless, if ultimately depressing, and I did learn a lot about Honduras and the inevitability of a global pandemic. So that was fun.
The Monogram Murders (by Sophia Hannah)
The other fake Agatha Christie, and equally fluffy and enjoyable. I thought this plot was way too complicated; the reveal didn't have a fun "aha" moment because I'd lost track of who was connected with whom and what, and there was a bit too much going on with the final denouement. But it was a fun library book I read on an airplane, so in that sense, it was perfect! I will definitely gobble up any other entries in this series.
Joy (by S. Kay)
An old online journal acquaintance posted about her novella in our Faebook group, and I noticed that it had been published by a micro-press (Maudlin House), which enabled me to check out the book, support a former journaler, and check off one of the categories of the Read Harder Challenge, all at the same time. This is an enjoyable little novella that reads like a prose poem, with anti-heroine Joy at the center of it all. Texts, tweets, blog posts, poems, all play a part in this work. I would have enjoyed this if it was many times longer, as I loved Joy, but the small size makes it easy to digest, ponder, and re-read. Thumbs up!
Closed Casket (by Sophia Hannah)
Airplane fluff for sure. This is an "authorized by the estate of Agatha Christie" mystery with Hercule Poirot at the center. I saw it in the airport bookstore and then checked to see if it was free via my library app. IT WAS. (Still not over it.) So it was easy to take a chance on, and a fun, breezy mystery. It doesn't approach classic Christie (obviously) and really reads more like really excellent Poirot fanfic (yes, it exists). But I enjoyed it enough to download the other Hannah/Christie novel, The Monogram Murders (see below) for the flight back.
City of the Lost Monkey God (by Douglas Preston)
A non-fiction pick for my work book club. This is the story of the search for a lost city in Honduras, the titular city of the lost monkey god. The author's time spent at the site (on two occasions) was fairly brief and the story wouldn't really work chronologically, so the narrative was choppy as a result, lacking the tension, depth, or pacing of Into Thin Air. (I immediately downloaded and reread Into Thin Air, one of my all-time favorite books to reread, as you may remember.) It's interesting nonetheless, if ultimately depressing, and I did learn a lot about Honduras and the inevitability of a global pandemic. So that was fun.
The Monogram Murders (by Sophia Hannah)
The other fake Agatha Christie, and equally fluffy and enjoyable. I thought this plot was way too complicated; the reveal didn't have a fun "aha" moment because I'd lost track of who was connected with whom and what, and there was a bit too much going on with the final denouement. But it was a fun library book I read on an airplane, so in that sense, it was perfect! I will definitely gobble up any other entries in this series.
Joy (by S. Kay)
An old online journal acquaintance posted about her novella in our Faebook group, and I noticed that it had been published by a micro-press (Maudlin House), which enabled me to check out the book, support a former journaler, and check off one of the categories of the Read Harder Challenge, all at the same time. This is an enjoyable little novella that reads like a prose poem, with anti-heroine Joy at the center of it all. Texts, tweets, blog posts, poems, all play a part in this work. I would have enjoyed this if it was many times longer, as I loved Joy, but the small size makes it easy to digest, ponder, and re-read. Thumbs up!
Labels: 2017 read harder challenge, book group, library, litfic, mystery, nonfiction, novella, on paper, vacation
posted by mo pie at 12:48 PM
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