AWWW, Yessss, Murder!

Hello reading humans! It’s not Monday anymore!

 Sherlock Holmes is theorized to have been born on born January 6th. His Watson was born on July 7th, 1852, the day Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930. 

 The new Star Wars trailer came out with no captioning. Thanks a lot. I now think Rey called Kylo her brother. Thanks a lot.

 But Books! I finally went to the town library, and. and. It’s a puny library. It’s just puny. I’ll take a picture next time. The mystery section was ok, but there was a lot of low-quality books that I suspect were mostly self-published.

 Town Library:

The Forest Of Prime Evil, Alan Russell. And it’s the second one. From 1 to 12, how much do you hate it when you pick up a book and find out it’s not the first in its series?

Me:

 But it looks like a normal detective story, so it should be fine to read out of order. It’s set in Humboldt County, CA, far enough north from the fires to be ok.

Library Book Sale

The Quotable Sherlock Holmes, John H. Watson, M.D. (That’s what it says!) This is my first time owning a Sherlock book. Que latisma it’s not the complete volumes, but it’s Sherlock Holmes.

I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather- that is, when the shoe fits me, for I can be spry enough at times

-SH, A Study In Scarlet

Passenger To Frankfurt, Agatha Christe. My first time owning an Agatha Christe. Third time reading is first time owning, I guess. 

The library was having a one day sale, and these two cheap. 2$ for hardcover, 1$ for paperback. I don’t know if this is normal here, but I like it.

School library

Wrighting Ethnicity, Jon D. Rossini. This I got for my playwrighting class (I’m not misspelling writing, it’s s different word for plays), before I found out that I could use Agatha Christe.  (I posted the research HERE) Nonetheless. it is interesting, although so far it only talks about male playwrights. 

Al Jazeera English, Phillip Seib Interesting, but failed to solve my problemas de tarea.

PUBLISHED I AM! Bits Of Flesh was published by Daily Science Fiction! Please read it and give me some feedback if you can. Also, I didn’t think it was very disturbing until I saw the editor’s note- Is it really disturbing and I can’t see it cause I’m the psychopath who wrote it?

Give me the fun facts! What do you know about Sherlock Holmes?

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Chocolate Mysteries

 Whisper Of Ink  recently fangirled over fantasy as part of the This is my favorite genre-what’s yours? book tag. My reply to the question…

Oh, dear. 

A little over a year ago, I would’ve blurted out sci-fi. Cause death, aliens, Ray Bradbury, and DEATH.

Breaking news: My mom just texted me that there’s a vegan doughnut shop a few blocks from where we lived. It opened last week, two weeks after I left for college.

The topic at hand is vegan genre doughnut favorites. It used to be fantasy glaze, but since I became vegan it became chocolate frosted mystery.  Vegan mystery doughnuts are harder to find (It got a lot easier for some people) because in my day, three weeks ago, you had to scour the shelves, filter out the pulp, and put it on reserve if you were going to be in town for the next month or so.

But there are delicious. Watson’s intriguing filling, Sherlock’s thrill of chocolate. Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle…just read my last post. 

Sir Arthur, who created my favorite detective, is not my favorite author. Agatha Christie, with her tunneling writing, is. In the chocolate mystery genre. My favorite author of all time is still sci-fi’s D.N.A., or as the title page says, Douglass Adams.

I know I said I would use my own photos. I know.

  I don’t remember if this is exactly what pulled me into sci-fi, but I was going through a Ray Bradbury phrase during my heavy sci-fi years. He might’ve actually staved me off sci-fi because let’s face it, what’s sci-fi after Bradbury? 

 So I turned to Agatha Christie. I read And Then There Were None a while before I really got into chocolate Mystery, and though I loved it, it didn’t really convert me. What really converted me was…

Not even a book. I became addicted to chocolate because Benedict. SherlockSherlockSher…

 I read most of the original stories, “most” because the library had volumes one and two of different editions, skipping CAM, whom I admittedly liked more than Moriarty in the show. Not as a person, but he just gave me creeps while Moriarty seems a counter Sherlock, unoriginal. 

 Did somebody ask me where the best chocolate mystery is? 

THE BEST CHOCOLATE MYSTERIES:

• And Then They Were None, Agatha Christie
• The Boxcar Children (for younger readers)
• Sherlock Holmes: If you only read five, If,:

1.         A Study In Scarlet
2.         The Red-Headed League
3.         The Adventure Of The Speckled Band
4.          The Adventure Of The Final Problem
5.           The Adventure Of The Lion’s Mane

 Again, I haven’t read all of them, just most, so if you can read all, I encourage you to do so.

What chocolate mysteries do you recommend? Victorian Sherlock Holmes Or modern? What do you recommend from your favorite genre? Speak!

Game Of Thrones-Book Review

To put it very simply, the Starks hate the Lannisters, vice versa, and everybody hates the Targaryens, who hate everyone but dragons.

After seeing the first half of the first season there was a delay in getting the rest of them. Meanwhile the book came.

 It’s exactly like the show, but with less detail. It bored me knowing that while I read a book with simplistic prose, a beautifully detailed version existed. The sentences are short and “telling” instead of “showing”. Ex. “Arya had a way of ruining everything.” “Cersei Lannister regarded him suspiciously.” “Tyrion gave a helpless shrug.”  The first is a cliché, the second is vague, and a third begets the question ‘How does a dwarf shrug?’

After a while I got past what I knew and was able to enjoy the story. Aaahhh… The story is difficult to describe my reaction to it. Life. It wasn’t as engaging as a detective novel, nonfiction would put its; chunky info dumps to shame by spreading the information evenly, and fantasy, its’ own genre, would mock its’ inability to produce an overall mood.

It describes life. Life in a medieval world with warring clans, but still life.

It begins with King Robert Barethoen hiring Ned Stark as Hand of the King, the lord that does everything the king is too lazy to do. Ned travels south to the capital, bringing his two daughters and their direwolves, leaving his wife and 3 sons. His bastard son, Jon Snow leaves for the night watch at the same time.

I don’t want to go further, because I hate spoilers (curse you, Time!) But there is an interesting symbolism all the houses/clans share: they have animals, or in the case of the Tarlys, a flower, as their house sigil.  The Starks of the North have direwolves, loyal and thriving in the cold. The Lannisters are lions, golden haired and prideful. The Targaryens are dragons, as far as I can tell it means they’re rare and you shouldn’t awake their wrath.

If you comment, please do not spoil anything, especially past the first season. But here’s the question: Which house should win? I relate most to the Starks, esp. Jon Snow, but Daenerys Targaryen would make an Elizabeth the first-esqe queen.

The Murders In The Rue Morgue Marginalia/ Booktubeathon #1

The Booktube-a-thon is an annual event hosted by Ariel Bissett that encourages people to read as much as they can in seven days. This is my first year participating but it’s well timed for me. Beren and Luthien is due this week, I was captured by A Spell For Chameleon while in the library, I’ve been wanting to read Murder On The Orient Express… So many books, so little time.

This year the Booktube-a-thon is taking place from July 24th to July 30th. The challenges are:

1 || Read a book with a person on the cover.
2 || Read a hyped book.
3 || Finish a book in one day.
4 || Read about a character that is very different from you.
5 || Finish a book completely outdoors.
6 || Read a book you bought because of the cover.
7 || Read seven books.

My first book is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders In The Rue Morgue:The Dupin Tales.

Challenge(s) applied: Err…The people on the cover are seen at a distance, it’s somewhat hyped in Sherlockian lore, I will probably finish it today, as it’s wonderful and has only 100 pages. Not so wonderful, but easy consumption for readathons. 

My marginalia (written in a notebook, not on library book)

pg. v -vi: Oh, vey. Married (Poe) his cousin when she was 13. Have I read Annabel Lee? It sounds familiar.

pg.3-5 This sounds like Sherlock, but he doesn’t put in this much detail. He hates chess but likes droughts. What is droughts?

pg.6  Here’s where it begins! “Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris these were easily obtained.” Exact same living arrangement as Sherlock and Watson. 

Pg. 8 Sherlock Holmes is a work of plagiarism.

pg.10-11 “Terrific Shrieks”? “Wildest disorder”? What a terrible impersonation of a newspaper.

pg.12-14 This is a long newspaper article… so gruff voice french, shrill voice disputed… probably exotic or muddled accent.

pg. 19 “In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked ‘what has occurred,’ such as ‘what has occurred that has not occurred before.'”

pg. 24 They see but do not observe.

Pg.35

Overall, Sherlock plagiarized Rue Morgue in method and detective-biographer relationship, but the plot, the mystery was unique. I have no desire to type the rest, for this is long enough already. I recommend this to any Sherlockian, for this is obviously Sherlock’s second father.

Book Appreciation: Boxcar Children

 Yes, I know it’s HP’s big 2-0, but even thought I used to have nightly dreams where Sirius Black was my father for two years, it’s not the only book series that made me. I want to give a shout out to all the book (series) that impacted me.

 The first one came out in 1924. There are over 150 titles, and no, I didn’t read them all. Blame limited library funds. The ones I particularly remember are The Boxcar Children, The Cereal Box Mystery, and The Secret Of The Mask.

 This was my first exposure to the mystery genre, wwaaaaayyy back in elementary school, then extended into middle school. People would try to get me into Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, but I didn’t connect with them. The best part about Boxcar was that they were kids. They were kids and they could figure out anything! They thwarted the evil-minded adults, were better than adults!

 There was no death. I got into death later, when I started reading YA.

 Eventually I stopped reading them because the writing was too simplistic. I recommend them if you haven’t read any of them yet, though I don’t blame you if you put it down because of the writing.

 There was a black hole in my life afterwards, I hole that I tried to fill with Uglies, Hunger Games, and other books, but I was malnourished, suffering a Mystery deficiency until a friend recommended And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie. Then I got into Sherlock and am slowly reading my way back into a healthy diet.

 It has made me aware of the serious lack of mysteries for teens. WHERE WERE THEY??? Do you know any YA  mysteries? 

Harry Potter 20th Anniversary!

On the 26th of June 1997, Harry Potter was released to the general public.

I don’t remember that part; I wasn’t born yet, but apparently this is what it looked like.

I’ll always remember HP as my bedtime stories. I used to have old hardback copies from my sister, but a misguided muggle bought me a new set and they don’t smell as good, nor hold the same warm memories or the tears of love.

That was a really inconsiderate muggle. When I got it, my mother donated the old copies to local bookshelf and now they’re gone.

I have a solution to my problem. I cannot live without writing, and it is logical that writing leads to books and books lead to tours. Should it, I will buy HP from the bookstores until all of my HPs have memories. Not as warm, but still associated with more than nothing.

Happy bookday, Harry. And thank you, Jo, for sticking with him.

What do you remember when you hear “Harry Potter”?