Lord Edgeware dies

Lord Edgware Dies is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie and so on. I enjoyed reading it; it feels like yet another piece of lightweight fluff, but is quite engaging.

It is a Poirot and is of that world: upper class folk with money, and those who serve that world or engage with it; this is a pleasant environment, there is no grime. And everyone lives near each other and the traffic is never bad; when Poirot asks a maid to come and visit him, she can arrive within ten minutes, London in those days was a small place it seems.

Now on to spoilers.

I managed to guess the central "swap", and once you've done that things become fairly clear. Since I was reading this over several sessions and not paying close attention I missed several minor details, having forgotten who Mrs van Deusen was for example. I also guessed the (s)he clue: and now I've seen that, I know that if ever you're in a detective story and someone sends you a telegram copy of a letter, rather than the actual thing, that means that inevitably there is a physical clue on the real thing.

Doubts: Lord E was cleanly killed by a knife to the back of the neck into the head. This doesn't sound like an easy kill; in a "confession" the killer says that she talked about it on-set with <medical person> sometime; but I really don't buy that. Nor is there any discussion, which I think you'd expect, about how the killer got that close; they were not an affectionate married pair. Also, our double is offered $10k to impersonate "for a bet". $10k is represented as a life-changing amount and therefore she jumped at it; but it should also have been such a large amount that she should have had very strong suspicions about what was going on.

Oh yeah and the bit about Lord E having a troubled marriage, and being somewhat odd, and having a rather attractive butler, would be said somewhat differently nowadays I suppose.

New gloves / mitts

Following the wild excitement of my New Boots, I bought some new gloves. These are likely to end up as cycling-around-town-in-the-cold gloves (well, mitts) and what I really wanted was a thicker pair of fleece gloves, but so it goes.

From Cotswold, £60. Sadly they had no pure-fleece gloves on offer.

Rather similar to my existing down pair, but I'll try to reserve those for the mountains so they don't get ground down.

Book review: the Magician's Nephew

This is the prequel to Narnia; its origin story. The writing style is very much in line with TLTW&TW. As I noted there, the junction isn't entirely smooth; Narnia is conjured into existence but where Jadis-aka-the-Witch goes at the end is unclear; how she ends up with say a castle, or even why she wants one just for herself ditto, other than of-course-she-has-a-castle. Although naturally the story is all from the viewpoint of those opposed to her.

In his treatment of the uncle, and the cabbie, CSL would appear to be teaching us to have faith in ordinary as opposed to educated people, at least when those people can "be themselves" out of the narrow confines of the modern world. I'm somewhat doubtful this is a good idea; but then I'm one of the educated folk so I would say that.

But did I like it? Did I enjoy reading it? Yes, even though I can remember much of the storyline.

Book review: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I've just - perhaps unwisely - re-read my review of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader which reminds me of "pale" thoughts from there. So: it is a charming book, well suited to children, but the style of the telling lacks a little the way that the Hobbit, say, doesn't.

A good bit: Edmund getting trapped by the magic Turkish delight.

In a number of slight ways, that are not too desperately intrusive, the book doesn't quite fit together, or with the prequel, the Magician's Nephew. Most obviously Cair Paravel has no obvious reason for already existing, in this book; or when combined with tMN's, it isn't clear where the kings and queens have gone. Aslan is effectively all-powerful, and so has no real need of the childrens' help; except perhaps for the commented-upon "he is often away" so maybe he is not so much using their help as teaching them how to be kings and queens; an allegory then of free will. Neatly leaving the witch's spell as the problem of evil.

Refs

* The book was written for Lucy, the daughter of Owen Saving the Appearances Barfield.

* The White Witch as Tragic Figure.

* The Silver Chair.

Book review: the Mote in God's Eye

This is wham-bam-thankyou-ma'am classic space-opera style SciFi. Ignoring the unsparkling prose and some minor quibbles, it is one of the classics of the genre and mostly survives this my first re-reading since my youth.

The characters are all stereotypes and the social setting about as advanced as in Asimov's "Foundation" series (though there's a plausible excuse for that: society has collapsed, and rebuilt itself). The spaceships are run like WWII battleships, or possibly more like Napoleonic era ships.

But no-one who cares about that kind of thing should be reading this kind of book in the first place; space-opera SciFi is the place for ideas, not subtle characterisation, and this does have a nice setup and nice aliens.

But having said that, let's play the fun game of what's wrong with the ideas.

The first and usual, but excusable, one is that the motley crowd of characters gets rushed off to the job, instead of people sitting down carefully and working out what to do. Secondly, I think it is odd how little attempt at stealth they make, and how quick they are to engage with the aliens. Thirdly, there's their lack of caution, and the improbable competence / intelligence of the aliens, but I'm descending into trivia now; let me claw my way back into the light.

I think it unlikely that a solar-system wide civilisation would collapse all together at once; the advantage of being un-collapsed when everyone else has reverted to barbarism is too high, people would scheme to be in that position. More likely would be waves or patterns of collapse.

I think the sketched alien civilisation is too "flat": having individual Masters as the top level, and nothing beneath it, would be unlikely to work. Coalitions would be necessary, but then the alien shock at people who both look up and down would make no sense.

Refs

* The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye.

Book review: Children of Earth and Sky

Children of Earth and Sky is a historical fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay, also author of the Stoats of al-Rassan. This one is much in the same mould, except he has switched from Spain to Venice, the Adriatic, and lands East. Like tSoaR places and peoples are semi-disguised (the city of Dubrova is an analogue of Dubrovnik) in a way that might be irritating if I cared, but I don't.

The story is decent and pleasantly told and I think lacks the poison in tSoaR.

On reflection I think it is a bit weird that sea-faring people chose to go to Constantinople on foot, just in order to allow the books story-lines to intersect.

The main... problem, perhaps I might put it, is that despite the author's attempts to be gritty, or provide realistic colour, it all comes out a bit pallid; perhaps because all the nice people get nice endings.

The novel emphasises - for storyline purposes - the way the Ottomans rigidly enforce obedience by drastic punishment: death, torture, mutilation. This has some advantages in enforcing honesty. But it is a very centralised system with disadvantages: if you've fucked up somehow and can only forsee a terrible death if you return, you're no longer motivated to return. This isn't explored.

Old B+W speakers

Many years ago - perhaps dating back to 1991 - we bought some B+W DM570 speakers (S/N), because in those days that was how you listened to music. And over the years we had a variety of Amps, Tuners (even Mfd+J's lovingly-preserved valve-based system) and CDs. 

But time passes, and for about the past decade they've been unused.

Recently, D decided to go Retro, and so we delivered him the speakers. Wired in and powered up they sound perfect; no trace of aging; good. They are pretty good visually too, with only a little scuffing.

Nowadays, I never listen to music of an evening. I have a playlist for "daytime at work" (here) and one for "erging" (here) and that's it. There is a poem I remember from school, or rather a fragment thereof, something like "sound to cover the broken bone, the sunken ship" and I think about that sometimes.