Friday, December 13, 2024

Review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

January 1, 1980

Oh, my I loved me some Christie back in the day. The details of plot are entirely lost in my mind. Two things stick with me: a world of adults without kids, and Hastings affection for auburn hair.

***

I'd been vaguely wanting to re-read this for a while. And then we were stranded on vacation without wifi (I know, right?), and the daughter didn't have anything on her Kindle she wanted to read, and she couldn't get anything new, so she and I swapped Kindles until we could get us some internet.

My daughter does not download everything on the planet. There wasn't anything I hadn't already read, but there was a Complete Works of Agatha Christie Volume I. Thirty three years ago, when I first read this, I didn't know it was Christie's first published novel. Nor had I recalled that it was a locked-room mystery. Nor that Hastings was so very dim; I'd thought of him as at least reasonably bright, like Dr. Watson.

Anyway. This isn't my favorite Christie, And Then There Were None is, but WOW, this really is the quintessence of country-house murder mysteries. It's got the Edwardian aristocracy, the obsession with alibis, the cast full of dubious characters with hidden motives. Really, the only thing it is missing is an obsession with train schedules. Classic.



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Review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

January 1, 1980

Oh, my I loved me some Christie back in the day. The details of plot are entirely lost in my mind. Two things stick with me: a world of adults without kids, and Hastings affection for auburn hair.

***
I'd been vaguely wanting to re-read this for a while. And then we were stranded on vacation without wifi (I know, right?), and Veronica didn't have anything on her Kindle she wanted to read, and she couldn't get anything new, so she and I swapped Kindles until we could get us some internet.

My daughter does not download everything on the planet. There wasn't anything I hadn't already read, but there was a complete works of Agatha Christie Volume I. Thirty three years ago, when I first read this, I didn't know it was Christie's first published novel. Nor had I recalled that it was a locked-room mystery. Nor that Hastings was so very dim; I'd thought of him as at least reasonably bright, like Dr. Watson.

Anyway. This isn't my favorite Christie, And Then There Were None is, but WOW, this really is the quintessence of country-house murder mysteries. It's got the Edwardian aristocracy, the obsession with alibis, the cast full of dubious characters with hidden motives. Really, the only thing it is missing is an obsession with train schedules. Classic.

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Sunday, December 01, 2024

Review: We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation

We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation by Eric Garcia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

03 June 2023

P 64

Quality reporting shifting the conversation around people on the autism spectrum from disability to normal variation found in the population.

But it makes me incandescent with rage that all the attention has gone to pleasing rich white parents of young boys while the girls, transgendered, racial and ethnic minorities, poor, rural and adult populations are underdiagnosed and pushed to the side again. Why, yes, this is exactly the same pattern as in ADHD which, fun fact, has a very high level of comorbidity with autism.

And the rage tires me out and distracts me, and requires soothing cat time, or falling down a rabbit hole on the internet, or something. Which means I can only read a little and this is already the third or fourth time I have had to return it and check it out again.



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