The Little Grey Lists

I have just finished watching the last season of Agatha Christie’s “Poirot” mysteries starring the brilliant David Suchet.  I wanted this week’s list to be a tribute to this ending, but how to do it?  By the Poirot books?  I went through these many years ago and most have blurred together.  All Christie books?  Some of my favorites were not Poirot, although he was by far my favorite.  By the “Poirot” series?  All Poirot adaptations?  In the end, I couldn’t choose.

Top Agatha Christie Mysteries:

1. Five Little Pigs

-This one was by far my favorite.  With the crime in the past there was nothing to get in the way of the psychological study.

2. And Then There Were None

-This is the first Christie book I read and one of the few books ever that I kindof wish had been withheld from me til I was a few years older…it still plays vividly in my mind, compelling, brilliant, and incredibly creepy.

3. Crooked House

-The tone and ending of this book just stay with you.

4. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

-Seeing the crime through the villain’s notebook while still not knowing who it is….thrilling.  The adaptation of this was one of my only true letdowns-no cinema can do it properly.

5. The Man in the Brown Suit

-This is a novel where I actually remember the characters more fondly than the mystery-it’s great fun and my favorite of Christie’s matchmaking moves.

6. Dead Man’s Mirror

-Another Poirot mystery I found particularly clever and memorable.

Top Suchet “Poirot” adaptations:

1. Five Little Pigs

-I was surprised at how faithful they managed to keep it.  Love it!

2. Evil Under the Sun

-They managed to add humor and suspects with more depth without losing the tone of the original.

3. The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor

4. The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge

5. The Chocolate Box

-All of these are just delightful to watch….I’m sure this list will change often, but David Suchet’s Poirot just shines.

Top non-Suchet Cinema Adaptations:

1. Thirteen for Dinner

-This Peter Ustinov one just has more time to flesh out the characters and what I found to be a more believable Lady Edgeware.  Plus, Suchet does appear…as Japp!

2. Witness for the Prosecution

-This Hitchcock film feels like a real Agatha Christie, and is well acted!

3. Death on the Nile

-This one I include because, although I feel the Ustinov version and the Suchet version are both excellent shows, I prefer the Ustinov one simply because it has more time to develop various motives and has a memorable montage showing how practically everyone could have committed the crime…On the other hand, I prefer Suchet’s Poirot here, as usual, and find his portrayal much closer to the books.  Still, whichever way you go, I recommend it.

Poirot would hate these mini-lists for being uneven and a hodgepodge of preferences rather than one, orderly list…I know, shall blame it on my need for gastronomic nurturing and plead that I have not yet eaten.  What about you, mes amis, which novels, episodes, or crimes do your little grey cells prefer?

Top Ten Christmas Wishlist Books

This is a rendition of thebrokeandthebookish.com’s Top Ten Tuesday (and a Day). However, after looking at the lists, I decided to do next week’s now. After all, what’s the use of putting out into the world what I want for Christmas on Christmas Eve? Santa, let alone anyone else, would never be able to implement that quickly! So, here’s my wishlist of books now:

Top Ten Christmas Wishlist Books:

1. xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths by Kate Bernheimer
-I have her previous anthology, “My Mother, She Killed Me, My Father, He Ate Me” and it is glorious.

2. Perfect Ruin (The Internment Chronicles) by Lauren DeStefano
-I love her lyrical writing style.

3. Animalia by Barbara Helen Berger
-She’s so beautiful and touching!

4. When the Sun Rose by Barbara Helen Berger

5. The Prince’s Doom by David Blixt http://www.amazon.com/Princes-Doom-David-Blixt/dp/0615894437/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418840600&sr=1-1&keywords=david+blixt
-Oh my goodness, I didn’t know this was out so soon, and it’s in paperback, and-and! I must have!!

6. Diary of Johannes Burchardus
-This diary is a firsthand account about Pope Alexander VI-the Borgia Pope!-and I love the quotes I know, and I crave it.

7. To Be or Not to Be by Ryan North
-This is a choose your own adventure Hamlet book. How do I not have this?

8. Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
-This is the sequel to Seraphina, coming out next year, and I must know what happens next!

9. Prudence (The Custard Protocol) by Gail Carriger
-This is another coming-out one, but it’s on my list of must-read. This is the sequel series to The Parasol Protectorate, about Alexia’s daughter.

10. Jester Leaps In: A Medieval Mystery (Fools’ Guild Mysteries) by Alan Gordman
-I loved Thirteenth Night and want to know what happens next.

So, that’s me. What does your wishlist look like?

Top Ten Books to Feed On

I once again decided to do my own top ten list this week, and as tomorrow is the Holiday of Feasting, these are books that focus on memorable foods and feasts.

1. The Magic Thief series by Sarah Prineas
Biscuits!

2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The title food, plus roast pigs and stews! Also a holiday tea tradition that I would love to bring to life…

3. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Eat me!

4. The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye
Spun sugar castles, and gorgeous swans, and ice-cream licking, and nuts!

5. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald
Whisper sticks!

6. Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett
Sandwiches, cake, and of course ice cream!

7. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
-Ah, the quest to figure out how to convince a magical house to feed you…

8. Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen
-Tea, champagne, and learning to cook and boil.

9. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
-Where food equals home, safety, and order…in comparison to hostile adventurers, anyhow.

10. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Turkish delight!

What are some foods or feasts that you found memorable in books? Alternatively, in shows? Personally, I think “Pushing Daisies” the most delicious
series. It has the pie-maker, the cheese cupboard, and all the honey! On the other end of the spectrum is Fringe, where in spite of all the invitations and references to food made to and around her, Olivia only eats in about 5 episodes, and that depends on whether you are willing to count 5 m&ms as eating or to assume that a raised hand in the blurry background can be taken as actually eating a bite of french toast…

Well, what works shall you imbibe this week?

Top Ten Non-Romance Relationship Books for Thanksgiving

This week I made my own Top Ten list, in honor of the coming holiday: the Top Ten Books where Gratefulness/Support is Key in People who are NOT in Love with One Another. So much of the time in stories, real support or gratefulness is just there to show which person the protagonist should romantically wind up with, and it can and should be there so often when romance is not at all part of the case. Alternatively, it is there as a background plot-point or a side story, rather than being celebrated. I just want to showcase some of the works where non-romantic relationships are the big deal, not a side story.

1. Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennet
-All about new friends, and the food they feed you!

2. Diamond Willow by Helen Frost
-Family and animals, and how they overlap!

3. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salmon Rushdie
-Family, new friends, and even new acquaintances who turn out to be allies, no matter how good they are at it.

4. Gwinna by Barbara Helen Berger
-Family, friends, and animals.

5. The Silent Gondoliers by S. Morgenstern (William Goldman)
-The acts of friendship here, oh how they trump all romance!

6. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
-I love how friendship and support clearly undermines other relationship terms and keeps the heroine going. This is perhaps one of the great reasons why shipping Bitterblue/Giddon revolts me-this book is about the warmth and triumph of friendship-and these readers are flying in the face of that by reading into one of the best friendships in it a romance that was never there!

7. The Merlin Trilogy by Jane Yolen
-Oh, how he connects to people! Family, memories, even the ultimately unworthy who still held his gratitude for a time, it’s all beautiful.

8. The Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett
-When Tiffany is your friend, you will wind up grateful.

9. Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
-The deepest relationships in here are about family, about friends who become family, and about trust. This is another instance where I get very upset at people who insist that a close friendship ought to have been a romance just because it was the most honest and strong relationship-real gratitude and reliance happens in friendships, too!

10. Entwined by Heather Dixon
-All about family, right to the core, and none of the romances get in the way of that in the slightest.

And 11, because I can: The Magic Thief series by Sarah Prineas
-Allies, friendship, and teamwork.

How about you? What are some of your favorite non-romance relationships or books?

Top Ten Characters Who Should Get Their Own Books

This is a rendition of Top Ten Tuesday by the thebrokeandthebookish.wordpress.com. This week was the top 10 characters we’d like to receive their own books. This was rather tricky as a lot of the books I love, I love because of the protagonist and even when I want there to be more, I want to keep that perspective. Alternatively, there are some books that I would greatly prefer to be rewritten from someone else’s point of view, but that seemed like a separate issue. So, here’s what I’ve got:

Top Ten Characters Who Should Get Their Own Books

1. Lord Akeldama from The Parasol Protectorate Series by Gail Carriger
(Review of first here: https://wheresmytower.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/soulless-the-parasol-protectorate-series-1/)
-He’s just so charismatic I don’t care what the book’s about.

2. Madame Lefoux from The Parasol Protectorate Series by Gail Carriger
-I imagine this as her tween/adolescent years where she’s becoming shocking instead of already established, encountering loves, criticizing everyone’s fashion sense, tinkering with everything and getting into lots of trouble, and obviously messing with local hives.

3. Lord Calliston from Incarceron/Sapphique by Catherine Fisher
-I long for this prequel with the creators and first recorders of the prison.

4. The Persian from The Phantom of the Opera by Gason Leroux
-How he got mixed up with the sultan, how he befriended the Phantom, what he got up to after the Phantom…anything.

5. Minerva McGonagall from Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
-Of her youth, of course. I imagine it would be a combination of a Miss Marple in-the-making and Harriet the Spy, only one who can get her spy equipment to do things separately, can partially transform her self into what she needs, will fly her broomstick all over getting into the thick and the mess of things, and who always, always, always speaks up, even when she shouldn’t. Now am imagining her meeting a young Sherlock Holmes and how he would deduce that she was a witch and she would make his life miserable for being so uppity, and he would try and steal her broomstick, and she would convince his parents he was going peculiar in the head, and then they’d take him to psychiatrists who put him on awful didn’t-know-they-sucked drugs to prevent it, and THAT’S HOW HE GETS HOOKED ON DRUGS. Every so often she checked in on him because the older-self Minerva felt kinda guilty, but then the Dark Lord popped up and when she remembered him then it was really just to make snarky comments about how much easier he had it with his nemesis. Okay, this is head-cannon now.

6.Saf from Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
(Review here: https://wheresmytower.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/bitterblue/)
-He has the best grace and I want tales of him traipsing around and using it.

7. Dame Okra Carmine from Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
-She’s so feisty, and had to have had so much trouble covering up her condition, and has such an interesting talent, and somehow became ambassador! I want to know!

8. Maddie from Fever by Lauren DeStefano
-I love her and want her to control the new world and I need to know how she’s doing and that she’s totally going to grow up and achieve a leadership role and make everything better.

9. Bramble from Entwined by Heather Dixon

-I want her to go around detecting nefariousness and protecting the weak with her husband’s support and money, and to burst in on all her sisters and their marriage prospects, etc. It’d be nice to get inside her head.

10. Felix from Frederica by Georgette Heyer
-Can you imagine the story of his scandals-come-apprenticeship in early technology and how he falls for the geeky aerator girl and winds up crashed with her and nothing but a jar of restorative pork jelly and the weird science metaphors he’ll use about his feelings, and how the girl’s father will judge him but then be won over and secretly helpful? It would be great.

How about you? Which characters do you want more of? Would you read the Minerva/Sherlock crossover? If Saf used his grace on you what would you want out of it?

Top Ten Books I ReRead

This is a rendition of Top Ten Tuesday (and a Day) by the thebrokeandthebookish.wordpress.com. This week was the top 10 Books to Reread. I puzzled about that…Books I’ve reread the most? Books I’d like to reread for the first time? I decided to go with books that I’ve reread a lot in recent memory, as opposed to of all time. So, here it is:

Top Ten Books For My Rereading Pleasure

1. The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye
Every spring. “There had been a long debate in Council on ‘The Advisability of Inviting Fairies to the Christrening.'”

2. Gwinna by Barbara Helen Berger

3. The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope
Every fall, this retelling of Tam Lin. “The Night is Hallow’een, my love, the morni s Hallows’ Day-”

4. Let Your Mind Alone by James Thurber
-This book includes several wonderful satires about early self-help advice and just humorous essays about life that work wonders about putting things in perspective, covering issues like travel, wanting a javelin, turtle-catching, and solving life problems with index cards, plays, and ghostly visitors. I reread it whenever I need to take my mind off of life-problems or just laugh.

5. The Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett

6. The works of A.A. Milne
“Forget about the crackers, And forget about the candy; I’m sure a box of chocolates Would never come in handy; I don’t like oranges, I don’t want nuts, And I HAVE got a pocket-knife That almost cuts. But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all, Bring me a big, red india-rubber ball!”

7. A Royal Pain by Ellen Conford
-It’s just such a fun one to read out loud. “Right off the bat I have to say that no matter what you may have read in the papers, I don’t think I was such a terrible princess.”

8. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
-Have you read those ogre and bird languages out loud? It’s marvelous!

9. The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern (William Goldman)

10. My Mother, She Killed Me, My Father, He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer
-This collection of fairy tale retellings is spooky, and funny, and touching, and haunting, and wonderful.

Top Ten Characters I’d Dress as for Halloween

This is a rendition of Top Ten Tuesday (and a Day) by the thebrokeandthebookish.wordpress.com. This week was the top 10 literary characters I’d want to dress up as for Halloween. This took a lot of pondering as a lot of my favorite characters don’t have any distinguishing costumes…So, here I go:

Top Ten Characters I’d Be for Halloween:

1. Millie Chant from “The Chrestomanci Chronicles” by Diana Wynne Jones
-Extra set of arms, magic, cats, count me in. I’d have to go around explaining who I was and a lot of people wouldn’t know her, but Millie’d be worth it.

2. Christopher Chant from “The Chrestomanci Chronicles” by Diana Wynne Jones
-This is mainly so I can swan around in his fantastic robes. I need some of those robes in my life.

3. Tiffany Aching from “Wee Free Men” etc., by Terry Pratchett
-I long to wear a green dress and wield a frying pan and measuring tape while eating excellent cheese and feeling witchy. This is also kindof a life goal.

4. The White Witch from “Narnia” by C.S. Lewis
-This just feels like the perfect costume for both eating/distributing sweets and celebrating approaching winter. It also gives the coming season a “This time shall be mine!” spin, which I always like.

5. Inigo Montoya from “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman
-I go around quoting him anyway, this character would be a piece of cake. Of sharp, on-point, delicious cake. And if they didn’t recognize this outfit with a girl in them, there’s the easiest fix in the world.

6. The Mad Hatter from “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carol
-I like hats, I like tea, and I like him. Another character I go around quoting, I feel this would be best for a sit-down costume party.

7. Dorothy from “Wizard of Oz” by Frank L. Baum

-Feels perfect for the night of ghouls to run around going “lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!!” Plus, this is probably the easiest and most recognizable of my choices.

8. Calcifer from “Howl’s Moving Castle” etc., by Diana Wynne Jones
-He is the best and I’m sure whatever costume one could come up with would keep you warm.

9. Jane from “Ironskin”

-She has so many striking looks and one could go around muttering outrageous ragey thoughts whenever taking off your mask…She has a built-in mask!

10. But my ultimate costume, if I could pull this off, would be to go as Baba Yaga in her house on chicken-feet from Russian folklore. Or just the house. Skull fence, chicken-feet, in-character tricks and turns, and getting to cackle all night while demanding payment/food…it would be glorious. Glorious, I say! (If anyone has seen this done or pulled it off themselves, I need pictures.)

And that’s me! What costumes appeal to you from the literary world?

Bring Me….a Fairy Tale Shrubbery!

So, I was thinking about fairy tales, as you do, and something occurred to me: on a surface, practical level, the lesson of an awful lot of them seems to be that the better gardener will win. Check this out:

1. Beauty and the Beast-The Beast gets the girl because he has the garden with the best roses. If Beauty’s family were better at gardening, she wouldn’t have had to ask for a rose and they wouldn’t have found themselves in that problem in the first place.

2. Twelve Dancing Princesses-The gardener just is the one who gets the princess, because she would rather marry a gardener.

3. Rapunzel-If the young couple could have just grown their own garden, they never would have had to deal with the witch.

4. Red Riding Hood-If her family had a pretty flower garden, she wouldn’t have needed to wander about the woods for a bouquet or admiring the floral scenery and the wolf’s trick wouldn’t have worked.

5. Cinderella-how did she manage to get to the ball so quickly and snazzily, AND run away in time for the prince not to see her transformation back to rags while wearing just one flimsy glass shoe? They had a thriving pumpkin patch.

6. Snow White-If the dwarves or Snow White could grow their own fruit they wouldn’t bother with apple-sellers, would they? (Clothing items like combs and ribbons are a different matter of course, but then those were absurdly easy to undo in any case.)

7. The Princess and the Frog-The only positive thing about the princess in most portrayals is that her family had a wonderful garden for the prince-turned-frog to live in, and that is clearly the underlying reason why she manages to marry well. Also, when you’re a frog beautiful gardens are clearly what you look for when you need a princess to kiss you, so that garden lies at the base of the happiness of both title characters.

8. The Juniper Tree-A well-kept tree can even resurrect the dead, in this one!

9. The Wild Swans-If the sister could just have maintained a royal garden once she was queen, she could have slipped some nettles in and not needed to go running around graveyards, getting accused of witchcraft and all the shirts might have been finished!

10. The Firebird-With no well-grown cherry orchards, this magical creature would not have shown up.

11. Jack and the Beanstalk-If those giants had simply been attentive gardeners, they could have weeded out troublesome beanstalks and kept all their own treasure, at least before a third visit!

As a matter of fact, a lot of fairy tales seem to show that problems arise when people use being in the woods as an excuse not to do their own gardening. It leaves them open to wildflower delays and poisoned fruit. Clearly, we all need to grow our own gardens instead of just hiding behind trees, which is actually quite disappointing since even as a young girl I wanted a yard full of blossoming flowers so I could have that beauty without having to really garden. Yet, look at the evidence! Witches win when they grow thorns. Beautiful gardens attract firebirds, princes, and insightful beauties. Gardening well can get even “villains” new children or keep them out. Maybe I should get one…

Any other fairy tale gardening/shrubberies you can think of? Bring it here and place it here beside this shrubbery, only slightly lower in the comments, so we get the two-level effect…

Top Ten Places Books Make Me Want to Visit

This is a rendition of Top Ten Tuesday by the thebrokeandthebookish.wordpress.com. This week was the top 10 places books made you want to visit, whether real or imaginary. I had trouble with this one because I’m a lot more eager to go around meeting people from books rather than places. So, here we go:

1. Phantasmorania from “The Ordinary Princess” by M. M. Kaye

2. Ireland from “Lion of Ireland” by Morgan Llywelyn

3. Verona from “Master of Verona” by David Blixt
(Full review here: https://wheresmytower.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/the-master-of-verona/)

4. Narnia from the series “Narnia” by C.S. Lewis

5. The 100 Acre Wood from all of “Winnie the Pooh” by A.A. Milne

6. The Paris Opera House from “Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston LeRoux

7. The cat hills from “Millions of Cats” by Wanda Gág

8. Frell from “Ella Enchanted” by Gail Carson Levine

9. Luster from “Into the Land of the Unicorns” by Bruce Coville

10. Ingary from “Howl’s Moving Castle” by Diana Wynne Jones

What about you? Do you want to visit Frell mainly to meet Ella and her friends, or would you just enjoy the scenery? (I’m characters.) Would you love to run amuck in Howl’s house or kingdom alone or do you just want to talk to him? (I’m for the house more than the wizard.) What sort of places intrigue you?

Top Ten Books I Had Trouble Finishing (For Reasons Other than Writing Style)

This is a rendition of Top Ten Tuesday (and a Day) by the thebrokeandthebookish.wordpress.com. This week was the top 10 books you had trouble finishing. This post took me the extra day because I had to figure out how to do this without giving free publicity to the most dreadfully written books I’ve read. In the end, I managed to remember the books that kept me pausing or agitated while finishing them for reasons other than poor writing. Here we go:

Top Ten Books I Had Trouble Finishing (For Reasons Other than Writing Style)

1. “The Virgin’s Lover” by Philippa Gregory
-I hated her characterization of Elizabeth and the motivations she gave certain others never even actually made sense! Agh!

2. “The Wings of a Falcon” by Cynthia Voigt
-After spending hundreds of pages inside the main character’s head suddenly she shunted me into his best friend’s head for the last bit! I am still up set about this. Head-Shunting is uncool!

3. “The Man in the Iron Mask” by Alexandre Dumas
-Nothing had prepared me for this to be the book where his famous musketeers die! No one had told me that! It was deeply upsetting to go in unaware.

4. “Morte D’Arthur” by Sir Thomas Malory
-My issue here is that all of its tales are just jumbled all together without noting that by including similar tales of the same people or slightly different versions of events, when one tries to read it as a story it comes out incredibly contradictory and dense.

5. “Tell me if the Lovers are Losers” by Cynthia Voigt
-This one I did find just too….heavy-toned, I think, and I stopped reading it for about a month before finishing.

6. “Justine” by Lawrence Durrell
-This book is fascinating and I actually love it, but the reading experience was very hard!

7. “The Bible According to Mark Twain” by Mark Twain
-I absolutely adore this, and had to own it, but it takes a lot of brain power and can prove very troubling.

These last three I’m having such trouble with I’ve yet to finish.

8. “Don Quixote” by Cervantes
-It’s just so long. And also angering when thought about too much.

9. The “Temeraire” series by Naomi Novik
-I had to stop after the 5th one because of the disrespect shown in replacing the real Duke of Wellington with a fictional character when other historical personages had been left alone.

10. Proust. Why are you so dense and hard to get into, Proust? Once in the groove you were interesting…

And so ends this week’s reading confessions. Have you any?