Category: Books

Literacy 2023: Book 10: The House of Silk

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson investigate a widespread conspiracy in a story so scandalous it had to be withheld from publishing for a century

Book
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

Synopsis
One of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s later adventures, in which a seemingly straightforward crime involving an American gang leads the detectives to a dark conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of the British government, and gets Holmes arrested and imprisoned for murder!

Pros

  • As with Horowitz’s James Bond books, this does an excellent job of suggesting Arthur Conan Doyle’s style, but with a more modern story.
  • Captures the serialized feel of some of the original Holmes mysteries, where seemingly self-contained cases could balloon into longer, more complicated sagas.
  • Cleverly explains how a “missing” Sherlock Holmes story was published in the 21st century, by saying that Watson found the whole affair so scandalous he insisted it not be made public for 100 years.
  • Feels like a “fair” mystery, with clues that are made clear throughout and reward the reader for careful observation.
  • Matches the feel of the original stories without being too obvious an impression.

Cons

  • So much of it was so familiar that I strongly suspect I’ve read this book already, but completely forgot about it.
  • Filled with so much exposition, or just recounting events that happened elsewhere, that it all feels a step or two removed from any actual action.
  • Takes the character of Mycroft Holmes, who’s described as “stout” by Arthur Conan Doyle, and goes to such lengths to describe him as morbidly obese that it can’t help but come across as fatphobia on Horowitz’s part.

Verdict
A solid but somewhat forgettable Sherlock Holmes mystery. There’s enough of an update to give the story a modern feel despite its fitting completely within the existing canon, but there’s not enough novel in it to make it feel as fresh as something like the Sherlock BBC series. Anthony Horowitz’s books are completely and dependably readable, and he was the perfect author to trust with the characters.

Literacy 2023: Book 9: The Skeleton Key

Erin Kelly’s mystery/thriller novel inspired by real-life puzzle books and the treasure hunters obsessed with decoding them

Book
The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly

Synopsis
The Golden Bones was a hugely popular art book filled with paintings giving clues to the locations of tiny, jeweled bones buried all across England. The book brought fame and wealth to the artist, but a lifetime of paranoia to his daughter Nell, who’s been stalked, threatened, and attacked by the hunt’s obsessive fans. Now, on the book’s 50th anniversary, there’s a plan to create a modern version of the treasure hunt, launched with a publicity stunt revealing the final bone that had never been found. When the launch goes awry, it ties the family to an actual murder and puts Nell and her family in jeopardy once again.

Pros

  • Brilliant concept, building off the real-world existence of Masquerade and, as the author describes it, “the human impulse to uncover secrets”
  • Once it gets moving, it’s extremely compelling. I was up until 3 AM reading it last night, and couldn’t wait until bedtime tonight and had to finish it this morning.
  • Juggles enough complications and revelations and escalations to make it feel as if everything is just on the edge of collapse, but without feeling too overwhelming.
  • Does a good job capturing the style and tone of treasure-hunt and ARG message boards — everyone referring to each other by online handle, and the mix of people fully invested in the subject along those who are perpetually angry at the artists
  • Pitch-perfect depiction of an egomaniacal asshole who is incessantly making cutting remarks, undermining everyone around him and passing it off as affection.
  • One of the major revelations is astonishingly well done. You immediately have to turn back and read an earlier chapter, to see that all the clues were there all along.

Cons

  • The depiction of an egomaniacal asshole was vivid enough to reawaken low-grade anxiety about people like that I’ve met in real life.
  • Kind of a stumbling start to the book, as there’s a ton of necessary context that needs to be established, and it all gets thrown together in a bewildering mess of names and events.
  • I just plain don’t like the main character; she’s self-righteous and a hypocrite. People kept pointing out she was being insufferable, and they were right, and she ignored them. There I said it.
  • Not really a “con,” so much as mismanaged expectations on my part: the book is only barely interested in the puzzle-hunt nature of the premise, and is much more of a “Tiny Secret Whispers”-style family drama.

Verdict
This wasn’t the book that I wanted or expected it to be, but it was surprisingly good at being what it is. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a “can’t put it down” thriller, and this one definitely qualifies. It’s gripping even though there’s very little action or suspense; it’s all plot developments moving everything constantly forward.

Literacy 2023: Book 8: Eerie Tales from the School of Screams

This new graphic novel is an anthology of five comic horror stories, ostensibly for kids but actually for me

Book
Eerie Tales from the School of Screams by Graham Annable

Synopsis
Children in a classroom are called on by their teacher to deliver an EERIE story to the rest of the class, and we get to see five of them play out.

Disclaimer
I worked with Graham at LucasArts and Telltale, but I would think his stuff is brilliant anyway.

Pros

  • More of the creepy-funny feel of the Grickle animated short films he’s been making for years, but on paper.
  • Suitable for kids — Or maybe more accurate to say that it’s aimed at kids but suitable for adults? I don’t care! — but there’s little sense of anything being watered down. This feels like the creepy stories real kids would tell each other.
  • Graham is a master of expressions and poses; even after years of being a fan, I’m impressed by how he can get across a full-on mood and complete state of mind for a character by changing the position of a line by a fraction of a millimeter.
  • The anthology format is great; it calls back to kids’ horror shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? as well as adult horror anthologies, but also carries through the entire framing story.
  • “The Face in the Forest” is my favorite of the stories, and it manages to be horrific and heartwarming at the same time.
  • I love how it feels old-fashioned and modern at the same time; it feels like it’s not trying to be anything else.

Cons

  • I read it too fast, so I’m only an hour from getting it in the mail and I already want the sequel.
  • I’d been hoping for Principal Skeleton.

Verdict
I loved it. I wish I’d had comics like this when I was younger, “younger” including “in my forties.” If you’re a fan of Graham’s creepy-funny animated horror shorts, then this is a no-brainer. If you’re not a fan of them, then what is wrong with you?

Literacy 2023: Book 7: Moriarty

Anthony Horowitz’s mystery adventure set immediately after Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis fell to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls

Book
Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz

Synopsis
A Pinkerton detective arrives in Europe shortly after the climax of the story “The Final Problem,” in which Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty had fallen to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls. There, he meets a Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard who appears to be as brilliant a detective as Holmes himself. The two return to England to track down the mysterious American who’d replaced Moriarty as the mastermind of all crime in London.

Pros
Every bit as engaging readable as everything else I’ve read from Horowitz. Much like his entries in the new James Bond series, you get the sense that Horowitz either loves these classic characters and the worlds of their adventures, or else he’s astonishingly good at faking it. He doesn’t try to ape Arthur Conan Doyle’s style (at least for long), but instead captures the tone and mood of the original stories while giving them a more modern and action-oriented plot.

Cons
Difficult to say anything about it without spoiling one aspect of it or another. The famous moments of deduction here don’t land as well as they did in the original stories. The central mystery — or at least, what I’m assuming is the central mystery — isn’t particularly satisfying, since there aren’t enough suspects to make it that interesting.

Verdict
Anthony Horowitz continues to be one of the most dependable authors of interesting and engaging logic puzzle mysteries, frequently with some meta-aspect that makes them especially fascinating. Moriarty was a fun read, but I have to admit that it might be the least satisfying mystery novel that I’ve read by Horowitz. But then, I’ve never been that much of a fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, either.

Literacy 2023: Book 6: Hallowe’en Party

A Hercule Poirot mystery from 1969 that will form the basis of the next movie, inexplicably

Book
Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie

Synopsis
When a teenage girl is murdered at a Hallowe’en Party, one of the guests calls on her old friend Hercule Poirot to help solve the case. Finding the killer will require Poirot to interview everyone in the small town even tangentially related to the party, as well as looking into several unsolved murders in the town’s history.

Pros

  • Has the confidence of the books written after Christie had proven herself and met with great success, where she was free to be a little experimental with style and pacing instead of purely focused on plot
  • Character-driven, with a little less emphasis placed on Poirot and his eccentricities, in favor of letting the other characters assert their personalities
  • Written in 1969, so parts of it feel jarringly contemporary. It’s fascinating to read an Agatha Christie novel expecting England in the 30s or 40s, and instead see characters complaining about how computers are ruining everything

Cons

  • Felt oddly like Christie’s heart wasn’t in the murder mystery; it feels as if she were really wanting to write a novel about these characters and their relationships, but was obligated to have a mystery running through it
  • The clues do eventually all come together, although it’s not in a particularly satisfying way. The feeling is less “a-HA!” and more “Okay, sure, I guess.”
  • Everybody is surprisingly cruel about the murder victim and nonchalant about the killings
  • More an observation than a “con,” but it was weird to see characters in an Agatha Christie openly talking about the possibility that it was a sex crime, or that the murder involved pedophilia and sexual assault. It’s unfair and condescending to Christie, but I always think of her work as being strictly G-rated-but-with-murders

Verdict
Not one of Agatha Christie’s best, but I thought it was an interesting reminder that she was still cranking out these mysteries in my lifetime. The fact that turns out to be the central hook is compelling, even if the book itself is more pleasant than interesting — that makes it easier to see why it was the basis for a loose adaptation in the upcoming movie.1Although I admit I don’t understand why there’s going to be a third Kenneth Brannagh Poirot movie at all, since I thought the last two weren’t successful?

  • 1
    Although I admit I don’t understand why there’s going to be a third Kenneth Brannagh Poirot movie at all, since I thought the last two weren’t successful?

Literacy 2023: Book 5: The Twist of a Knife

Getting accused of murder is one of the best things to happen to Anthony Horowitz’s writing!

Book
The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

Series
Book 4 in the Hawthorne and Horowitz Investigate series

Synopsis
After the events of A Line to Kill, Anthony Horowitz’s reluctant partnership with irascible detective Daniel Hawthorne is complete, and Horowitz is free to pursue a lifelong dream: having one of his plays produced in London’s West End. But when someone is violently murdered after the play’s opening night, Horowitz is the prime suspect. His only hope is that Hawthorne can find the true killer and clear his name within 48 hours.

Pros

  • Completely engaging, even among Horowitz’s consistently entertaining and readable mystery novels
  • The revelation that I consider to be “the twist” — the real reason someone framed Horowitz for murder — was really cleverly done. I never guessed the truth at all, but the clues were all there for the observant reader.
  • Does a great job of juggling lots of sub-plots and individual character intrigue, which serve as kind of a “consolation prize” for piecing together the minor stories, even if you don’t figure out the central mystery.
  • Great balance between good, old-fashioned murder mystery and the meta-gimmick that serves as the premise of the entire series. There’s just enough of the real world to remind the reader that this is ostensibly non-fiction, but not so much that it overwhelms or distracts from the rest of the mystery.
  • Feels like Horowitz has perfectly hit his stride with this series. There are very few of the weird shifts in tone that were in the other books — descriptions of a violent crime scene, a character’s unexpected homophobia, which were presumably included to make the novel read more like true crime.

Cons

  • The case against Horowitz isn’t at all convincing, and I had a hard time believing any prosecutor would ever be willing to take it to court. This undercut the tension and honestly made the book feel slightly juvenile.
  • Horowitz has settled on the characterization of himself in this book as being famous and successful enough to be frequently recognized but never respected. I should be used to it by now, but it still comes across as more artificial and a bit annoying instead of self-effacing and charming. (On the other hand, if he’d just gone with “best-selling author with long-running book and TV series” would probably be insufferable).
  • Hawthorne is a little less unlikeable in this one, but I still find the character too irritating to be at all interesting.

Verdict
The most consistently entertaining and engaging book of the series so far. It doesn’t have the weird novelty of the first book, but it also doesn’t have the strange shifts in tone. I’m clearly hooked on this series, even if I only like or care about one of the main characters.

Literacy 2023: Book 4: Bonk

Mary Roach applies her wry takes on uncomfortable topics to the subject of human sexuality and sex research, and the results are hilarious

Book
Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

Synopsis
Roach takes an at-times-uncomfortably close look at the various ways that scientists have tried to understand and improve the sex lives of humans.

Pros

  • Roach’s comedic timing is at its absolute height here. Overly dry (no pun intended) or uncomfortable passages (ibid) are split up perfectly with an odd or humorous digression, or a well-placed footnote.
  • Full-to-bursting (so to speak) with clever double entendres, and even a lament that some terms have no good synonyms or room for double entendres.
  • Goes even further than other books to advance the studies she writes about, as she and her husband volunteer for a sex study.
  • Mature, modern, and open in a way that I never see, finding the humor and fun in the subject of sex without becoming vulgar or resorting to snickering and lazy gags.
  • Matter-of-factly acknowledges differences in orientation and behavior without even a hint of prudishness.

Cons

  • Contains a detailed description of penis surgery. I cannot overstate how stressful this is. (Roach acknowledges this in a footnote, expressing sympathy for biologically male readers and commenting that she noticed her husband had to read some chapters with his legs crossed).
  • Often had me reflexively putting a hand down to protect my business while I was reading.
  • Not really a con, but it spends significantly more time on female sexuality than male (at least partly because female sexuality is more complex at both the physical and psychological levels, and because it’s historically been repressed and misunderstood).

Verdict
My favorite of Mary Roach’s books that I’ve read so far, interesting and exhaustively (literally) researched while also being laugh-out-loud funny.

Literacy 2023: Book 3: Stiff

A six-feet-deep dive into all the various things that can happen to a dead body

Book
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Synopsis
Roach examines the various ways that human cadavers are used, abused, and disposed of, with topics including organ donation, forensics, crash impact testing, medical studies, cannibalism, decomposition, plus the advantages and disadvantages of having your body composted instead of cremated.

Pros

  • Roach has a masterful sense of comedic timing, knowing exactly when to be funny without coming across as flippant, and personal without making herself the focus of the story.
  • Extensively researched, with Roach insisting on going to the source whenever possible, seeing all the gruesome details in person.
  • Stays positive throughout, stressing the importance of organ donation and ecological responsibility, and also allowing people dignity and respect.
  • Full of information I not only never knew, but never even thought about.
  • Frequently made me laugh out loud.

Cons

  • Absolutely not for the squeamish. Roach tries to lighten the mood when she senses it’s getting too dark or too grisly, but she also doesn’t flinch at all while describing cadavers being opened up, ripped apart, drained, or allowed to rot.
  • Uses Mehmet Oz as an expert on the topic of organ transplants, presumably long before most people realized just how much of a shameless prick he is.
  • In addition to the gory or grisly descriptions, there are a lot of descriptions of torture, murder, or cannibalism that can upset sensitive readers like myself.

Verdict
Probably the book that made Roach’s reputation as one of the funniest science writers, and the reputation is well-deserved. I think I would’ve been way too sensitive or squeamish for this material if it hadn’t been for Roach’s confidently funny and often compassionate approach to the subject.

Literacy 2023: Book 2: Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome

The latest compendium of darkest imaginings from Author, Dreamweaver, Visionary, Plus Actor Garth Marenghi

Book
Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome by Garth Marenghi (Matthew Holness)

Synopsis
Prolific horror author Nick Steen finds himself compelled to purchase a mysterious, ancient typewriter from a strange antique shop, unwittingly setting off a series of terrifying events which threaten to destroy the entirety of Stalkford.

Pros

  • In case anyone still believed that Marenghi was only capable of creating characters that were thinly-veiled wish-fulfillment stand-ins for himself, TerrorTome‘s Nick Steen is every bit as original, unique, and vividly-realized a character as Darkplace‘s Rick Dagless.
  • Practically three novels in one
  • Includes multiple Fright Breaks and a Horrotica section
  • Contains Bruford, one of Marenghi’s best side-kicks since Dr. Lucien Sanchez
  • Encompasses a multitude of literary styles, with Clive Barker and Stephen King-style horror interpreted in Marenghi’s unique voice

Cons

  • Readers unfamiliar with Marenghi’s style might be frustrated at the amount of repetition throughout — iterating over and over on the same gag, or repeating the same plot structure (which is lampshaded near the end of the story).

Verdict
I would’ve been content if TerrorTome had just been Darkplace: The Novel, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the book changing up its structure and opening up into new ideas. Holness impressively commits completely to Garth Marenghi’s voice, making sure that he’s an ever-present character throughout. What impressed me the most was that this feels very much in line with Darkplace, not just as a simple adaptation, but taking the same concept and applying it to literary horror instead of 1990s episodic television.

Literacy 2023: Book 1: Ghost Story

Peter Straub’s great big take on a Salem’s Lot-style small-town novel works best when it’s sticking to the stuff promised by its title

Book
Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Synopsis
Four elderly men, long-time friends from a small town in New York, have a tradition of meeting regularly to tell ghost stories. After the death of one of their club’s founding members, they begin to have shared nightmares, foreshadowing the arrival of an evil entity that wants to destroy the entire town.

Pros

  • Much of the book is masterfully written, with scenes that, like the best ghost stories, are filled with inescapable dread from just a sighting or a fleeting thought.
  • Adept at changing tone and voice as the story is told from the perspective of different characters and an omniscient narrator. The effect is subtle, but you can absolutely sense the different characterizations coming through.
  • Stella Hawthorne is a charming and interesting character.
  • Comes to a satisfying conclusion that’s far less bleak than you’d expect from the dismal prologue.
  • Particularly good at foreshadowing: the narration will matter-of-factly tell you about something tragic that will happen soon, letting the idea hang in your mind until you read how it actually happens.

Cons

  • Overlong. While individual passages are well-written, the book as a whole has too many of them. I respect the desire to have a story that impacts an entire town of characters, but Ghost Story stays on the surface of all of its side characters, never giving enough detail to make their appearances feel like more than wasting pages.
  • There’s a feeling of repetition as we hear what is essentially the same story happen to different characters. It’s especially frustrating because the characters seem oblivious to clues which have been mentioned over and over again.
  • The supernatural aspects of the story are either insufficiently described, or inconsistent; the villains have powers that would seem to make them omnipotent, but much like Roger Rabbit, can only do it when it would be spooky.
  • Dated. The book feels very much of the late 1970s, not just in the technology but in the attitudes. There’s a seeming fascination with adultery, and a tinge of causal misogyny that seems to linger behind everything. It’s difficult to just say “it’s a product of its times” because so much of the book seems to need to feel contemporary, contrasting the modern world with that of the old men in the Chowder Society.

Verdict
I’ve wanted to read Ghost Story since I was in high school, and I’m glad I finally finished it. It made for some excellently creepy reading at bedtime, and it made for some late-night marathon reading sessions where I wanted to find out what happened next. But ultimately, it felt like it was lacking something at its core, the core thematic idea and statement-of-purpose that was present in most of Stephen King’s novels around the same time. Ghost Story was strongest when it stayed true to its title, but ended up a bit of a disappointment for me when it turned into something else.

Literacy 2022: Recap

A failed reading challenge that’s encouraged me to pick up the habit again in 2023

Thanks largely to a day job that’s consumed most of my free time over the year, I didn’t meet my reading goal for 2022. However, I didn’t read any real duds over the course of the year, which is a first. And trying to cram in a few over the Christmas-to-New Years break has reminded me of how much fun it is to get completely lost in an entertaining book. That’s a nicer takeaway than my usual, which is just, “I don’t read enough and am a bad person because of it.”

Goal
20 books in 2022

Final
15* read. (My Kindle ran out of power, forcing my to finish up the last book on New Year’s Day instead of Eve)

Favorite Book of Literacy 2022
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It’s got such an interesting main character, and is so stylistically clever at re-interpreting and re-contextualizing time-worn elements from gothic horror, that I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

MVP of Literacy 2022
Anthony Horowitz. I’ve only read two of his novels this year, but in addition to being unfailingly entertaining and engaging, they’ve also spun off into recommendations for other mystery authors, as well as renewing my interest in reading Agatha Christie books I haven’t read before, or re-reading some of the classics from a new perspective.

Goal for Literacy 2023
Sticking with my modest goal of 20 books for the new year, and cautiously optimistic that I’ll have more time to exceed it. Two books a month might be a little too ambitious for my pacing.

Sub-Goal for Literacy 2023
To finally finish The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I started this one back in 2021, I think, and probably had unreasonably high expectations since The Night Circus is one of my favorite books of the past decade. But it’s been a slog that never holds my interest. I’ve just read a glowing review from a friend, so I’m hoping I can power through it.

Call to Action
I’ve already got a huge list of books in my Want-to-Read section, more than I’ll be able to read in my lifetime, but I’m always looking for more suggestions!

Literacy 2022: Book 15: By the Pricking of My Thumbs

A short, pleasant Agatha Christie mystery to finish off the year

Book
By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie

Series
Book 4 in the Tommy & Tuppence mysteries

Synopsis
While visiting an irascible aunt in a retirement home, Tuppence Beresford has an odd conversation with one of the residents, suggesting that something sinister is going on, and the other residents’ deaths might not be of natural causes after all.

Pros

  • Charming and extremely British, exactly what you’d expect from Christie’s stories of upper-middle-class English people solving murders with curious detachment
  • The now-middle-aged married duo of Tommy & Tuppence, who I thought were extremely dull when I first read Christie’s books, now seem genuinely endearing, a kind of lower-energy Nick & Nora Charles without all the alcohol
  • The idea of solving a cold case with literally no information apart from a painting, a vague memory, and a railway map, is an intriguing one
  • Resolutely middle-aged, hinting at scandal and adventure without straining plausibility
  • Short but not too slight, has the feel of the hour-long televised mystery stories that somehow Christie might’ve predicted would be made from her works

Cons

  • Meandering and roundabout, and unlikely to be palatable to anyone who isn’t charmed by Tommy & Tuppence’s married-couple banter
  • Not really much of a detective story, since there are a few interesting bits of actual deduction, but most of the case is solved by the protagonists just asking various people to provide exposition

Verdict
Charming and comfortable, if you’re in the mood for a more languid and lackadaisical detective story. I believe that this is one of the few Agatha Christie books I didn’t read in middle and high school, and I only picked it up because it was mentioned in one of Anthony Horowitz’s mysteries, as an example of a detective story that accomplished a lot in a brief space (227 pages). Very well-suited to cramming in last-minute entries for a reading challenge.