Karl's Reading List

Published in ebook format by HarperCollins: New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, August 2011. First published 1924. I read this collection of short Poirot stories while researching mystery fiction for my Year 10 mystery fiction module . Each of these short stories is narrated by Poirot's friend Captain Hastings, and involves Poirot solving a short case of some description. I think of Poirot mysteries as the most intricate of Agatha Christie's books, so it was interesting to read a collection where, by the necessity of being short stories, the mysteries Poirot solved were not as convoluted as, say, Mrs McGinty's Dead . In fact, in one or two instances I even was able to spot the clues and figure out at least part of the mystery before 'the reveal.'  The opposite problem also emerges in some of these stories; because they are shorter, Christie doesn't always drop enough clues for the reader to figure it out themselves, relying instead on the 'reveal' to fill...

Published by Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2004. This is a great book, one that I first read as part of my theological training. Bartholomew and Goheen take the Bible as a whole and divide it into six "acts", namely: 1) God Establishes His Kingdom: Creation, 2) Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall, 3) The King Chooses Israel: Redemption Initiated, 4) The Coming of the King: Redemption Accomplished, 5) Spreading the New of the King: The Mission of the Church, 6) The Return of the King: Redemption Completed. By dividing the Bible thusly, they are able to focus on the 'overarching' story of the Bible, something that is important because "If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should."  (page 12) The Bible is really the story of God and how He connects with His chosen creation, and Drama of Scripture helps to remind us of t...

Published by Huia Publishers: Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, 2018. Riki is the great-great-grandson of his namesake, Te Ariki, a soldier who fought in the First World War with the Maori Contingent. Riki lives in Wellington with his mother, who is obsessed with the story of Te Ariki, and has been listening to cassette recordings of interviews that Te Ariki's grandson Alamein made with Te Ariki in the 1970s. When Riki is unexpectedly hit by a bus while taking Te Ariki's diary to his mother, he wakes up in 1915 in Egypt, where he becomes mistaken for his ancestor. Now Riki must figure out why he is here, what happened to Te Ariki, and how - if at all - he can get home to the present. This is a great set-up for a story that examines racism, history, what defines a Maori, free will vs destiny, and the different ways in which New Zealanders can view their history. Hereaka has created an authentically 21st century voice with Riki, and is able to use her protagonist to analysis both...

Published by Penguin Books: North Shore, NZ, 2004. This book tells the story of three Maori brothers, Pita, Rangi and Tu, who one by one join the Maori battalion and end up fighting in Egypt and Italy during World War 2. Tu, our narrator, is the youngest of the three, and the vast majority of the book is presented as his journal entries from the war, with an additional framing device being that he is handing these journal pages on to his niece and nephew in order for them to understand their father, Pita, more. While Tu's journal entries are obviously mostly focussed on his own experiences, other chapters are interspersed with the 'journal entries', telling Pita's story in a third-person narrative. It is a little confusing as to how these may or may not be being presented to Tu's nephew and niece, as if we are to take the narrative at face value all of these chapters should be Tu's journal, but obviously are not. However, putting that aside we get a good idea of...

Published by Faber and Faber Ltd: London, England, 2008. Originally published 1968. The very first Booker Prize winner, Something to Answer For follows Townrow, a protagonist that for the first section of the book I kept misreading as “Tomorrow.” I bring that up, because it reflects, on a smaller scale, the feeling of confusion and disorientation that permeates this book. Very early on, Townrow (who has travelled to Egypt to either help or swindle an elderly widow) gets knocked on the head and left for dead, and as a result has ongoing memory problems. He forgets things that we, the readers, already know, or he remembers sequels to earlier scenes much later, and on occasion even “remembers” as having happened events that we know are fictionalised, or that may have happened to another character. The concept is clever, but having an unreliable narrator who also makes spontaneous and reckless decisions throughout the narrative also makes the book very difficult to follow. For example, at...