Karl's Reading List

Published in an omnibus edition: "The Pale Horse"; " The Big Four " and "The Secret Adversary" as part of the "Agatha Christie Crime Collection", first published by the Hamlyn Publishing Group: London, 1970. This edition published by Lansdowne Press: Dee Why West, Australia, 2009. First published individually in book form, 1927. I usually like Poirot novels; there are a lot of twists and turns, with unexpected moments that - in hindsight - are clever solutions that fit the evidence better than the 'obvious' ones. Poirot is always the smartest person in the room, and the cases are ones that only he could solve. The Big Four is a little different, and - to me - a little underwhelming. This is mostly because of its structure: The Big Four originated as a series of short stories, each individually published, that eventually got collected into a book, with a little bit of connective tissue added in. Unfortunately, the short story aspect shows ...

Published by Little Mammoth/Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd: Auckland, 1993. One of two books on this list that we found at a friend's bach and read to Ezekiel while staying there (the other being First Flight ) this book actually contains three short stories, the titular story of which was by far our favourite. Briefly, the other two stories tell of a meal where Alice - a small child - exclaims "Yuck" to a lot of foods that are offered to her (not something we really wanted to inspire Ezekiel to do) and then an 'imagination game' story where Alice pretends to be a number of different characters, and gets her family to join in (more fun over all, but just ok). The titular story is the strongest, and goes through a typical bed-time routine, with Alice being read to, sung to, having some milk, saying good night to her family... all good 'wind-down' activities. There is a moment where Alice tries to stay up rather than settling down, and her mother cautions her that...

Published by Triad/Panther Books: Frogmore, St Albans, 1976. First published by Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1952. This is a very famous, and very short, book that is also the second Pulitzer Prize winning book I have read! To be fully transparent, I am currently also listening to an audiobook version of The Age of Innocence , but this was short enough that I finished it over two days, whereas Innocence still has hours of listening time to go. The Old Man and the Sea has a very simple story: an old man (Santiago) has not caught a fish in eighty-four days. On the morning of the eighty-fifth day, he sets out, hooks a large fish, and determines that he will stay in pursuit until he catches it. The fish swims out to sea for a couple of days before the two finally 'fight', and then the old man must attempt to return home with the fish. There isn't much more to the story than that. He also talks to a young boy at the beginning and end of the story. Some tourists mistake the bones of his fi...

Published in an omnibus edition: " Ordeal by Innocence "; " One, Two, Buckle My Shoe "; " The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding " as part of the "Agatha Christie Crime Collection" by Lansdowne Press: Australia, 1985 (1973). First published in omnibus edition 1970. First published individually 1960.   This 'book' is actually a selection of short stories by Agatha Christie, mostly involving Poirot. The first - and longest - in the collection is the titular Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, which involves Poirot trying to determine who has stolen a missing ruby and what they have done with it. It is not a spoiler to say that a Christmas pudding features heavily in this story. This one is fairly straightforward for a Poirot story, partially due to being a short story and partially due to logic: a subplot involving kids pretending to have discovered a murder seems very unlikely to have resulted in an actual death! The second story, The Mys...

Published by Oxford University Press: Great Britain, 1992 (1987). First published in 1894 (The First Jungle Book) and 1895 (The Second Jungle Book). I probably could have broken this "book" in half, considering that it consists of both "The First Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book", but as both Jungle Books are really just a collection of short stories - many of which (though far from all) are about Mowgli - they work together as one larger collection. Though, considering the whole collection as one book  did mean I messed up my reading challenge slightly (see the previous entry). What surprised me about the Jungle Books as a whole is that there are so many non Mowgli stories. We get a tale about a mongoose, a few from the perspective of humans that can't talk to animals, and even a few set in the Arctic region - which really stretches the idea of "jungle"...! Each of them feels a little like a folk tale or fable, and apparently some of...

Published by Cape Catley Ltd: Whatamongo Bay, Queen Charlotte Sound, 1991. When I was in primary school, I remember reading Uncle Trev stories; I guess there was a book of them in the school library. I have an Uncle Trev of my own, who is also a bit of a storyteller, so this book must have struck a chord with me. Having found this copy at a book sale somewhere, I began reading it quite some time ago with Elise. Then, I 'stole' it away to school, where I used chapters of it to help craft a new Level 1 (Year 11) English course that was focussing on Kiwi identity. For the rest of this year it has been sitting on my desk at work, so when I packed up for the year, I brought it home and finished it off myself. The set-up of Uncle Trev is very simple: a nameless young narrator, living in the 1930s or 40s, often sick at home, is regaled by the tall tales of his Uncle Trev. Uncle Trev will have some farfetched idea that will make farming life easier, or some farfetched adventure involvi...

Published by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc./Academy Chicago Publishers: USA, 1991. Volume 2 of 'Academy Mystery Novellas.' Preceded by ' Women Sleuths. ' Followed by ' Locked Room Puzzles. ' The second volume of a box set of four novella collections, Police Procedurals contains another four novellas, each focussing on a different detective. The four in question this time are: 'The Empty Hours' by Ed McBain. In this novella, the detective Steve Carella (not to be confused with modern actor Steve Carell) tries to solve the mystery of a woman found dead in her apartment, who has been making strange withdrawals and deposits of her own money into her own accounts. There are a number of elements to this case, and it feels the most like one that could become its own full novel. The ending is also odd in that it resolves the case nicely, while still feeling a little like a 'cheat' for this genre. 'The Sound of Murder' by Donald Westla...

Published by Frederick Warne & Co./Penguin Group Ltd: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 2001. Stories originally published between 1902-1918. Ever since our son Ezekiel was born last year, I've been wondering how to acknowledge the books I read with him. As a general rule, things that end up on this list take 'a while' to read; I don't include articles, or comics (sorry Asterix ), or picture books, because they are too short, and would also bulk this list out too much. But, reading to Ezekiel is a privilege, and is something I quite enjoy, and I would love to be able to share some of that enjoyment here. So, as a beginning, I've decided to include some of the 'larger' storybooks I read to Ezekiel. And maybe I might also include groups of picture books as a single entry, especially when they are ones that we really enjoy. ...When I say 'we' I mostly mean myself and Elise for now. At present Ezekiel's level of 'enjoyment' is based arou...

Published by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc./Academy Chicago Publishers: USA, 1991. Volume 1 of 'Academy Mystery Novellas.' This is a collection of four novellas (longer than a short story; shorter than a novel) bound together in a single volume, each on the theme of - you guessed it - women sleuths. The four novellas here are each quite different, with the only common elements being their mystery fiction genre and their use of a female protagonist. Even their time periods are different; the first three were originally published in the 1930s while the fourth was published in the 1980s. This means that the first three seem a bit dated at times - one case would have been easy to solve if DNA testing had been available. To give a brief review of each novella: 'The Toys of Death', by G.D.H. Cole and Margaret Cole, has a famous (and fairly unpleasant) author found dead in his study. Although a well-known detective is on the scene to begin with, and is able to prove...

Published by Hodder Moa Beckett Publishers Limited: Auckland, NZ, 1997. First published by Barry Crump Associates Ltd, 1988. A collection of short stories and poems by Crump. Some elements are a little dated/offensive by modern standards, but otherwise they are an interesting mix of stories, covering a lot more genres than I expected.  'Warm Beer' is a ghost story with a punch of an ending. 'That Way' is a dark drama involving a ruthless man quick to kill his pets. 'Cave' is a slightly supernatural poem involving possible time travel. More than one story has a protagonist contemplating, if not outright committing murder!  And of course, there are a number of the humorous slice-of-rural-life yarns that Crump was well known for. My favourites include 'Overheard in the Pub' which tells a shaggy dog story about a live fish being transported in a four-gallon kerosene tin through the outback, 'Double Scotch', in which the protagonist believes his publi...

Published by Picador: London, UK, 2001. First published 1971. An odd book, containing three different narratives (along with separate prologue and epilogue narratives) all on the theme of feeling displaced in a different culture and environment.  The first main story is told from the perspective of Santosh, an Indian servant who moves to America, only to find himself questioning his life choices. The next story follows a West Indian man who travels to England to support his brother, only to become disillusioned and eventually murder someone.  The third main narrative - which is the longest and also the titular 'In a Free State' - follows follows two English expats - Bobby and Linda - as they road trip south through a progressively more war-torn African nation. On the way we learn a lot about each character - mostly through their conversations - and witness their interactions with each other and those around them. As with many of the  Booker books I have read, there is an ...

Published in an omnibus edition "The Essential Crump Collection" containing: "A Good Keen Man"; " Bastards I Have Met "; " Wild Pork and Watercress ", by Hodder Moa Beckett Publishers Limited: Auckland, NZ, 2003. Originally published 1971. This is the third Barry Crump book I've reviewed here, after Gold and Greenstone and Wild Pork and Watercress . Unlike those other two books, this book (I'm not really all that comfortable with the title) is a collection of short stories, rather than an ongoing (loose) narrative. The thread tying these stories together is that they are all nominally (as the title suggests) b*stards that Crump has 'met'. He arranges the book alphabetically, with one b*stard for each letter of the alphabet (plus a few spares he adds in at the end), even going so far as to create a "Latin" name for each 'species' of b*stard he mentions (such as Bastardus loafus for a 'Lazy B*stard'). Desp...

Published by Souvenir Press Ltd.: London, 2001 (1994). This ridiculous and very short book retells a number of classic bedtime stories in a tongue-in-cheek version of "political correctness." As an example of what this looks like, when introducing the three bears, our narrator comments that "they all lived together anthropomorphically in a little cottage as a nuclear family. They were very sorry about this, of course, since the nuclear family has traditionally served to enslave womyn, instil a self-righteous moralism in its members, and imprint rigid notions of heterosexuality roles onto the next generation. Nevertheless, they tried to be happy and took steps to avoid these pitfalls, such as naming their offspring the non-gender-specific 'Baby'." (page 39) The stories within are all like this, and many diverge from the plot of the original quite substantially - usually in a manner that makes a joke about what 'politically correctness' might deem to b...

From an original idea by Siobhan Dowd. Published by Walker Books: London, England, 2012 (2011). This is one of those books I've heard people rave about, and now I understand why. Technically a children's book, and definitely written with (older) children in mind, A Monster Calls nevertheless confronts some very heavy topics. Conor faces bullying at school, constant nightmares, and now the nightly visit of a monster, but all of this pales alongside the fact that his mother is dying of cancer. I don't remember the word 'cancer' being actually written in the book, but it is very obvious that this is what she is suffering from. It is also very obvious from the beginning that Conor's mother is dying. The titular monster begins visiting Conor at 12.07 at night, and explains that Conor has 'called' him. The monster says it will now tell him three stories "from when I walked before" (page 45), and then Conor will tell the monster a final story, which w...

Published in ebook format by  William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers, August 2012. First published 1929. The second of two Agatha Christie short story collections I read online while researching a Year 10 mystery unit, Partners in Crime was also my first exposure to Tommy and Tuppence, an investigative duo who also are husband and wife. Their entry into Private Investigation is an interesting one - they are hired by the Government to impersonate the previous head of an investigative firm, who has been arrested for 'indiscrete dealings' including, it is assumed, espionage. Neither Tommy nor Tuppence have had any experience as Investigators, but Tommy in particular is a fan of mystery fiction and is eager to learn (though of the two, Tuppence has a greater immediate knack for the role). The collection of stories is more connected than most Christie short story collections, with earlier cases sometimes influencing latter ones in some way, and the way that Tommy in particular wan...

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 Longman Cheshire Pty Limited: Melbourne, Australia, 1989. Here is a book that I have read solely to get some ideas in putting together a unit of work for some of my English students. I selected the book from a pile being given away by my former Head-of-Department, and when I noticed that some of my students had an interest in mystery fiction, I pulled the book back out and read through it for ideas. For what I have been working on, it is a helpful, if slightly 'light' resource. McRobbie breaks the mystery genre down into its different elements - so chapters on such things as plot, settings and 'The Detective' - and intersperses them with original pieces of short mystery fiction. As someone who enjoys the 'whodunnit' genre, these stories are not very complicated, but then, that's not the point! Although for most of the stories I found myself going, "Well, of course its that person, they just said [insert incriminating statement here]," ...

Published by The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited: Middlesex, England, 1977 (1967). After a few 'heavier' or 'denser' books, I felt the need for something a bit 'lighter', and so pulled an older anthology off my bookshelf where it has been sitting for years. This is definitely an older- style book as well - very English and mildly dated, though not distractingly so (the most notable example is one character who keeps saying "I dig it"). There are eight stories within, and although they are all fairly straightforward, I was surprised that some took a slightly darker turn! High Quest by Donne Avenell stands out to me as the most unexpected of the stories. We follow John Killick as he travels to the Alps, retracing the footsteps of his grandfather, Henry Killick. Henry and his climbing companion Albert Blythe were killed trying to climb the north face of  'the Henker', which so far no climbers have successfully scaled. When Killick arrives in the r...

Published by Random House New Zealand: Auckland, NZ, 2002. I'm starting to get a taste for non-fiction Alphabet Soup books; who knows what I'll pick for Z! With a little extra time on my hands while Elise and I recover from Covid, I've been able to get through this 10 person biography about prominent New Zealanders - or at very least, people with some connection to New Zealand. I say prominent, but there were a few individuals covered in this work that I had never heard of, and that is coming from a New Zealander with an interest in history. Not a full-on passion I guess. I mean, if I was full-on passionate about history I'm sure I would have heard of these people before, right? What makes this different from a regular biography is that the majority of the chapters were originally written as New Zealand Geographic articles. This results in an unusual feel; each chapter tells us the story of the individual in question (or at least part of it) while also describing the...

Published by Arrow Books: London, 2018 (2008). First published 1925. After the last few Alphabet Soup books it seemed time to read something a little bit lighter. I've have Wodehouse recommended to me before, so decided this was the perfect opportunity to find out a bit more about him. Wodehouse wrote in the genre of comedy, and if the quotations from various famous comedians within the cover are anything to go by, he is one of the better comedy writers to have written comedy! Carry On, Jeeves is a collection of 'Jeeves' stories released by Wodehouse. I thought it was the first collection to be released (as the first story tells of Jeeves being hired), but apparently it is not. Each chapter is its own self-contained story, telling of some problem arising for Wooster (Jeeves' employer) which Jeeves invariably helps solve. Jeeves is Wooster's personal man-servant, who is not above showing his disapproval of Wooster's poor dress sense, nor even of undermining his ...