Elizabeth > Recent Status Updates

oh man. move aside, six-word tragedy "for sale: baby shoes, never worn," there's a new contender in the house.

"reagan's career could have ended there."

'Bout halfway through, and so far it's been nothing new or groundbreaking. Several different (male) authors have contributed, so the integrity varies. Very European-centric, overwhelmingly male centric, but if you want to make it fun, you could say that proves that white men made almost all the mistakes in history and therefore shouldn't be trusted.

genuinely hilarious, Very Online, and much deeper in scope than i thought it would be. a+ work.

oh! damn, okay.

would love to eat a meal at this guy's house sometime.

also i was actively working with seed inventory when this book was published, so every time the book'd say something like, "unfortunately, this variety isn't available for sale -" and I'd blurt, out loud, "what, yes, it is!!" "- except in america." "thank you."

started this one feeling that it would be a nice break from all the agatha christie i've been downing, only for Leaf to come in on her second appearance to start talking about how wonderful Lady Mallowan's murder mysteries are.

Mallowan, of course, being agatha christie's married name.

A short listen, only about three hours, and honestly a nice palate cleanse after all the very very british agatha christie lmao

me, as soon as my library hold comes through: oooo is this the fanfiction one??
me, five seconds later, hearing "adapted by charles osborne": yessss. you rotate that blorbo, charles.

2/2 and then SOMETIMES, when it's the fourth, fifth, or twelfth time she's done it in as many chapters, you sit there like "okay, agatha, were you struggling to hit a word count here?"

So I'm about, what, 55 books into the ACEU (agatha christie extended universe,) and can safely point out a favorite trick of hers is long, rambling dialogues from tertiary characters. narratively, this adds character or local flavor to a story - and, in her earlier works at least, getting a "back in my day" ramble from, say, a devon-accented character was as diverse as she got - and sometimes hold a buried clue. 1/2

although, in follow-up to the previous update, the internet's insisting "march of folly" was first published in 1984, so either my sources (serhii plokhy's "nuclear folly" & ada ferrer's "cuba") are wrong, or i somehow got this book confused with "the proud tower".

EITHER WAY, everyone say thank you barbara tuchman for preventing nuclear war. some other ppl helped, i guess, but mostly: barbara.

my favorite bit of trivia about "the march of folly" and "guns of august" is that both had a significant impact on the presidency of John F. Kennedy, to the point that he sent copies to all his generals during the cuban missile crisis.

so i'm imagining jfk standing in front of his war council, pointing derry girls style, like, "did the soviets plant nuclear missiles in cuba? SWEAR ON BARBARA. SWEAR IT."

oh! it's so nice to finally meet hasting's wife! especially since i read everything out of order and so already know that she is /never mentioned again./

every agatha christie book comes with something you've just got to put down to the author being from the victorian age and move on. this includes using "ejaculate" as a synonym for "shout" and "pussy" as a synonym for "old woman," along with a host of cringe notions about women and the global south. this one's really testing me tho with the "girls these days are asking to be raped." actual quote.

siddhartha mukherjee: and then watson met crick and fell instantly in love
me: :o
siddhartha mukherjee: it was a platonic love, but --
me: no no no, don't walk back the truth. say your piece.

I want to pause here and thank Jonathan Meiburg for narrating his own book AND unhesitatingly doing his own bird calls. delightful.

It's strange to think agatha christie lived long enough to see computers and incorporate them into her stories. not as strange and off-putting as her still using "Jewish-nosed" derogatorily, but still strange.

oh! this one is very well done. i did have to pause about half-way through in order to google when, exactly, agatha christie finalized her divorce from her cheating husband, because the flow-of-consciousness is very 👀 😶

😬😬

between the flowers in the attic-esque sadistic mother character, the orientalism, the zionism, and the dated sweeping condemnation of women's lib, i don't think i'll reread this one. worth reading once though. i bet there's a paper somewhere analyzing all the ways those -isms intertwine w/ each other.

this one genuinely had my heart pounding at the end and i 100% fell for the red herring, only figured out the murderer about two paragraphs before the narrator. i haven't guessed correctly yet.

i'd read elsewhere that as she got older, christie got wiser about her -isms. this is ... er, not one of those. be forewarned.

oh! i was incorrect!! i was thinking of the twist in 'strangers on a train,' so count me double surprised by the twist in this lmao

somehow, despite having a mother who owned the full collection and all biographies of agatha christie, even the critical ones, murder on the orient express is the only i'm going into where i know the twist beforehand. the others i've read so far have all caught me off guard.

oh this one is /creepy/ creepy. got it.

I'd read and really liked Brannen's previous book and was excited to see this one published this year, but the mood is definitely more keanu reeves smoking meme. obvs books are allowed to be bummers, but i'm only getting through this one in small sips.

not unbiased, so as long as you've got one eye on that, it's /fascinating/. somehow i managed never to learn korolev had been a survivor of stalin's purges, which, you know, played a significant role in how he approached rocket science. WILD.

I understand that "inflation" is the right word for what the universe is doing and it makes sense to use it so often here, but ........ i am just ... too chronically online .....

oh we love deep dives into niche specializations in this house

ohhhhhh yeah, okay, this is a classic for a reason.

love that bill schutt is out here making science accessible and fun to learn but i espeCIALLY love that he occassionally just pauses the story to go "okay here's an idea for a grad student research project. take notes."