This was another eventful reading month. Except it mostly just looks like that, because 2 of the books are ones that I started in January and just didn't finish until Feb. Now there's often a book or so that will cross months, but both of these are books I started pretty early in the month. Agnes Sharp was a Christmas gift that I started in early Jan but because it is a paperback, took me much longer to get through than an audiobook that I can pickup when I'm doing other things. And Sherlock Holmes took a while because it's relatively long and I was mostly just reading it to my son while he fell asleep, which meant just a few pages a night
Number of books read
6
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann
The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell
Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I hadn't read this in a long time but I wasn't quite into one of my other reads this month (5B) and was looking for something that I would enjoy and also that was currently available from the library (often a determining factor in what I read). It had been many years since I read this one, but luckily I enjoyed it just as much this time around, which is always a worry with books you read and enjoyed a long time ago. I listened to the audiobook and think Stephen Fry does a great job reading, though I think this book probably works better being read because I feel you can really enjoy classic lines like "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."
Rating: 4.75 stars
The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger
The book I was reading when I thought "I'm not enjoying this" and picked up Hitchhiker. But I didn't return it to the library right away (no one was waiting for it) so I decided to give it another try. I got into to to an extent though not without some issues.* A young artistic couple (she's a writer, he's an actor) live in a crappy apt in NYC but inherit a beautiful building from the husband's late uncle, who they had been taking care of in his old age. But the wife Rosie feels like something is off from day one. Her husband seemed to already know they'd be getting the apartment (despite a battle with his cousin over the will), the doorman seems to know a little too much and why are there cameras and intercoms everywhere? But Rosie is writing about the building so living there seems like a good way to get material. It's creepy at times but there seems to be a lot thrown at the wall, some of which sticks, some of which not so much. And while I don't need the protagonists to be genius who can see every twist coming or behave totally rationally in intense circumstances, I'd like some degree of awareness.
Rating: 2.8 stars
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Another book I read to the little monster at night to put him to sleep. He was less into this one than A Christmas Carol, probably because he already knows that story), but it achieved the goal of helping get him to sleep. I partially picked it cos I thought he'd appreciate a mystery (he's seen almost every variation of Scooby-Doo) and also because I had recently re-watched some episodes of the BBC Sherlock. I've read original Sherlock Holmes stories before but reading it now really brought home how dissimilar the BBC Sherlock and the OG Sherlock are. BBC Sherlock is a dick who yells at people (including children) who bring him mysteries that he deems boring. OG Sherlock tells a person who comes to see him with a seemingly simple mystery that no problem is too small and Watson comments how he always knows the right tone to take with a person. OG all the way, even if, tbh, some of the mysteries are...less mysterious but that could be more an issue with the times (they are a-changin'). This collection included stories like "A Scandal in Bohemia" (aka Irene Adler's story), "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb", "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches".
Rating: 4 stars
The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann
A Christmas gift from Tom who was looking for books that are like Thursday Murder Club. Agnes has turned her family home into a place where fellow seniors can live as an alternative to an old folks home, where they take care of each other and don't have to worry about dying without dignity. A dead body is discovered next door, a murder, perhaps a home invasion gone wrong. But this could be good for them because perhaps they could use this murder next door to help cover up the dead body they're currently dealing with. The household, who each bring their own pasts and their own unique skills, to solving this murder. Of course, they all bring their own faults too, many age related. Getting around, remembering things, isn't quite so easy as the years creep on. While it's not quite TMC it is a fun (and sometimes funny) mystery that doesn't wrap up quite as cleanly as I would have liked but I'll still seek out others from this author
Rating: 4.25 stars
The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell
So here's the thing. I liked this book. I liked listening to it. I thought the topics she talked about were interesting (Stan culture! TikTok therapists!). But I am having trouble telling you what exactly this book is about. It's more memoir than her other books (Cultish is a fav of mine) and each chapter reads more like its own stand alone piece that never really builds to an overarching point.
Each chapter talks about different bias/effect/psych 101 term like the IKEA effect, overconfidence bias, sunk cost fallacy, taking examples from her personal life, from the news, and from interviews with experts to talk about what they are and why we fall into them. Each topic did feel a little light on the research side and as I said, more memoir than I expected, but I still enjoyed.
Each chapter talks about different bias/effect/psych 101 term like the IKEA effect, overconfidence bias, sunk cost fallacy, taking examples from her personal life, from the news, and from interviews with experts to talk about what they are and why we fall into them. Each topic did feel a little light on the research side and as I said, more memoir than I expected, but I still enjoyed.
Rating: 3.75
Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes
First thing first. I was filling out my book spreadsheet, as one does, and I was looking up info about the author. Goodreads just tells me some other stuff he's written, that he's originally from the UK. Great. But I notice the name and think to myself "huh, that's funny. Same name as the guy who wrote the Pina Colada song. Weird coincidence." Then I go to lookup the Pina Colada guy to make sure I got the name right and what do you know. It's the same person! This has 0 bearing on the book, but I thought about it constantly. Plus it made me think of this scene from Always Sunny.
Anyway, I loved this. What if there was a school that taught you how to murder, sorry, I mean "delete" someone? You have to have a good reason sure. You have to show that the world would be better without this person, no one would mourn them, that no one else would get hurt. But get past that and then it's lessons about how to off someone in, admittedly, very convoluted manners but isn't that the fun part? Cliff Iverson finds himself on the mystery campus at the behest of an unknown Sponsor (murder school isn't cheap) after unsuccessfully trying to kill his boss. He finds himself at a school where he could very easily be the target of another student and he has to learn how to plan the perfect murder. The story is about half boarding school story, taking place at the McMasters school, while the second half follows three students as they go about trying to finish their graduate thesis (aka, murder). It was a lot of fun and I would happily read about other students at this school and see their final theses.
Rating: 5 stars
Total pages read
2,169
Fiction
83%
Female authors
50%
BIPOC authors
0%
US authors
33%
Rereads
17%
Translation
17%
Format
audiobook: 67%
ebook: 17%
paperback: 17%
Where'd I get the book
gift: 17%
library: 83%
Decade published
1890s: 17%
1970s: 17%
2020s: 67%
Resolution books
67%
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is written by a UK author and published pre-2000 (1979)
The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp is written by a German writer and while she does live in the UK and set her book there it is also translated from German
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is written by a UK author and published pre-2000 (1892)
Murder Your Employer is written by a UK author
*In case you didn't want any spoilers or didn't want to ruin the flow above, here's one of my main issues with the book. The couple quickly realize they really can't afford the maintenance fees on this apartment and if they did move in they could only afford to be there for ~6mo. Which should have been the end but they decide to move in. For awhile I thought there'd be something about how they'd figure out how to make it work long-term, but it comes out later in a bit of a throwaway line that they're sort of planning on moving out when they run out of money. Seems like a waste of time to me but fine. You deal with NYC real estate multiple times in one year. Enjoy. BUT while they're there, all of the creepy stuff is happening and it turns out it's because the neighbors want their apartment (or at least some of the creepy stuff. Again, a lot thrown at the wall). Their apartment that they're going to have to move out of in a couple months. Something they've discussed in their apartment that has been bugged so those neighbors can hear. And yet the neighbors still go to all this trouble when they could have...waited 12 weeks. A lot of the book is like this, where it feels like the author set up something and then just forgot about it. Or wanted the creepiness to be due to multiple things, to which I wanted to yell "Pick a lane!"
