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Yes

well

>__o you better

I... I still have to read it. Damn university. Also tumblr. Black hole of time, that place.

Well ... I ...

Hm.

"I have often noticed… that in books of that kind it is frequently assumed that any given fact can admit of only one single deduction, and that invariably the right one. Nobody else is capable of drawing any deductions at all but the author's favourite detective, and the ones he draws (in the books where the detective is capable of drawing deductions at all which, alas, are only too few) are invariably right.”

So, I finished The Poisoned Chocolates Case. And, mind you, I've spoken at length on my issue with detective fiction trickery that this book dabbled in early on and my disdain for it generally speaking. With the book completely finished, I must say that I am perfectly fine with how the book presents itself throughout in despite, or even due to, this.

I will say, without spoilering as much as I can, that it still is quite the normal, traditional detective fiction tale despite how it may appear due to the setup. Perhaps not the most fairest of fair play but not tremendously outside the realm of it. You'll learn more about the case from the start and until the resolution and you can piece together where you should be going. There's always going to be new news, yes, but many of it is within the realm of your own possibility to get to. You're always left able to conjecture and then the proof crops up to affirm or deny; to sit on your laurels because "new information" rendered your assumptions wrong is to be a sore loser at this game of the mind.

This book is less the case of being able to solve it at the start and to see if your theory holds up but, rather, play along with it as if you were the seventh of the circle and see where your theory gets you from the start. See where it is at after the first night. The second. The third. And so on. Picture yourself as an observer within rather than an outside force that is seeing if the detective(s) get to your conclusion; you're piecing it together as their mental exercise pans out, not an omnipotent force waiting for them to get to where you are.

This is less of a massive spoiler as it won't mention the story in and of itself, just something humorous I find of it in lieu of the above, so it's merely hidden. The plot of the story itself is left intact: .

As for the book itself, it lingers a bit early on and didn't grab me initially. A few solutions in, however, and it was a whirlwind frenzy of intrigue and interest, though I wager part of that was due to the shift in the focus of the solutions due to my own brainstorming of the case. The final half of the book went down almost non-stop.

Also, I fear that I type out posts quite like British authors apparently. Quite so.

And so, real spoilers.

Despite your primarily negative (well actually I think it's half positive, half negative) review and maybe because of the negatives mentioned (along with the positives) - I'm going to see if I can't find and read that book at my local library and if not, then I'm just going to order it. It sounds good and while you might not be impressed with detective fiction I'm still trying to dabble in it and enjoy it (my hold on Murder at Styles by Agatha Christie just became available yesterday as a matter of fact and I'm anxious to plow into it). ^_^ It does sound like a very interesting book.

Wait, not impressed with detective fiction? My complaints were due to the nature of it against detective fiction expectations. Which I'm pretty much on the opposite side of the fence on now, hence my little blurb on the how the book should be approached. I do so quite enjoy my detective fiction and I purchased my Kindle primarily out of the hope of getting more works from the Golden Age.

Wordsmithing was more commentary on much ado about nothing writing styles, though this is still far better done than other books of the period. It grew on me over time but, at the start, it feels a bit wordy for the sake of wordy and interferes with getting to the meat of the plot.

@Mysterious Affair at Styles - A good debut by Christie, and remarkably well done of a book and detective novel itself when one takes the history of how the book came into being in mind (a bet that she could do a whodunnit under what we now accept as basic tenets of the genre: The reader and detective share the same clues).

Well, I was calling to mind the prior post on the subject and the .

The Patterson novels are pleasure reads for me; they fill the niche between detective fiction and pure action. Whodunnit thrillers. Detective Fiction is still more my taste, perhaps just out of love of the image of reclining with the book, pipe in hand and head full of mysteries.

As for choosing, I get what you mean. I started here as this case is held up as one of the best of the Age and I can see why.

I also quite enjoyed some of the discussion by the Circle that is commentary on the genre itself. The quote in the review post is from one of the characters, a reader of novels and quite separated from the field itself (the rest are far more associated; four are authors, two of which write the stuff, and then we have the lawyer).

For instance:
“You state a thing so emphatically that the reader does not think of questioning the assertion. 'Here,' says the detective, 'is a bottle of red liquid and here is a bottle of blue. If these two liquids turn out to be ink, then we know that they were purchased to fill up the empty ink - pots in the library as surely as if we had read the dead man's very thoughts.' Whereas the red ink might have been bought by one of the maids to dye a jumper, and the blue by the secretary for his fountain - pen; or a hundred other such explanations. But any possibilities of that kind are silently ignored. Isn't that so?"

Quite so indeed.

Quite so. ^_^ Looking forward to future discussions with you scy. Ok time for work now. *sigh*

Mysterious Affair at Styles is doing the one thing that frustrates me as much as Sherlock Holmes: the detective finds things but does not reveal them to the narrator. Thus I feel like I have not been offered all of the facts to come to my own conclusion. I didn't have this problem with Murder at the Vicarage. Do you know what I'm referring to Scy? And can you tell me if all of the Hercule Poirot books are like this?

It is still an interesting book but... I just feel like I might as well be another Mr. Hastings following the detective around until the detective is ready to even bother to reveal something.

However, it's not COMPLETELY terrible since 99% of the items are talked about - he just doesn't tell you what's important. But the teacup contents is pissing me off. Even 1% of missing facts is intolerable.

There's usually some details left out, but usually nothing that is ever not made aware of later or is not used in the solution itself (or, rather, not the key piece of evidence in the solution). Fair play does not denote that you get every single detail possible, it's that there's no analysis done by the detective that you cannot have gotten yourself. That is to say, the detective does not see something and notes it as a clue because of a use as a poison (bitter of almonds, for instance) but that is never expressed itself.

Christie is rather well done about sharing details for the reader, though I haven't read every single book of hers. Don't get hung up on not being told things, be more attentive at what you are told and what they mean. She won't pull the wool over your eyes and have a conclusion literally out of nowhere.

*nods* you're right. And I was just thinking "maybe Poirot hasn't told me what was in the teacups YET. I just have to be patient and learn and be attentive." I will say this, though :3 I absolutely LOVE Poirot's character. Expressive, fun, and kinda haphazard, but highly observant. So, if nothing else, it's going to be a fun read. Which is somewhat what Miss Marple lacked. The story itself was fun but Marple didn't particularly strike me as a fantastic character - a good one, but not fantastic.

So I finally read that new John Green book. The one I can't talk about. I'm going to explode. IT IS SO GOOD. I laughed so much. I even laughed right after the stupid thing had me sobbing. SOMEONE SPEED UP TIME SO I CAN TALK ABOUT IT.

I picked up and started reading a recent purchase of mine, An Incomplete Education... I don't think I'll keep reading it. It's disappointingly written. The information is nice to have handy, but the authors are so busy being snarky and trying to be clever that they just come off as pretentious and make the whole thing a very unsatisfying read. I'll just stick with my Penguin one-volume encyclopedia for now. I prefer the dry facts over this biased bunk.

Next up, A Passion For Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring For, and Appreciating Books. : 3

EDIT:

I have a question for Kino! How do you organize/subcategorize your biography section in your store? I've inherited our biography section from a staff member who moved out of state and I have been given full discretion over what stays and what goes. Our section is so subcategorized that I've noticed most of our biography readers can't really ever find what they're looking for. Hell, sometimes I can't find what they're looking for, even though I know it's there!

"I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot."

The Shadow of the Wind doing a good job of making me feel bad for getting no reading done in the past week :/