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Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding | Review

Title: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 368

Rating: 3.5/5

This isn’t Agatha Christie’s finest work, but it’s still worth reading if you’re an aficionado, especially if you actually pick it up around Christmas like I did. It’s only really the title story that’s actually Christmas-themed, but I did think it was a pretty good one with a few different surprises in store.

Most of the other stories were only so-so, but I did enjoy Greenshaw’s Folly, the only one of these stories to feature Miss Marple instead of Hercule Poirot. Poirot is fine, but he’s not my favourite. He was actually okay in these stories, but I don’t think the cases themselves were the most intriguing. I actually forgot a couple of them as soon as I read them, although there were a few good ones too.

Another standout for me was The Mystery of the Spanish Chest, in part because I felt like I’d read something similar to it before. It’s always hard to tell with Christie (and even Conan Doyle) because they’ve been imitated so many times by so many different people that it can be hard to tell whether they created the clichés or whether they fell into them.

I was actually talking about this with my Uncle Carl because he’s a big Christie fan himself. I’ve been trying to pick up every book she ever wrote and some of them were only published in America. That means that some of the stories are duplicated or even included in different versions.

All in all then, this is a decent enough collection to read if you like short stories and if you’re a fan of Hercule Poirot. If you’re more of a Marple fan like I am, you may be better off going for something like Miss Marple’s Final Cases, which I thought was fantastic. Those short stories showed off Christie at her finest, whereas these ones feel more average, if such a term can be applied to Christie’s oeuvre. And this book was still pretty good, it just wasn’t anywhere near her best. So yeah.

Click here to buy The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.

Charles Bukowski – The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps | Review

Title: The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps

Author: Charles Bukowski

Type: Poetry

Page Count/Review Word Count: 360

Rating: 4*/5

Charles Bukowski – The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps

This collection of Bukowski’s poetry was published after his death – the author left selections of his work behind to be published after his demise, and this is one of them. If you’ve read Bukowski before then you know roughly what to expect – irreverent examinations of life as a down and out, with plenty of gamblers, women and horses. It’s mostly autobiographical, and Bukowski’s ever-present wit and cynicism shines through, throughout.

There’s plenty going on here, and the good thing about that is that it gives you a wide field of view of the world that Bukowski lived in, and it’s the sort of thing that you simply can’t find anywhere else. Bukowski’s work was unique, and not just because it’s so self-reflective that you can see his thoughts on his poetry evolving alongside the work itself. And here, you get to see another side of him – the cat-lover. He had a few of them as pets, and his poems about them are genuinely touching.

Now, I wouldn’t say that this is the best Bukowski book to start with, but that’s not a reflection of the quality of the poems – it’s just that I’d recommend beginning with some earlier work and then moving on to this after you’ve read a book or two of that, and maybe one of his novels. But either way, when you’re reading a book like this then you know roughly what to expect, and that’s a good thing – Bukowski’s work is consistently good, which is great for readers but can make it a little difficult to recommend any one book above any of his others.

Overall though, this is an intriguing read and a mind-opening poetry book that I’d recommend to anyone who likes to think for themselves. Even if you don’t agree with Bukowski, he’ll make you examine your own feelings as you go, and he’ll do it all with beautiful language along the way. His words are simple but effective, and that’s why I like his work.