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Agatha Christie – An Autobiography | Review

Title: An Autobiography

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 560

Rating: 4*/5

Agatha Christie – An Autobiography

Wow, this was pretty epic. I mean, it’s a long old book based on just the page count alone, but it’s also super dense with tiny writing and hardly any gaps between the different pages. That means that it takes a huge time investment if you want to get through it and if you have the same edition that I do, you’re also going to need some decent lighting.

This also isn’t the book for you unless you’re a serious Agatha Christie fan. That’s because by its very nature, we spend a lot of time learning about Christie’s early life and her personal life, which really won’t mean much to you unless you want to find out more about what makes her tick. It also places much less focus on her individual books than I was expecting, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, we get to see how Christie saw herself, and that’s not necessarily as a novelist. It took her a long time to realise that she could be a writer by profession.

We also don’t get to see what happened when she famously went missing, although that’s hardly a surprise because she said in interviews that she wasn’t too sure herself. But the good news is that Christie’s writing is so entrancing, as it always is, that she could be talking about absolutely anything and it wouldn’t matter. As it is, she talks a lot about the society that she lived in and covers everything from the effects of the two World Wars to what the family unit looked like back in the early half of the 20th century.

Agatha Christie

Christie was also something of an adventurer, travelling around to Syria and Iraq, flying in an aeroplane less than ten years after the Wright brothers demonstrated their first powered flight and even becoming one of the first English women to go surfing. She really lived a remarkably full life and this book is the result of that all. Sure, it pretty much comes to a stop after the end of the Second World War and misses out much of her later life, but then it would have been a massive book it had kept on going and it was already published posthumously as is.

My enjoyment of this book was also boosted by the fact that I buddy read it with a BookTube friend of mine called Bookslikewoah. She’s been doing “Project Poirot” and reading a bunch of Agatha Christie for that, and so it’ll be interesting to see what she makes of it. We’re both big Agatha Christie fans and the perfect audience for a book like this. As to whether I’d recommend it to my mum? Probably not, and she’s a big fan of Agatha Christie and detective/crime novels too.

All in all then, I really enjoyed reading this book and I feel super accomplished because I finished it. I feel like I got to know Christie a lot more, but I also feel as though this background information will help me to get more from her other books when I get to them. I’m also glad I read it because this was the single biggest obstacle to stop me from reading her entire bibliography.

Agatha Christie Quote

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Stephen King – The Dark Tower | Review

Title: The Dark Tower

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 710

Rating: 8/10

Stephen King – The Dark Tower

And so it ends. This book is the seventh and final book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, although you could count The Wind Through the Keyhole as an eighth book if you were so inclined. Either way, this rounds off the series and reveals the end of the story, as well as what happens when Roland finally reaches the Dark Tower.

I’ve got to be honest, the first couple of hundred pages seemed to drag for me, and I found it difficult to get into the story line. But a little later on, it got good again, and we were soon rolling along the path of the Beam and towards the Tower and the Crimson King. It’s certainly true that a lot happens here – we get to learn more about Mordred, the anti-Roland, and we learn the ultimate fate of each of the characters that we’ve met along the way.

And so, of course, we have to deal with death – in a series like this, with so many characters, there’s no way that all of them are going to make it to the end. But don’t worry – I’m not going to tell you who dies, because that’s ka’s will, and you’ll find out all about it in your own time. That’ll be fun!

Stephen King

What I will say is that I saw the ending coming around 50 pages before it happened, which was a little annoying because the whole series was around 3,500 pages long. That said, it didn’t ruin it – if anything, it felt just right. It’s hard to explain it – if you’ve read the rest of your series then you’ll know what I mean, because it felt just like it was meant to be.

Another thing that I ought to mention is the size of the book, and the print. See, my copy doesn’t look as thick as some of the other books, and after the relatively slim size of Song of Susannah, the book that comes before this, I was expecting to blitz through this pretty quickly. But then I started reading it, and I realised that the print is so small that it’s actually difficult to focus on. It’s a book that you’ll need to read in the day, and not because it’s scary – it’s because it’s so damn difficult to see, and you’ll need good lighting if you want to be able to make out the print.

But other than that, I was happy with this – it was a great read, especially during the latter half of the book, and it forces you to keep reading until the end. As the reader, you feel like a part of Roland’s ka-tet, and when the ending rolls around, you feel like a part of the team. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll start to see the symbolism all over the place – roses, towers, and ka. After a while, it all starts to feel real, which made me want to call in sick because I figured that this ain’t Mid-World, so it doesn’t matter.

Stephen King Quote

Overall, then, I’d say that The Dark Tower is a satisfying conclusion to the series, but it’s far from the best one on the market. I can’t explain why, but The Drawing of the Three was my favourite of the lot so far. This one does a good job of continuing the series, but it’s far from exceptional – good, but not great.

But I’d still recommend it, especially to lovers of fantasy and science fiction, as well as people who just appreciate good storytelling. See, the thing with The Dark Tower is that it transcends genre, and for anyone who appreciates a good read, this is good stuff. Unfortunately, you do need to stick with it, and to spend a lot of time ploughing through the pages.

Luckily, it’s a pleasure – even despite the difficulties I faced throughout it, I’m glad that I stuck with it. In fact, I’ve already started reading The Wind Through the Keyhole, the final Dark Tower novel, which was written after the series was completed and which fits somewhere in the middle of it. I’d recommend it – this too!