Tag: Fact

Agatha Christie – They Came to Baghdad | Review

July 21, 2020
Authors A-E (By Surname)Fiction

Title: They Came to Baghdad

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 4.5/5

I liked pretty much everything about this one and so I’m super happy that I finally got to it. One of the main things that I enjoyed was actually the way that the location names captured the time it was written, including the H at the end of Basrah and the fact that London Heathrow was called Heath Row Aerodrome.

Then there’s the killer murder mystery at the heart of this, along with the kickass female lead who isn’t about to let gender norms stop her from having adventures. The result is a super fun little murder mystery with a lot going for it, and I don’t think there’d be anything wrong with it being your first Christie because it works quite nicely as a standalone.

And that’s your answer to the “would I recommend it?” question, so a little more on the why. I just think Christie’s great when she writes about other countries, which is one of the reasons why I love Death on the Nile so much.

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Isaac Asimov – Where Do We Go From Here? (Book #2) | Review

July 9, 2020
Authors A-E (By Surname)Fiction

Title: Where Do We Go From Here? (Book #2)

Author: Isaac Asimov

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 200

Rating: 3/5

This book was interesting enough, as most Isaac Asimov books are, but it’s also true that he was a better writer than he was an editor and so I would have preferred a collection of his own short stories as opposed to those by other authors.

Still, there are some decent enough shorts in here, and we also have an introduction by Asimov and a little additional context on what we’re reading thanks to his notes on each story. Perhaps more unusual was the fact that he also included a bunch of questions for his readers to try to answer. Some of them were so intense that I couldn’t even understand the question and would have had no hope of answering.

Overall, this is probably the weakest of the Asimov books that I’ve come across so far, and even a contribution by both himself (a story I’d already read) and Arthur C. Clarke wasn’t enough to save it. Glad I read it, but I won’t re-read and it was eh.

Learn more about Where Do We Go From Here? (Book #2).