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Olga Tokarczuk – Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead | Review

Title: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Author: Olga Tokarczuk

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 272

Rating: 4.5/5

This is potentially a late entry into my list of favourite books of the year, and so I’m definitely glad that I picked it up. I think I heard about it from BookTube, although I can’t remember where I first saw it. I mentioned it to my girlfriend in passing and then she grabbed me a copy for Christmas, and it turned out that Charlie Heathcote was reading it at the same time, so we did a buddy read.

It’s a Polish book that’s been translated, a sort of noir-ish literary fiction murder mystery, and it has some deep takes on life and philosophy that we can all learn from. It’s one of those rare books with a delicious mouth feel where for me at least, it was just a pleasure to read all of the way through. I didn’t want it to stop, but I guess eventually and inevitably, it had to.

If you’re looking for philosophical fiction with a poetic feel, you’re in luck. It also scores a few diversity points if that’s your thing, being written by a woman and originally in Polish. But those are all little bonuses, the icing on a delicious cake that I’m super glad I heard about.

I have no idea whether Charlie liked it as much as I did, but I’m sure he’ll be posting about it on Goodreads and on his BookTube channel, so you can find out there. Enjoy!

Learn more about Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

Agatha Christie – The Seven Dials Mystery | Review

Title: The Seven Dials Mystery

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 4/5

I was taken by surprise with this one, and that’s a good thing. I’ve been getting through the last few unread Agatha Christie books on my pile and so I have a sort of automatic tendency to assume that I’ve left the worst ones until last. That was definitely not true in this case.

Weirdly, for the first time in my life, I found myself relating to the murder victim in Agatha Christie book, mainly because he was something of a spoiled young man who had a habit of sleeping in late. The core plot basically revolves around a plot that some of his friends hatch to plant a bunch of “alarum” clocks beneath his bed to wake him up nice and early.

For me, this is in the top 20% Christie books, and that’s saying something. There’s a lot of good characterisation here, a fun little mystery for you to enjoy and just overall a lot of that classic Christie goodness. You can tell she was in her prime.

Learn more about The Seven Dials Mystery.