Ok to Judge by Its Cover: Classic Penguin, Cover to Cover | 2016

This book is so cool!

"Within these pages the artists and writers involved tell you what it was like for them to dive into this material and with their hands, their minds, give it a new continuity to propel these timeless themes and stories into the world you and I are now occupying. You will see what did not make it onto the covers, rough ideas, outtakes, the excellent and the my-god-man-what-were-you-thinking?

This book is a celebration of the marriage of beautiful Art & Design and powerful iconic Literature. There will always be ways to experience things anew -- the fun is finding those who want to help you do exactly that." - Paul Buckley, Classic Penguin: Cover to Cover, Introduction 

The Sum of It:

Obvi this is not a book of crime fiction, but we're considering this post a public service announcement for all the book folk out there (and their friends and family on the lookout for a good birthday gift this year)! 

I'm pretty sure we're all book lovers here, so it seems safe to say that we not only enjoy their contents, the moving, clever, insightful, beautiful words that make up their stories, but we also love them for their exteriors. As we've gotten to know #bookstagram, we've seen so many posts about readers finding yet another beautiful copy of a favorite book, often even posting photos of many different copies of a beloved tale together. This book is an ode to that love, of books as objects of beauty, in addition to their intrinsic value. It travels through a wide range of beautiful classic Penguin covers, from the iconic orange bands to recent redesigns of classic authors, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Graham Greene, and so many more. In addition to showcasing the beautiful covers, this book allows the designers to talk about their work, how they approached each cover, and in many cases shares earlier drafts of different covers as well as thoughts from editors and designers on how the final choice was made. It's super fascinating to learn more about the process of bringing book covers to life in such a way that really speaks to the book's themes and content, and draws in readers. 

The YOA Treatment:

It was such fun to pore through this beautiful book. While I've seen many of these covers in real life, it was so cool to catch a glimpse of others I haven't had a chance to see yet, and add them to my wishlist! It was also just so interesting to learn about how an editor pairs a designer with a particular book or author, knowing that either the designer has a style that reflects the writer's prose, or does a great job with images that will really parallel a book's themes. Even though we're all well familiar with the old adage, "don't judge a book by its cover," so often a cover's look is the first step to encouraging a reader to pick it up, and check out what's inside. It's wonderful to read these designer's thoughts on the deep responsibility they feel to accurately reflect an author's work so that the cover functions as a window onto the words inside. We just know you'll love spending some time with this book over a cup of tea or a glass of wine, and it will make you pay even more attention to the beautiful covers that pull you in! 

- E. 

The Year of Agatha: Phase Two | What Comes Next

Hello all,

Because we have enjoyed delving into the world of books and mystery so much, we aren't really going to let the Year of Agatha end! Here are our plans for The Year of Agatha, phase two, in 2017:

1) More reading, blogging, and social media about mysteries and thrillers!
Agatha is the Queen of Mystery, and at this point is widely regarded as one of the absolute greatest writers of crime fiction of all time. She has inspired legions of fans, and many of those fans have gone on to write their own intricate, clever, fascinating mystery and thriller novels. In 2017, we've decided to dig further into the genre. We'll be posting about our reads each month here on the blog, and on our other accounts, just as we've been doing with Agatha's work this year. We plan to read contemporary as well as classic mysteries so we can learn more about the genre and continue to explore what it is about a good mystery that continues to draw people in. Though we've appreciated the challenge, the pace of a book a week has been intense, so while we'll still remain just as active on social media, we are planning to shoot for each of us reading at least one mystery or thriller a month.

2) Our very own mystery novel!
The project has also required both of us to write on the regular. Obvi, we both love words, and through graduate school and our careers, there's a professional outlet for that, but little of that writing is particularly creative. The blog has given us a reason to think about how what we read gets our wheels turning, allowing for analysis, jabbering about our opinions, and thinking through and attempting to express what has made Agatha's work special and lasting. This works out well, considering we pledged to ourselves at the beginning that after devoting ourselves to every bit of the Queen of Mystery's canon for a year, we would try our hands at writing our own mystery novel in phase two. So, that's part two of what's happening in 2017, which we'll share updates about here on the blog and social media! We are super excited and super nervous to see if we've learned anything from the Queen, and to see how it goes. Feel free to send us some good vibes.

3) A Survey: THIS PART IS FOR YOU - YES, YOU!
We've learned a lot through reading and thinking about Agatha's books, writing about them, and hearing from new friends across the world about their opinions and insights on each one. We'll also be writing more in 2017 about our thoughts on Agatha as we digest the completion of the project, and this is part of it. To wrap up this year of immersing ourselves in Agatha's work, we are creating a survey that we will REALLY APPRECIATE your participation in. It will help us gain a fuller and more nuanced understanding of why today's readers still read, chat about, and love Agatha Christie's work. Stay tuned for more on this soon - don't worry, we won't let you miss out on it!

We can't wait to keep in touch with the #bookstagram community - it's been such a pleasure to get to know you all better this year!

Cheers to 2017!

- E. & A.

Wrapping up: The Conclusion of the First Year of Agatha | Our Thoughtz & Feelingz

Hi everyone,

First of all, if you're out there, THANK YOU for reading the blog, following us on social media, buying tshirts, sharing your thoughts, opinions, and photos, and generally being there. The experience of The Year of Agatha has been fascinating and fun and enlightening and empowering and so much more, so we wanted to share some of our #THOUGHTZANDFEELINGZ after this epic year!

Broadly speaking, though we're both admitted bibliophiles, this project has forced us to prioritize reading despite our busy lives working full-time jobs, finishing graduate programs, teaching classes, and (for one of us) planning a wedding! The way we divided the books allowed us each to read a little over one book a week for the entire year, sometimes both reading the same mystery at the same time, sometimes reading different books during the week. We both realized that a lot of the time we spend in boring meetings, riding public transportation, waiting for a friend to meet you for dinner, etc. (which these days we all often spend scrolling mindlessly through our phones) can instead be put to good use as little nuggets of reading time. While we both love television (especially the streaming variety) and would never malign it, making so much time for reading also had us being more mindful of our other media consumption as well. Not to mention an all-consuming project such as this one has been a great ice breaker at parties and in job interviews!

Obviously, reading all of Agatha's mysteries between the two of us in itself has been a really delightful experience. Her books are timeless, the plots engaging, the characters funny, terrifying, clever, alive, and the twists are brilliant, even a hundred years later. We each wanted to share some thoughts about Agatha's books after this year with her work, as well as an oft-requested list of each of our five favorites.

Emily
I was a little less familiar with Agatha's work than Aud going into this year, so many of the books were totally new to me. Knowing Agatha was so renowned as an author, I went into the experience expecting to be impressed. However, after reading 52 of her books over the course of the year, I am just straight-up bowled over by her mind. She has such a talent for creating an engaging plot that hooks you like a melody and keeps you turning the pages that in the few books that aren't quite as catchy, you're totally shocked to be underwhelmed. She is the Queen of Mystery because she has a gift like none other for creating tale after tale with so many quality red herrings and plot twists that even her most avid readers are still kept guessing. I think one of the things I've enjoyed the most about the books, though, is Agatha's skill with dialogue. Creating dialogue between characters that sounds natural and not stilted is terribly tricky, and so many of Agatha's books contain funny, or chilling (or both!) conversations that really advance the plot. She knew people, and how they would interpret situations or conversations or clues. She knew how to explain motives, as well as painting a picture of settings and scenes that could be as cozy as a little, flower-covered English cottage or as bleak as a windswept seaside cliff. She knew what would matter to readers, and what readers would believe mattered to characters. Getting to know her through her work this year has been really something.

After an agonizing narrowing down process, here are  my five favorites, in no particular order: 
1) The Secret Adversary (Tommy and Tuppence at their finest, the witty dialogue bubbles like champagne and the action races along, I read this one in one night, staying up way past my bedtime to find out what happened!)
2) 4:50 to Paddingdon (This one is such a good solid mystery, and I loved Lucy Eyelesbarrow, Miss Marple's adorable, clever, brave sidekick who can make dinner for the landed gentry and track down a dead body all in one night without batting an eye #girlboss, plus this is a great Miss Marple, whom I now seriously adore)
3) Endless Night (IT'S SO GOOD AND CREEPY!! I love how deep into character Agatha went to get into the narrative of this story, and what a great sneaky plot it is. Terrifically well done. I'm not a big Halloween person, but I think I'll read this one around that time every year!)
4) And Then There Were None (There is seriously no two ways about it, in my mind, this book is brilliant. I've already shared it with so many friends who have different tastes in books, but they all race through it and proclaim it great. The character development is top notch, the setting is ominous and terrifically well painted, and the reveal is oooh, excellent. An absolute classic.)
5) The Seven Dials Mystery (This was one of  my earliest reads, and a story I was totally unfamiliar with. It's a very interesting set-up, with a mysterious secret society, and its more of a caper, which I really enjoy, but what I liked most was the plucky heroine Bundle Brent, who didn't mind what any man told her was her role, and did as she pleased with calm and cunning. Another #girlboss I adored.)

Audrey
As I've said time and time again (sorry, #brokenrecord), I've been an Agatha Christie fan for a long time now. The thought did cross my mind for a quick second back at the beginning of last year whether or not I would be bored re-reading books I had devoured as a teenager. I couldn't have been more wrong. Spending this year revisiting my favorite author has been the most delightful experience - even more so to share it with one of my dearest friends! There's nothing quite like having a good friend to discuss books with! Not only have I loved my midnight text marathons with Emily about that ending to Sparkling Cyanide I forgot about or Hastings' latest crush, but the Agatha Christie community we have found here on the blog and on social media has given me an even deeper level of enjoyment of Agatha's works. I've loved reading reactions from our #bookstagram pals as they've reached the end of Roger Ackroyd or shared their love for some of my more obscure favorites. Reading is one of my deepest joys, and it warms my heart to no end to have dedicated this year to a genre and an author I have admired for so long!

And now on to my favorites: (Like Emily, this took me FOREVER to decide! I ended up sharing some of my more surprising favorites, because honestly, they're just all so great.)
1) The Murder at the Vicarage (I can't say this enough: go read this book pronto. It has some of the funniest lines I think Agatha ever wrote. And Griselda Clement is literally my hero.)
2) A Pocket Full of Rye (A surprising favorite for me! This year taught me I am more of a Marple fan than a Poirot fan when it comes to the books [even though I adore David Suchet's Poirot performances more than I can say!], and I thought this portrayal of Miss Marple avenging her murdered maid was one of her best!)
3) Crooked House (This book is just terrific. Like And Then There Were None, this was a case where a standalone novel without Agatha's usual crime fighters was a home run. Agatha does creepy/dysfunctional families well, and this was, in my opinion, perhaps her best. Add to that one of the most mind boggling endings and you have a true classic!)
4) Cat Among the Pigeons (Even though Poirot has basically no page time in this later Agatha novel, I really loved the angsty and very realistic teenage girl characters that made up the majority of the story.)
5) Murder in Mesopotamia (This was always one of my favorite Poirot TV adaptations, so I was primed to love this book. While the mystery itself isn't necessarily earth shattering, the Middle Eastern setting is so much fun, and you can tell it was very dear to Agatha's heart.)


People have asked all year if we're "tired of it" yet, and perhaps surprisingly (aside from short story droughts, oof) the answer has always been no. This project has been a joy and an inspiration, for reals, from beginning to end. Which is why we aren't really going to let it end! Our next post will offer our plans for The Year of Agatha, phase two, in 2017. We hope you'll continue to follow us as we make our way further through the world of mysteries and crime fiction!

- E. & A.

And Now His Watch Is Over: Curtain | 1975 [SPOILERS]

(image from here)

"I should have known.

I should have foreseen...

'Cher ami!' Poirot had said to me as I left the room.

They were the last words I was ever to hear him say." 

-Captain Arthur Hastings, Curtain, p. 237

The Sum of It:
My dear friends, I have come to my final Agatha Christie book for this year. As if that in and of itself wasn't slightly emotional enough, I had forgotten that something rather jarring happens in this particular novel.

FRIENDLY REMINDER THIS POST DOES INCLUDE SPOILERS!

Captain Hastings has returned to Styles. Yes, Styles! Remember where the Poirot/Hastings bromance first started wayyyy back in the day when Agatha was just a cool dispensary gal who wanted to try her hand at writing a murder by poison book? Hastings and Poirot are still old friends, and yet also literally getting on in years. Styles has been turned into a sort of boarding house/country hotel where Poirot has taken up residence. Hastings arrives to visit and is quite startled by how Poirot's health has deteriorated. In place of Poirot's faithful manservant, Georges, he now has a quasi nurse named Curtiss who has to carry the poor feeble Belgian detective around - #poorestPoirot! And also #poorestHastings because his wife has passed away and his daughter, Judith, who is also residing at Styles (more on that shortly) is kind of a jerk to him (YOUR DAD IS SWEET HASTINGS, BE GRATEFUL PLZ!)

Poirot is delighted to have Hastings around once again so they can do what they do best: solve crime! Poirot lays before Hastings a series of deaths that all seem a bit odd. In each case there was a clear murderer with a motive...and yet, also in each case a certain individual, "X" to Poirot, was either acquainted with someone involved, or was in the area at the time of the crime. And this "X" was now at Styles! Poirot is CERTAIN someone is meant to be murdered and is determined to stop this "X" once and for all!

Styles is once again full of characters only Agatha Christie can do justice. There is a retired military man painfully embarrassed by his nagging wife, an unattractive scientist and his mysteriously ill wife, Hastings' daughter, Judith, who won't stop flirting with a man her father thinks is TROUBLE, and, of course, Hastings himself, somewhat subdued in his later years, and yet never too old to have his head turned by a woman with auburn hair.

The YOA Treatment:
So, elephant in the room and #spoiler, Poirot dies in this book. I remember reading this novel back when I was a teenager and thinking "well good grief, this one seems a bit slow" and then finding myself at the end of chapter 17 and bursting into tears. I don't even think I finished the remaining chapters. I barely could this time around!

When reporting on the death of his dearest friend, Hastings says:
"I don't want to write about it at all. I want, you see, to think about it as little as possible. Hercule Poirot was dead - and with him died a good part of Arthur Hastings."

(image from here)

Nearly as heartbreaking as those lines is David Suchet's description of his feelings on playing the death scene of Hercule Poirot in the television adaptation:

"I am about to breathe my last as Agatha Christie's idiosyncratic Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, who has been a part of my life as an actor for almost a quarter of a century...it is, quite simply, one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
This is the death of a dear friend. For years it has been Poirot and me, and to lose him is a pain almost beyond imagining." -Poirot and Me

(I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING!)

Poirot is and always will be my first Agatha Christie love. He was my gateway into her vast wealth of delicious mysteries. Curtain serves as a fitting farewell for Hercule Poirot. Though this book was published right before Agatha's death, she wrote it in the 1940s, spiriting the manuscript away to be kept top secret until the time was right to off her irksome little Belgian. Curtain has all the delightful hallmarks of Christie in her prime. Though you do spend several chapters wishing Hastings would stop just chatting people up and make something happen (!!), you can't help but gasp at her nearly-Roger-Ackroyd-esque conclusion.

Farewell, cher ami Poirot: I am so happy to have ended this Year of Agatha with your final chapter.

-A.

PS: *what is dead may never die* #themonogrammurders #closedcasket

Miss Marple's Last Case: Sleeping Murder | 1976

Image from here

"No," said Miss Marple. "You believed him. It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years." - Sleeping Murder

The Sum of It

Gwenda Reed, a young lady who grew up in New Zealand, has been sent to England by her new husband, Giles, to find them a house along the coast. She spies a white Victorian house from the road outside the town of Dillmouth, and gets a feeling that its the house for her. She goes about renovating the house based on her intuition, envisioning a new door connecting the dining room and drawing room, choosing a wallpaper of cornflowers and red poppies for a room that she feels used to be a nursery, asking the gardener to cut a new walkway in the garden. Only, it turns out there used to be a door where she asked for a new one to be cut, and a cupboard in the room that had been painted shut revealed old wallpaper exactly like what she had asked for, and when the gardeners went to cut the new path, evidence of an old path in the same spot was found. 

Gwenda starts thinking she's psychic or something, which weirds her out, and so she decides to get away for a bit to visit her husband's friend #FamousNephew Raymond West, along with his wife and aunt, one Miss Jane Marple, in London. While they're watching the play The Duchess of Malfi, a character utters the line: "cover her face, mine eyes dazzle; she died young" and Gwenda shrieks, jumps out of her seat, runs out of the theater and takes a cab back to Raymond's house where she sits shivering in bed until Miss Marple comes in with a water bottle and a calm request that Gwenda tell her what exactly is going on. Gwenda finally tells her that when she heard the line, she immediately envisioned a man with "monkey's paws" strangling a beautiful blonde woman in the foyer of her house, then saying those exact words. Somehow, Gwenda is sure this woman's name was Helen. She tells Miss Marple about the other weird stuff going on related to her house, and that she's afraid she's going nuts.

Miss Marple explains that what makes more sense is that Gwenda has actually been in the house before, and maybe even witnessed a murder, even though Gwenda is sure she's never been to England. However, a bit of investigating reveals that her late father actually took her to England, to the very house, to live with her young stepmother, Helen, for a couple years when Gwenda was a baby. The stepmother eventually disappeared, and her father died soon after, having sent little Gwenda to live with relatives in New Zealand. Once she hears this, Gwenda is like oh crap was my stepmother #MURDERED in my house, and did I see it as a tiny child?! She and her husband Giles decide to start investigating, even though Miss Marple tells them they really ought to let "sleeping murder" lie, as getting mixed up in an old crime like this is #DANGEROUS. They're like yeah yeah this is our house, we have to protect it #HomeAlone and decide to embark on digging up old relatives,  lovers, and employees of Helen's and trying to get to the bottom of why she really disappeared all those years ago. Out of concern (and probably curiosity, knowing her) Miss Marple arranges to visit some family friends in Dillmouth so she can keep an eye on things and help them out. Turns out in the end that it's a bloody good thing, too! 

The YOA Treatment

As we were reading this one, we were both thinking "man, Agatha might have struggled a bit with Tommy and Tuppence in old age but she is still on FIRE with Miss Marple!" Then Audrey remembered that Sleeping Murder is actually one of two books, along with the last Poirot, Curtain, that Agatha always said she wrote during WWII and left in a safe in the names of her daughter and husband, for posterity's sake (and in the way of an inheritance, should the war prove fatal for Agatha, EEK thank goodness it didn't, not only because we would have missed out on so many great books!!) So, this final Miss Marple was actually written long before several others that were released before this one was published following Agatha's eventual death in the 1970s. 

Regardless, this book is top form Agatha, a very creepy and mysterious mystery that absolutely keeps you guessing until the very end (as long as you haven't seen one of the two TV adaptations, or, if you've seen the ITV Marple version, you'll still be guessing as to when the troop of summer stock actors will turn up [spoiler: they are not in the book]). It really is a very clever concept with some truly deceptive red herrings, and the initial premise of a potentially haunted or sentient house reminded us of some other classics, like Henry James' The Turn of the Screw or one of our favorite recent novels, Rebecca Makkai's The Hundred-Year House. 

While the real onus of the sleuthing is left to Gwenda and Giles, Miss Marple guides them along in their amateur detecting and steps in to help when she's needed. Since this book was technically written before Agatha let Miss Marple start getting really frail, in light of the last few Marples we've been reading, it was also nice to bid farewell to our favorite lady sleuth when she's still depicted in her prime, weeding in the garden, running up stairs, and garnering the respect of police inspectors all over England. 

One of the most surprising things about The Year of Agatha for both of us has been that we truly enjoyed Miss Marple's mysteries even more than our beloved Poirot's! The joy and mischievous twinkle of Miss M's sleuthing style, the cozy nature of her environs and the clever, dark-horse nature of her character are a delight to read. While we've finished all the Marple books at this point, we feel confident that we'll be revisiting her stories many times over the years to come. 

- E. & A. 

P.s. We'll post about Curtain, and about our plans for 2017, after Audrey returns from her honeymoon later this week!