The Many Years of Agatha #2018

(William Andrew Loomis, Woman in Yellow Shirt Reading, from this charming blog called Reading & Art.)

Hello friends,

We are so excited for a new year and all the new ideas bubbling around in our little heads for Agatha and books and you guys and here we are to finally share them!

First, regarding Agatha: 
We, like you, are clearly having trouble quitting dear Agatha even though we've spent so much time with her already. This year we've decided to do a couple things, and the first is to take an opportunity to recommend to each other some favorites that we each read on our own the first time around, swap books, and chat about those favorites from the other mindtwin's perspective. Emily hates that she missed reading The Murder at the Vicarage and The Moving Finger, and Audrey is tickled to pick up The Man in the Brown Suit and 4:50 from Paddington. You'll find the schedule of the books we'll be revisiting each month where you always do on the blog, and you'll also be seeing evidence of the reading on our social media accounts per usual. We hope those of you who are newer to Agatha's work will drop in and join us when we're working on one you're eager to read, and share your thoughts with us here or on social media! And of course, because we truly love them and can't stop staring at them, we will also continue sharing our favorite vintage copies on Instagram and Facebook.

Second, regarding other authors:
We, like you, really like books and have enormous to-be-read stacks that seem to grow almost on their own! We know it can be a bit jarring for an account you come to for one thing (Agatha Christie, for example) to flip the script periodically and try to move in different directions, so we've decided to add a second venture to the Mindtwins Media Empire (to quote Jon Lovett #FriendsofthePod, we're working on becoming media moguls), which we've decided to call #drumrollplease... The Book & Cover! 

The Book & Cover will be a second blog and set of social media accounts where we will each review and recommend books by current authors and share more gorgeous cover art along the way (because we are obsessed)! Each of us will be reading, reviewing, and recommending a book each month, either a new release or a book newly released in paperback (listen, we're all on a bit of a book budget and sometimes we just gotta wait for that PB!). You know us; We're not here to be snobby about what's cool to read, to pretend we know more than professional authors about how a good book is composed, or to ruin your experience of reading a book with silly spoilers. We get asked all the time what we're reading now, and what we can recommend folks pick up when they're in their local book shops, so we're excited to share that type of info with our pals here, on #bookstagram, and elsewhere, about new books we're truly pumped about, and to hear your #thoughtzandfeelingz about them as well.

IN CONCLUSION, IN WITH THE SAME, IN WITH THE NEW, we like to say, and we'll be here doing more of what we love for as long as you'll have us (and books). What a world we're living in right now, and what an opportunity our writer friends offer us to imagine new things, visualize magical places, feel a different person's feelings, and escape our everyday. To quote one of us from Twitter in response to a favorite author's (#CharlesFinch) lament about whether it's right to create art right now, we say that without our writers and artists, everything stops. We stop, in our exploring, and considering of perspectives and moving forward day after day. What our author friends do is vital, and we're here to shout it. As Emily Mandel wrote in Station Eleven, "survival is insufficient!" So we're here to celebrate writers, old and new, on as many platforms as we need to, and we hope you'll keep joining us and adding your voices to the revelry.

Cheers, loves, we are ever,

-E. & A.

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. 

#DETECTIONCLUB GUEST POST | Double Review: The Sinking Admiral and The Floating Admiral

Photo courtesy of our guest blogger, @bookishsteph1 on Instagram!

We (Audrey and Emily) are so excited this week to have a guest post from one of our #bookstagram friends, Stephanie Russell, from @maidensofmurder! We'll be collaborating with them on a few things this year, and when Steph offered to write about a revival of one of Agatha's most interesting projects, we were thrilled! So, without further ado, take it away Steph!

First, The Detection Club
As an avid yet fairly new reader of Agatha Christie, I'm still in the stage of wanting to know everything and anything about the Queen of Crime. During one of my regular searches for information, I came across The Detection Club, which Agatha Christie was a founding member of in 1930, right up to being the President between 1957-1976.

I found the idea of The Detection Club fascinating! A group of crime writers getting together for dinner a few times of the year and discussing their craft. From these meetings the idea for The Floating Admiral was born. The basic set out of the book is that each of the 14 members would each write a section of the book, making 12 chapters (husband and wife duo G. D. H and M. Cole wrote a chapter between them) and a prologue by G. K. Chesterton, as well as an introduction by Dorothy L. Sayers. Each author would carry on from the last chapter, working up to the conclusion by Anthony Berkeley, making a collaborative novel. A great feature of the book is the alternative endings from the other authors at the back of the book. Agatha Christie's alternate ending is fabulously outrageous and a little far-fetched but super fun.

The Sum of It:
A brief synopsis of the book: a body is found in a rowing boat floating down the river in the town of Whynmouth. Inspector Rudge must clear up all the details, which include the vicar, who owns the boat, the victim's niece, who has disappeared, and many more characters who could all be withholding information.

The YOA Treatment:
What I liked about this book the most was the unexpectedness of each chapter and the anticipation of what each author would bring, what character they could introduce, and what bombshell they might leave their chapter on for the next author to clear up in the following chapter. This really added to the suspense and made it quite impossible to guess with any degree of accuracy whodunnit. There are many possibilities of the ending, as shown with the alternate endings.

Getting to know all the authors was also a plus point. I really found it quite fascinating to see how well this book worked with all these different authors and their individual voices and whether those voices would get lost or stand out too much, how they would vary from the most popular author to the lesser known authors. I'm happy to say that the format worked really well and there were no major shifts in perspective, atmosphere or character. This is a testament to how well these authors could adapt and add their own style without overwhelming the story.

I found the ending impressive and thought it was in keeping with what the previous authors had developed.  But for me, the alternate endings were even more intriguing. The many possibilities of how a story could end. Christie, I think, had the best and most creative alternate ending and it is worth reading for that little page and a bit of summing up.

My rating for this book is 4/5 stars. I couldn't give it the full 5 stars as I found the prologue by G. K. Chesterton a bit obscure and long winded. I also disliked one of the chapters, which was a list of evidence. It was helpful, just not the most riveting. I would highly recommend this for Christie fans and lovers of classic crime books.

The Sum of It:
Now, 85 years after the publication of The Floating Admiral, the current Detection Club have taken inspiration from it to produce the collaborative novel, The Sinking Admiral (published by Harper Collins),  released this year on June 16th. I was lucky enough to receive a copy from Harper Collins and read it straight after I finished The Floating Admiral!

The basic storyline is that the local pub, The Admiral, is threatened with closure due to falling takings. A TV crew arrive to make a documentary. Then the owner of the pub, also nicknamed The Admiral, is found dead in his tethered boat. Suicide is the assumption. But all isn't as it seems.

The YOA Treatment:
Firstly, the not so good things. It isn't set out the same as The Floating Admiral and you do not know which writer is writing each chapter, an added whodunnit element, as Simon Brett, President of The Detection Club, states. Which is great if you are familiar with each authors style. Which I am not. There's also no alternate endings, taking out the fun of seeing different perspectives.

Where this book does succeed is the actual storyline which is engrossing and kept me guessing. The book has some good twists and fun characters and kept me reading, so I gave it a solid 3/5 stars. Again, great for lovers of classic crime but with a modern take.

There are several other Detection Club books available, some which have a contribution from Agatha Christie!

Thank you for reading my review and a big thank you to Audrey and Emily for featuring me.

- Steph (@bookishsteph1, @maidensofmurder)

This month over at @maidensofmurder on Instagram and at www.agathachristie.com/ @officialagthachristie we are reading The Thirteen Problems. This Miss Marple book of short stories makes me wonder whether Agatha Christie was inspired by The Detection Club or The Detection Club formed around the basic premise of these stories of a group of people, The Tuesday Night Club, getting together and discussing unsolved crimes. A bit of life imitating art? These stories were published together in 1932 but written between 1927-1928, a few years before The Detection Club was formed. You can also read the Year of Agatha post about The Thirteen Problems here!