Ava and Taco Cat by Carol Weston

Rating: WORTHY!

Okay, I read these out of order, so sue me! This is the second. I liked the first and did not like the third, but I can report that I liked this one which did not feel like your typical cloned-volume in a series, unlike volume 3 which was essentially a retread of volume 1 with a few details changed.

Since this is an audiobook, I actually listened (as opposed to read) to all three in this series, getting all of them on a discount deal from Chirp which was nice since I liked two of the three. The reading, by Kae Marie Denino, is consistent and enjoyable in all three. The books are also all very short! So, in this one Ava gets an apparently stray cat, which I knew from volume 3 she was both going to get and keep, so no mystery or suspense there. There's also a side story about friendship and fear of losing friends as they make other friends.

The palindrome and other types of word usage are not overdone here, I'm happy to report. The first volume bordered on annoying the reader by putting too much of that in the story, but this one has a lot of story and a lot of heart, so it was appreciated much more, and overall I rate this a worthy read.

Ava XOX by Carol Weston

Rating: WARTY!

This was a tired formulaic story that exemplified everything that's bad about series. I listened to the Ava and Pip original audiobook by this same author recently, and liked it, but this one, also an audiobook, was too much of a 'more of the same' story, which really had no story, and it was pretty much a cookie-cutter clone of the first volume in the series (this is volume 3 which I read out of order, but the order doesn't really matter). The reading by Kae Marie Denino was fine, but the story really wasn't.

In the first volume we had Ava making endless palindromes which was frankly a bit tedious because there were so many of them, but it wasn't awfully bad. There's more of that here, and it's really too much more in a second volume, and it becomes wearing rather than entertaining. Was there not another aspect of the English language the author could have explored here? Additionally, we have Ava once again doing something thoughtless, getting chewed out by other people, fixing it, and then becoming friends with the people who were extremely hostile to her just a short time before. This is exactly what happened in the first story. So what it transmits here is that Ava can't learn and is stupid, which is never a good thing to do to your main character, and it says, I'm making you, the reader/listener, pay a second time for what's essentially the same story with a few details changed, which suggests that the author thinks you're also stupid to fall for the same trick twice.

On top of that, there's the 'hey, I didn't know I loved my best friend' trope, which is tediously common in YA novels, and here it reared its ugly head in a middle-grade book. Again it says the main character is stupid to have failed to realize she has a special bond with her best friend. Even an eleven year old can tell that. It also says her friend Chuck is stupid for failing to realize this in return, and also that he's an insensitive jerk to hang around with Kelli, who is a jerk herself. When he quits seeing her (after too long) the book also says it's fine to lie to people since he doesn't tell her he's done hanging with her because she's a jerk, but because his mom said she didn't want him hanging with people in that way at his age. In short, he outright lied.

The text for the day here is also the same as the first volume, in that it relates to considering others' feelings, but the story actually undermines its own morality tale because, after having had people chew out Ava about her total cluelessness regarding body positivity, it still has her go ahead and put out a poster essentially saying, 'hey fatty, here's how to shed a few'. It's not that bad, obviously, but it might as well be.

So for me this book was a fail because it sent all the wrong messages and often contradictory ones at that. Ava's mother at times seems cruel and cold as well, which is frankly disturbing. Now I have the second book to get through, and I'm thinking it's probably also going to be a redux of volume one. We'll see. At least these books have the advantage of being short!

Seven Skeletons by Lydia Pyne

Rating: WORTHY!

Narrated very well by Randye Kaye, this book written by a woman who also has a Y in both first and last name, was an excellent study of how fossils become celebrities. It is not about human evolution or the human family tree, so you'll need to read elsewhere for that information. Nevertheless it can be argued that a bit more of the evolutionary side and the linkages (or lack of same) between these fossils would have served well, I feel.

That said I enjoyed it immensely. The book covers these seven fossils (listed here in order of discovery):

• Homo neanderthalensis, specifically the Neanderthal known as La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1, which was discovered in 1908, although the first example of the Neanderthal was discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley in Germany.
• the Taung Child (Australopithecus africanus), discovered in a quarry in Taung, South Africa in 1924.
• Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis) was discovered starting in 1929 at Zhoukoudian near Beijing.
• Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) was discovered in 1974 at Hadar in Africa. A team at the University of Texas-Austin where the author also has an affiliation, x-rayed Lucy's skeleton and came to the conclusion that she died probably from a fall from a tree, although this is disputed. The author doesn't mention this, so I assume this took place after the book was finalized, the book being published the same year the study was conducted (2016).
• Homo floresiensis, discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia.
• Australopithecus sediba was discovered in the Malapa Cave in South Africa in 2008.

The seventh one covered is the Piltdown hoax - remember it's not about fossils per se but about fossil celebrity, which is why this hoax was included.

The story is about how and why these fossils became celebrities, and not necessarily about how important they are to science or how rare they are, or whatever. In that, the book does a good job detailing how they were found and what happened to them since then, including their path to stardom and the reasons for it. I commend this as a worthy read.

The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the first in a series called "The Academy" - a series title that could have been a lot better! Why would anyone be excited by that title?! I'm not a fan of series, but I found this one, written in the mid-nineties, palatable when I read it some time ago in a print version. The rest of the series was written between 2000 and 2007, with one more novel coming out in 2018. The last one I read was Starhawk which was a prequel and which I did not like, so I haven't read the 2018 release. I recently listened to this first volume again as an audiobook and found it less thrilling than I originally had, but still a worthy read on balance. It has issues, but overall, I think if you like hard sci-fi this might be to your taste. There are times when it plods and the characters are a bit flat. They sometimes act stupidly, but after the last four years this should surprise no one.

I wasn't a huge fan of the reader of this audio book, which was Tom Weiner. He wasn’t a disaster, but his voice sounded a bit too hard-bitten for my taste. He'd be better of reading a noire private dick novel if you ask me - and one which I wouldn't have any interest in hearing! Given that the main character is female, I felt a female voice was required here, but that wasn't a story-killer.

The story is of a woman named Priscilla Hutchins, who of course predictably goes by 'Hutch' and who is a pilot for the Academy, an organization that fosters archaeological expeditions not on Earth, but on alien worlds where life once existed, but now no longer does. This is why this series appealed to me to begin with, because it’s different for your usual let’s kill evil aliens or evil space humans and which typically makes sci-fi stories so predictably tedious.

The story is slow-moving, and the pilot and the archaeologists she transports to several worlds do stupid things and get themselves into improbable scrapes, but the underlying story isn’t too bad, and it offers a mystery which threads through the series and is eventually resolved without making this volume feel like a prologue or a cliffhanger, and I appreciated that. Each story is self-contained while advancing the mystery through the sequence, although not all volumes address the mystery.

The underlying premise is that there was, perhaps several thousand years before, a race of advanced aliens of whom there is now no trace save for the monuments they left behind them: strange and often confusing monuments. One is a statue of an alien. This is where the story begins, and the archaeologists don't know if this is the people themselves - who have come to be known as the Monument Makers - or if it’s a representation of one of their gods or mythological figures. Other monuments they leave behind consist of very angular geometric shapes and which often seem to have been severely damaged by warfare or by some natural catastrophe. Some monuments look like cities from a distance, but close up are just solid 3D shapes with many right angles. Just enough to make them look unnatural. The story is one of the slow-dawning of knowledge among the archaeologists, as to what all of this actually means.

There are some problems with the story - of the nature of Star Trek-like stupidity or lack of inventiveness and foresight. Despite drones actually being in use since the mid-1960s and especially of late, and despite robots being in use since the mid-1950s, neither Star Trek nor this novel acknowledge that there are any such devices in use anywhere in the universe! Consequently we have these archaeologists and this pilot romping into unknown situations with no support or backup and every trip they make seems to have serious problems befall it.

There's clearly been no attempt whatsoever by this so called 'Academy' to send drones or robots to map newly-discovered worlds before humans go there to study them. It seems like their approach is to simply fly there on spec, using their FTL technology and then eyeball the place until they find something interesting to go down and look at close-up. In that regard, the writing is a bit primitive and amateur. It is from the mid-nineties, but I don't see that this is an excuse for equipping these people with pretty much the same technology and mindset we have today (minus the robots and drones!).

The premise at the start of this story makes little sense. The archaeologists are working on this one find, which is semi-submerged in the ocean. They've had almost three decades on this planet to dig and evidently they still haven't excavated this particular site. There's no word on why. There's a terra-forming corporation waiting to start making over this planet so humans can live there despite there being at least one other planet where humans could live without terraforming (more on that later). The thing is that the terraforming involves multiple nuclear weapons being detonated at the poles in order to melt the ice which somehow they figure will fix the biting-cold temperatures. To me that made no sense. The planet would be irradiated and unlivable, and if this project is looking like it will take a century to complete, as they say, it will have frozen over again before they can move there! Nuclear weapons? Maybe McDevitt's military past was overriding his common sense.

It’s been known since Eunice Foote demonstrated it in 1856, that carbon dioxide traps heat. A study in 1938 showed the greenhouse effect on Earth's atmosphere, and we’ve known Venus was such a runaway greenhouse planet since the late fifties and early sixties. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded in 1988, so it’s not like this idea of a greenhouse effect was unknown when McDevitt wrote his novel, yet he wants to use nuclear weapons instead of seeding the atmosphere with some CO₂?

But here’s the thing: we're told that it’s going to be a century before the planet is livable anyway, so what difference does it make if the archaeologists take another day or two, to finish their dig? It doesn’t. Yet the corporation seems obsessed with a deadline, and in order to scare the scientists off, they let one of their comet snowballs fall early into the ocean, which ends up causing a tidal wave, and costs the life of one of the archaeologists.

In order to get even with them, Hutch the hero decides to send them a snowball, but this one is fake, made up of this expanding foam they use to package the artifacts they find. The problem with this is that even though it's low mass, it’s coming at their space station at over 4,000 mph, which means it would do some serious damage and Hutch ought to know this, but she claims it won't do more than bend a panel here or there. It ought to have got her fired, but no legal penalties come of either of these dangerous actions. Given the political scene of late I geuss this isn't so far-fetched after all.

The other problem I had with this scene is that they're planning on nuking this planet and there's no outcry or complaint anywhere about the indigenous life, some of which seems to be quite intelligent if rather apelike. That was shocking - that an author would write this - even in 1994, and not have any consideration for the ecology of the planet that they were destroying. It felt inauthentic. The other side of this coin is a planet they land on where the indigenous life ought to have been wiped out in my opinion, because it was too improbable or dangerous to live anyway, but no-one thinks of this then.

This is the planet I mentioned earlier which could support human life. These team goes down to explore it on foot without any weapons and with zero foreknowledge of local fauna. Nothing happens at all until they’ve been down there for a while and then suddenly there are literally hundreds and hundreds of crabs which have an appendage they can use to slice open their prey. The problem is not the existence of the crabs per se, it's the existence of endless hordes of them in one place and the fact that they're ravenous predators.

Nothing like this could realistically evolve and this is a problem writers frequently make - they know nothing about evolution and invent these threatening creatures which couldn't exist in reality or in isolation from their ecosystem. Anything as ravenous and endlessly predatory as these crabs would have quickly eaten their entire world's food supply. They would then have turned on each other and eaten themselves into extinction. It’s simply not possible to have such a deadly predator in such numbers.

The third improbable crisis is in their finding a possible solution to their question as to what was inflicting the damage on these artificial constructs they'd found - the ones left by the Monument Makers. They have a chance to study this but instead of staying far from it, they land on the very moon this thing is going to destroy and almost get killed. They're afraid to take off because they’re in a very boxy shuttle which they fear will attract something that appears to target angular constructs. It makes no sense. First it makes no sense that the shuttle would be so boxy, second it makes no sense that they would try to get so close to the thing, and thirdly it makes no sense that the thing would come after their angular shuttle when they'd visited a world earlier where a space station had not been attacked by this thing despite it being quite visibly artificial.

So yeah, there are problems with this story, but overall I felt it wasn't too bad of a tale and I commend it as a worthy read. That said, I have to add that I don't feel any urge to keep pursuing a re-read of this whole series. Maybe in future I may take it up in audiobook form if Chirp offers another volume at a discount, but right now I'm not moved to do it, having already been through it once!

Andersen's Fairy Tales volume 2 by Hans Christian Anderson

Rating: WORTHY!

Note these are not your childhood fairy-tales. Some are more like horror stories. The Little Mermaid isn't Disney's mermaid, which for me was a good thing because these stories as told by Anderson, have far more originality, heart and substance than anything Disney has ever animated.

The stories are as listed below in order. They're easily looked-up online so I will not detail any of them. For me the most interesting were The Wild Swans, The Little Mermaid, The Pen and the Inkstand, The real princess, aka The Princess and the Pea, but not in a favorable way. Note that chidren's author Sally Huss has a good take on that in her Princess Charlotte and the Pea which I reviewed favorably in September, 2015.

For me the most amusing one was The Portuguese Duck and that was partly because of the story itself, and partly because of the hilarious take on it by the narrator, Eve Watkinson, who read many of these tales (along with another narrator, Christopher Casson). I don't know what accent she was doing, because she used the same one, pretty much, in the very next story set in Scandinavia, but in The Portuguese Duck she had me laughing out loud.

Anyway, here's the list:

• The Flax
• The Daisy
• The Pea Blossom
• The Storks
• The Wild Swans
• The Last Dream of the Old Oak
• The Portuguese Duck
• The Snow Man
• The Farmyard Cock and the Weathercock
• The Red Shoes
• The Little Mermaid
• Buckwheat
• What Happened to the Thistle
• The Pen and the Inkstand
• The Teapot
• Soup From A Sausage Skewer
• What the Goodman Does Is Always Right
• The Old Street Lamp
• The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep
• The Drop of Water
• The Swineherd
• The Metal Pig
• The Flying Trunk
• The Butterfly
• The Goblin and the Huckster
• Everything in its Right Place
• The Real Princess
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• Great Claus and Little Claus

I commend this as a worthy listen.

Hook (audiobook) by Melissa Snark

Rating: WARTY!

Back in June I reviewed the ebook of this novel, and I don't usually revisit works (and usually not authors) where I've been disappointed. I judged the ebook warty for an assortment of reasons and those haven't changed in the audiobook - it's the same book! What I was curious about though, is whether I might perceive that same book differently if I heard it, rather than read it myself.

When you read a book it's between you and the author, but an audiobook brings someone else into the picture - so to speak! - and maybe it might sway perception? Since Chirp had the audiobook on sale for 99 cents, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to experiment. Yes, 99 cents! I'm guessing others are finding this book as unappealing as I did the first time around, and so the publisher is trying to move it by any means possible.

So, as I said before, this was yet another attempt to wring some value from the antique and ridiculous Peter Pan story. About the only one I've read so far that was worth reading was Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson which I reviewed several years ago. I'm currently working on a children's parody myself, skewing all the things that are wrong with the book and with Dipsey's antique and sad animation of it. The first problem with the book is that it's first person. For me it makes for an irritating voice to read because it's usually so unrealistic, and that's especially the case in novel like this one.

They hired an American voice actor to fake a British accent for Captain Hook's daughter - Jaden Hook - like anyone in Britain was named Jaden back when this story was written. Seriously? No marks for Mistress Snark! She could use a few though - to buy herself a clue. My problem though, was who is she supposedly telling this tired story to anyway?>/p>

While I like the idea of a female pirate captain, I don't imagine your average pirate was wont to prattle on about anything let alone a private vendetta between Hook and Pan, not even if there's a switch here and Pan is presented as a villain, kidnapping young children, and Hook as the 'good guy' rescuing them. Since I didn't finish either story, I can't even be sure if this Hook is a reliable narrator - maybe she's just as bad as her dad was, and Pan is still the spiteful, self-centered, narcissistic villain I've always perceived him to be.

The story takes forever to get going and in the end (and by end, I mean middle!), it never really does. That's one reason I quit it. The captain seems only half-hearted in her pursuit of Pan and quite lethargic about it. It takes them forever in trying to sneak up on the speedier Ariel ship, in their own lumbering Revenge, and they never do get there. Yawn.

The chapters are filled with Hook's tedious ramblings, and debates with her crew. What pirate captain debated with their crew? Doesn't 'captain' mean one who is in charge and who gives orders? I quit reading the ebook before I learned that Ariel got away, so I was wondering it if it had been a trap, but it evidently wasn't, according to what I heard here, which begged the question as to what the hell was going on? I have no idea, and worse, I didn't care any more the second time than I did the first!

As I'd concluded earlier, the plot which had initially intrigued me never seemed to have any substance to it. I need more than this in a novel, and this author refuses to stand and deliver! Consequently, I can't commend either the ebook or the audiobook.

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Rating: WARTY!

In which my sorry attempt to embrace the classics continues rather unsuccessfully.

This was published in 1851 and was based in small part on a real house of seven gables where lived Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll. The story supposedly has some supernatural and witchery elements to it, but I never made it that far. The novel has its moments and offers some sweet turns of phrase here and there (or should I say hither and thither?), but for the most part it was tediously rambling and just when I thought it might get interesting, when a new broom in the form of the main character's younger cousin showed up, it almost immediately went back to rambling on and on, and it bored the pants off me. I never did find out what happened to those pants.

A somewhat old maid, Hepzibah Pyncheon lives in the house and decides to open a little store in one part of the building, but she really has no idea how to go about it. Her cousin Phoebe shows up unexpectedly from out of town, and starts turning things around in the store while falling for another cousin named Clifford. The rather sleazy Judge Pyncheon sticks his nose in where it's unwanted, and that's about it for the first portion of the book. It wasn't holding my attention at all, and so based on what I read I cannot commend it.

Black No More by George S Schuyler

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an audiobook from a novel first published in 1931 by the author, whose name is pronounced 'Skyler'. The novel is sci-fi and has the odd premise that some guy (who is black) invents a process by which people of color can be made to look white. Due to the ill-treatment of such people. There's a flock of them wanting this process, which in turn causes all kinds of unexpected issues down the road.

Max Disher's advances are rejected on New Year's Eve by a racist white woman named Helen. The thing is that Max is racist too - he only wants to date white women, so these two are made for each other. Rather than dismiss her and look for a more friendly prospect, he obsesses on her and when he learns of this 'Black No More' process, he's front of the line volunteering as a test subject, and so he ends up white. He changes his name to Matthew Fisher and moves to Atlanta, where this woman lives. He discovers she's the daughter of a white supremacist who goes by Reverend Harry Givens, head of The Knights of Nordica.

Matthew passes himself off as an anthropologist who supports the reverend's aims and soon is an integral part of the organization, turning it around into a powerful and money-making society. He becomes rich as a result, and marries the unsuspecting Helen. Problems arise when she becomes pregnant though, because although for all intents and purposes Matthew is now white, his offspring will not be. Fortunately for him, Helen miscarries, but shortly becomes pregnant again and his problems begin multiplying.

Matthew quickly discovers his life does not become a bed of roses from being white, although he has the girl of his dreams and is now wealthy. He's even on track for setting-up the next president of the USA, but society around him is falling apart. Black businesses are suffering because most blacks are now turning white and adopting an upscale lifestyle. Neighborhoods are going to hell, and society itself is in trouble.

This book was hilarious, and Schuyler proves himself to be a funny and perceptive writer who really had a surprisingly modern take on things and a good handle on how society works - or fails. I fully commend this book - which is quite short - as an amazing, entertaining, and worthy read.

The Graduate by Charles Webb

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook of the novella that gave rise to the 1967 movie of the same name starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. The novella was published in 1963, and it's very much of its time. The USA was still pretty much stuck in the fifties in the early sixties, but even so, there were problems with the writing, for me, and I would have ditched this with a hour still left to listen to if it had not been for the fact that, having seen the movie, I was curious as to how the book ended and what differences there were, so despite knowing I was going to rate this as warty, I listened to the whole thing. The movie followed the book pretty darned closely from start to finish.

The thing is that this could have been a romance or a romantic comedy, but there's too much evil behavior in it to be either. I have a feeling it might well have been rejected by publishers if it had been submitted today. It didn't even do well back when it was originally published, and it only took off at all after the movie came out.

This is the only book I've read by author Charles Webb, and I'm far from convinced he can write female characters. Elaine is so passive and compliant, and doesn't behave like she has any self-respect, so for me she was written poorly and her whole interaction with Ben was so unrealistic. But I'm getting ahead. The story is of Ben who is a college grad fresh home from school, and he's one of the most morose, petulant, moody and angry characters I've read about.

He was really annoying in his childishness and his control-freak behavior. He was letting opportunities to get on with his life slip by - for example in not taking-up this grant he was awarded for grad school. Neither is he looking for a job. At the same time he seeks to control everything around him despite what others, particularly Elaine, might want. he proves time and time again that he really doesn't care what Elaine wants as long as he gets what he wants.

Ben's parents alternately hound him cruelly and spoil him rotten, so I guess it's hardly surprising that he's turned out the way he has. At one point early in the story, Mrs Robinson, the wife of his dad's law partner, corners Ben in an upstairs bedroom and makes it plain that she's available to him sexually if and whenever he wants her. Ben rejects this at first, but soon starts an affair with her. They meet at night in the swanky Taft Hotel and spend the night together, and they do this often. Mrs R leaves early in the morning to go home to make her husband breakfast! How she gets away with this is a mystery until she explains this to Ben when he prods her about having a conversation instead of just sex.

She tells Ben that she and her husband not only do not share the same bed, they don't even share the same bedroom, and he only pays her any physical attention when he gets drunk. So the affair continues until Mrs R's daughter Elaine comes home for Thanksgiving, and Mr R and Ben's parents insist he take her out to dinner. He doesn't want to and Mrs Robinson forbids it on pain of revealing their affair to everyone, so Ben doesn't want to take her on a date, but does so under this pressure, ignoring Mrs R's ultimatum. He doesn't believe she'll carry out her threat, but clearly he doesn't know Mrs Robinson at all.

I'm actually with Mrs Robinson on this because Ben has hardly shown his character to be stellar. He's having some sort of existential crisis and he's moody and isn't remotely interested in going back to school or finding a job. He always seems to have money though, but where he gets that, I don't know. The issue isn't addressed in the story or the movie for that matter, so I can only assume his parents give it to him, but why they would do that is a mystery given how he treats them.

They whine about his going out so much, and so late at night with no explanation, but if it bothers them that much, then why facilitate it by paying for it? They gave him an Italian sports car as a graduation present, so he's spoiled rotten. Maybe they just can't say 'no'. I can't blame Elaine's mom for not wanting someone like Ben associating with her daughter, though. And why would Ben? He had no interest in Elaine before, so why now? It made zero sense that he'd suddenly obsess on her except that maybe he just wants the thing that people are trying hardest to deny him?

There is a mildly interesting idea I read online that Mrs R didn't want Ben and Elaine to get involved because they both have the same father, which indicates that Elaine's father seduced Ben's mother, but there's nothing in the book to suggest that and it would mean - in an indirect way of course - that she's having sex with her own son. She doesn't seem like the kind of person who would do something like that. She's not shown as being particularly motherly either, so maybe she was just a predator, jealously guarding her prey, Ben, from becoming someone else's catch, but since we never see Ben aiming to date a different girl and get Mrs R's reaction to that, it's hard to be sure what her motivation was. Maybe she was just horny and Ben seemed like an easy mark to her.

She apparently cares little for him; it's just about sex for her, so I don't imagine she much cares about someone stealing her prey, just about him not being fit to marry Elaine. I think if that were the case, she would have simply said that's why she objected to it, but she really doesn't want her daughter traveling the same crappy road though life that she had to follow and she can see that coming a mile away with Ben at the wheel. She sees too much of herself in Ben: someone who is going nowhere, who has a drinking problem, and who could well end-up being at best a neglectful and at worse an abusive husband later in life.

Interestingly, she's never given a first name in the movie: she's always referred to - and addressed even by Ben - as Mrs Robinson, like she's someone else's property rather than her own person. We learn that her initials are G. L. but we never find out what those letters stand for. This may be a conscious choice by the author, but even when Ben wants to have that conversation with her in the Taft, rather than just get down to the sex like they typically do, he never asks her what her first name is.

From this, it would seem that he has no real interest in her either, despite his claimed desire for a conversation. For me Mrs Robinson is without question the most interesting and strongest person in the movie. Ben is a spineless ne'er-do-well and it's hard to imagine that someone like Elaine would be attracted to him, especially after the shabby way he treats her, followed by her learning of his affair with her mom. Their relationship makes no sense except in that they're both as bad as one another in their own bumbling and insecure way.

On the date with Elaine, he tries to ruin things by treating her badly and taking her to seedy clubs, one of which features an exotic dancer. She eventually demands he take her home, but he refuses, and instead pressures her into changing her mind, offering a meek apology, and she goes right along with it. He mentions having an affair and is worried she'd think badly of him for that, but he barely addresses the elephant in the room: of how he treated her thus far that evening!

Despite all of this she lets him dominate her and she agrees to go out for a drive with him the next day. When he comes to pick her up, Mrs R confronts him and Elaine figures out that the affair he had was with her mother. She orders Ben to leave, and refuses to speak to him. So now we're expected to believe that he's in love with Elaine and in the big finale, she's somehow persuaded to return his feelings despite neither of them really knowing each other; despite their having had no contact since high school; despite his controlling behavior, and despite his neurotic demeanor and his poor treatment of her. It doesn't work.

Initially, I found this audio-book amusing, if a bit irritating here and there, but I became rather less enamored of it as I listened to more of it, and especially after that 'date'. Webb also has a truly annoying writing habit, at least in this novella. Apparently all of the main characters are hard of hearing because the sheer number of times the word 'what' is used interrogatively in conversations is phenomenally annoying. It's like every other thing any character says, the person they're talking to says, "What?" like they haven't heard, or they can't believe it, or they don't understand what was said even though it's perfectly plain, and the other character constantly has to repeat what they just said. It's really pervasive and really distracting. And thoroughly irritating.

I found myself coming into agreement with an email friend of mine whose early assessment, based on what I'd told her about Ben and Elaine, was that they deserved each other - and not in a good way. After being in another funk for several weeks post-rejection, Ben abruptly declares to his parents that he's going to marry Elaine, despite him never addressing this topic with her and despite his having been angrily barred from her life a few weeks before - and despite the fact that he barely knows her these days!

So he drives up to Berkley where she's doing her senior year and starts stalking her. He sells his car so he'll have some money to live on and starts hanging around the campus looking for her. He planned on going to her dorm, meeting her and inviting her out to dinner, but he chickened out of that. He tried composing a couple of letters, but got drunk, the letters becoming more and more incoherent as he did, and he fell asleep. Eventually he runs into her in the street and she rejects him again, but he won't take no for an answer.

Later she shows up at his rooming house and he tries talking to her, but she won't talk to him because Mrs R has told Elaine that Benjamin got her drunk and raped her. Elaine won't listen to his denials, and he's such a poor communicator that he fails dismally in explaining his side of the story - and this is the guy who was, we're told, head of the debating club in college! It just doesn't work! Elaine tells him to leave Berkley and leave her alone, but later, she shows up in his room late at night. How she even got in there without a key is a mystery. I guess no one locks any doors in Berkley. Suddenly, she's interested in listening to him. He asks her to marry him and she says she might. She is so easily influenced that she really has no personality of her own, simply going with the flow of whoever is dominating her at the time - her boyfriend Carl, her father, or Ben. Always men, and they dictate her life right to the end of the story.

None of this story makes sense, and it doesn't really offer a fulfilling tale, So, overall, I can't commend it. It has its moments, but in general it's poorly and inauthentically written and it really doesn't give us a realistic story. On reflection, I think the story would have been considerably better had it been about Mrs Robinson instead of Ben, but not if Webb wrote it! I can see no future for Ben and Elaine except one of misery as he controls her life, abuses her, maybe even beats her when he's drunk, and she eventually commits suicide. There's no romance here at all.

Right Ho, Jeeves! By PG Wodehouse

Rating: WORTHY!

This novel, first published in 1934, is the second full-length book from Wodehouse about Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. I'd been sort of idly interested in reading a Jeeves story for a while, but I never got around to it, so when this came up as a discounted audiobook on Chirp, I snatched it up. I didn't regret it. It was highly amusing to me and quite entertaining, although there were some bits where it dragged, and it's hardly politically correct, given its antiquity.

Note that there is one use of the 'n' word (although not in this historical context intended in an abusive way, merely descriptive, it's still, through our modern eyes, abusive enough) and there's the usual sexism for a book of this vintage.

On top of all of that one might justifiably take exception as well, to the idea of the idle rich having so much and so little of use to do with it, when so very many have so very little and are in urgent need of more. Those things aside, I enjoyed most of the book.

The story is of Bertram Wooster who, fresh back from Cannes, is looking for yet more idle pastimes to waste his life on. He discovers that his old school chum, Gussie Fink-Nottle, needs help. The book is replete with oddball names, my favorite being Pongo, which is not a dog but another of Bertie's male friends.

Anyway, Gussie is pining for a woman named Madeline Bassett. Bertie refers to her as 'the Bassett' and I must have missed something (I listen to this while driving, which always takes precedence in any conflict of attention, of course), because when he started talking about the Bassett, I was convinced for a while that it was a dog he was walking. It took me a little time to make the right connection which in itself was another source of amusement.

Bertie is rather peeved that Gussie is resorting to taking advice from Jeeves, and this is a theme that runs through this book - Bertie's jealousy of Jeeves's respected standing and his accomplishments in terms of winning people's favor for seeking advice. Naturally Bertie tries to take over all of these situations, convinced he'll do a much better job, and inevitably ends up screwing things up. Thus he takes on yet another love affair, that between another friend of his, Tuppie, and his betrothed, Angela, and messes that up as well.

Some of the most entertaining parts of the book are those which feature Bertie's interactions with his feisty Aunt Dahlia. I was laughing out loud at several of those. She is such a force of nature and is so disrespectful and dismissive of Bertie, and utterly intolerant of idiocy, a quality with which he seems over-abundantly endowed.

When his aunt tries to tap him for the prize-giving at the local grammar school where she lives, Bertie is aghast and ends up managing to offload the talk and prize delivery onto Gussie, who shows up drink and is quite amusing. The whole event is reminiscent of a similar occasion in David Nobbs's The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin wherein Reggie delivers an equally irreverent and drunk speech at an event before faking his own disappearance. I wonder if Nobbs might have cribbed his scene from Wodehouse's original example.

All ends well, of course, so overall I really enjoyed this book and in particular the spot-on reading of it by Jonathan Cecil. It's possible to get this book for free from Project Gutenberg since it's now out of copyright in the USA, but then I would have listened to it via my robot reader and amusing as that can be, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as entertaining as Cecil's version! I commend this as a worthy listen.

Utopia by Thomas More

Rating: WARTY!

Originally published (in Latin in 1516!) as A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia this book proved to be as boring as the title. It began well enough, but though it's fiction, it is by no means a story as we would imagine one in modern times. It's much more like a lecture that will put you to sleep, so don't listen, as I did, while driving! Although I survived it, the lethargic and droning delivery could prove fatal in some circumstances!

I made it about 60% of the way through, and I was planning on finishing out the week with it, but after listening to it while driving home on the Thursday I grew so deadened by it that I couldn't stand to listen to it on the Friday, so I ditched it for something else. The reader, James Adams has a voice that doesn't help. My Latin is barely existent, and although this is fortunately in modern English, it's possible to imagine that More himself is reading it. It started out well enough, but over time, it became repetitive, plodding, and tedious to listen to.

Utopia is supposedly an island, although it actually was a peninsular though which a canal was cut to separate it from the mainland. The problem is that there's nothing Utopian about it. Life is highly regimented and there is slavery and a death penalty, so how this remotely resembles any idea of a utopia we may hold today was a mystery to me.

The "islanders" have rejected money as any sort of local currency, although they do use it in foreign trade if necessary (trade, after all, literally meant a trade - one item of goods offered for a different item in return), but the society itself is pretty much a communist one along the lines of everything being held in common, with each giving according to ability and receiving according to need, although there is more to it than that in this case. The thing is that while all this may have been original five hundred years ago and may even have impressed some people, clearly it impressed precious few since it never took hold. Today, it's nothing more than quaintly antique, and it offers nothing special, or new or interesting.

In some parts it was unintentionally amusing, being rather reminiscent of the board game The Settlers of Catan where sheep and bricks are traded, and little else. I've never played that game but I am familiar with it, and it was amusing how limited this 'vision' was - about as limited in scope as the game. Though I can't commend this at all as a worthy read, my recent migration through reading/listening to antique works continues to at least to one more volume - but by a different author. I'll post that review anon.

Please don't tell My Parents I'm a Super Villain! by Richard Roberts

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not much for series, but once in a while one comes along that makes me want to follow it, and if this series (this is book one of three as of this writing) is as good as its opener, then it will definitely be one I follow. Note that this novel is in no way representative of the real world and to judge it by real world standards is wrong. It's an off-kilter fantasy world, and it's in that context that I review it here since it's neither wilder nor more sensible than your average super hero graphic novel!

In the version of LA where she lives, Penelope Akk lives in a superhero world and has superhero parents. Mom was once a super villain, and dad is a tech genius, so it's hardly surprising their daughter turns out to be a mad scientist. Penny's skills start coming in far more aggressively than most do, but they also come spasmodically. That's nothing unusual, but the nature of Penny's skills deceive her parents, who pay her nowhere near the attention she deserves because they're supers themselves and always too busy. They may regret that.

Penny's real problem though, is that she creates things that typically work weirdly, and she has no idea how they work, and often no memory of the actual creative process at all. In the back of her mind they make sense, but she's never able to grasp that and pull it up front into the light. She invents some cool gadgets though, and what better way to test them out than with some good, old-fashioned villainy? I really liked Penny because she's a smart, strong young woman who never gives up and is always learning.

Teaming up with her friend Claire, and her other friend Ray, the trio becomes "The Inscrutable Machine" - talented and super-coordinated villains, whose success goes way beyond what their age would suggest they were capable of, and once Penny - now known as Bad Penny - has invented a few cool gadgets for her friends as well as a serum that brings on their powers too, they really take off. Claire becomes the extra-charming 'e-Claire' and Ray becomes the super-strong, super-fast 'Reviled'.

Their capers, beginning quite accidentally, become almost legendary, and bring them to the attention of Spider, the biggest villain of all, who is apparently an actual spider (although I had my doubts). It becomes ever more difficult for them to withdraw from their super villain life (it was so much fun!) and retreat to a life of super-heroing which is what Penny really wants. Or is it?

When Spider blackmails them into pulling a couple of jobs, Penny finds herself having to come down firmly on one side or the other. But how can she do that, save the city, beat Spider, and preserve her anonymity? Because the last thing she wants is for her parents to learn that she's a super villain! Yes, sometimes their thinking can be whack, and their motives a bit obscure, but they're so engaging that you can't stop wanting to know what scrape they'll get themselves into next - or how they'll get out of it. This is where Penny's unmatched, but totally not understood genius comes into play. Some of her inventions have a mind of their own - literally.

This book is one of the best I've ever read, despite it being aimed seemingly at a middle-grade audience. It's inventive and funny, and completely believable even as the fantastical world the author creates is outrageous - and beautifully put together with a cast of amazing and creative characters. There are some classic super heroes (my favorite is Marvelous) and super villains (my favorite is Lucy Farr). Note that these names are taken from an audiobook so the spellings may be off! I thought this was a fun world and a great book, and I commend it as a worthy read.

The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde

Rating: WORTHY!

This is perhaps my favorite play. The definitive movie version is that starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances O'Connor, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Anna Massey, and unfortunately, Reese Witherspoon, who I used to like until she played the "Do you know who I am?" card in 2013, when she was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

This audiobook version is a fine work, and made me laugh out loud frequently. Unlike the movie, it's very true to the play, which is generally considered to be one of the best English comedies. Unfortunately the audiobook version I had did not list a single cast member so I can't list them here. I even went to the publisher's website (Highbridge Audio - this is part of the Highbridge Classics series) in search of a cast, and they offered nothing, which I feel was rather mean of them.

Wilde is unleashed full force through his various characters here, cutting a swathe through social convention and societal habit with great relish. Two friends, Jack and Algernon, have invented fictitious family or friends to give them each an excuse to get away from their regular life and duties, and escape into a fantasy world of complete irresponsibility. Jack's bother is called Earnest, and Earnest is actually jack, but in his Earnest guise, he pays no bills, misbehaves in general and has a great time. Algernon's invention is a sick friend named Bunbury, and Algernon often goes 'Bunburying' when he wants to get away, under the guise of visiting and taking care of his ailing friend.

Jack has an eighteen-year-old ward named Cecily Cardew, as well he should be having inherited her father's fortune. Jack is an adoptee with no family history, having been discovered by accident in a bag left at the baggage claim at Victoria Station in London. Jack is so in love with Algernon's cousin Gwendolen Fairfax that he actually proposes to her despite the disapproval of the formidable Lady Bracknell, who insists upon interviewing Jack regarding his suitability to press his suit. When Algernon learns of Jack's ward, he decides to press a suit of his own and goes down to Jack's country home, posing as Jack's fictional brother Earnest. The confusion and self-induced foot-shooting only increase from there.

The joy of this is listening to Wilde's take on life, and hearing it expressed as a holistic philosophy from these two reprobates. I highly commend this, or the movie, or going to see the play performed if you can, or simply reading the play for yourself. It's available free from Project Gutenberg in ebook form.

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

Rating: WORTHY!

This book sounded quite interesting and although it wanders from the octopus often to delve into other topics, it always comes back to the main one and overall, despite an issue or two, I enjoyed this audiobook, read by the author, and commend it as a worthy read. It's for the most part well written, although a bit sentimental and anthropomorphizing at times, and the author has a pleasant and enjoyable reading voice.

The story covers her falling in love with the octopuses (octopods if you must, never octopi), at the Boston Aquarium, and since they're so short-lived - the Pacific giant octopus, which is the mainstay of this book, lives only for four years or so at most, and is biologically programmed to die after caring for the thousands of eggs that she lays. In the main, there were three of these animals discussed throughout the book: Athena, Kali, and Karma, but others were also touched upon - sometimes literally!

At one point I had to question the purpose of bringing these animals from the wild into a zoo to be put on display. There was this one relatively young octopus they named Kali, who featured in a large part of the book. Overnight, she managed to get out of this new tank she'd just been put into that same day, and she died of dehydration and suffocation on the floor at night.

There was a small gap in back of the tank where the water pipe went in, to keep the water refreshed, and she somehow squeezed through that. You have to wonder how intelligent these critters really are when they deliberately leave a safe environment to go into the open air through a two- or three-inch gap. The thing that really bothered me though, was the sheer number of accounts in this book, of this kind of thing happening repeatedly, affecting one species after another. Frankly it was irresponsible of the captors of these animals not to have seen to their welfare better than they did and I'm sorry the author didn't seem angry about it. She was more like, 'Oh well, there goes another octopus. Bring a fresh one in.' It's a little cruel to phrase it like that, but honestly, that was sometimes how it felt to me.

Obviously caring for animals is not an exact science, and things can go wrong. I can imagine if these animals were kept by private owners there would be all kinds of stupid and thoughtless mistakes made and animals dying, but this is the Boston Aquarium staffed by seasoned professionals and the number of incidents was disturbing, like for example, when this electric eel got from its tank into a neighboring one where it electrocuted two prized fish in that tank.

Seriously, did these people never consider keeping the tanks completely isolated from one another? Keeping secure lids on them? At least giving a nod and a wink to Murphy's Law? The saddest thing is that it felt like none of them learned anything from past experience and were therefore condemned to repeat their mistakes. This is incompetence, plain and simple. I sincerely hope other zoos and aquaria take more care.

I can also imagine that Kali's death was an emotional moment for the author after she'd bonded quite strongly with this particular octopus, but the rapidity with which she moved on to Kali's replacement, named Karma, of all things, rather cheapened her mourning period. It was at that point that she put some stuff in the book aimed at justifying going through this parade of wild-captured octopuses.<./p>

She talked about the value of the education that the aquarium does, but she never said a word about pollution or climate change and whether or not the educational experience, for whatever it's worth, that random members of the public get in seeing these animals in captivity, ever really translates into any concrete results in terms of public awareness and support for combatting climate change, or pollution, or in increasing environmentalism.

The absence of something like that undercut the value of her words, because without knowing if that works and produces results it seems fatuous indeed to me to be so devil-may-care about capturing these animals from the wild and then seeing them die in foolish and thoughtless ways. Neither does it do any good to educate people that the giant pacific octopus is really cute, interesting, and harmless if they don't connect its habitat with a polluted and warming ocean. I found that annoying and inappropriate.

I had to ask myself why they aren't breeding these octopuses and repatriating their offspring back to the ocean, or using the bred-in-captivity offspring to populate zoos instead of capturing more from the oceans. That would help to make up for those that are dying in captivity, but she didn't say a word about that either! Overall I got the impression that she was so enamored of the animals that her thoughts really were not free enough to stray very much into the bigger picture, which was truly sad.

That said, the book was educational, although it could have gone a lot further, and it was entertaining. It gave me more of a picture of what's involved in maintaining an exhibit in an aquarium and in how octopuses interact with novelty - including humans sticking their arms into the tanks. It said a lot less about what I was interested in: how intelligent (or dumb!) these animals truly are or what efforts are being made to measure and test that intelligence. I'd hoped for more. This was very much a puff piece - a PR exercise for octopods - but I was reasonably satisfied with what I got, so on that basis I rate it a worthy read.

Like Vanessa by Tami Charles

Rating: WARTY!

I wasn't thrilled with this audiobook, which had sounded like it might be a fun story. This young girl, Vanessa, is thrilled to discover that a black woman has, for the first time, won the Miss America contest. Since she shares a name with the winner, Vanessa Williams, she decides anything is possible and ends up entering a beauty pageant herself.

My hope was that this book, set in the early eighties, would quickly start teaching the very lessons it claims it will teach - about beauty being only skin deep and what's below that is far more important, but it took way too long to get there for my taste, and it was rather tedious and unsatisfactory on the journey. I DNF'd it, and I cannot commend it based on what I heard of the story.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Rating: WARTY!

I'm saddened to report that this novel, published in 1939, and which has had at least four titles, "Ten Little Indians" not being even the most offensive of them, has sold over 100 million copies. The ten victims were comprised of eight visitors to this remote island, along Ethel and Thomas Rogers, who are the housekeeper and butler respectively. Slowly these people start being killed off, and apparently no one is safe.

The residents and visitors alike are all evidently morons, and all guilty of some misbehavior or one kind or another in their past. Apparently someone has found out about their sins and retribution is on its way. Anthony Marston dies first from cyanide poisoning, Mrs Rogers is found dead in her bed the next morning, and general MacArthur (no, not that one, this other one) dies from being bludgeoned. Mr Rogers is found dead shortly afterward not having a beautiful day in his neighborhood. Later, Emily Brent is found dead in the kitchen, again from cyanide poising. All that these people had to do was to lock themselves in a room and stay there eating nothing, until the boat came from the mainland, but apparently that never occurred to them.

And how convenient that the bad weather prevented the daily boat from coming over to the island and rescuing them that next morning! This book was too much and once the stupidity became not only evident, but also positively rampant, I DNF'd it. I can't commend it at all - and I'm now done with Agatha Christie.

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

Rating: WARTY!

Boring! That was my conclusion on my very first attempt to meet Miss Marple, another in Agatha Christie's stable of amateur detectives.

This audiobook began with a long, tedious, semeingly endless history of everyone who was remotely connected to anything. At first I thought I was listening a Stephen King novel, but no, there's Miss Marple being summoned. Naturally when you find the body of a complete stranger on your library, the first thing is to dismiss the word of the maid who has been terrorized by finding it. Obviously she's la-la. The next thing to do when it's actually confirmed is to say, 'the hell with the police, I'm calling in an amateur sleuth'. Well, I don't do 'sleuths', amateur or otherwise. If a book has the word 'sleuth' anywhere in the blurb, I don't even consider reading any further.

This one didn't have 'sleuth' anywhere to be seen, and that wasn't the reason I DNF'd it. The reason was that it took forever to get going and I lost patience with it. Miss Marple may or may not be doddering, I never got far enough to find out. My problem was that the entire book was doddering long before she ever came on the scene, so no. Just no.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Rating: WARTY!

This was an offshoot of my reading of the biographies of Agatha Christie recently. There were about four of her books I had never read which were mentioned and caught my interest for one reason or another. I may as well have not bothered!

This is a Hercule Poirot story full of suicide, surprise engagements, dramatic activity, secret engagements, unknown offspring, and finally the murder of Ackroyd. Evidently there’s trouble at t’ mill, lads! Of course Poirot solves it because when has he ever failed? There was far too much going on in this story, but I did not make it very far because the opening portion of it was so dreadfully boring dahlings! I gave up in it. It had intrigued me earlier when I was reading the biographies, but not so much that I’m willing to be bored to death! Not when there are other books out there which I know will grab my interest from the start. I can’t commend it based on the dire portion I heard.

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

Rating: WARTY!

In this novel there's trouble at t' mill. Robert, the mill owner is forced to lay-off some employees, and there are threats against him. Meanwhile, little orphan Caroline comes to live with her uncle the Reverend Helstone - if you can believe that. Sounds like a cuss word. She falls for Robert greatly and gets sick when she thinks he's for someone else. She also becomes great friends with a fellow orphan, now wealthy girl about town, Shirley. Note that this was in an era when Shirley was a man's name. I know what you're thinking: Surely, you're Joe King? I jest ye not.

Anyway, Shirley tries to help the laid-off mill workers both out of charity and out of fear for Robert's life. Caroline thus imagines Shirley and Robert ending-up together in a tryst and it's too much for her poor fluttering heart to bear. Thus are the comings and goings which ramble on forever, but of course Caroline weds Robert in the end.

It's really a redux of Jane Eyre, with a few details changed, and nowhere near as entertaining. Robert ain't Rochester. He's more like Gravesend, which is northeast of Rochester, but still in the same county of Kent. I grew utterly bored with Bob the Blunderer in the first twenty percent and ditched it. Caroline is no Jane. I can't commend it based on the tedious portion I mistakenly subjected myself to.

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie

Rating: WARTY!

This audiobook made little sense from the title onward, but I did start to get into it initially. Unfortunately, it failed to hold my interest with too much rambling, and seemingly endless interviews covering the same ground. It was very flat and static, and it became boring for me. Maurice Disher, who was a reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement back in 1943, claimed, according to Wikipedia: "No crime enthusiast will object that the story of how the painter died has to be told many times, for this, even if it creates an interest which is more problem than plot, demonstrates the author's uncanny skill. The answer to the riddle is brilliant." I beg to differ. The suspect was - in retrospect, I have to admit since I'm usually hopeless at guessing who it is - pretty obvious, and it was clearly not the wife despite the endless damning evidence stacking up against her. I favored a different suspect which I thought would have made for a better story, but that might have been obvious too had she gone that route.

One problem was that I started in on this around the same time as I also started in on another Christie by the name of And Then There Were None which is not the original title, but it is a more acceptable title than the original ever was. The problem with hearing these two volumes so closely together was that in many ways they felt very much alike, the biggest difference being that this story focused only on five people whereas the other focused on ten!

The story begins with the daughter of a woman who was, some thirteen years before, convicted of murdering her husband and who herself died within a year of being imprisoned. Now her daughter is seeking to marry a guy and for some reason the jerk seems to be insisting that that conviction all those years ago is an impediment to marriage. My feeling this that this woman should ditch the guy, but instead she comes to Hercule Poirot, convinced of her mother's innocence, and asking that he investigate, so off he goes.

After a very brief analysis, he concludes conveniently that there are only five suspects (other than this woman's mother), and he goes off to interview them, hence the five little pigs. Every single one of them is gracious and loquacious. The problem was that of how would Hercule Poirot know this rhyme? It's been around since the mid-18th century, but why on Earth would Hercule Poirot know it? He didn't grow up in the UK, being Belgian and was therefore never exposed to British nursery rhymes. He moved to Britain only during World War One, when he was (as initially conceived) an elderly man, having retired 1905. Of course after his immense success, Christie rather had to retcon him some youth as it were, but still he was very mature.

None of this automatically precludes him from ever having heard the nursery rhyme, but the fact is that he never married, Never had any interest in women, and certainly never had children nor was interested in them, Quite the opposite in fact, so whence would he ever have heard the nursery rhyme? I think this is a problem of writing which Christie never thought through. Clearly, having long been a mother herself by then, she was aware of it, but she never considered the unlikelihood that Poirot would have been. She could have resolved this by having someone mention the rhyme to him in passing or have him accidentally hear it, thereby putting it in his head and having him adopt it as a framework for his enquiries, but this literary great never thought of that, I suspect because she evidently considered her character to be as English as she was despite the thin veneer of his foreign origin.

Yet this nursery rhyme forms the foundation of his battle plan and he refers to it quite often as he moves from one suspect to another. That may be a minor issue, but what wasn't was the endless repetitive retelling of the murder, which unlike Mr Disher, I found to be tedious. I found my mind wandering from the story often because it was the same story over and over, and I tired of it. I cannot commend this as a worthy read.