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hannahstohelit's reviews
80 reviews
The Knife Slipped by Erle Stanley Gardner
4.0
I feel like I always overrate these books, but whatever- they're always fun. This one was too, though I was surprised in the end by how lightweight it was, as well as how little of the fun legal legerdemain that I'd come to expect from ESG showed up here. Donald is also dimmer, Bertha is kinder (and smarter), and one kind of gets the vibe that ESG was informed that this wasn't going to be published before he'd completely conceptualized and completed the ending as it feels a bit half-assed, even if the final parting shot is a very fun one. While in some ways I had fun with the straightforwardness that you don't usually get from Gardner's books, it also did reveal some of the weaknesses- random characters popping in and out, for example, which is something usually camouflaged by a twist of some kind. Having read the book this was replaced with already, ESG clearly picked a different direction to go in for the series after having this one rejected, and it was probably the right move. Lam is more fun when he's smarter than everyone else than when he's just a blundering PI.
Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries by Lisa Sanders
Skipping a star rating on this one because I don't really know how to rate it. I wasn't exactly expecting Berton Roueche here, and it wasn't that, but they were snappy, interesting, and often sobering. (It was fun to already have been familiar with one case- I went to high school with the daughter of the ENT who diagnosed a woman's frequent cataplectic attacks and must have heard about it at some point because it was EXTREMELY familiar to me.) I probably shouldn't have binged it in one go, but it was a good read (and I do actually have some Roueche books queued up on interlibrary loan, so...).
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham
4.75
I critique a lot of the nonfiction books I read with "I don't get why they put all these things together rather than just picking one and focusing on it" and I can't make that complaint here because this thing felt FLAWLESSLY constructed. I was confused at first as to why all this information was being included at the beginning and by about 3/4 of the way I felt like I understood everything about Higginbotham's choices.
I'd previously read his book about Chernobyl, which I'd enjoyed- but this was better. And the great thing about it is, I knew nothing about the topic. I'd seen Apollo 13 and I had previously been aware of the Challenger explosion as a thing that happened, and was like "yeah there was something about the seals, right?", but it became SO clear that I just knew nothing about astronauts and the space program. I had friends who were space geeks when I was a kid but it so completely passed me by that I thought that "space shuttle" was just a generic term for the vehicles that astronauts used. So not only did this book manage to do a great job introducing me to the topic from its building blocks, it also built a very clear picture in a way that was justified and inexorable.
The quarter point from perfection for me is completely subjective- I am terrible with math/physics as well as with imagining things spatially (which is probably why I'm bad at math/physics), and so a lot of the technical stuff blew right past me and in some cases felt somewhat excessive. But otherwise it was a triumph, with the parallel developments of the space shuttle program itself, the recruitment of that first diverse cohort of astronauts, mutating attitudes toward the space program, etc etc all culminating seamlessly into the two simultaneous stories of the crew getting ready to launch and the engineers worrying about whether it would be safe. And, after 400 pages of jargon and details, I was crying when reading about the impact on the families. This book just did all the different bits of it right.
I'd previously read his book about Chernobyl, which I'd enjoyed- but this was better. And the great thing about it is, I knew nothing about the topic. I'd seen Apollo 13 and I had previously been aware of the Challenger explosion as a thing that happened, and was like "yeah there was something about the seals, right?", but it became SO clear that I just knew nothing about astronauts and the space program. I had friends who were space geeks when I was a kid but it so completely passed me by that I thought that "space shuttle" was just a generic term for the vehicles that astronauts used. So not only did this book manage to do a great job introducing me to the topic from its building blocks, it also built a very clear picture in a way that was justified and inexorable.
The quarter point from perfection for me is completely subjective- I am terrible with math/physics as well as with imagining things spatially (which is probably why I'm bad at math/physics), and so a lot of the technical stuff blew right past me and in some cases felt somewhat excessive. But otherwise it was a triumph, with the parallel developments of the space shuttle program itself, the recruitment of that first diverse cohort of astronauts, mutating attitudes toward the space program, etc etc all culminating seamlessly into the two simultaneous stories of the crew getting ready to launch and the engineers worrying about whether it would be safe. And, after 400 pages of jargon and details, I was crying when reading about the impact on the families. This book just did all the different bits of it right.
The Emperor's Snuff-Box by John Dickson Carr
fast-paced
4.75
This is, in some ways, the exact opposite of a locked-room story- pretty much anyone in the field of suspects could have done it, in fact to an extent that somewhat strains credulity- and yet I loved that, despite that, it turned out to be something of a locked-room story anyway- byb explaining how someone who we the readers believe could NOT have physically done it actually did not one of Carr's usual technical, spatial puzzle-box methods that always mess with my brain, but instead a very basic psychological trick
The book itself moved fast and was always interesting and fun- and with a fun detective as well, with the ending romance just straddling the line between sweet and gratuitous. If I have a complaint it's that the character of Toby Lawes is just a BIT too much/over the top- but that's countered by the absolutely perfect rendition of Eve and Ned's relationship, the emotions on either side, and what they each deserved. I wouldn't describe Carr, from my reading of his other books (or even other elements of this one), as anything approaching much of a feminist, but his psychological insight here was actually excellent.
Could the character work have, theoretically, been better? Sure, but I don't read Carr for character work. The only people who really needed to feel "real" were Eve and, in a different kind of way, Kinross, and both of those were very well done. In every other way, the mystery chugged along, I figured out just enough to feel smart, then realized just how much I had been fooled and appreciated how it had been done by a master. I've seen some criticisms thatthe lack of any motive for members of the Lawes family besides Toby meant that they were pointless as characters, there wasn't really a motive for Eve either! Clearly this was a physical evidence case and they were going to try to piece together evidence of a motive afterward, which is what they did with Ned- they just assumed what his motive was and while they were probably right, who knows, it doesn't matter
Anyway- 4.75 for me not because it's perfect but because it's so close to perfect AND so freaking enjoyable throughout. Again, it's really only the Toby Lawes stuff that bugged me- otherwise I just had a wholehearted good time.
The book itself moved fast and was always interesting and fun- and with a fun detective as well, with the ending romance just straddling the line between sweet and gratuitous. If I have a complaint it's that the character of Toby Lawes is just a BIT too much/over the top- but that's countered by the absolutely perfect rendition of Eve and Ned's relationship, the emotions on either side, and what they each deserved. I wouldn't describe Carr, from my reading of his other books (or even other elements of this one), as anything approaching much of a feminist, but his psychological insight here was actually excellent.
Could the character work have, theoretically, been better? Sure, but I don't read Carr for character work. The only people who really needed to feel "real" were Eve and, in a different kind of way, Kinross, and both of those were very well done. In every other way, the mystery chugged along, I figured out just enough to feel smart, then realized just how much I had been fooled and appreciated how it had been done by a master. I've seen some criticisms that
Anyway- 4.75 for me not because it's perfect but because it's so close to perfect AND so freaking enjoyable throughout. Again, it's really only the Toby Lawes stuff that bugged me- otherwise I just had a wholehearted good time.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
4.0
I think it's possible that I'm giving it half a point or so more than I would if it weren't iconic, but hey, it is iconic! I mean, if nothing else it was nice to see where all the vampire story tropes came from.
In terms of the actual book itself, it was interesting in that it definitely felt somewhat more modern than I was expecting while also simultaneously more old-fashioned- the overall literary style contrasted with, say, Jonathan Harker using a "kodak" to capture what he saw at Dracula's castle reminded me that different eras overlapped! I think my favorite thread of the book, to my surprise, was Lucy Westenra's turning- unlike a lot of Harker's diary entries it moved, and was always entertaining and actually quite moving (...yes some of the innuendo was pretty weird but hey, that's part of the book's dubious charm!). The character of Renfield, though the doctor's entries about him started off tedious if gruesome, ended up much more interesting once Mina and the crew started visiting him and that was a pretty cool approach.
It was also very fun how the epistolary/found-document nature of the book is explained in-text- it is both extremely plausible and explains why we have read some things and not others and have the specific amount of information that we do, very cleverly done. Stoker's job at differentiating people's writing styles from each other is very passable, though a better writer would have used it to draw out the characterization more. That said, if there's one thing the document-based nature of the book makes clear, it's that a major flaw in the plotting is how absolutely obvious it is that Stoker's plotting relies on people keeping secrets from each other for no reason. In books that are just prose, people keep secrets without telling us they're keeping secrets, so those seams in the plot are less visible- here, I was able to identify a number of points where things would have gone much more smoothly, or particular events would never have needed to occur, if Harker or Van Helsing or Mina would have just explained themselves early on.
In terms of characters- Mina was of course a lot of fun (incidentally- the afterword in the volume I read implies that the three vampire women who attempt to seduce/bite Jonathan are seen by him as an alternative to the more frigid Mina, which seems unfair to her), and while Harker doesn't get that much to do on his own after the first quarter of the book, he's still a clearly stand-up guy on the basis of the rest of it, even if the plotting makes him... I was about to say impotent in a metaphorical sense but I actually don't think the book's implication is that it's meant to be metaphorical... let's say ineffective when Dracula comes to attack Mina. Van Helsing is fun even if, as mentioned, he could have saved everyone a lot of confusion if he had just explained what he thought was happening rather than pushing it off- and Lucy's three suitors are all a kind of differentiated blob to me, especially the American who dies (for no reason that I can tell). The madhouse doctor one whose name I'm forgetting at least has his own unique role- the others not so much. Lucy, of course, is written only to be lusted after and shockingly turned.
The thing is that I went into this book knowing that I don't really like creature/monster based fantasy... so it's not really the book's fault that I didn't get a whole lot out of Dracula as a character/force. The world building was interesting, and Jonathan's time in the castle was largely compelling, but at a certain point I just didn't feel the tension during the London scenes. I was expecting to feel it more when they went to Transylvania, but that whole section/the ending felt weirdly meandering and tensionless to me, and ended on what felt like an anticlimax. (Again, why did the cowboy have to die?) In the end, Dracula felt more like an antagonistic force than a creature/person, which was in fairness a decent amount of what he was meant to be in the first place. Reading about his effect on people- the turning of Lucy, the part-turning of Mina, the influence over Renfield, the destruction of that ship- was always compelling, but whenever he himself showed up after that he just felt kind of lame. I don't know why.
Anyway- probably got a bit of a boost for iconicity and not really my thing but in many ways better than I expected.
In terms of the actual book itself, it was interesting in that it definitely felt somewhat more modern than I was expecting while also simultaneously more old-fashioned- the overall literary style contrasted with, say, Jonathan Harker using a "kodak" to capture what he saw at Dracula's castle reminded me that different eras overlapped! I think my favorite thread of the book, to my surprise, was Lucy Westenra's turning- unlike a lot of Harker's diary entries it moved, and was always entertaining and actually quite moving (...yes some of the innuendo was pretty weird but hey, that's part of the book's dubious charm!). The character of Renfield, though the doctor's entries about him started off tedious if gruesome, ended up much more interesting once Mina and the crew started visiting him and that was a pretty cool approach.
It was also very fun how the epistolary/found-document nature of the book is explained in-text- it is both extremely plausible and explains why we have read some things and not others and have the specific amount of information that we do, very cleverly done. Stoker's job at differentiating people's writing styles from each other is very passable, though a better writer would have used it to draw out the characterization more. That said, if there's one thing the document-based nature of the book makes clear, it's that a major flaw in the plotting is how absolutely obvious it is that Stoker's plotting relies on people keeping secrets from each other for no reason. In books that are just prose, people keep secrets without telling us they're keeping secrets, so those seams in the plot are less visible- here, I was able to identify a number of points where things would have gone much more smoothly, or particular events would never have needed to occur, if Harker or Van Helsing or Mina would have just explained themselves early on.
In terms of characters- Mina was of course a lot of fun (incidentally- the afterword in the volume I read implies that the three vampire women who attempt to seduce/bite Jonathan are seen by him as an alternative to the more frigid Mina, which seems unfair to her), and while Harker doesn't get that much to do on his own after the first quarter of the book, he's still a clearly stand-up guy on the basis of the rest of it, even if the plotting makes him... I was about to say impotent in a metaphorical sense but I actually don't think the book's implication is that it's meant to be metaphorical... let's say ineffective when Dracula comes to attack Mina. Van Helsing is fun even if, as mentioned, he could have saved everyone a lot of confusion if he had just explained what he thought was happening rather than pushing it off- and Lucy's three suitors are all a kind of differentiated blob to me, especially the American who dies (for no reason that I can tell). The madhouse doctor one whose name I'm forgetting at least has his own unique role- the others not so much. Lucy, of course, is written only to be lusted after and shockingly turned.
The thing is that I went into this book knowing that I don't really like creature/monster based fantasy... so it's not really the book's fault that I didn't get a whole lot out of Dracula as a character/force. The world building was interesting, and Jonathan's time in the castle was largely compelling, but at a certain point I just didn't feel the tension during the London scenes. I was expecting to feel it more when they went to Transylvania, but that whole section/the ending felt weirdly meandering and tensionless to me, and ended on what felt like an anticlimax. (Again, why did the cowboy have to die?) In the end, Dracula felt more like an antagonistic force than a creature/person, which was in fairness a decent amount of what he was meant to be in the first place. Reading about his effect on people- the turning of Lucy, the part-turning of Mina, the influence over Renfield, the destruction of that ship- was always compelling, but whenever he himself showed up after that he just felt kind of lame. I don't know why.
Anyway- probably got a bit of a boost for iconicity and not really my thing but in many ways better than I expected.
The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, Richard Lancelyn Green
4.5
I enjoyed this a lot! I did know much of the material in it from other sources since published, but certainly not all of it, and I particularly enjoyed reading about fantheories about the solution of Hound of the Baskervilles that were debated in the newspapers as it was being published. That said, I was hoping for a bit more reprinted matter that I hadn't already read (which isn't exactly the book's fault), and do kind of wish we'd have gotten one or two of ACD's non-Holmes detective stories in there (particularly the ones that have the "famous detective" writing in) as well as I think that they are relevant to the overall point of the book, which is contextualizing ACD's writing of Holmes. I thought Richard Lancelyn Green's introduction was very well done, and while I don't think this is the first time I've read something he's written on Holmes, I did appreciate how great he was at all of this- as, like so many people, my first exposure to him was in learning of his tragic and dramatic death, reading something fascinating from his life feels both positive and refreshing.
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David von Drehle
4.75
This book was EXCELLENT. Given my background in modern Jewish history I was quite familiar with the overall era but, as Von Drehle points out at the end, a lot of books about the overall era don't do a great job/go into much detail summing up and contextualizing the Triangle fire as its own thing and explaining its importance and I thought this did a fantastic job, both contextualizing lots of individual things I already knew and adding an angle I wasn't familiar with (the Tammany shift leftward) in a way that was fascinating and convincing. It also did a great job at giving context to the victims and their lives- though my .25 off is because, and this is totally subjective, I felt like I'd have loved to see more about the familial and communal mourning/responses to losses of the people who were killed, which felt like a bit of a lacuna besides for the mention of the mourning parade. I think it could have gone more into social history in general and given it more living detail. But again, that doesn't really detract from what is in this book which I thought was very effective.
Black Orchids by Rex Stout
4.5
Enjoyed this far more than Three Men Out- the novellas felt long enough to give us enough background/color to make it fun, though the first novella was definitely better than the second. I do feel like Stout has a kind of a thing where he specializes in mysteries where the most easily suspicious person did, in fact, do it - I think that it doesn't ALWAYS work, but I do appreciate that it fits in well with Stout's overall approach of the intelligent/talented Watson as narrator, which definitely has its own charm.
Three Men Out by Linda Ellerbee, Rex Stout
4.0
This was enjoyable but insubstantial enough that a day later, I had to kind of rack my brains to try to remember what the three novellas were. While the other Stout I read this weekend (Black Orchids) was also novellas, I think that there being three of them in a relatively short book wasn't ideal- Stout's plots are fine but it's the trimmings that make the books more than fine and with the novella length you don't really get enough of them. That said, I did enjoy the novellas quite a bit while reading them (besides the last one which I thought was kind of meh, Stout just feels out of his element talking about baseball and the loopy plot feels like evidence of that), even if the whole thing kind of felt like less than the sum of its parts.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
5.0
[REREAD]
This wasn't on my list to read this weekend, but I couldn't sleep and this is a comfort read. Gave it five stars because while there are one or two bits that I don't think are perfect, everything else is, so I let them slide, because how many books are 95% perfect?
This wasn't on my list to read this weekend, but I couldn't sleep and this is a comfort read. Gave it five stars because while there are one or two bits that I don't think are perfect, everything else is, so I let them slide, because how many books are 95% perfect?