Archive for February, 2009

book review: Peril at End House, by Agatha Christie

February 24, 2009 at 8:57 · Filed under Reading

Another fun entry in the Poirot series…

a lovely diversion with an ending not to be guessed

Captain Hastings and Hercule Poirot are on holiday when they learn that several attempts have been made on a local girl’s life. Poirot seeks to stop a future murder, with mixed success.

This is the 8th published work featuring Poirot (6th novel), and while not the finest (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, perhaps? I have not read them all…yet), it made for a pleasurable travel diversion while waiting in Brazilian airports. As the New York Times Book Review said of this novel in 1932, “With Agatha Christie as the author and Hercule Poirot as the central figure, one is always assured of an entertaining story with a real mystery to it” [1].

[The previous Poirot works are - in order - The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Murder on the Links, Poirot Investigates, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Big Four, The Mystery of the Blue Train, and Black Coffee (a play later adapted as a novel).]

Note on potentially objectionable content: Sexist protagonists (Women, they are impatient!) and murder as entertainment.

[1] Isaac Anderson, March 6, 1932, p20. Quoted in the wikipedia entry for this book.

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audiobook review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney

February 24, 2009 at 8:53 · Filed under Reading

This was AWESOME.

brilliant, fast paced 1950s science fiction thriller

Dr Miles Bennell, a general practitioner in a quiet California town, notices a strange psychological epidemic. People begin believing that their loved ones aren’t really their loved ones. And then he finds the seed pods…

This is a brilliant suspense thriller from the 1950s. I listened to the audiobook performed by Kristoffer Tabori, published by Blackstone Audio [and available here under the "Audio CD" edition]. Tabori was the perfect narrator: he really made the story come alive. I couldn’t put my mp3 player down! And to boot, Tabori’s father directed the original film and the audiobook includes an interesting interview at the end with Tabori about his father’s film.

I listened to this during a business trip to Brazil and it was perfect escape listening. Only at one point did the characters make a ludicrous decision (like when people split up in horror movies); incidentally that part was cut from the original movie. And in this “updated” version, the date of the action is moved to the 1970s, even though it seems little else is updated, including the gender roles which feel very 1950s. The ending was a little quick; I had to listen to it twice to catch all that happened, and even so I have a couple of questions. But if you can handle that, What a ride! I loved this and immediately sent off for the 1950s movie. Highly recommended: the funnest audiobook I’ve listened to in months!

Note on potentially objectionable content: a smattering of “light” profanity, 1950s gender roles, and it’s Very Scary.

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audiobook review: Martian Time-Slip and the Golden Man, by Philip K Dick

February 24, 2009 at 8:46 · Filed under Reading ·Tagged ,

Dick is always a total trip, and this is no exception.  Great human drama.

what is reality? take a look inside a troubled mind

At one point in this book, I said to myself, If anyone was in doubt as to whether Philip K. Dick took drugs, here is confirmation. But I was just mixed up in the time slips.

It is the future. Humans have colonized Mars but life is hard on the colony with little water and scant employment. The native Martians are a low class. Jack is a repairman whose path crosses that of Arnie Cott, a corrupt local power broker. There are time warps and visions of the future, schizophrenics who live in a different time realm, and Martians with special powers.

But really this book is about people dealing with fear and with suffering, about power and its misuses. And it asks the question, What is reality? What do we really know about it?

Not much.

I enjoyed it. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Grover Gardner and published by Blackstone Audiobooks. Good reading. [Note on content: one character uses profanity regularly, and there are one or two brief, not-particularly-graphic sex scenes.]

The audiobook includes an additional CD with the story The Golden Man, ostensibly the basis for the Nicholas Cage movie Next. In fact, the two have nothing in common except the idea that a person can see the future, but I enjoyed both.

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squatting in Rio

February 19, 2009 at 15:44 · Filed under Funny

I checked out of my hotel this morning but this afternoon found that my room key still worked and that no one had checked in.  So I used my laptop in the room for a while rather than in the lobby.  (I didn’t use any amenities, just sat and typed and called my wife on Skype.)

Then my nerves got the better of me and I retreated to the lobby.  But it was mildly exciting.

UPDATE:  Maybe it wasn’t just my nerves.  A colleague in the room next door was trying to reach me shortly after the events described above and knew I was squatting, so she went to my room and knocked boldly.  A naked (except for a towel) man who had clearly just woken up came to the door. 

I must have missed naked man by minutes. 

This is what I call living large (now that I’m not getting drugged and strangled).

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book review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie

February 19, 2009 at 15:41 · Filed under Reading

I have taken to reading very light fiction when I travel.  And I’m on an Agatha Christie jag right now.  This is her first published book ever!  My thoughts:

wonderful travel reading, a great start to an incredible career (for both Christie and Poirot)

It’s exciting to read the first published novel of the world’s best selling author of all time. After reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I decided to read all of the Hercule Poirot mysteries, and this is a natural beginning. We meet the detective Poirot, a Belgian refugee in England, and his future traveling companion, Arthur Hastings.

The powerful matron of a wealthy family is poisoned in her sleep! Whodunnit?

I felt the book started a wee bit slow (as always with the first in a series, no?), but once the poisoning happened, it was difficult to put down. Perfect reading for a long flight to Brazil.

Highly recommended as travel reading (or whenever else you may need a diversion). For the rest of my trip, I’ve brought Murder on the Orient Express and Hallowe’en Party. Poirot to the rescue!

[Note on content: No objectionable content, unless you count poisoning an elderly woman or the general idea of murder as entertainment.]

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teaching like the world’s favorite father figure

February 3, 2009 at 10:04 · Filed under Development, Economics

Last week I was in Peru for a workshop, and I taught two sessions in Spanish, one on “sampling and power calculations” and another on “data collection.”  we had participants from around the continent.

Today I saw the teacher evaluations.  My favorite positive comment: In response to “What did you like most?”, one participant wrote

que a veces hable como Homer Simpson [sometimes he talks like Homer Simpson]

And – as to be expected – the main “what suggestions to improve the session?” was “menos rápido [slower]“.  Story of my life.

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