forestsofpine

I'm still on my Agatha Christie kick. This month it was Murder in Mesopotamia, which is set on an archaeological dig in Iraq. I'm pretty sure it's one I never read before, nor have I seen the David Suchet episode. Christie was interested in archaeology and participated in digs, so it had some interesting details about the work and day-to-day life of archaeologists in that era. It featured a different narrator than most Poirot books: a woman hired as nurse to the eventual victim about a week before her death. The nurse was both opinionated and unreliable, which was a fun combo in some regards since you could see how her prejudices for or against certain characters were affecting her judgement and blinding her to some of the realities of the case, but unpleasant when her opinions involved racism against the local Arab workers at the dig, which they frequently did.

As for the mystery itself, perhaps the easiest explanation of my feelings is that I enjoyed the setup, but not the solution. One hopes for a satisfying answer to all three of the questions of Who, Why, and How, and the ending was so improbable on one of those counts that it destroyed my suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the classic Christie twists and turns and it's a light, fast read, so I wouldn't describe it as wasted time.

And here are some of the fics I enjoyed in July!( MDZS, Beyond Evil, K-pop RPF )

Original fiction reading of the month included The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, by H.G. Parry, a dark academia historical fantasy with a lot of ominous foreshadowing that kept me turning pages to see exactly how everything was going to go wrong.

On the fanfiction front, here are some of the fics I enjoyed in March:( 2 MDZS epistolary fics )

Another slow reading month, alas, but here are some of the fics I enjoyed in July:( MDZS and Word of Honor )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in January:( MDZS, Kinnporsche, Mr. Queen, UWMA, 1000 Stars )

In November, I read fewer fics than October, but still a lot more than September, so I'll take that. 😆

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed:( MDZS, Mr. Queen, Moonlight Chicken, Bad Buddy x 1000 Stars )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in March:( MDZS/CQL, Beyond Evil, 1000 Stars, Nirvana in Fire, Yuri on Ice, K-pop RPF )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed this month:( Featuring MDZS, Kinnporsche, K-pop RPF, Until We Meet Again, Love in the Air, Our Flag Means Death, Knives Out!, and Gordon Korman )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in October:( MDZS, Kinnporsche, Until We Meet Again, K-Pop RPF )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in July. Vegaspete kind of ate my brain this month, but there's also at least one each for MDZS/CQL, Bad Buddy, Beyond Evil, Semantic Error, and Hawaii Five-0. ( Read more... )

For RarePair Hell Weekend, here are ten of the MDZS/CQL rarepair fics I've enjoyed the most. Since this is a large fandom, I'm using the same standard for rarepairs as mdzscqlrarepairs_ex: less than 300 works on AO3. Listed in order from most common to rarest ships, as of the publication of this post. Please ⚠️ mind the tags! ( Read more... )