by Ash » Tue Jul 08, 2008 2:26 pm
Like the title says? What'cha reading, what do you think about it, is it to be recommended, etc? Most of my readings consist of Golden Age detective fiction by the way ^_~
Last night I finished John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge, one of his Doctor Fell mysteries. While known as one of his better books, I didn't actually like it as much as other Doctor Fell mysteries like the The Hollow Man (legendary for it's locked room lecture!), The Plague Court Murders and He Who Whispers (Or the Merrivale novel The Judas Window). Use of horror-themes in his book is very Carr-ish, but here it was kinda confusing, with unrelating subjects like Automatons and Satanism.
I'm also reading Japan Technology University's Professor Ueda Jirou's "C'mon Strange Powers!" (日本科学技術大学教授上田次郎のどんと来い、超常現象). It's a metafiction book of the Japanese drama Trick (really funny detectivedrama!), written by the protagonist Ueda Jirou. In it, he chronicles the happenings of the dramas, but from his viewpoint. So he never fainted when ESP-er Big Mother used her levitation in his office, he "saw through her trick immediately and went to sleep". XD
What's even funnier, in Trick 2, Ueda Jirou's is promoting the same book throughout the series XD
"Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God's good earth" - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God