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What I'm Reading: Murder on the Orient Express

Okay, I think this one is pretty well-known: Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie. Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective who works in London, has just finished solving a case for the French Army in Syria, and is now on his way back home, though he plans to spend a few days sight-seeing in Istanbul. In Istanbul, he receives a telegram that a case in London that's been on the backburner has just had a big breakthrough and he needs to hurry back.

He books a ticket on the Orient Express, and is surprised to find all the sleeping car is filled. This is unusual because it's deep winter, when the train is usually not full. Even his friend, Monsieur Bouc, an official in the train company who happens to be riding with him, is not able to get him a sleeping berth. Only when a passenger doesn't show up at the last minute is Poirot able to secure a place.

It's an unusual collection of people riding, from all over--Americans, English, Italians, Swedes--all of whom coincidentally wanted to take the train at the same time. After Poirot goes to sleep, he hears a shout and a muffled thump against the door. He looks in the passageway and sees only a woman in a scarlet kimono (though he can't see her face) and the conductor for the sleeping car, who seems to be taking care of matters. Later, Poirot realizes the train has stopped and hasn't moved for some time.

In the morning, he wakens to discover first that the train is stuck in a snowdrift in the mountains in Yugoslavia--it could be days before they get moving again, and second, that one of the passengers has been murdered. The murderer must still be on the train. At Monsieur Bouc's urging, Poirot agrees to take the case, and begins searching for clues and interviewing the passengers. Of course, it would be nice to find the murderer, in case he (or she) plans to strike again....

This is one I'd never read, although of course I knew the famous ending ahead of time. (I won't give it away for those who might not have heard.) Still, the twists to get there were well worth reading, with plenty of false leads and clues hidden in plain sight. Monsieur Poirot specializes in psychological analysis, and the way he gets the truth out of those who might wish to hide it is ingenious. All in all, a fun novel with a lot of style.

What I'm Reading: Tom Brown's Schooldays

Hmm, I've just finished a book about an average English boy who gets called away to a special private school. When he arrives there, he's accepted to one of several houses that each have their own special character. He's not so hot academically and often gets in trouble with his small group of schoolmates, but finds acceptance in the school by proving himself on the field playing the school's favorite sport. After several years at the school, he defeats great evil, becomes friends with the wise school head, and to everybody's surprise, graduates an accomplished young man ready to face the world.

So I must be getting into the Harry Potter series, right? Not at all! The book in question is Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes, written in 1857 and set in the 1830s at Rugby School in Warwickshire, England. Actually, besides being a direct and acknowledged inspiration for J.K. Rowling's fantasy books, it also set off a fad in private school novels in England after its publication. Apparently, it was also immensely popular in Japan in the 1890s, and there have been at least five film versions. Actually, Tom Brown's Schooldays may be one of the most influential books ever published, at least if judging by the number of works it's inspired.

So I've described the general plot above, but more specifically, Tom Brown arrives at Rugby school when he's eleven and joins the Schoolhouse, one of several houses. His first year goes well, but in the second year, some of the sixth-form boys (the oldest boys, probably 17-19 years old) who had kept peace and order in the house have graduated, and the new lot is not as well respected. A rather nasty fifth-former (15-16 year olds), Flashman, and his buddies find that there is no one to stop them bullying and demanding service from the younger boys. It's up to Tom to lead a revolt by the younger boys against the bullying, which brings him to Flashman's particular and unwelcome attention. It's only after Tom is roasted over a fire by Flashman and his cronies in a harrowing scene that some of the older boys turn against Flashman and order gets restored.

That's the first half of the novel. The second half concerns Tom's befriending a small and sickly boy newly arrived at the school named Arthur. At first, Tom's main concern is making sure the new boy doesn't get bullied the way he was, but over time, Arthur's studiousness and religious devotion rub off on Tom, and as they get into the upper grades, it's Arthur who becomes the greater influence on Tom. The climax of the book comes when an epidemic sweeps through the school and a number of boys fall ill, including Arthur.

I found Tom Brown's Schooldays to be fairly delightful, and I think anybody who enjoys Harry Potter and is able to look beyond the magic to the story underneath would also enjoy Tom Brown. At the time it was written, Thomas Hughes explicitly aimed the book at teen-agers, so it was the YA of its period. The nineteenth-century language might make it a bit tougher for today's teens, although it's by no means a difficult read. It does get off to a slow start though, with the first chapter basically dedicated to a description of the landscape around Tom's home town. Skip the first chapter to get right into the story and this might be a good choice for a Harry Potter fan who wonders what to read after The Deathly Hallows is over.

What I'm Reading: The King's Best Highway

The King's Best Highway is a history of what was once called the Boston Post Road--the road from New York to Boston that developed in colonial times from a series of Indian trails, became the most important and trafficked road in America in the 19th century, and still exists in piecemeal form, largely as the modern Route 1.

Lots of interesting stuff in here. I thought the two best chapters were the early one on how the road's early improvements were largely driven by Benjamin Franklin in the 1760s, when he headed the colonial postal service (hence, the name of the road at the time), and a later one on how after a period of decline when the railroads outcompeted them, the old highway system returned to prominence in the 1890s during the national craze for the bicycle.

In fact, it was these improvements to the road system driven by bicycle enthusiasts that literally paved the way for the automobile to flourish ten to twenty years later. Not to mention that much of the early automobile industry was located along the Boston Post Road, in the factories and workshops that made bicycle components in Connecticut and Massachusetts. If not for Henry Ford's production innovations in Detroit, the US auto industry may very well have ended up in New England.

So this book is more than just a history of a highway, it's also a history of America from a certain perspective. All sorts of historical figures march, ride, or drive their way through this book, often in roles we don't normally associate with them--P.T. Barnum as a state congressman in Connecticut fighting for road improvements so more people can travel and visit his Manhattan museum, for instance. We also see George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Robert Moses, J.P. Morgan, and plenty of other lesser-known but still important figures.

Yet somehow I don't feel like this rises to the level of one of my "Shortcuts to Smartness" books. While the topic is right up my alley ("A book about a highway! Cool!" I said upon first seeing this), it's probably too narrow a topic for the general reader. For those interested in the histories of cities, infrastructure, or transport, it's appeal will be evident. For others, this is probably one you could skip.

What I'm Reading: Round-Up

My family is taking a fun trip to Mexico over Christmas break, and I've been practicing my Spanish! I've been listening to the Pimsleur CDs from the library (up to Level 5!) and reading books from the "Easy Readers" series. This is a series of actual Spanish literary works simplified down to certain specified levels--Level A requires a vocabulary of about 600 words to read (not to brag, but these are way too easy for me), Level B a vocabulary of about 1,200 words (this is a bit easy for me), Level C about 2,000 words (these are challenging for me, but a good challenge and probably what I should stick to), and Level D about 2,500 words (haven't tried yet and almost certainly beyond my skill level).


Las Inquietudes de Shanti Andia A Level B book by Pio Baroja, originally written in the early 1900s and set around perhaps 1850, about a sailor named Santiago (Shanti for short) Andia. Shanti as a child dreams of working on one of the boats he sees from the waterfront in his small seaside town in the Basque region in northern Spain. As an adult, he finds work on the ships making three-year journeys from Spain to the Philippines and other destinations in the Far East. While at school to become a ship's captain in Cadiz, he finds romance with a beautiful but manipulative woman who promises to wait for him on his next journey so they can marry, but instead marries a rich man while he is away.

Disappointed and bereft, he returns to his hometown for a spell and gets involved in a complicated family mystery involving an uncle long thought lost at sea but perhaps still alive, the beautiful and good-hearted daughter of a dying family friend, and an evil wealthy merchant who wishes to marry the daughter and will stop at nothing--including kidnapping and murder--to get Shanti out of the way when he tries to protect her.

I read this book several years ago and so enjoyed its ocean-faring adventures that I returned to it again, with much satisfaction.


Historias de la Artamila  A Level C book by Ana Maria Matute first published in 1961. This is a book of short stories set in the fictional village of Artamila, probably around 1920. Artamila is an impoverished and conservative village set in a remote valley where the modern world barely intrudes, other than an occasional car from the big city. The unifying factor is a young girl, the ten-year-old daughter of one of the town's few wealthy men, who occasionally participates in, but mostly observes, the daily events that unfold in the town and its environs.

These stories are beautiful and sad, and often involve an outsider coming to the village and trying to change things for the better, only to find it's not possible. I think I had two favorites stories. The first was El Rey (The King), about a new teacher who comes to the local school and befriends a poor but imaginative boy in a wheelchair. When he discovers the boy doesn't expect to get anything for Christmas, he promises that the Three Wise Men will deliver gifts to him, planning to dress up himself as a Wise Man and make a special delivery to his house. Only the boy's imagination proves more expansive than the teacher's resources, and the teacher gives up the plan when he discovers the boy believes his special visitors will be able to conjure up a magical abundance of toys and treats.

The other of my favorites was Los Pajaros (The Birds), about a lame boy who lives with his father outside of the town. Because the father is the game warden in the woods and thus not popular with the residents, the boy leads a lonely life, and the little girl who is in all the stories meets him when she trips and injures herself on a walk outside of town one day. She must spend the day with the boy, who has learned to climb a rope ladder to the high branches of a tall tree and whistle so that birds come and settle around him and even land on his outstretched arms. Later, when the boy dies of the same illness that causes his lameness (polio?), his father sells the boy's clothes for money. Only the little girl knows why the scarecrow that is clothed in these remnants attracts birds to the field, rather than scares them away.


Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish Finally, this one is not an "Easy Reader" but rather a non-fiction book that is just what it's title promises. Not really the kind of book you read from cover to cover, but instead the best way to go seems to be to pick out the sections that seem most useful for an individual reader. For me, these were parts of the chapters on "tricksters" (i.e. false cognates, or words that appear to be similar to English words but mean something different), "which is which" (ideas with multiple words to express them in Spanish, each with various connotations), and pretty much the entirety of the "cranking up your Spanish" chapter (with small, easily overlooked words or phrases that might not be in your textbooks but are critical to sounding fluent--the Spanish equivalents of well, I mean, you see, so anyhow, etc.).

Scary Movies: The Babadook

Okay, last scary movie of the season, and we come to The Babadook, a movie who a couple people recommended to me as a really scary, really well-done movie. They weren't wrong! Let me just say right now my discussion of it is going to have spoilers, because I've got some ideas or theories about this movie.

When the movie opens, Amelia is a single mother in Australia to her six-year-old son, Samuel. Her husband, Oskar, died in a car crash when she was on the way to the hospital to give birth to Samuel. He's a troubled little boy--he spends his time building weapons out of wood and household objects to fight off some imaginary threat, he gets in trouble constantly at school, and worst of all, he wakes his mother up every night in the middle of the night because of his fear of monsters. Amelia has trouble falling back asleep after being woken up every night, and because of her sleep deprivation she has trouble staying awake at work. She is generally at the end of her rope.

When Samuel wakes up in the middle of the night, Amelia usually reads him a book with the story of the Three Little Pigs. One night, however, he brings her a new book he found on his shelf called the Babadook. It looks like a kid's book on the outside, but once Amelia starts reading it, it's about a horrible creature in a top hat and a long coat and the words are really menacing--"If it's in a word or it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook," it starts off, and halfway through it reads, "And once you see what's underneath, you're going to wish you were DEAD!"

Not surprisingly, the book only worsens Samuel's anxiety and now he really, really won't go to sleep, saying he doesn't want his mother to die. Not only that, weird things start happening--sounds in the house at night, and at lunch she finds glass in some food she's eating. Samuel assures her the Babadook put it in there. At a birthday party for her niece, who is about Samuel's age, Amelia makes a scene with the other guests and Samuel pushes his cousin out of a treehouse after she makes fun of him for not having a father, breaking her nose in two places. And even though Amelia tore the Babadook book up the day before, she finds it taped back together and waiting for her on the front stoop when they arrive home.

Severely sleep deprived, Samuel having finally been kicked out of his school and she taking sick leave from work and cut off from her sister who won't talk to her after the fiasco at the party, Amelia finds herself isolated, with only she and Samuel in the house alone together all day. She becomes increasingly unhinged and even experiences hallucinations and lapses in her memory, tearing the wallpaper from the kitchen walls to find the source of roaches she imagines crawling everywhere, finding herself clutching a kitchen knife she wasn't aware of, and watching TV late at night where her half-sleeping nightmares mix with the programs on the screen.

All of this leads to the final confrontation with the Babadook in some very disturbing scenes. But after the Babadook is defeated, we get a final scene showing it's still in the house. In fact, she and Samuel dig up worms to put in a bowl, and she takes it down to the basement, her late husband's workshop that she's left completely undisturbed, and leaves it on the floor for the Babadook to retrieve and eat in the shadows. It seems the Babadook cannot be really destroyed, only managed.

Okay, I'll start with the theory that a quick perusal of the internet shows is everybody's theory: the Babadook is Amelia herself, or at least it's a physical incarnation of her own resentment for Samuel, whom she subconsciously blames for Oskar's death. It's easy to see that after Oskar's death on the day Samuel was born, she never had time to properly grieve for him what with a newborn to take care of, and over time that repressed emotion grew into something huge and powerful enough to break into the real world. That's why at the end, the Babadook can't truly be killed--it's her own emotion. The only way to control it is to acknowledge it and deal with it.

But now for a couple questions I didn't see addressed anywhere else. First--where did the Babadook book come from? Answer--Amelia wrote it herself.

How do we know this? First, in the party scene at her sister's house, Amelia mentions she used to be a writer, until her son was born, so she has the skill to have done it. Second, if you read the words of the book, they sound threatening at first, but on closer examination, they are actually a warning. Third, we know that Amelia frequently doesn't remember things she did, for instance finding herself in different parts of the house without knowing how she got there, etc., especially in her hazy periods in the middle of the night. I think it's a book she wrote during one of those hazy periods to warn herself and Samuel against the terrible period of madness she knew was coming. (Notice, the previous book they read together was the Three Little Pigs--all about protecting your house against the wolf, an outside threat. But the Babadook book makes clear that doesn't work--the threat is already inside.)

Second, how does Samuel know the Babadook is coming? Remember, in the beginning, he's making weapons to protect he and his mother against monsters--the final thing he does to get kicked out of school is to take one of his homemade weapons to school in his backpack. He also claims he's waking her up every night to protect her. But this is all before they've found the Babadook book. How does he knows his mother's madness is on the way?

I think the reason he knows the Babadook is coming is because it's happened before. Keep in mind, his seventh birthday his approaching, and as Amelia's sister mentions at one point, Samuel has never celebrated his birthday on the actual day, because that's the anniversary of Oskar's death. That approaching anniversary seems to be what is driving the surge in Amelia's madness. And of course there are her memory lapses--she doesn't remember previous years on Samuel's birthday, when the Babadook must have come out. This is a recurring thing. Samuel remembers past years and knows it is coming, and Amelia knows it too, at least subconsciously.

And I think that's the point of the movie--she hasn't dealt with her feelings of resentment, her grief, all the complicated stuff that goes together with the death of her husband, and she knows it's finally reached a point where she can't put it off anymore. Her son is getting kicked out of school and she's lost all her friendships and relationships with her family. She knows she finally has to confront her feelings/the Babadook, even if it means one final fight against the Babadook that risks her killing herself and/or her son. It turns out she is strong enough to survive this final fight, but only just barely.

The Babadook (2014)

Story/Plot/Characters-- Great acting, realistic dialogue, perfectly paced, characters are utterly believable and psychologically complex. (4 points)
Special Effects--Beautifully done effects. I've read director Jennifer Kent intentionally avoided computer-generated effects and did everything old school, and it works exactly as intended. (2 points)
Scariness-- Scary on many levels--things jumping out of the dark, plus suspense that builds throughout the movie, plus psychological horror. (2 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--So, so freaky, especially Amelia's TV watching late at night, where her nightmares mix with the programs on the screen to create truly frightening, surrealistic scenes. (2 points)
Total=10 points (Best Ever)

And what do you know, our second perfect score ever, matched only by Alien! There are a few other movies I suspect might earn a perfect score, but we'll have to wait until future years for those reviews....
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Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)

Best Horror Movies Ever
Alien (1979)=10 points
The Babadook (2014)=10 points
Dawn of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Excellent
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Poltergeist (1982)=7.5 points
The Haunting (1963)=7.5 points
Freaks (1932)=7 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Day of the Dead (1985)=6 points
Okay
Creepshow (1982)=5.5 points
The Raven (1963)=5.5 points
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1960)=4.5 points
Alien Resurrection (1997)=4.5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The House of Wax (1953)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points

What I'm Reading: Action Philosophers

Okay, I have one more horror movie to review for the season, but first let's get to a book I recently finished, Action Philosophers, a non-fiction graphic novel providing biographies of forty philosophers, from Ancient Greece to the contemporary world. This book is awfully charming, with cartoony but detailed art from Ryan Dunlavey that adapts itself to each era and location--appearing Chinese for Confucius and Lao Tzu, for instance, or medieval Jewish for Spinoza. The art and dialogue (by writer Fred Van Lente) are clever and fast-paced to the point of hyperactivity, providing a wealth of information but also nearly non-stop humorous references to pop culture, history, other jokes from earlier in the book, even the authors themselves.

I think my favorite philosopher in the book is John Stuart Mill, presented in the style of Peanuts. J.S. Mill is Charlie Brown, with adorable little 19th century sideburns on his bald head, espousing his Utilitarianism to the other skeptical characters. His attempt to teach virtue to Snoopy, who keeps trying to steal the blanket of Jeremy Bentham (in the guise of Linus), is a particular highlight.

And yet, despite the pervading jokiness, the core of the book is serious. This is a real history of philosophy told through a biographic framework, clearly showing how each new era of philosophers have expanded, synthesized, or rejected the work of their predecessors. It starts with the pre-Socratics and ends with Jacques Derrida, and is fairly brilliant at cogently demonstrating in words and pictures even such difficult concepts as the analytic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In fact, I'm giving this book one of my coveted Shortcuts to Smartness awards! A Shortcut to Smartness book is one that "so expands your knowledge and understanding in so many areas that it is like a college course in and of itself," and I think that works here. It's graphic novel form would make this readable even for high school students, as it breaks down lots of highly complex ideas to a level that practically anyone could understand. And they would have a lot of fun in learning those ideas, too!