Agatha Christie: The Moving Finger

 I have read enough of Christie's books that their relative quality can be reduced to one variable.  They are all filled with vivid, human characters, engaging dialogue, and skillful pacing, so to comment on these elements seems pointless.  The one thing that varies from novel to novel is the cleverness, the extent to which she "gets" me, and leaves me at the end admiring how skillfully she misled and surprised me. 

By that measure, this is a middling specimen.  She fooled me, in a manner of speaking, in that she dropped some nice red herrings.  In particular, i felt very clever for sussing out early the possibility that the culprit was not, as the characters assumed, a woman, and was in fact the gay-coded Mr. Pye.  I was so invested in this thread that I considered researching whether Christie was using "queer" more than she usually does to drop a cute hint.  She "got me", of course, as it became clear that this was a red herring.  Similarly, she suckered me into wondering about Megan by casually mentioning her dark side in a way that might have been a setup.  In both cases, she revealed herself a bit too early by mentioning the relevant clues perhaps once too often. 

Nonetheless, these little traps pale in comparison to certain others.  The perpetrator turns out in the end to be rather run of the mill, and not at all surprising.  They are not, to cite a few examples, the innocent child, the narrator himself, the victim, the investigator, to mention a few of my favorite examples.  The result here is a perfectly skillful, competent, and enjoyable mystery by general standards, but of a class below her greatest tricks.

Ross Thomas: The Pork-choppers

 I often begin my thoughts on this sort of book--unnecessary, but enjoyable and well-crafted--with a comment to the effect that I should read more of them, by which I mean that the balance of duty to pleasure in my reading is askew.  Upon setting down to record my thoughts now, however, the question arises, "Why?"  Why "should" I read more of this?  To improve my reading level?  That seems ludicrous.  To be familiar with and conversant about the works of an obscure writer?  Also a long shot. If the reason were connected to my own enjoyment, then there would be no reason to "should" about it; it would just happen.  

And yet the notion persists that I am not a real reader because I am not constantly reading.  The trap of comparison and expectation is as prevalent here as in all areas of my life, and deserves some scrutiny.  Do I have something to prove?  Perhaps to myself, but I have always been impervious to the idea of satisfaction with myself. The light of scrutiny reveals that I have no real reason, in fact, to read more for pleasure.  My pleasure comes from learning, not from reading.  I have other preferred forms of escapism to fill that niche.

There is one thing that broad reading is better at than deep reading, however.   The creative process is a cycle of input and output, and moves in phases.  I input mostly deep, old, complex things into my cognitive matrix, and correspondingly my output has a deep, old, complex tone that borders on the obscure.  I aspire, however, to write things that people might actually want to read as well--a novel perhaps--and find myself stymied and blocked when I attempt to write such things.  Clearly, if I wish to be able to write unnecessary but enjoyable and well-crafted things, which I don't currently seem to be, I need to input more of it.  That is "should" enough, I suppose.