Finished All Poirot Stories

Way back whenever I first started reading Agatha Christie books, it was always paperbacks. Then I got a Kindle and read so many more electronically – until I got to the last two books or stories about Hercule Poirot (33) and when I downloaded the last two of his mysteries, neither would open up on my Kindle (the only 2 books I’ve ever had trouble with electronically).

So the cumbersome effort of calling Amazon Help and finally getting a live person then the wasted time of several efforts to make the books load, none of which worked. And finally given credit for the electronic books which they removed from my bookshelf. Soooo . . . to complete my goal of reading all the Poirot books (including that book of short stories), I order the last two books she wrote as paperbacks – back to how I started his stories! Poetic justice to modern electronics! 🙂

Agatha Christie’s last two Poirot books.

And bear in mind that this is not as easy to happen with a U.S. company when you live in another country! But finally I receive and finish the last in the Poirot series, Halloween Party and Curtains, and of course enjoyed these old-world England stories as much as the first two back whenever.

I’m still experimenting with other types of books that sound good or I think I may like – most of which I don’t. And if I don’t enjoy a book after a few pages or chapters, I now just quit reading it. Like I just started reading (again) All God’s Creatures Great and Small and then remembered that I had tried it once before and just did not enjoy his detailed description of birthing a calf with his arm up inside the womb of the cow and will probably drop this book again. I report on most of my book reading through Goodreads.

Along with Poirot, I did read some of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple books and may next try to finish that shorter series. Of course I saw most if not all of the TV series “Murder She Wrote,” based on the Miss Marple books, but that is never the same as the books. The same with the TV series on Poirot.

When on my only trip to London, I did get to see Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap, the world’s longest running play. Cool! A great British experience!

And I’m afraid my reading will be slowing down now with only one good eye. Though I can read for short periods with my left eye uncovered, it soon starts burning and watering and I cannot continue long. One-eye reading is possible but not as good and soon that eye gets tired too. Just one of the many side-effects of my cancer and the loss of a facial nerve. You just do the best you can with what you have in life. 🙂 And at 80 I no longer expect all of my body to work perfectly! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

“Real” & Electronic Books

“Real” Book
Trees of Panama & Costa Rica
Electronic Book
Hercule Poirot: The
Complete Short Stories
I don’t buy many “real” or paper books any more with my Kindle Fire and the easy access to so many books electronically. And as an Agatha Christie fan, the Kindle has been a great joy for me with basically no storage space needed! And the best deal yet has been my current reading of The Complete Short Stories of Hercule Poirot. The cover says “More than 50” which of course means 51 stories, almost like 51 little books. I’ve loved every one as I’m now on the last 12 which are sort of related in their connections to the Roman mythology of Hercules, Hercule Poirot’s namesake! (Note that Hercules Roman mythology is similar to the Heracles Greek mythology.) And equally interesting is that this last series of 12 stories were all written in the year of my birth, 1940, and first published in magazines in both England and the U.S. Cool!
But nature reference guides are mostly easier to use in paper format, so my new “real” book on the trees of Costa Rica will hopefully help me identify more of the trees I see and photograph here. Experts know the names of around 3,400 trees here (more than all of U.S. & Canada combined and they still have not identified them all here. This particular book includes Panama which has a lot of overlap with Costa Rica and is produced by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on Isla Barro Colorado in the middle of Lake Gatun, Panama which I visited Dec. 2013, making me confident this is the most authoritative resource available for now. And though I haven’t gotten into photographing trees like I do birds and other animals, the importance of trees ranks near the top as ecology indicators and value to us humans.
 
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.” 
 Kahlil Gibran

 

Illustrated by my photo at Tambor Bay last Christmas:
If a tree dies, plant another in its place.   -Carolus Linnaeus