Unapologetic Reviews

I read Crooked House (1949) as part of my 2025 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge , and I listened to it as an audiobook narrated by Hugh Fraser . That, oddly enough, turned out to be part of the problem for me. Fraser usually narrates Poirot novels, and since this is not a Poirot book, I kept mentally casting the narrator as Hastings . The story is told in the first person by Charles Hayward , and even knowing his name, the narration still felt oddly anonymous at times. Because Fraser’s voice is so closely tied to the Poirot series in my mind, it created a strange overlap that affected how I experienced the book. What surprised me was how familiar the story felt. I was convinced I remembered it as a Poirot case, even though it isn’t one. I’ve never seen the Crooked House film adaptation, so I’m still not entirely sure why certain scenes felt so vivid to me. It may be because the structure of the story would easily allow Poirot to be inserted into it, and perhaps that’s how my memory...

I finally started The Wheel of Time after the TV adaptation was cancelled. I had always meant to read it, in a vague someday sort of way, but fourteen enormous books is an intimidating commitment. Still, I was in the mood for high fantasy, and I was genuinely annoyed about the show. I liked it. I did not need it to be faithful in every detail; I am perfectly fine with adaptations changing things. Books and television work differently, especially when the source material is this sprawling. I tend to think of adaptations as alternate versions of the same story. The visuals were beautiful, the atmosphere worked, and yes, I am going to miss it. Screw Amazon . I listened to The Eye of the World as an audiobook, which turned out to be a serious undertaking. It runs over thirty hours, and it took me more than a month to finish. This is not a fast book. The plot is enormous, but the pace is glacial. Things happen, then the characters walk. Then they walk some more. Something interrupts them....