Dear readers, welcome back and thank you for letting me share with you the books that I have been enjoying. As usual, I delight in a diverse range of genres. This month’s reads come from the genres of non fiction, fantasy, and horror. I greatly enjoyed reading these titles and I hope one of these catches your eye!

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven

A shout out to my fellow librarian, Aubrey, for recommending this title is in order. Thank you Aubrey! If you are looking for a book that stays with you long after the closing page, this one is it! It has been a week or so since I finished this book, but I still find myself thinking about it. Dear reader, this book is a work of fiction, but it could very easily be set in the real world present day. FantasticLand is a theme park in Florida built by an eccentric billionaire. What sets FantasticLand apart is that it is designed to be many mini theme parks in one. There are different sections of the park. All are designed to be their own unique world. There are places like The Pirate Cove, The Fairy Prairie, and so on. Everything is great until a super hurricane hits. In theory, the staff that stay behind to care for the park should be fine. There is enough food and water for everyone. Dear reader, if that were the case we would not have a story. What results is something that resembles a slasher movie as the young people trapped in the park turn on each other. Each faction fights for dominance as supplies dwindle. The sordid tale is told from the point of view of interviews with those who made it out alive. Only the survivors can tell the tale of what REALLY happened inside FantasticLand. What keeps me thinking about this book is that this is no ordinary slasher. It poses psychological questions about the effects of phone addiction on our young population. Yes, it is a fiction, but it makes one wonder.

Click HERE to request FantasticLand!

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Before I moved to Sheboygan I had to commute to work. I had about a 40 minute drive at the time. I fought the boredom of the long drive by listening to audio books on CD. I had been getting into mysteries and knew that Agatha Christie was one of the big names in that genre. My journey began by picking up The Mysterious Affair at Styles (narrated by Hugh Fraser, who stars as Hastings in the Poirot TV show.) From that mystery I was hooked and needed more of the little Belgian detective and his excitable sidekick. After moving to Sheboygan a few years ago I switched from audiobook to paperback, the voices from the audio series still in my head for the various main characters. I finally came to the end of my journey with Hercule Poirot this past week with finishing the final book: Curtain. What a worthy ending to a great series and brilliant detective!

The Hercule Poirot Series by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie started writing her Poirot series in 1916 and had the first novel published in 1920. While the series is of the mystery genre it is fascinating as it provides a window into the time period it was written in. The series kicks off with Captain Hastings coming home with a war injury. WWI and WWII are not the focus of the books, but the impact of the wars are clearly seen throughout the series. From a historical standpoint it is interesting to get a glimpse of how WWII was affecting the English people as they tried to continue with their daily lives. This is most clearly shown in the title Taken at the Flood in which Poirot casually waits in a bomb shelter during a raid and listens to a stranger discuss a suspicious death. The series continues into the 1960’s where they provide a glimpse into the changing times and culture of that era. As I enjoy historical fiction as well, I found this element to be just as engaging as they mysteries themselves.

The mysteries kept me guessing from beginning to end. If you are a fan of mysteries like myself, you probably find yourself trying to solve it before the detective by the end. As for this series, just when I thought I had the system figured out, there would be some huge twist that I certainly was not expecting. If you are a fan of twist endings the book I most recommend in this series is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as I believe that book had the biggest twist of the lot.

As for the characters, after the first book it felt as if they were already friends I had known for ages. Captain Hastings is young. He has a hopeless romantic personality and always tries to see the bright side of life. He is Poirot’s best friend and sidekick in the early books. In the later books Poirot meets Ariadne Oliver, the author of a mystery fiction series. She is also a lot of fun and has a quirky personality. Due to her fame as a writer of mystery fiction in the series, she ends up getting caught up in real murder mysteries and often has to come seek out Poirot for help. Hercule Poirot is of course the main hero of the series. He is a short Belgian detective who is known for his impressive mustache. He believes that any mystery can be solved by “using the little grey cells”. A student of psychology and the study of human nature, Poirot uses this to figure out the connections and motives in cases. It is interesting to see how the human mind works from his point of view. He has a very analytical mind which often plays against Hastings’ more fantastic theories. Poirot is a very immaculate person with an obsession for symmetry. These quirks provide often needed humor and serve to make him a rather endearing character in addition to helping him notice anything suspiciously out of place while solving a crime.

I started trying to compile a list of favorite titles to share in this article. Going back over each book I realized that I loved almost all of them. Elephants Can Remember seemed perhaps the weakest of them as Poirot did not seem to be in it as much as I would have liked. However that title comes right at the end before Curtain. Curtain, being the last novel, finished the series with a bang! (No pun intended). I was very satisfied with the ending and felt Agatha Christie did right by her characters and the series to wrap it up in the way she did.

Now that I have finished the book series I have been binge watching the TV show Poirot staring David Suchet and Hugh Fraser. I find it to be just as good as the books! There have also been three new movies based on Poirot books (A Haunting in Venice VERY loosely based.). The movies star Kenneth Branagh. You can also listen to Agatha Christie’s Poirot series on audio. When I first started searching for audio, I found there are a few different voice narrators. I recommend finding the set narrated by Hugh Fraser. He does the best in doing the various voices and pulling the reader into the story. Of course, you can also find all the titles in book format at the library or through our online catalogue. Happy reading!

Hercule Poirot books in order:
1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles
2. The Murder on the Links
3. Poirot Investigates
4. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
5. The Big Four
6. The Mystery of the Blue Train
7. Black Coffee
8. Peril At End House
9. Lord Edgware Dies
10. Murder on the Orient Express
11. Three Act Tragedy
12. Death in the Clouds
13. The ABC Murders
14. Murder in Mesopotamia
15. Cards on the Table
16. Dumb Witness
17. Death on the Nile
18. Murder in the Mews
19. Appointment With Death
20. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
21. Sad Cypress
22. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
23. Evil Under the Sun
24. Five Little Pigs
25. The Hollow
26. The Labors of Hercules
27. Taken at the Flood
28. Mrs. Mcginty’s Dead
29. After the Funeral
30. Hickory Dickory Dock
31. Dead Man’s Folly
32. Cat Among the Pigeons
33. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding *only in audio CD format in the catalog*
34. The Clocks
35. Third Girl
36. Hallowe’en Party
37. Elephants Can Remember
38. Curtain