AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie Agatha Christie is a grand master of mystery. She specialized in the locked house mystery and "who will die next" formula. My mother was a huge mystery and horror genre fan. And Then There Were None was both . I began reading Christie's books at age eleven and reread them occasionally today. *** SPOILER ALERT*** To begin, a group of seemingly random people arrive at a remote manor home on a deserted Island for a party. “Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things...” As the bodies pile up, backstories and the reason for their attendance is revealed. Each has been found guilty of a crime decided by a judge of one and have been invited to their own execution. There was a silence—a comfortable replete silence. Into that silence came The Voice. Without warning, inhuman, penetrating . . . “Ladies and gentlemen! Silence, please! . . . Yo...

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Lucy Maud Montgomery It is the late 1800s at Green Gables  in the fictional town of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island. Geriatric Matthew and Matilda Cuthbert reached a point where they needed help on the farm. So they applied to an orphanage to take on a boy old enough for the job. Instead they get Anne Shirley, a loquacious, dreamy, eleven-year-old girl. “Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.” She charms them in to letting her stay. As she struggles to adjust to life on the farm and school, she proves a ch...

The results of the Great American Read are based on a survey in which 7,200 “demographically and statistically representative” people participated by naming their favorite novel. Number one is To Kill a Mockingbird . One of the 100 novels I read at the time of its original publication (1997), Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, made the list at #45. Especially worthy of discussion today because of the ongoing controversy about cultural appropriation, Golden wrote from a female’s point of view, a Japanese woman’s life before and during her experience as a renowned geisha in Kyoto circa World War II. The story begins: Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, “That afternoon when I met so-and-so…was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.” Arthur Golden was born in 1956 in Tenn...

Little Women appears at #8 on the Great American Read list of favorite novels. My take on Little Women may not coincide with that of the critics who speculate on its representation of the time in which the story is set. Nor do they necessarily address the author's feelings and perspectives, which  may not have been accurately reflected in the story. Dubbed as formulaic by some and criticized for various shortcomings by others, the tale nonetheless brings a variety of gifts to any reader who chooses to ignore outside opinions and allows it to speak to her (or him) based solely on that reader's own feelings and history. The March sisters provide a thought-provoking study in contrasts. The oldest and most motherly of the girls, Meg, dreams of marrying money to escape the poverty into which her family has fallen. Typically—but with occasional lapses—she behaves appropriately for the time in which she lives. Her dreams of wealth dissipate when she marries a bookkeeper, and...