— Books, Memes, Reviews —

And Then There Were None, Or Ten?

September 15, 2021

Blast from the past, dusting the cobwebs of the archives, or ‘reuse, recycle, and all that.’ This is another of those instances where I am looking into the posts written once upon a time and bringing them to the forefront. Considering it is Agatha Christie’s birthday on the 15th of September, this one seemed apt. A twofer review – one for Christie’s And Then There Were None, and another for a retelling of the same, titled Ten.

I have made formatting changes to the sections from the original post. This includes the book reviews and most of the meme section. And then there is the Top Ten Tuesday; added for the retelling of the original post 🙂

The Reviews

And Then There Were None

A masterpiece from a master story teller.  If Christie had added a few more pages to this book, I would have gladly kept on reading; that is how I felt as I reached the last word in the book.

Ten people are lured to an island by an absentee host. As they try to figure out why they are on the island, their numbers start reducing. Someone is murdering them one by one!

The murderer certainly has a penchant for nursery rhymes. Each murder follows the lines in the ‘Ten Little Indians’ (conveniently displayed in a frame in each of their rooms!). They now scramble to find out the murderer; each murder makes them suspicious of each other. Yet they need to work together to hopefully stay alive – but soon – there were none.

Christie manages to throw the reader off at every turn of the plot and keeps you thinking at the end of the book. A must-read for anyone who loves mysteries.

Rating: A

Ten

Ten by itself is written well for its target audience. It brought to mind movies that I know of – not really seen though (except for trailers) – like ‘The Ring’, ‘I know what you did…’ series, and similar movies. The dialog was sometimes a bit juvenile for me. Though it did have a redeeming feature; for I did keep turning the pages to the end to see how this author would move the story forward. 

Overall, this will be a good read for someone who:

  • has not read ‘And Then There were None’ by Christie
  • likes the movies I mentioned earlier
  • loves mysteries
  • and teen-speak does not detract them from turning the pages!

Rating: C+

Note: While I no longer rate books with stars or grade-like systems, I used to do so at the time of the original post and hence retained the same here.

The Movie(s) Review

I still need to watch the movie by the same name – ‘And Then There Were None’ but I did watch a Bollywood (Hindi movie) adaptation of Christie’s book – Gumnaam. I remember loving that movie – it was well made, had a strong cast, and also had all the requisite song and dance sequences o Bollywood movies that make them a total entertainer.  Some of the scenes are still fresh in my memory and the songs of this movie still hummable.

The Memes

Top Ten Tuesday

This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday over at ThatArtsyReaderGirl is books with numbers in their titles. I decided to pick books from my shelves; and decided to pick books where numbers were written out in word-form. Also tried to list out books for the numbers one through ten (failed for the number nine though). I just realized that I wrote a very similar post (with some of the books in today’s list as well) a while ago and you can check it out here.

  • Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
  • Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
  • Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
  • Fourth Grade Rats by Jerry Spinelli
  • The Famous Five (series) by Enid Blyton
  • Six Boys and a Minivan by R. Demaurex
  • The Secret Seven (series) by Enid Blyton
  • Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
  • The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (well, I could not find any other book!)
  • Ten by Gretchen McNeil

Extras

  • Two Toreadors from Vasukovka Village
  • A Tale of Two Cities
  • Five Days in Paris
  • Slaughterhouse-Five
  • The House of the Seven Gables

Memes From the Past

9/15/2021 Note: The remaining part of the memes section is as is from the original post dated June 19, 2013 and I only did some formatting.

3WW

Agile, flaccid, phantom

The Ghost Who Walks (walked!)
that was what he is called.
Many know him as the Phantom
As he appears out of nowhere at random

Agile as a cat, quiet as a mouse
His darling kids – Kit and Heloise
Of late, he had adventures few
And flaccid of course is how he grew!!
~Vidya Tiru @ LadyInReadWrites

Note: I love the Phantom comics – growing up in India, I devoured books – Indrajal Comics among them. Phantom was one of them published by Indrajal.  

ABC Wednesday

W – As we explore the letter W for ABC Wednesday, I realize I do not have any women writers whose works I have read for this letter. I do, however, have a few whom I have had on my to read list forever now – they include Laura Ingalls Wilder, Alice Walker, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

  • wimples
    • a woman’s headcloth drawn in folds about the chin, formerly worn out of doors, and still in use by some nuns.
  • Barmy
    •  slightly irrational: unconventional or slightly irrational in behavior
    •  nonsensical: completely lacking in good sense or reason
  • cavil
    • object for no good reason: to make objections about something on small and unimportant points
    •  carping criticism: a trivial and unreasonable objection

And Now, the End of This Post

Dear reader, have you read any of the featured or listed books? Your thoughts on them? Any recommendations for similar books? I would love to hear your comments (all and any) on this post as well.

9 thoughts on “And Then There Were None, Or Ten?”

  3. I will be looking forward to your reading of Virginia Woolf. I read three of her books earlier this year. After you review them I will share my thoughts with you. Nice use of the 3WW words.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *