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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3043 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 17, 2026

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So, what are you reading?

I'm finally done with Christie's And Then There Were None. Didn't have much preamble, it just goes straight into it. Seems like a book written to an audience already very familiar with her work. It was enjoyable enough, and the characters worked. I've more or less given up on the desire to figure out who the killer is beforehand in these kinds of books, and I find that it is pleasant to read them like that. I'm afraid that the only other thing which I can say is that my favourite character died.

Going to give another stab at Sayers' Whose Body?

Just started Machiavelli's "The Prince". Man, it is dry, but it's fun to read about someone hundreds of years ago giving advice on imperalism. Some of the doctrine you can still see in action today so I guess certain things haven't changed.

Finished Eyes of the Void. Liked it, but still kind of upset of how wasted is the whole rich worldbuilding compared to how little the action advanced. Basically not even worth the spoiler tag - they set out to defeat the bad guys and to find a mcguffin that will allow to defeat Very Bad Guys, and by the end they did. It wasn't bad, just it could be some much more I feel...

Also re-read (or, properly saying, re-listened) all Father Brown stories I could find on Hoopla eventually, because once I start on those I just can't get enough.

Reading Morning Star. I'm not there yet but I have a hunch I need Brown to be a little more subtle with the nick names Darrow get's in the book. Golden Son: "Icarus". I wonder where "Morning Star" could be headed?/s

Finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress finally. Enjoyed it. At this specific moment the character of Mike seems eerily close to being a realistic possibility.

Mysteries are better once you understand they are not homicide investigations, but manners comedies. The solution is unimportant, and is often shoe-horned in to wrap up the real story, which is uncovering all the dastardly details of rich people's lives. The murder is forever in august company, never a drug addict shivved by feral teenagers. The parade of red herrings are inevitably the dirty laundry of the social elite. While pretending to denounce this poor behavior, the focus of the story reinforces to middle-class mass consumers that their social betters are really worse, but also that this is the aspirational life. Working class people are maudlin cartoons no closer to reality than step-n-fetchit blackface is to real black people.

The murder mystery is a middle-class fantasy that rich people are corrupt in the ways that middle class people look down on in the poor. In reality of course, getting rich, famous or powerful means you don't need to murder people to get what you want, and the crime rates bear this out. The corruption of a class is generally invisible to those below, who generate conspiracy theories to explain the obvious dissonance. One of those conspiracy theories is the murder mystery.

Agreed: they are escapist fantasies, often about lives of rich people and often moralistic in a way to appease genteel middle class tastes. Even more true for later adaptations, such as ITV Poirot and BBC Miss Marple, because they double as nostalgic period shows.

Disagreed: it says anything about what middle class think of rich people in a psychologically or culturally relevant manner. A generic Christie murder mystery includes a cast that includes a few rich people but rest of the cast (suspects) are servants, rich-adjacent or simply middle-class people who hang around for plausible or implausible reasons. I am confident that identity of culprit is statistically random, and thus usually not the rich upper class heir. Christie wrote puzzle pieces which are supposed to surprise the reader with a technically possible but usually unexpected solution.

Rich upper class people are there because by virtue of being rich, one can conjure many superficially plausible reasons for many people to want them dead. None of the reasons interrupt the puzzle with inconvenient social realities unless the author wants so. Their other function is to introduce other interesting plot devices, like an exotic locale, or an exotic murder weapon, or an exotic motive, or both. Sometimes other decidedly non-rich people serve some or all the same functions, such as archeologists or middle-rank military officers who have served in exotic places.

Consider some highlights of Christie's oeuvre. "Why was the victim murdered in the shadow of pyramids? ...he was an archeologist." "Nobody has written a good murder mystery about an airplane yet. Why was the murder victim found dead in an airplane? ...obviously, for starters, he was a rich enough to travel in business class." "Why would a murder victim be killed in an enclosed place, filled only with his family and friends who all had reason to kill him and no distracting possibility that someone else did it?" "...obviously, he was weird and rich, and was killed in his yacht." "Why would my detective receive a summons to solve a murder before it has happened, and I am bored of the setup where it is the murderer who invites the detective to watch his crimes happen? Naturally, the task is given by a weird, quirky millionaire in his last will and testament ... who previously was upstanding guy who solved murders together with my detective and found something weird just before he died!" "How can my quirky detective afford all the quirks and luxurious lifestyle I have written for him? "...he is a crime-solving consultant for the government and rich people." "Why is my detective in an exotic locale in order to board this famous train? ... as I said, he works for the government, on secret military stuff." "Why was the murder weapon an unusual arcane object? ... the victim was a rich antique collector." "Why was he murdered in a closed room together with a group of highly esteemed citizens, yet nobody saw anything? ... he was a rich antique collector and they were all playing bridge. Actually, one of the clues for the detective is to work out everyone's bridge game strategy. My readers love that game."

It all makes much more sense as "rich guy was there to make the plot happen" (not too different from "a wizard did it") than for "let's look at the depravities of the rich people". She also tried her luck in writing some books where "secret spy stuff made the plot happen", but those don't play so well. Considering "depravity", Christie's mysteries are chaste enough to child-friendly. The gruesome murders are abstract enough to be almost cozy. There is surprisingly little depravity, and the little of it's mild. Jealously, vengeance, greed, blackmail about something not too shocking are the common motives for murder. Sex is nearly always presented in very abstracted way: an affair, a romance.

"Social critique" homicide fiction post-date the classic murder mystery fiction. It was pioneered by Raymond Chandler (who was all about showcasing the general depravity of the rich people, and vibes are considered more important than consistent puzzle-like mystery.) Scandinavian noir does the same thing, but with more explicitly left-ward values valence.

Cute theory, but…no?

Sherlock Holmes: yes to Hound of the Baskervilles, no to Valley of Fear, Study in Scarlet, or Sign of Four. There are too many short stories to cover; plenty of them have neither a high-class victim or perpetrator.

Dupin: yes to Purloined Letter, no to Rue Morgue and the forgettable Marie Roguet.

Poirot: I actually haven’t read any of these, and I don’t want to spoil them, so sure. Maybe they’re shameless class envy.

I think a better explanation would be that mysteries demand drama, and two hoboes shivving it out in an alley isn’t dramatic unless there’s some extra spice. A treasure from India worked just as well as an English inheritance.

For a murder mystery to be a mystery you need the murderer to be competent enough to hide their crime. I think this excludes drug addicts and the feral teenagers who would probably commit the crime out of impulse, leave tons of evidence at the scene, and already be suspected by the police.

This is hardly an interesting story. For that you need a villain with the foresight to plan the murder, the intelligence and knowledge to do a competent cover-up, and the self-control to stick to the plan. It seems very unlikely that such a person would not be either middle-to-upper-class or in a position of power in the criminal underworld. Especially if the crime requires an accomplice who must necessarily be loyal to the murderer.

I don't think this is a remotely accurate portrayal of Christie's oeuvre. In the most recent Christie novel I read, for example, the killer turns out not to be a member of the landed gentry, but rather a penniless physician who resorted to blackmail to maintain his standard of living.

Retrying Joel Baden's The Historical David from the start.

I started to rewatch Kings to torture myself about that what-if, and thought it'd make a good companion (since the show basically plays the legend straight).

I read that a couple years ago. It’s a great book that applies the historicist logic. I tend to be a maximalist and give the benefit of the doubt to tradition, accepting the historical-critical method; but that isn’t the dominant position in Biblical studies as I understand it; it’s considered “conservative.” To me it shouldn’t be beyond the perch to presume historicity for at least some of the figures, even if you think they’re highly mythologized; but built off a core of tradition. Not a lot of people know we have zero direct historical evidence for King Josiah in the OT, despite historians confidently concluding he existed. Anyway, JB’s multiple interviews on Mythvision is always interesting.

I mean the biggest problem is that it’s almost impossible to know what is true or false about a person who lived several thousand years ago. Most of the physical evidence would be gone just by virtue of people building over and reusing materials and land, plus the difficulty of preserving written materials for that long even under ideal circumstances.

I find it a rather interesting thought experiment to imagine just what our distant descendants would think true or false about our current era. Would they find the Trump ballroom thing likely a myth? Would we question whether or not there was a “historical Barack Obama?” Would we find historical parallels between a future president JD Vance and some mythological legend and thus conclude Theres no evidence such a man actually existed? He does sort of parallel “Mr. Smith goes to Washington”, given his poor background and quick rise to power. Obviously no one should take the historical JD Vance seriously.

One movie I really enjoyed watching years ago was The Man From Earth. There’s a line in that movie that goes (I’m paraphrasing), “The people back then [in ancient times] weren’t any more or less intelligent than we are. They just didn’t know as much…” We tend to look back on history as if the human beings who lived then weren’t really humans but were some kind of aliens. It’s why I’ve always rejected the whole “… everyone before ‘us’ we’re all ignorant and bigoted savages…” notion that pseudo-intellectual blowhards love to lead with. Of course they laughed. Of course they had sex. Of course they had institutions like the military, marriage, inheritance, etc. even Joseph wanted to divorce Mary in the Bible because he knew perfectly well where babies come from. These people weren’t gullible fools. Look around and consider all the things in the world that for all intents and purposes you lack such sufficient knowledge that you’d conclude, “This thing here works by magic.” Beneath it all you surely know there’s something mechanistic to it, but the world is still a very mysterious place.

The questions they would ask would likely be very different but I think on a basic level they’d acclimate over time. I tend to think we’ll always be slightly more well adjusted to adapt to the future than if a hard reset took place and we had to go back living in the distant past.

I’m sure it would, but my point is mostly about the plausibility of finding records of any type thousands of years in the future. David, or whoever David was based on lived 2500 years ago. Even if you assume the archeologists of 4526 are great at their jobs and have more sophisticated techniques, if paper records are lost or the hard drives storing the data are compromised, and the buildings referenced are destroyed, piecing all of that back together and finding the historical evidence of a human being, or knowing what that human did at the time is going to be tough.

One of my favorite examples of the arrogance of modern humans (including myself in the past, and I'm sure in the present as well, just in different ways) is thumbing our noses at people using the awkward 12 for so many things, instead of the simple, elegant 10 of the metric system. Of course, the beauty of 12 is that it's easy for dividing things evenly among 2, 3, 4, 6, or 12 people. And also any multiple of 12 with an even number is easy to divide among 8 people, and with a multiple of 3 is easy to divide among 9 people, due to 4 and 3 being factors. When not everyone knows long division or even the concept of decimals, Arabic numerals or fractions, having such a flexible number as a standard makes a lot of sense.

Paper and video on how binary is better than both decimal and duodecimal

Try doing complex mental computations off Roman numerals. It’s even harder. I used to wonder how the artisans and craftsmen of the time made such beautiful architecture and how they performed their measurements to calculate things. It’s always baffled me.

As a layman I think David is usually where both more conservative and more skeptical scholars can agree we can start looking for historicity. Some others push it till the Omrides but I think it's hard to argue that the mythicist side wouldn't have used the lack of anything like a stele as an argument so what's good for the goose and all that.

I guess I'm more of a mainstreamer here: things like the Exodus and Patriarchs seem like a total mess historically. Even if you grant there is some historic core you'll never agree on what it is. David's time seems like a good enough point to say the figures in the Bible have slipped out of myth.

I have seen some of Baden's interviews online, and read his Composition of the Pentateuch which is why I picked up the book. It's early days but I tend to lean towards what I think is Baden's own conclusion: there's a lot more explaining things in a more flattering light in David's legend than you'd expect if he didn't exist.

Which makes a good contrast with the show.

I finished Mage Errant, it was pretty good but dropped down to a 3.5/5 by the end. I actually made a Youtube review if anyone is interested: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8XjM93SfXTE

Started reading Spellslinger on the advice of the author of Mage Errant, and it's fun so far. My biggest gripe with it though is that it has that retarded trope where the protagonist gets in intense magical battles and always just happens to knock people unconscious instead of actually killing them. So incredibly stupid, though I get why authors are tempted to use it.

Science fiction was always an important part of my reading diet whenever I felt like I had to add fiction to the mix. Fantasy always caught my interest from a young age but for some reason I always found it very difficult to search for.

What are your favorite fantasy books that you might recommend?

The cold fire trilogy by CS Lewis is a fun one.

For light fun fantasy I like Earthsea and Narnia.

Edit: sorry I meant cs Friedman not Lewis!

Mage Errant was way too YA for me.

Yeahhhh that was my biggest complaint. I mean at least they had real killing and stakes and a truly epic scale. But the YA therapy dialogue was the lowest point of the series.

I've managed to listen to your review and I think I can sympathize with the idea that first book is such a great pull into the fantasy universe that you just compelled to see how it will turn out. But I quit somewhere at start of book 3.

Hey glad to hear man! At least one person has listened then, hah.

Yeah it's always sad to read series with a lot of potential that don't fulfill it, but hey that's more common than not. I still enjoyed reading it.

The new Dungeon Crawler Carl book just came out. Book 8, A Parade of Horribles.

So far it hasn't been thrilling me. Book 7 featured the conclusion of multiple long running storylines. Book 8 starts with Carl and Donut isolated from the supporting cast. I probably just wasn't in the right mood, I'll give it another shot in a week or so.

I'm at chapter 55 but I'm not that engaged, it feels a bit formulaic and at this point both me and the characters in the story are numb to the horror and gore of the setting, but there have been a few fun lines and moments. There have been a few awkward PC lines though that felt like unfunny moral hedging. That has not really been the case in previous books but perhaps Dinnieman is getting nervous from the fame.

Maybe it picks up though. The climax of the bedlam bride was great for instance, there is one setup I'm looking forward to the conclusion of.

Honestly I'm pretty glad to hear that. 7 was good but it was pretty tough to keep everyone straight.

Glad you enjoyed Ten Little Redacted. The impression I get is that the people who read mystery novels in the thirties and forties were for the most part well-versed in the conventions and "meta" of the genre. Aside from her books' sheer entertainment value, part of the reason Christie is so admired is because of how intimately acquainted she was with these conventions, and how skilled she was in subverting them and manipulating her audience.

About one-third of the way through The Matriarch.

Wrapped up Locke Lamora. Overall 6/10 - the plot holes became too big to ignore by the end (why the fuck did Barsavi not make sure Locke was dead before putting him in the barrel? How could the bondsmage guild exist in the form that it does without totally upending any semblance of political stability?).

Started on Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. I'm a little concerned that it's just going to glorify exercises in intellectual masturbation but it has a touch of Borges that makes me willing to stick it out.

Glass Bead Game is way overrated imo, I couldn't even finish it. I hope it's better for you idk, it gets a lot of love, but I was incredibly bored by it. Cool concept though.

GBG is awesome. My non-spoiler advice for enjoyment/depth is to keep in mind that it is explicitly narrated.

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