Agatha Christie

I knew that picking a crime-fiction-based-thesis was a great idea, if for no other reason than I’d get to read some awesome crime books.

Tonight, I finished Murder on the Orient Express, written by the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. I’m a late bloomer when it comes to Christie, having only experienced her works a couple years ago because of Uni, and my current total is three novels and one play, and all have been exciting, interesting and maddeningly challenging when it comes to solving the damn crime.

My score is 0 to 4 when it comes to figuring out who the culprit was. Each time my mind was blown and my feeble attempt at guessing blown completely out the window. I’ve gotten to the point whenever I come up with a guess, I automatically add ‘but I’m probably wrong’ at the end of it.

That said, only once have I found that Christie succumbs to ‘crime convention’ – in The Mousetrap, a victim utters the phrase ‘Oh, it’s you. I didn’t hear you come in,’ while the murderer crept into the room. My instant reaction was to withhold laughter, as I thought the other audience members in the theatre wouldn’t appreciate my chortling at the obviously tense scene, but then a thought struck me.

The Mousetrap is over fifty years old. When it originally came out, it was probably original and never been done before. I suppose it’s just telling of Christie’s ability that she can still keep people guessing decades later.

I cannot wait to wrongly guess the ending to another Christie classic.

Hamlet

I know I’ve been mentioning it every now and again, but you may be happy to know that I’ve actually finished Hamlet! Well, some of you might be happy. Some of you might be feeling a crushing sense of sadness, as you were secretly hoping that I would never eventually reach the back cover of the book, and instead get trapped in an endless loop between pages 86 and 102, constantly repeating that section, over and over, until the pages tore and my fingerprints ground from the constant page turning.

Or, maybe you don’t care whatsoever. Any is good.

But I really freaking enjoyed this play. I haven’t seen a tremendous amount of Shakespeare and I’ve never actually read it before, but I’m really considering getting stuck into this guy’s writing. I mean, he’s kind of a big deal.

I ordered a few more play scripts from the internet today and I can’t wait to get them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was first on the list – I finished watching the movie today too and I’m so excited to read the full play script. I just need to find a group of friends to perform it with, I heard The Academic was very interested! I also heard that Waiting for Godot was an inspiration to RAGAD – oh man, that’s an awesome acronym – and I’ve been meaning to check that out for a while, so I ordered that too. I rounded out today by ordering the scripts (and possibly score… I’m kinda hoping score too) of Company and Assassins, a couple of awesome Sondheim musicals that I’m desperate to read.

Every now and again, a play or musical comes along and my first thought isn’t ‘I want to be in that’ but ‘I want to direct that’ and I’m not entirely sure why (to be fair, though, my second thought is usually ‘I want to play X role too, that would be awesome’). I haven’t had much experience directing – some would call it none, I like to round up – and I don’t think I’ve ever been struck with an immediate, really original idea for how I would stage things, but I just feel like I should look into this directing thing… I don’t know. It sounds like a cool idea in my head, but I’d really worry about letting everyone down, or just being plain bad at it.

Then again, I guess I have those worries about everything I do…

Hooray for self-esteem!