July 9, 1912 / Franz Kafka Diaries

— July 9, 1912 / Franz Kafka diaries

Book Review: The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Gaston Leroux

My favorite quote of the book:

"... He declared that he admired the cautious doubt with which certain people (me) approached the most simple problems from afar, not daring to say: this is like this, or this isn't like that, so that their intellects arrived to the same results as if nature had forgotten to put some gray matter in their skulls."

My Full Review:

One of the most famous closed-room mysteries out there, "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" is a captivating novel from french author Gaston Leroux that feels fresh despite being more than a century old.

The driving force of the novel and the most powerful magnet of the reader's attentions is our "detective" in the story, Joseph Boutabille, local reporter: a competitive boy, his charm has no rival and his self-confidence results admirable rather than annoying, buying himself the trust of any potential witness of the impossible crime of Mathilde Stangerson.

The crime itself is fascinating, and the author gives all the clues and tools to the reader to solve it by themselves, since the conclussions Boutabille draws are not really out of thin air, even when there are some hidden "mechanisms" in his mind that he later reveals during the trial of the main suspect.

But since the mystery it's actually two-fold, the author takes the same route as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in "The Valley of Fear": there's an impossible-to-know-or-suspect backstory of some of the characters that complete the puzzle and explains their odd behavior, which cheats the reader from dechypering the rest of the mystery completely by themselves.

Regarding the style, given it's the narration from the point of view of Sainclair, lawyer and friend of the young reporter, it has a careful prose and rich vocabulary, which doesn't prevent the author from highlighting even more the intrepid spirit and resourceful mindset of the young Boitabille, who compensates his more proactive and sometimes premature attitude with a fierce adherence to logic and reason.

A lovely novel and a captivating mystery.

My Other 2024 Readings.

Wanted to show you the cute flowers

"Hay tanto amor en mi alma que no queda ni el rincón más estrecho para el odio. ¿Dónde quieres que ponga los rencores que tus vilezas puedan engendrar?"

~Amado Nervo, Tanto Amor

Book Review: Poemas Esenciales, Juan Ramón Jiménez

My favorite poem of the book:

Destino ruin; si tu fueses // Cursed fate; if you were un hombre y se te pudiera // a man and one could buscar, igual que al león // hunt you, like the lion más terrible, por la tierra. // most fearsome, through the Earth

My Ful Review:

The only previous work I've read from Juan Ramón Jimenez is "Platero y Yo", about a kid and his donkey. It's been a while since I read it, but I can clearly trace the same wonder and curiosity of childhoodness in the poems included in this selection.

The author's verses are sweet and short, candid and full to the brim with the same eagerness to discover new things, marveling at the beauty of nature mostly.

That same childhood wonder though is also responsible for the erratic train of thought of the author, jumping from theme to theme with apparently no rhyme or reason, resulting in a aeries of poems with a very thin connection between them.

All in all, I liked his poetry, which seemed to mature in themes alongside the author.

My other 2024 readings.