喜鵲謀殺案讀後感 含劇透

     I just finished the book.  I borrowed from library a couple months ago but did not finish it.  For some reasons, I kept thinking about it.  So I went to library trying to borrow it.  However, I'd already forgot the name, so I went to the circular desk and ask the librarians.  I told two young librarians, I am looking for a book I borrowed before.  I wonder if they could find it in my account.  They said the system does not hold such records.  So they started to ask me about the book.  I described the book as one of the staff's pick a couple months ago.  It's a detective story, red cover, the title contained some birds.  They both immediately said, Magpie Murders!  It was kind funny.  I got the book right away.  

    I really like the book.  I think it was quite engaging.  The way it presented itself was quite unusual.  A story within a story.  Both stories are engaging.  But at the end, when the first story finally finished, it was quite powerful for me.  Because the characters are all different now.  They took on a new meaning from the second story, especially for the characters from the first story were based on real person in the second story.  Even when I writing this afterthought, I found it a bit confusing to describe the plot...  

There're a lot of reference to the Agatha Christie novels, but I haven't even read one of her novels.  

I am kind comparing this one to the the Ganache series.  I felt this one is more grounded.  The characters were written in a more realistic way.  Because a lot of time, I find characters in Ganache series a bit like caricatures.  

I feel like the author really paid a tribute to the genre both for written words and TVs with this book.  Because the amount of reference for both media are a lot.  

I never see answers in neither stories, but the most surprising was the first story.

I saw some interviews with the author, he said his idea came from ArthurConanDoyle.    ACD hated Holmes so much, he wanted to kill the character off.  And apparently, a lot of author, including Agatha as well hated their own creations.  This gave author the idea for this book.  When I saw those interviews.  I thought it was indeed the case, the book wrote extensively about the relation with author and his own creation.  I guess it's why the ending for the first book was so appealing to me.  Author lives through their creations.  And yet, when it was demanded of them to use the same character, it became a grind, even debasing their ideals.  It was kind sad.  

I knew this book has a Chinese translation.  So I went and read some reviews.  Most of them said the same thing, bad translation and editing ruined the whole thing, both Mainland'sandTaiwan's version.  It was a shame.  But I would think this is a very hard book to translate, because it really has lots of references to classic mystery novels.  Plus I think it's so very British.  So unless the translator is really familiar with both Britain and classic mystery novels, it would is really difficult to do justice.  I only read it through 1 time, but I know I could only understand less than half of the contents, maybe even less...  

But even so, I could not put down the book once passed the opening scenes.  

Now  to think about it.  It was so weird that the victim was so disliked by everyone.  That made his death less sympathetic for the readers.  And yet, while I was reading it, I could not put it down.  

讀一篇法布爾的文章

 我最近看到法布爾的一篇自述，裡面有一段我覺得饒有趣味。  他說他第一次有科學的經驗是小時候想看看到底是眼睛看到太陽，還是嘴巴。  於是，他用了一個方法。  面朝著太陽，他同時把眼睛閉起來，嘴巴張開， 結果太陽就消失了；接者，他把眼睛張開，嘴巴閉起來，這次太陽出現了。  於是，他用歸納法得出了一個結論，是眼睛看到太陽，而不是嘴巴。  但是，當他把這個結論告訴其他人時，每個人都笑得噴飯。  

我滿喜歡這篇文章，本想把它錄下來。  但是很可惜，我在念的時候實在有太多地方拗口，不通順。  這實在是可惜。  很可惜。  我念的這一本是沉櫻編選的散文集。  裡面有一半是翻譯文，有不少是法國的文章。  雖說可能是英文翻譯過來的，但是畢竟我看的法國文章很少，我覺得很難得。  可惜的就是翻譯不是很順暢。  想找找看，有無英文版的，自己翻譯試試。  但是找不到。  

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在我找這片文章的過程中，我發現一個奇怪的題目，例如：法布爾面對進化論：不重視還是仇視？  (fabre and evoultion, indifference or blind hatred).  之後還有陸陸續續其他類似的題目。  

這篇文章之所以吸引我，很大的部分就在於法布爾開宗明義地說他不相信當時很多人所信服的一套理論，這套理論就是遺傳，主要是說大部分的本領都是由上面好幾代鍛鍊好了傳給下一代的。  我剛開始找這篇文章用的是 heritage，但是在找了一陣子後，我現在改找 evolution。  但是還是找不到。  

剛好這一篇我想讀的文章和這個搜尋的結果似乎可以連在一起。  看來，法布爾始終覺得進化論只是一個理論， 這個看法可能衍生自他對遺傳的看法。  當他提到天才的時候，就和遺傳分家了。  

這一篇翻譯，最後一段還是可讀的，我把他鈔錄如下：

「現在應當把這篇講我自己的故事結束起來了。  從這一篇以看出從很小的時候我就很愛好自然的事物，我又有觀察的才能。  為什麼緣故，又是怎樣起來的呢？  我不知道。 

我們人與動物都有些特別的才能。  有個小孩喜歡音樂，別一個時常用泥土塑出東西來，又一個長於計算。  在昆蟲也是這樣。  一種蜂能夠切葉，別一種建築泥房，蜘蛛知道織網。  這些才能˙因為存在所以是存在，人們所說的只是這一句話罷了。  在人類裡，我們稱這特別的才能曰天才。 在昆蟲裡，我們稱他做本能。  本能即是動物的天才。」

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我今天看到的動物

Morning:

I was watering the dahlias in the morning.  I saw a hummingbird flying around the flowers.  It's the second morning I saw it.  What a beautiful sight!  

Morning: 

I was riding a bike through skug river preservation.  I came upon a long board walk, which passed through the Skug river.  There is a section filled completely with duckweed(浮萍)。  And among them, there're so many frogs, with eyes popping out of the duckweed.  I sat on the boardwalk, just to enjoy the view, after a while, I rose and trying to leave, so many frogs jumped out of the river, and made a very interesting call.  What a fantastic experience.  

Evening:

I was watering in the evening, the weather was hot, about 100 degree F today.  I saw a large insect.  It looks like a locust?!  I feel it was almost 4 inches.  

Making voicerecording so far

 It is so hard...  

When I read, I like to read in a whisper sometimes.  I thought if I could record some of the materials, it would be interesting.  And I was right.  It is interesting, but so very hard.  

I could not read without all kinds of noises, from my nose, my throat, even my stomach.   I usually do my recording after dinner.  I guess that doesn't help the noises.  

I just recently put an video up YT.  I spend more than a month to do it.  Because I want to use PPt to make slides with pictures and the article.  But I need to learn the most basic of PPt.  BTW, I don't have PPt.  So I used Libreoffice Impress.  It works the same, almost.  Then there's the format and design of the slides.  I eventually decides to go with the Traditional Chinese format, vertical style.  That took some doing.  Along the way, I scrapped the plan for a partial quote of the article to a full copy.  Because, my recording has too many problems, wrong pronunciations, adding words that's not there, or subtracting words that's there.  And therein lies a real problem.  I re-record a few more times, trying to see if I could replace the intended voice recording.  I failed, I could not produce another recording with the same tone, speed, and emotions.  

Anyway, it was frustrated.  I spent half day putting this project up on YT after talking to my sis.  She said if the  mistakes did not alter the story, I should just salvage it.  So I did.  

Another thing, no more sending videos to relatives and people.  Let them live in peace...  lol  The recording is really not a joy to listen.  I listened on a laptop then a cellphone.  My gosh, the cellphone's quality is pretty bad.  I can imagine what other people would think.  So no more.  Just let it flow on the YT ocean, and hope no one will find them and tell me to pull them down...  lol