SILLY Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them – the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these – a composite order of feminine fatuity, that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery species.

In this first novel by Agatha Christie, published in 1920, she introduces the inimitable Poirot, who would go on to appear in 33 Christie novels and 54 short stories. In fact, Christie spent so much time with Poirot that she began to think of him as “insufferable” and “an ego-centric creep.”

An article in LaptopMag.com talks about the new OLPC (one laptop per child) computer. Smaller than the previous OLPC laptop, it has some pretty neat features. “The design will provide a right and left page in vertical format, a hinged laptop in horizontal format, and a flat, two-screen continuous surface for use in tablet mode.” [...]

Fanny Burney’s second novel is the story a young and beautiful heiress whose army of suitors is made up of gentlemen, scoundrels, and many others who are not what they seem. Admired by Jane Austen and other contemporaries, it is said that the title for Pride and Prejudice is taken from the last pages of this novel.

Wanted: Cook for remote camp. Location: Antarctica. Job Description: Cook meals at unspecified times for 7-100 persons. Duration: 4 months. Pay: Appallingly low. Facility: Scattered tents in the middle of nowhere. Entire facility buried sometimes for years when not in use. No Cuisinarts. No KitchenAids–no electricity. Stove sometimes belches fire and could burn down the camp. However, camp more likely to be blown away by storms.

Agatha Christie carefully weaves her story with clues that appear to be casually dropped, and which the reader may not take to heart. Her skill at foreshadowing marks her as a master storyteller whose stories endure nearly a century after they were written.