Reading Update (Zoning and more Poirot)

First, we'll have the only non-Poirot book of this batch...

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke The American City and How To Fix It by M. Nolan Gray

Written a former NYC urban planner, a very readable introduction to what zoning is and more importantly, the way it has basically broken the housing market is most major American cities. The book first explains is that zoning has two main purposes: (1) separating land uses (commercial, residential, etc.) and (2) controlling density.

It then makes a convincing argument that zoning utterly fails at doing (1) in ways that actually matter to the people living in an area - commercial zones of vastly different noisiness often gets lumped together, it often rids residential neighbourhoods of useful small shops. Even more convincing is its point on (2) - zoning is a huge part of why housing costs have risen so sharply. The following is a smattering of upsetting facts.

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Anyway, I'd highly recommend this book, it goes into a bunch of other cool details, like how having to change zoning to build more housing on a lot disincentivizes density, or a quick dive into Japan's zoning scheme that is limited nationwide to only twelve types of zones.

Now it's time for some Poirot!

Lord Edgeware Dies by Agatha Christie

An actress's husband is found dead shortly after she visited him, but at the time of the supposed visit, she was seen having dinner with twelve others on the other side of town. Poirot and Hastings investigate. One of the deaths in this book had some real pathos for me, the solution makes you groan in realization (in a fun way) and Hastings gets delightfully defensive of Poirot when it comes to Japp. But there was some filler I was bored by, and more jarringly, even for a Christie novel this one manages to do like, a hat-trick of bigotry across a few pages, with anti-black racism, some anti-semitism, and some anti-chinese racism. At seven novels in I thought I'd be able to predict when that shows up, and I can to some degree, but there are still some surprises left for me.

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

An actor who is taking a break from the stage throws a party at his place, and one of the guests suddenly dies after a sip of his cocktail. There's no apparent motivation, and its chalked up to a medical issue until at another party at a different residence, with a big overlap in guests from the earlier one, the host dies in a similar manner. Much of the book is split between the actor and his two friends investigating, and Poirot investigating. This book makes it very obvious (if it wasn't already) that Poirot really does not enjoy being retired with nothing to do. Dude wants to solve crime, is probably going to keep solving crime till he literally drops dead.

Anyway, this had some fun character moments (there's a playwright that's clearly just Christie making fun of herself), I found the murderer even more cold-blooded than I expected and there were a looot of PoV switches. I think one might be able to start figuring out who the murderers in these novels are via the romantic subplots though.

Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Look, this should be a fun one. Someone dies on a plane! Someone dies on a plane that Poirot is also on, albeit distracted by his mal de air! There's blackmail, wills, two countries worth of suspects! But while the solution is reasonably clever and satisfying, I was quite uninterested in our heroine, Jane Grey, who's helping out Poirot. Possibly the least charming of the ones we've met so far, and that's before the narration drops in some prejudice in what's supposed to be a cute paragraph about her bonding with a to-be lover.