Troubled Blood Chapters Three and Four

July 24, 2022 by Leave a Comment

RGalbraith tweeted two questions yesterday about the first fourteen chapters of Troubled Blood to encourage new readers to discuss the story as they are reading it. We have been discussing Troubled Blood in some depth since its publication for attentive re-readers so I started tweeting a question for each of the novel’s first two Parts, the fourteen chapters, and posting my answers here for those wanting more challenging conversation.

Yesterday it was the first two chapters; today I’ll be taking a deep dive into chapter 3, Robin on the job in Torquay, and chapter 4, Lucy and Cormoran fight it out early in the morning in St. Mawes. First the @HogwartsProf tweet, then my answer to the question, and finally, I hope, your push-back and counter-point responses in the comment boxes beneath the post. See you after the jump!

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Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Troubled Blood: Chapters One and Two

July 23, 2022 by Leave a Comment

The promised questions offered to spur new readers into conversations at @RGalbraith’s twitter feed turned out to be as bland and spoiler free as I thought they might be. As I pledged yesterday, I tweet-posted links to my reflections that were written on publication of Troubled Blood about its first fourteen chapters, Parts 1 and 2 of 7, in that @RGalbraith tweet thread and tweeted @HogwartsProf two challenges, one for each of the first two chapters. I’ll try to do the same all this coming week to finish fourteen before the next @Rgalbraith questions appear next Saturday. My answers to the first two tweeted question-challenges, offered for your reflection, comment, and correction, are posted below. Enjoy!

Here are my top seven. Feel free to contradict (“That’s not an echo!”) or offer your own. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Troubled Blood ‘Listen Along’ Tomorrow

July 22, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Professor Freeman posted the news Wednesday that Robert Galbraith’s twitter feed (@RGalbraith) will be sponsoring conversation of Troubled Blood in the run-up to publication of Ink Black Heart. Their plan is to offer questions on that twitter feed every Saturday at 2 PM BST (9 AM Eastern time) for readers to discuss in the comment threads beneath the tweets. See Louise’s post for the dates and chapters for those discussions.

Looking over the original tweet, it has two follow-up parts to the announcement of the ‘Listen Along’ exercise.

Unless I’m really misunderstanding this, the conversation seems to be an outreach to readers — make that ‘audiobook listeners’ — who have not yet read the book or heard the Glenister version of Troubled Blood.

I’m not sure where that leaves the Serious Strikers at HogwartsProfessor and Strike Fans who have been discussing the artistry and meaning of Strike5 for the better part of two years. Out in the cold? If we do more than listen in on the conversation, won’t we inevitably spoil the story for first timers?

Fortunately, I wrote down what I thought of each part of Troubled Blood as I read it, an exercise I doubt I’ll ever repeat given how labored that reading was and how far off-base my guesses were about Whodunnit. I think my contribution to the conversation tomorrow will only be to link to my discussions of Parts One and Two, chapters 1 to 14, posts that include no spoilers because I hadn’t read any further than those chapters, on the @RGalbraith comment threads. I’ll tweet @HogwartsProf (and post here) my own questions about the first fourteen chapters for all of us who have read and listened to the book more than once, even more than twenty or thirty times.

See you then!

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes

Official Troubled Blood Readalong in the Countdown to Ink Black Heart

July 20, 2022 by 2 Comments

I spied this on Twitter and plan to join in!  @RGalbraith

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Louise Freeman

Troubled Blood: Unanswered Questions

July 17, 2022 by 1 Comment

Earlier this month, inspired by a comment Elisa made about Cormoran and Joan’s deathbed conversation and how Strike may have misunderstood what was said, I wrote a post that asserted that, as long and as satisfying a novel as Troubled Blood is and as much attention as we have given here to exploring the artistry and meaning involved, there are as many Strike5 mysteries still left to be solved. See Have We Covered ‘Troubled Blood’? No. for that discussion.

Yesterday I listed 7+ unanswered questions about the Strike series that we neglect because we’ve been suckered into trusting our two narrators, Sherlock Strike the Amazing Memory Man and the Jungian Jungfrau Ellacott, who are no more dependable as story-tellers than Harry Potter, Rowling’s other misdirection delivery system. Read Cormoran Strike: Unanswered Questions for those subjects that our Dynamic Detecting Duo just refuse to think about despite Rowling-Galbraith dropping clues around them for stop-and-look-down discovery.

Today I want to list and discuss seven plus more unanswered questions that are specific to Troubled Blood. Dave Polworth, Lucy Fantoni, Charlotte Campbell, Jonny Rokeby, Shanker, Ted Nancarrow, and Cormoran Strike with a ‘plus’ question about Ellacott the Incredible Cartomantist are all featured. See you after the jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike