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hellohannahk's review against another edition
4.0
I don't know why, but I loved this book. It was so so funny and unique, with beautiful writing throughout.
paola_mobileread's review against another edition
3.0
A pleasant light read, though I found it at time too predictable, and at times too exaggerated. Needless to say, though, very well written.
rui_leite's review against another edition
3.0
Even though I’ve been curious about G.K. Chesterton for quite some time, ever since I’ve read that some of my favourite writers were influenced by his style, I’ve never read anything by him. To tell the truth I was slightly worried I would not enjoy his writing because I’ve also read that he had some rather strong conservative leanings. But a few days ago I found this small book at a very affordable price and decided it was about time I picked it up.
I am pleased I did. Maybe it’s this particular book, or maybe I had judged the man too harshly without ever really knowing what he wrote, but the thing is that within this pages I found not so much the overly-conservative kind of social criticism I was fearing, but a smarter, kinder, type of conservatism I can live well with. Most of the stuff pointed out was simple common sense and, surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with Basil Grant, the main character, more often than not.
Chesterton seems to be very apt at creating quirky and strange stories, populated by quirky and strange characters that, nevertheless, are easy to picture walking down a street in real life and engaging in that very sort of adventures. He is strange and funny but never “nonsensical” and it is a rather hard balance he achieves in these six short-stories.
Basil Grant is both a kind of Sherlock Holmes, in that he is amazingly competent and seemingly infallible, but also his exact opposite, using a mix of common sense, knowledge of human nature and instinct to solve his cases instead of formal logic. But, and this is the really clever bit, truth be told, all the cases can be solved by the readers if they use the kind of “grantian logic” instead of its “holmesian” counterpart. Chesterton does play fair, the rules of “the game” are well established early on, all clues are on page, even if they often come from unexpected sources and the endings actually made a lot of sense most of the time.
On the other hand Rupert Grant, Basil’s younger brother, is a well done parody of the style of detectives that followed Holmes school of investigation. There is, for example, a delightful scene where he is trying to find out “The Truth” about a milkman using deductive reasoning and the results are...well... memorably hilarious…
My only complaint might be the very ending of the book… even if I loved Basil’s speech about the profession of Judge there (full of shrewd observations, if you ask me) what we find out about him might just undermine the understanding we thought we had about his prowess as an investigator. It doesn’t necessarily do that, but it can. That disappointed me a bit because I came to admire the way he acted throughout the book and the way he reached his conclusions.
But, all in all, The Club of Queer Trades was quite a humorous light read filled with some very quotable lines, and a very nice and different take on the mystery genre.
(By the way... 3 stars because I read a translation and it was quite a bit of rubbish - para a malta tuga: Europa-America, colecção vampiro...yeah... - but I guess that in this particular case I got exactly what I paid for, so I can't complain much.)
I am pleased I did. Maybe it’s this particular book, or maybe I had judged the man too harshly without ever really knowing what he wrote, but the thing is that within this pages I found not so much the overly-conservative kind of social criticism I was fearing, but a smarter, kinder, type of conservatism I can live well with. Most of the stuff pointed out was simple common sense and, surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with Basil Grant, the main character, more often than not.
Chesterton seems to be very apt at creating quirky and strange stories, populated by quirky and strange characters that, nevertheless, are easy to picture walking down a street in real life and engaging in that very sort of adventures. He is strange and funny but never “nonsensical” and it is a rather hard balance he achieves in these six short-stories.
Basil Grant is both a kind of Sherlock Holmes, in that he is amazingly competent and seemingly infallible, but also his exact opposite, using a mix of common sense, knowledge of human nature and instinct to solve his cases instead of formal logic. But, and this is the really clever bit, truth be told, all the cases can be solved by the readers if they use the kind of “grantian logic” instead of its “holmesian” counterpart. Chesterton does play fair, the rules of “the game” are well established early on, all clues are on page, even if they often come from unexpected sources and the endings actually made a lot of sense most of the time.
On the other hand Rupert Grant, Basil’s younger brother, is a well done parody of the style of detectives that followed Holmes school of investigation. There is, for example, a delightful scene where he is trying to find out “The Truth” about a milkman using deductive reasoning and the results are...well... memorably hilarious…
My only complaint might be the very ending of the book… even if I loved Basil’s speech about the profession of Judge there (full of shrewd observations, if you ask me) what we find out about him might just undermine the understanding we thought we had about his prowess as an investigator. It doesn’t necessarily do that, but it can. That disappointed me a bit because I came to admire the way he acted throughout the book and the way he reached his conclusions.
But, all in all, The Club of Queer Trades was quite a humorous light read filled with some very quotable lines, and a very nice and different take on the mystery genre.
(By the way... 3 stars because I read a translation and it was quite a bit of rubbish - para a malta tuga: Europa-America, colecção vampiro...yeah... - but I guess that in this particular case I got exactly what I paid for, so I can't complain much.)
natalie_xoxo's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
3.5
A mixed bag of stories but good overall.
eriynali's review against another edition
4.0
really enjoyable fast and a bit surreal read, with surprisingly many quotes that were absurdly relevant.
mc_j_ho's review against another edition
2.0
I really didn't enjoy this for so many reasons but I will keep it brief. The Basil Grant character was an insufferably pompous, mercurial in his dispensing of his insights, over zealous, moralizing buffoon. Meanwhile the other characters were largely idiotic 2D straw men designed to reflect Basil's greatness. As for the "queer trades" they were in the most part decidedly disappointing. Chesterton, in his (clearly declared in this work) staunch religiosity, conservatism and bull headed disregard for reason and science, was utterly unpersuasive. This work seems to have been written as an attempt to criticize Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character and his dedication to science and reason and for me failed utterly in this object. I am sorry but archaic morality, intuition and subtle mysticism are not believable devices by which mysteries can be solved. 2/5.
obzy05's review against another edition
3.0
I like it Vocation people get involved in that only they could ever carry out. A nice ending to the whole story.
wwatts1734's review against another edition
4.0
This book is one of GK Chesterton's lesser known works, a collection of short stories centered around an interesting organization, the "Club of Queer Trades", which is a club made up of people who make a living out of doing things that nobody would expect can earn someone a living. This book is part mystery book, part short story collection and part social commentary. Chesterton comments as much on the queer people of turn-of-the-century London as he is commenting on the queer trades that they practice. And his detective/hero Basil is perhaps the queerest of all the characters, a sort of Sherlock Holmes style recluse and genius. The situations encountered in this work are fascinating but are not exactly relatable to modern readers, in this sense the work is dated. Still, I would recommend it for fans of Chesterton and turn of the century British works of humor.