Finished A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life by Pat Conroy. Interesting. I like reading about writing. I was surprised to learn that he’d written The Lords of Discipline in Paris, France.
Started The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate. It’s very good so far, much better written than the other two Newberr medalists I’ve read recently, Moon Over Manifest and Crispin: Cross of Lead.
I finished reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land of Hidden Men, an atypical Burroughs yarn. It’s set in southeast Asia, and doesn’t involve Tarzan or other planets. American hero walks into the jungle, gets lost and almost killed. He rescues an old holy man before collapsing, is nursed back to health, then becomes a proficient jungle hunter and goes on to discover not just one but two “lost cities” in the jungle, rescues a woman who turns out (eventually) to be a princess. Fro this point on it plays like a John Carter novel, with captures and escapes. It’s straight outrageous adventure – the hero kills three tigers in the course of the story, using only a javelin – but a modern reader can’t help but see the “White Guy Shows the Natives How to Do It” plot.
The weird thing is that the novel was also published under the title Jungle Girl, under which title it was bought to be the basis of a movie serial – Nyoka the Jungle Girl, which I had heard of before (Nyoka got another movie later on). I suspect the filmmakers bought it thinking it was a sort of female Tarzan story, which it isn’t. The serial has nothing to do with the book (the book’s heroine is Fou-tan, not Nyoka)The Thai princess gets shifted to Africa and was made into a female Tarzan. I guess they figured that once they had Burroughs’ name on it, people would come.
I’m currently reading Ian Fleming: The Fantastic 007 Man, a Bio of Fleming written in 1967. There’s a lot more detail and inside knowledge than I’d expect, with the author saying to the reader that he’d interviewed Fleming’s bosses and the like.
The book is by Richard Gant, which turns out to be a pseudonym. According to most internet sites, including Wikipedia, “Richard Gant” is really Brian Harry Freemantle, a writer of thrillers who also wrote Sean Connery: Gilt-Edged Bond the next year.
But the author of this blog ( Ian Fleming: The Fantastic 007 Man – Fleming's Bond ) says that he contacted Freemantle through his agent, and learned that the real author was Leslie Thomas, another writer of thrillers. It was Thomas who suggested that Freemantle write the Connery bio (the two writers shared the same agent), but also using the “Richard Gant” pseudonym.
Just to make things more confusing, the British title of the book is the somewhat better Ian Fleming: The Man with the Golden Pen. The reason they didn’t use that title in the US was because it had already been used for a book by Eleanor and Dennis Pelrine. And just to add to the confusion, there’s a play about Fleming with the same title by writer Mark Burgess ( Mark Burgess (playwright) - Wikipedia ) So if you ask “Who wrote ‘The Man with the Golden Pen’?” you could get five different answers, one a pseudonym, one incorrect, and three of them right.
How is the book? I’m in the middle of it. Well-written, but it was written right after Fleming’s death, and some things wouldn’t come out for years.
On audio I finished the early Nero Wolfe mystery The Red Box, which I found a little disappointing. One thing, though, in this one Sergeant Kramer doesn’t merely stick a cigar in his mouth and chew on it – he lights up at least three of them.
Having finished that, I’m re-listening to Christopher Moore’s Fool. I have to find another to listen to before this runs out.
Continuing my cozy mystery kick, I read Cat Nap, by Claire Donally, the second in the Sunny and Shadow series. Serviceable. Lots and lots of irritating coincidences make me lose steam pretty quickly.
Also A Killer Plot, by Ellery Adams. The story was fine. The pacing bad. The main character insufferable. I won’t be reading further in this series.
And The Corpse with the Silver Tongue, by Cathy Ace. Even weirder pacing than the Adams book. Lots! of exclamation points. !!
In my Newbery reads, I finished Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes. Much better than I was expecting. Hmm. I’m not sure what I was expecting, or why.
Now I’m reading Warlock Holmes - A Study in Brimstone, by G.S. Denning. It’s an extremely funny fantasy take on the Sherlock formula.
Also Vessel, by Sarah Beth Durst. YA fantasy that I think is about to turn into a rather tedious romance.
I haven’t quite given up on MC Higgins, the Great, by Virginia Hamilton (another Newbery winner), but I want to.
Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that my bedside reading is Christopher Miller’s American Cornball, "A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny**. It’s a surprisingly long and interesting guide to the things that used to dominate comic strip pages, radio sitcoms, TV sitcoms, and other pop paraphernalia from the 1920s through the 1970s. A lot of stuff I knew, or even grew up with, but other items were a surprise to me. I had no idea, for instance, that before “Little Audrey” was the name of a Harvey Cartoon and Comic Book character, that name was associated with a type of humor – “Little Audrey” jokes were dark humor about a moronic child who invariably saw the sunny side of a situation without realizing the deeper implications.
Some entries are a bit too brief (the entry on anvils is skimpier than the piece I wrote about the topic for Teemings way back when), but it’s profusely illustrated and informative.
Miller is younger than me, but has an impressive knowledge of old radio shows, old newspaper comics, advertising, and the like. By his own admission, he has perused the complete New Yorker cartoons collection on CD. He must have spent an inordinate amount of time listening to old radio recordings, too. He collects old humor memorabilia. This isn’t the Chris Miller who was with National Lampoon, and co-wrote Animal House. I’m unfamiliar with the other works of his cited at the front of the book
I was curious about Little Audrey jokes, so I found a site with a few of them.
I confess to finding them a little amusing.
What’s really weird is that the folks at Harveytoons deliberately named their sweet, innocent cartoon girl “Little Audrey”, undoubtedly knowing full well about these malicious little jokes. And she later got turned into a comic book character meant for little kids, as well.
It’s often said that the cartoons of the 1940s were intended for adults, not for kids, and that you can see it if you consider the jokes. The Harveytoons were really made by Famous Studios as “Noveltoons” (and later bought by the Harvey comics people, who put new openings on them and labeled them “Harveytoons”), which was the successor to the Fleischer Studios (makers of Betty Boop and Popeye), employing many of the same animators, writers, and directors. Betty Boop was definitely directed at adults, so it wouldn’t be surprising if this later incarnation was adult-directed, too. Was the use of “Little Audrey” some weird attempt to give these cartoons a bi-level humor, with the kids getting the straightforward, sunshine and kittens image, while adults, knowing the darker “Little Audrey” jokes of the thirties, saw them in a different way?
I’m gonna have to go back and have a look at those old Little Audrey cartoons again to see.
There’s another layer to all this. The Famous Studios people, like the Fleischer people before them, licensed characters from the comic strips for use in their cartoons. Fleischer, after all, got hold of Popeye from E.C. Segar. They also tried out Otto Soglow’s The Little King. Famous Studios licensed Marjorie Buell’s Little Lulu. as their lease was ending, they wanted to try creating their own character, and so came up wiith Playful Little Audrey. Audrey is basically a Little Lulu substitute.
Now, that’s funny, I don’t care who y’ar!
Those are funny! Even though they are ostensibly dark, they also seem like nonsense jokes, so I can see why the name might have been used in a comic.
That was my favorite, too!
Just finished The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron, which I found surprisingly good. Just started Beethoven’s Skull: Dark, Strange, and Fascinating Tales from the World of Classical Music and Beyond, by Tim Rayborn.
I’m about a quarter through The Nix and so far it’s great fun! It follows a young man and his mother through three timelines, one in the 80s, one in the late 60s and present day. It’s engrossing and, at times, very funny.
I took a stab at Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable by Andrea Tantaros. I was disappointed, because the book had a compelling premise but an unfortunate presentation. The premise was that the feminist movement centered around extolling and trying to emulate male virtues and positions within society, and while the feminist movement is good in its efforts to earn women more rights and respect in society, imitating men isn’t the best way to go about doing it. I was so fascinated with this idea that I kept trying to forge through the book even after it became clear that the author was completely obnoxious: ridiculing and name-calling people who disagreed with her, criticizing everyone in her life (women are jealous backstabbers, men are intimidated by tough women) – it never occurs to her that if most people of either gender don’t like her, that she’s the problem, not them. I didn’t last the whole book, though I would love to discover another book that covers the same theme but has a more likable author.
I zipped through Body Weight Strength Training Anatomy because the book had a lot of pictures. I liked the book: it had diagrams showing which primary muscles and accessory muscles were used for a bunch of different exercises, with accompanying step-by-step instructions on how to complete the exercises. My favorite part was the exercise notes for each exercise, where the author addressed common form mistakes and things to be cognizant of while performing each exercise. There was also a chapter at the end with helpful hints on how to design your own workout routine, which is actually the most concise and helpful piece of writing I have ever read on the matter. Oh! And also, I want to mention that this writer did a very good job of incorporating women into the book, showing women in the diagrams and including paragraphs on specifically how women might benefit from developing different muscle groups. I appreciated this thoroughly, as some fitness writers aren’t too good at making women feel like a target audience.
In terms of novels, I read The Wishing Tide by Barbara Davis, a cozy, seaside story about the intertwining of three strangers lives and the friendships they develop as they work through their troubled pasts. It was good and I recommend it.
Per a recommendation in one of these threads (I forget whose, sorry!), I have started on Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, and am still making up my mind about how I feel about the book. When I first started reading it, I was completely hooked and in love. You know, the kind where you start to feel cold and you kind have to go pee and maybe you should get something to eat, but you keep trying to ignore all those biological things because you don’t want to set the book down for even a few seconds!! But as I got more into it, I started to get lost, because Valente introduces so many different characters that I love track of anyone’s identity beyond the protagonist and the antagonist. But I’m still less than halfway into it, so there’s plenty of time for me to fall back in love with the story again.
You guys, I have started 4 books and am currently not making much progress on any of them. I don’t think it’s the fault of the books, exactly, but I’m so cranky about real life right now that I want my reading to be a pleasant escape to somewhere cheerful and I apparently keep striking out.
In the pile with bookmarks in various places, I have:
Strangers in Their Own Land, by Arlie Hochschild. Hochschild is a sociologist who goes to Louisiana to talk to Tea Party members about why they are opposed to environmental regulations despite the fact that LA is an extremely polluted state. It’s depressing.
Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman. These are not happy stories.
Eifelheim, but Michael Flynn. (No, not that Michael Flynn.) Dual timeline story from the perspective of a Medieval town in 1348 and a present day historian trying to figure out why the town was abandoned and never resettled after the plague. I sense that things aren’t going to end well for the Medieval characters.
Truly, Madly, Guilty, by Liane Moriarty. I haven’t even gotten far enough to say what this one is about, but the main character appears to be emotionally distraught about something.
So. Who has a nice cheerful book to recommend?
Do you have particular genres you tend to like?
I’m fairly omnivorous in my fiction reading, although I generally avoid romance. Sci-fi and fantasy are my usual go-tos for escapist reading. But honestly, all I want right now is for everyone to live happily ever after.
Something by Bill Bryson? For fiction, you could try some Elmore Leonard or Dave Barry.
I’m finishing up a Moe Prager crime fiction novel at the moment and will next read Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West, by Tom Clavin.
Hmm. Most of what I read has someone dying (I read a lot of mystery and fantasy. People pop off in those things all the time!). But here are some fantasies that I consider pretty not grim or depressing (apologies if I’ve forgotten any details that make them unsuitable):
The Emperor’s Edge, by Lindsay Buroker. Steam punky fantasy, very fun and fast moving with a kick ass female protagonist.
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik. About a girl chosen to be sacrificed to the local “dragon” (really an immortal wizard).
The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud. YA fantasy/ghost story series. Very entertaining.
Libriomancer, by Jim C Hines. Fun, light fantasy about the power of books.
The Thousand Names, by Django Wexler. Military fantasy set during a war, so lots of people die, but it’s not a brutal, grim book at all for me.
The Enchantment Emporium, by Tanya Huff. It takes a while to settle in (at least for me) but it’s Tanya Huff-ish in having lots of strong women doing entertaining things.
Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed. Arabian Nights-ish fantasy about a great evil stalking a city with only a few people standing in the way.
A couple of fun non-fiction, too:
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, by Natalie Angier. Just what the title claims. It’s a primer on various sciency things, written in a very funny, breezy style.
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Clifford Stoll. An astronomer tries to track a hacker through computer systems in the 80s. Very entertaining.
Not “everyone,” but I’d suggest you try Old Man’s War or Redshirts by John Scalzi, or Tool of the Trade by Joe Haldeman, which are each excellent and have largely-happy endings.
I recently gave up on Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises - just didn’t grab me.
Now a few chapters into Robert Harris’s Conclave, a novel about the election of a new Pope and all the Vatican intrigue and politicking-by-another-name behind the scenes. It’s good so far.
Still enjoying Sansom’s alt-hist novel Dominion, about a drab 1950 Great Britain dominated by Nazi Germany, and to a lesser extent Chiang’s short-story collection Arrival; the quality of the stories in it is very uneven.
Hmm…thanks!
I reached D-Day for Iwo Jima today in “Flags of our Fathers”. I’m glad Bradley didn’t pull his punches, gloss over or prettify it, but damn that was a hard dozen pages to read.