B.C. Is Alive and Well!

 

By Johnny Hart

The copyright on this edition is 1964, 1965, 1969 but I think the comics date from the early 1960s. 

In this collection, the boys are exploring the idea of football, with limited success and still working on figuring out baseball. And golf is still a game the boys are playing. The Fat Broad is famous for her strange soups she cooks in her giant caldron. Snake is still getting flattened and the anteater is still enjoying the company of the armadillo and the bird is still sitting on the turtle. One of the boys invents the telephone but discovers someone else has beat him to it. The struggle between anteater and the ants continues, but the anteater's aim is off and he keeps missing the ants he is aiming at.

The B.C. comic strip is going strong in this collection. My only quibble is too much sports. I care not about football, baseball or golf. But overall, it is still funny and a pleasure to read with its goofiness.

Magical Thinking

 

By Augusten Burroughs

A memoir. Set mostly during his adult years in New York City, before he became well known for his first memoir, Running With Scissors. It deals mainly with his love life, the men he favored and the man who later became his main man at the time, Dennis aka The Schnauzer. I guess at the time he wrote this book, he was pretty certain that Dennis was forever. However, looking online I see that they split up, growing apart, according to what I read, but still fond of each other.

Burroughs loves to shock us with his crazy life. But to me the most shocking thing I read in the book was his torture killing of a mouse in his apartment. It was truly disgusting and inhumane what he did to that poor creature.

On the other hand, much of the book is really interesting and frequently funny. Oddly, he describes an encounter with Puff Daddy aka P. Diddy aka Sean Combs which I found interesting because of Combs trial this year and sentencing to about four years of incarceration. The encounter Burroughs writes about happened at the Kentucky Derby:

During the seventh race, a man in a blindingly white suit approached our box and, seeing that it was full, stood at the opening of the box next to ours, the one just slightly ahead of the finish line. A murmur rippled through the box, and I heard the word 'Daddy,' a word that for various reasons always gets my attention.

His diamond earrings flashed in the sun. Of course: P. Diddy (formerly Sean 'Puffy' Combs), rap star, music producer, recently acquitted gun-out-the-window-thrower. A small entourage of impeccably dressed and very handsome black men huddled behind him.

A crowd materialized, and there seemed to be less oxygen in the air. The dozens of photographers in front of us on the track now turned around to face Puffy. Auto-focus lenses whirred into action. Flashes fired.

'Puffy!' yelped on of the debutantes. 'A picture? Pretty please, Daddy?'

Puffy extended his arm, and the girl parted the crowd and slid right in. Flashes exploded on their faces. The light around us popped.

The crowd seemed to close in on our little box. Puffy signed autographs, signed anything passed to him. He held a cigar between his teeth. There was not a single smudge on his white suit. His Rolex shone. When he spoke, he sounded like a senator.

Even without his white, white suit, Puff Daddy would have been the whitest man at the Derby. And yet I couldn't help but think: all these Hats, swooning over him, their faces melting into smiles, their bodies leaning into him, their eyes trained on his every gesture—these ladies wouldn't give him a quarter to save his life if he were wearing sweat pants, a Fubu jersey, and a backward baseball cap. Yet now, I was certain, any of them would have been proud to bear his children. The men, too. Any one of them would happily shrug, 'What the hell?' and be his bitch."

Here is a review from Kirkus Reviews. 

And one from the New York Times.

Backpack

 

By Emily Barr

After her mother died, Tansy,  was feeling the need for a change. Her mother left her a goodly amount of money and so Tansy decides to have an extended vacation to the Far East. The plan, originally, was that her boyfriend, Tom, would come too. But at nearly the last minute, he backed out. That doesn't stop Tansy from going on her trip, even though the thought of traveling alone scares her.

But she follows through and heads off to strange new lands. At first, she sneers at her fellow backpackers but soon enough finds that she is doing the same cliché things they are doing. She makes some friends and finds that the traveling is easier if you are with some people you know a bit. 

She actually meets a man that she at first is not too interested in but that changes over time. Although she still has her sights set on the absent Tom, who she feels is her true love, she embarks on a love affair with the new man, Max. 

The longer she stays in the East, the better she feels about herself. And being with Max is part of the reason for that. Nevertheless, when Tom lets her know he will be coming out there too, she dumps Max and runs to join Tom at the island resort where he will be staying. Before long though, Tansy realizes that Tom is not the love of her life and that she has made a very big mistake.

Added to all this is a serial killer in the area who seems to be targeting women who are very similar in appearance  to Tansy herself, making all the young, blonde, European woman like herself who are traveling in the East very nervous and wary.

I can't say I really liked this story. I've said this before, but it's hard to like a story where you don't like the main character. And I really didn't like Tansy. Not one bit. I found her to be a very unpleasant person. And it turns out she has a horrific secret that, I think, proves she really is bad news.

Also there are several sections in the book where the author lectures the reader on various topics including alcohol, opium, Vietnam war, cocaine and the decay of modern Western society. Her lecture on the decay of Western society is one of the shorter ones:

Decadence, after all, comes from the Latin word for decay. The more time I spend away, the more strongly I feel that Britain, Europe and America are corrupt societies on their way out. They are past their peak, collapsing, with too much money and luxury. They have lost the most basic humanitarian instinct to share. From here, it seems obvious that no society can survive once its members lose that impulse. 

I don't know if this is just intended to be Tansy speaking or if it is the author's opinion too. But I did not appreciate the "I'm better and smarter than you" attitude of these lectures. Even though that may be the case.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

 

My Cat Is Such A Weirdo Vol. 7

 

By Tamako Tamagoyama

A book about three cats and an axolotl. Mainly concerned about how the cats will adapt to a new house. And about the various health problems the animals experience. Not in great detail though.

The drawings are cute. But the cats don't seem any weirder than most cats. The axolotl's health problem was very weird, I think. 

For the most part, I don't get this book. It was very dull. How does a series this boring sell well enough to extend to seven volumes? That is what is weird about this book.

Anyway, here are three drawings from the book that I found to be a little bit amusing (Note -- the comic reads from right to left):

Bridge of Souls

 

 By Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake, Book Three

Third story in the triology finds Cassidy, her ghost friend Jacob and her parents in New Orleans where her parents are working on new episode for their video ghost story series.

Of course a place like New Orleans is going to have a lot of haunted locations and ghosts. But it isn't a ghost that Cassidy runs afoul of, it an Emissary of Death, who has come to take Cassidy back to the place of the dead. She actually got a glimpse of this being at the end of the second book in the series, Tunnel of Bones, where it appeared to her as a person dressed all in black and wearing a skull mask. 

Cassidy is in serious danger but fortunately a magical society in New Orleans and her friend Lara from Scotland and Jacob, of course, are there to help. But even all that help may not be enough to save her from Death's Emissary. Who is really angry that Cassidy escaped death when she nearly drowned. 

I didn't care for this premise. Maybe because I'm old and haven't much time left on this earth. But lifetimes are so short. Why is Death so impatient? In a few short decades, Cassidy will be dead. Death is eternal. Even the sun will eventually die, at least that is what science tells us. In the billions of years that the universe has existed, the lifespan of a human being is virtually nothing. Death needs to chill. Cassidy will be there soon anyway. I just couldn't buy into the idea that Death was so outraged by Cassidy not drowning that it had to send an Emissary to drag her to the land of the dead. Nah.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Someone Else's Shoes

 

By Jojo Moyes

Nisha has been traveling with her husband and together they are staying at a fancy hotel in London, England. But what Nisha doesn't know is that her spouse has plans that definitely do not include her: cutting her off without a cent or even access to her own clothing or money. So she is stranded in a foreign country wearing only a bathrobe and slippers since her clothes were mistakenly taken at the gym where Nisha was doing her daily workout.

When she is finally able to get in contact with her faithless spouse, he informs her that she will get nothing from him until she returns the expensive shoes she was wearing when she went to the gym. A very strange request, indeed, but one she feels forced to do. But how is she supposed to track down the unknown woman who took her bag with her clothes and the special shoes?

Meanwhile, the woman who took the bag, Sam, has an important sales meeting to attend, one her success at her job may depend on. She opens the bag and instead of her ordinary clothes there are very expensive and glamorous items. Sam doesn't intend to keep the bag but a time crunch has her in a bind and she is forced to wear the expensive shoes to her sales calls. Interestingly, these power shoes give her that extra boost of confidence and the sales calls work out very well.

Sam has more in common with Nisha than either knows. Sam is facing marriage problems too. Her spouse has been depressed after the death of his father and he has been so shut down for months that most of his time is spent on the couch or in bed, accomplishing nothing at home, including failing to find a new job. Sam is getting pretty tired of carrying the full load all on her own and there is a man at her work who has indicated he is attracted to her.

And poor Nisha, accustomed to a life of luxury after years of marriage to her extremely wealthy husband, has been forced to get a job or end up living on the street. The job she finds is as a maid at the very hotel where her horrible husband is staying with her replacement. But even though the work is not what Nisha has been used to, she finds the people she is working become more important to her than just as coworkers.

I did enjoy this story even the plot was a tad ridiculous and not in an amusing way. Parts of it brought tears to my eyes. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Number One Is Walking

 

By Steve Martin, drawings by Harry Bliss

A look back at his career in cinema by actor/writer/comedian Steve Martin. Steve provided the prose and Harry Bliss did the illustrations. 

I first saw Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live when he sang "King Tut" dressed like Egyptian royalty. It was funny and weird and introduced the world to an extraordinary performer who went on to have a very successful career in entertainment. Still going strong as far as I know. More power to him!

On the other hand, I had never heard of Harry Bliss so I looked him up on Wikipedia: "Harry Bliss ... is an American cartoonist and illustrator. He has illustrated many books and produced thousands of cartoons including 25 covers for The New Yorker. He has a syndicated single-panel comic titled 'Bliss'. 'Bliss' is syndicated through Tribune Content Agency and appears in over 80 newspapers in the United States, Canada, and Japan."

I enjoyed what Steve has to say and I really enjoyed the drawings Bliss contributed. They add so much to the story. Here are a few examples of his drawings from the book:

Here is an example the style in which the story is told. And also has an explanation of the book title:

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass

 

By Dave Barry

Dave Barry is a well known columnist, humorist and author. His skills as author and humorist are displayed beautifully in this entertaining, funny memoir. He made me laugh so many times, I think this might be one of his funniest books ever, which is saying a lot. His skills as a writer and humorist are top of the bunch.

He doesn't go into much detail about his private life beyond his childhood which he does delve into. But after that, the book is mostly about his professional life, starting off as a young reporter and kind of ending up a humor columnist accidentally. But he did graduate from serious reporting to being, as it says on the front of the book, a wiseass and we are all the better off for it. So thank you, Dave Barry, for your work and your amazing sense of humor and giving your readers decades of laughs and lighter moments.

Here are just few of the moments in the book made me literally "laugh out loud."

• "I made art projects out of construction paper and this white paste—you Boomers remember this paste—that turned out to be delicious. I enjoyed eating that paste WAY more than I enjoyed eating the Wampus Elementary cafeteria food, which came from giant government cans left over from some previous war, possibly the French and Indian."
• 
  
• "The girls were no longer girls: They were definitely young women. It was as if they had all attended Summer Bosom Camp. The boys definitely noticed this, and were feeling powerful new biological stirrings in the form of semi-permanent boners. A Category 5 puberty storm had hit Harold C. Crittenden Junior High; waves of hormones were sloshing through the halls."
• 
  
• "If you or one of your companions gets bit by a snake, don't panic. Take a razor blade and make a cut shaped like an "X," then suck out all the blood. Snakes just hate this, and after you've done it to them one or two times they stop biting people altogether."
• 
  
• "For nickname stupidity, no state challenges Indiana, which proudly calls itself "the Hoosier State," even though nobody has a clue what "Hoosier" means. It could be a Native American word meaning "Has sex with caribou."
• 
  
• "So the Republicans brought out a parade of humanizers, with the star being Mitt's wife, Ann. She talked, movingly, about a completely different Mitt Romney, a Mitt Romney whom most people have never seen, a Mitt Romney who is funny, spontaneous, tender, laid-back, five feet tall, overweight, bald and—in some [US] states—Jewish." 

I'm adding one last Dave Barry quote, but it is not a funny quote: "For the record: I can't stand Trump. He's a narcissistic jerk and a liar, and his behavior on January 6 was despicable. I'd never vote for him." 

Same for me, Dave.

Here is a review by Bookreporter.com.

Tunnel of Bones

 

By Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake, Book Two

We first met Cassidy and her ghostly friend Jacob (the ghost boy who saved her from drowning) in Edinburgh, Scotland where Cassidy nearly died when she was attack by a desperate ghost woman. While in Scotland, Cassidy made the acquaintance of Lara, a girl about the same age as Cassidy who also has the ability to sense and perceive ghosts. Lara taught her a lot about this ability that Cassidy acquired only after nearly dying.

Cassidy's parents have finished with their work in Scotland and are off to Paris, France, to film another in their videos about ghosts and haunted locations. Neither of her parents can perceive ghosts and even though Cassidy has told them she can, they don't believe her and dismiss her claims about Jacob as being an imaginary friend.

Paris is an ancient city and has its share of ghosts and haunted locations, one of which is surely the Catacombs. It is one of the locations her parents are planning to film and the parents bring Cassidy along enjoy a private tour of this massive underground storage depot of human bones. But, with her usual bad luck, Cassidy attracts the attention of a poltergeist. And this poltergeist follows her out of the Catacombs and starts causing mischief, as poltergeists are wont to do. It's their thing. 

Trying to deal with this poltergeist, Cassidy discovers that the mirror trap trick that she learned from Lara doesn't work on this poltergeist. Lara thinks it is because it has been dead for so long it has forgotten who it is and until it remembers, the mirror trap won't work. The poltergeist will continue to rampage in Paris until Cassidy can find out who it was, how it died and reveal those details to it and then deal with it and send it to its eternal destination.

This was an OK story. I find that Cassidy is a little too precocious for a twelve year old and I would like her better if she was a teen and not an adolescent. She is very sneaky and a liar, both things she probably wouldn't have to do and be if she were four or more years older in the stories. Also she makes friends with a young girl and Cassidy is able to display her ghostly talents quite easily to this child but somehow can't convince her own parents?

Anyway, kids and young teens probably would enjoy this series a lot.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.