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):