Daily newspaper strips dating from about 1966 & 1967.
The gang is still the core group and Grog is still being his weird little self. Thor is having trouble figuring out what more to do with his main invention, the wheel. One of the cavemen is skulking around at night as the Midnight Stalker. Peter has more new businesses, including a hardware store, a gift shop, a weather bureau. B.C. discovers clams have a secret.
Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 2018.
Arthur Less is minor author who is soon to turn fifty and who feels like a failure at everything but especially at life and work. He has a lot of baggage from two of the most important relationships in his life. First was Robert, who was a married man but who fell deeply for young, handsome Arthur. Robert was a famous and successful poet and a Pulitzer Prize winner. That relationship lasted for many years but eventually Arthur felt bored and eventually moved on to Freddy. That relationship also ended and Freddy has invited Arthur to attend his wedding to another person. Arthur needs a good excuse not to attend so he accepts several invitations to lectures overseas that will take him from his home in California to Mexico, Italy, Germany, France, India, Morocco and Japan.
Even though Arthur views himself as a failure, his travels introduce him to lots of new people and he learns that he is not quite the loser he has been picturing himself to be, despite some of the mistakes and misadventures he has on his travels.
The book started out slow and when I started reading it, I didn't know the main character was a gay man. I can't say I find the romantic intrigues of homosexuals particularly interesting, whether male or female. I set the book aside for several weeks after starting it. I did finally pick it back up and, as I got further into it, I started to enjoy it more and more. It is mildly funny and Arthur's dim view of himself doesn't improve until he reaches the end of his travels and realizes what he actually accomplished. Upon hearing that his old lover Robert has had a stroke, Arthur heads back to California with a better sense of himself and of his past relationships. To quote from the novel, it turns out that, "happiness is not bullshit."
According to Google's AI, Less won the Pulitzer because 'it offered a witty, tender and deeply humane exploration of aging, middle-class heartbreak and queer identity. The [Pulitzer] board praised the novel as a "scintillating satire" that expertly balances broad comedy with poignant reflections on the human heart.'
Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.
During a bad snowstorm, a rancher (who is also the sheriff) and his sons are out in the weather dealing with their cattle when they find the nude body of a young woman laying in the snow in their cow pasture. There's blood on the snow and it appears she has been sexually assaulted. The sheriff doesn't know who she is but his two teenage sons do but they say nothing.
The younger boy stays home, per his father's orders, but the older teen goes with his father when they take her body to the doctor's office into nearby small town.
Meanwhile, the doctor's teenage daughter has a visitor in her bedroom, Mitch, the handsome son of the local judge. Abby and Mitch have been making out and Abby has decided she is ready to go all the way. Problem is neither teen has any condoms. Abby knows her dad has condoms in a closet off the exam room. So Mitch sneaks downstairs, looking for the condoms. As he is poking around downstairs, the sheriff drives up to the doctor's house and Mitch ducks into the supply office to hide. He was able to peer through a crack at the edge of the door and saw the dead girl being carried into the exam room. And then Mitch sees something so shocking and unexpected that he actually gasps in horror. But fortunately he isn't heard and he is able to sneak away later. He was so shocked but what he had seen, he didn't go back upstairs to Abby's room and he ran out into the snowy night without his coat or shoes. And he never saw Abby again or returned back his home town until about seventeen years later.
The girl is a stranger to the area and is never identified. Her body is buried and a tombstone placed on her grave. Oddly, a legend sprung up about the girl, that a visit to her tomb could heal the sick and the trouble. She became known at the Virgin of Small Plains.
Abby never got over Mitch leaving town without talking to her or telling her what happened that night. She didn't know his parents had quickly hustled him out of the town when he told them what he had seen happen in the doctor's office. The judge informed his son that the doctor and the sheriff were denying what Mitch claimed he had seen. Further, they threatened to throw the blame for the girl's death on Mitch. So to keep their son safe, they were sending Mitch to school far away.
The story moves from the teenage days of Abby, Mitch and the sheriff's two teenage sons to seventeen years later. In all that time, the girl's death has never been solved. Abby has remained single as have the sheriff's sons, Patrick and Rex. Mitch has never returned home, not even for his own mother's funeral.
One day at the cemetery, Abby happens to encounter the now former sheriff's wife who is visiting the grave of the unknown girl. She knows about the stories of healings and her husband has been suffering greatly from the pain of arthiritis. So she is asking the Virgin to help her husband feel better. She and Abby begin casually chatting and the night the Virgin was found dead comes up and some of the things the sheriff's wife says stirs something in Abby. After the other woman leaves, Abby makes a promise to the Virgin to find out who she was.
But sometimes it's better to let sleeping dogs lie. Or in this case sleeping Virgins.
This was a very interesting mystery story. There are several suspects and several secrets surrounding the dead girl's time in the town. The main suspects are the three teenage boys, Mitch, Pat and Rex. It turns out that all three boys were involved with girl in the months before she died. And all three boys knew who she was and where she came from. But they never spoke up about it. Seventeen years later though, times are changing in Small Plains. The Virgin has gained some internet fame and people are coming to town to visit her grave and ask for her blessing and healing. Interest is rising and questions are being asked. And Mitch has finally come home and locals can't figure out what he is up to, including Abby, whose heart was broken when he left without a word so long ago.
Here is a review of the novel by Publishers Clearing House.
From the B.C. comic strip, copyright 1970. It comes with a note that it has two former titles: B.C./"LIFE IS A SEVENTY-FIVE CENT PAPERBACK" and B.C./"LIFE IS A NINETY-FIVE CENT PAPERBACK."
This is one of Johnny Hart's funniest collections of daily comic strips of his I have read so far. I had a hard time limiting the number of examples to put one here.
A Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mystery
Kendra is studying in preparation for a bid to regain her license to practice law which she lost when she was wrongly accused of being a murderer.
After losing her lawyer job, Kendra moved into the garage apartment of her home and rented the actual house to a young couple, Charlotte and Yul.
Charlotte is a former contestant on a reality TV dating show. As the winner, she was awarded one million dollars but lost a lover when she was informed that the rule was the winner could take the money or take the lover but couldn't take both. So Charlotte chose the money, which is how she affords the rent on Kendra's large and luxurious home. However, the catch to the money was a rule that she had to give up her love match, Chad, and never seem him again or she would forfeit the money. She picked the money, later claiming that Chad was a phony whose only reason for being on the show was for the exposure which he hoped would help his career in show business.
Charlotte and Yul enjoyed holding parties and one night Chad showed up at one of their parties uninvited. When Charlotte discovered he was there, they got into an argument and she sent him packing. But then Chad turned up dead, laying on the floor of the house, with Charlotte's and Yul's pet ferrets released from their pen and nibbling on his dead body.
Charlotte talks Kendra into investigating the murder even though Kendra is not certain that about Charlotte's or Yul's innocence. She does it anyway because if it is determined that the ferrets caused Chad's death, then the ferrets will be euthanized. Which is not what either Charlotte, Yul or Kendra want.
This was a pretty good mystery even if the murderer improbably tried to affix blame to the ferrets. The story is also mildly humorous which I felt added to the story.
After teenage oddball Wednesday Addams was kicked out of school for releasing piranha fish into the school's swimming pool to punish some boys who had been bullying her younger brother Pugsley, Wednesday was been enrolled in Nevermore Academy by her parents, Morticia and Gomez, who also attended Nevermore when they were teenagers.
Wednesday is not happy to be placed in this school intended for kids who are not ordinary. This school has students who include vampires, werewolves, witches, shapeshifters, psychics and more.
It soon becomes apparent that something is amiss at Nevermore and in the local village of Jericho. It doesn't take Wednesday long to ferret out the rumors of a monstrous creature haunting the countryside and killing people. So she takes it upon herself to discover the truth about this supposed monster.
Which she does when she witnesses the monster murder a fellow student. However, the school officials insist that the student, Rowan,was not killed and he is subsequently seen packing up his things and going into town to board a train home. Wednesday knows what she saw and finding Rowan's bloody spectacles on the ground where the attack occurred proves it was not just something she imagined.
Finding the truth is going to be difficult since some of the teachers and the principal are part of the cover-up. As Wednesday digs deeper into the secrets of Nevermore, not only is she gathering the evidence she needs to track down tbe monster, whom she suspects is a fellow student, but she also finds herself gaining friends and becoming part of a community, something she never really expected or wanted.
This was an OK mystery story. Wednesday, unfortunately, keeps accusing the wrong people of being the monster and it makes her look like a fool, in my opinion.
Another thing that I found rather sad is the serious nature of the story, with very little of the fun of the original Addams cartoons nor the silliness of the original TV series. True there are some lighter moments that hark back to the roots of the Addams family, but they are scarce. I just found the story to be too serious for me.
Yue-ying is servant to her beautiful sister, Mingyu, who is a courtesan in a brothel in China, The Lotus Palace. Yue-ying used to be a prostitute until her sister bought her and brought her to live with her in the Lotus Palace.
Mingyu is the star of the Lotus Palace, being very popular with the men who visit the house. Yue-ying looks a lot like her sister but has a large birthmark on her face that most customers find upsetting. So she serves as her sister's personal servant.
Bai Huang is a man of noble birth who visits the Lotus Palace to spend his time and money on Mingyu. He is really there for Yue-ying but she keeps him at arm's distance, choosing to disbelieve his interest in her is sincere and not some kind of joke or setup. Mingyu knows of his interest in her sister and it bothers her and creates some distance in her relationship with Yue-ying.
The Lotus Palace is not the only brothel in the area. Huilan was the famous courtesan and main attraction at the House of a Hundred Songs. Huilan and Mingyu knew of each other and sometimes spent time together at parties and other social events. When Huilan was found murdered in her bed, it was only to be expected that the authorities would have questions for both Mingyu and Yue-ying, hoping they might know of Huilan's activities before her death. Both women have nothing of consequence to tell the investigators.
Yue-ying decides to do a little investigating on her own and discovers that Bai Huang is also investigating Huilan's death and also the death of an unknown man on the nearby waterfront. Pirates are not unknown in the area and the man's death could have some connection to piracy and human trafficking.
This was an OK read. The romance between a humble servant/former prostitute was a tad unbelievable. Housefuls of beautiful, willing women and the rich guy chooses the woman with the huge birthmark on her face.
Another problem I had with the story is the killer turns out to be a very minor character in the story that we never hear very much at all about.
Overall, I'd say I liked the story. Apparently it is one of the first books in a series of mystery stories set in the Pingkang li area.
When Erin was a preteen, she began to come into her magical powers and was adopted by the Illuminati and trained to be a Hunter, an assassin who uses both magic and martial arts to eliminate evildoers who are upsetting the balance. Or so she was told.
Turned out all that was a lie. She was actually eliminating road blocks to the Illuminati's plans for world domination. She found this out when she was sent to murder William Strickland. According to her master, Strickland was a sorcerer and practitioner of the Dark Arts and that he had created a superweapon that the Illuminati wanted.
As Strickland lay dying from her attack, he told her the nature of the weapon, a small crystal ball: "It shows truth. Look through it when a man speaks, and it shows his lies. Look at a spell or a book or a work of art to see how true it is. Watch an Illuminati ritual and see the blood and the Darkness hidden beneath the surface."
He also warns Erin that of the crystal's other power: "Take that to your masters, and they will destroy it. But in the process, it will destroy them."
Erin takes the crystal and views Strickland through it. It shows her that he was dying. But she also saw: "...he was a wizard of the Light, and felt, though I couldn't tell how, that everything he had told me was the truth."
Leaving the dying man, Erin is confronted by his daughter:
'"He said you would come, and you would kill him."
"He may yet live," I said, "but he is dying."
"And you have the crystal?"
"Yes."
"Then you need this as well," she said holding out a book.
. . . The book was black leather trimmed in gold. The title, in the secret language of the Illuminati, said, "The History of the Illuminati."
"Read it," she said. "He said—my father said—that you must read it." She gave me a grin that was so malevolent I took a step back. "They will kill you when you take it to them, whether you read it or not. I hope you're stupid enough to believe their lies."'
Erin does read the book and discovers Strickland hadn't lied about the true nature of the Illuminati and what she had been doing for them: "Rather than being a force for the Light, I had advanced the reach of the Dark."
She takes the crystal to her master and leaves it in his hands, without the warning that Strickland gave her. True to what he said, crystal detonates and leaves the hidden city of the Illuminati vaporized with no trace left to show it had ever existed. The location where it had stood was now pristine wilderness.
Even though that was the end of the Illuminati stronghold, Erin knows the members are scattered all through the world in the places of influence and power and wealth. Her split from the group has put her life in danger and she goes into hiding, ending up in Westport, a city on the western coast of the USA. She quickly finds a job as a bartender and just as quickly discovers that Westport is a hive of magical activity and conflict between supernaturals like werewolves and vampires. Even the bar where she works is part of it, a haven for magically gifted people like herself, mages, wizards, shapeshifters, even vampires occasionally.
But that's not all she discovers. An Illuminati assassin, a Hunter, is in town and is behind a number of mysterious deaths among the supernatural communities. It appears the Illuminati are up to their usual tricks, fomenting disorder in order to gain some kind of advantage in Westport and increase their influence. Erin finds herself entangled in this conflict and trying to help her newfound friends and community survive the Illuminati machinations and still keep her presence hidden from the Hunter and his Illuminati cohorts.
This was an OK read. It goes from Erin learning how to pretend to be an ordinary person to battles with supernaturals that show she certainly is not a ordinary person. Which quickly becomes apparent to those around her and raises many questions about her past that she, for her own safety, will not share.
There are so many supernatural battle scenes, which are just like all battle scenes, just with magic thrown in. To me, no more interesting than all fictional battle scenes, boring. So, bartend for a bit, meet some folks for a bit, battle. Repeat over and over again.
Normally, I would classify this as a book that would appeal mostly to female readers. But the battle after battle scenes reads more like a book for male readers, who are more inclined to enjoy that than most female readers. Yes, I know there are exceptions, whatever.
Isabel and a companion are at a concert when they see a young man fall to his death from the upper deck of the hall.
Witnessing a tragedy like that leads Isabel into a an investigation of the man and what may have led to his death and whether it was an accident or something else.
Being a woman of wealth and means, Isabel has the time to undertake such an investigation. Her friends don't think it is a good idea, but she ignores their advice. Her inquiries lead her to conclude that the dead did not fall, that there were reasons he might have been pushed, mainly insider trading. His position at the firm where he worked may have led him to suspect that people in the business were using inside information to take advantage of the markets.
Was this why he died? Or was it a romantic entanglement? Or perhaps it truly was just that he lost his balance and fell? Isabel stirs things up and finds more than one villain. And her own life may be in danger as a consequence.
This was an OK mystery story. The evildoers are unmasked but oddly no one is brought to justice, which made for a rather weak ending, I think.
Here is a review of the novel by Kirkus Reviews.
Tuck is a jet pilot who kills his career when he gets loaded and crashes the company jet while having sex with a prostitute. Desperate for work, Tuck takes a job as a pilot for a Pacific island-based medical charity.
The charity is run by a doctor and his nurse/wife. But it doesn't take Tuck long to figure out that these two are up to something unsavory. Like how can a small, local charity afford a Learjet? What is in the coolers that they transport via the jet to Japan? Something that is so special that the wife guards it with a gun.
Eventually Tuck figures out that the two Westerners are taking advantage of the natives' cargo cult and are using it to bamboozle the islanders into becoming organ donors and that the people don't really understand how they are being used. It all comes to a head for Tuck when he realizes the doctor removed the corneas of a little boy for transport to Japan and they justified it to him by claiming the boy was already blind and didn't need his corneas. He also realizes it is up to him to put a stop to their organ-harvesting operation.
This was a very amusing story and it has lots of funny moments. For example, two native men are talking about a People Magazine and what the one who could read is sharing from it:
"'But look!" Malink pointed to a picture of a man with unnaturally large ears, "This man is a king and he wishes to be a tampon. It is quoted."
Sarapul scrunched up his face . . . while he tried to figure out what, exactly, a tampon was. Finally he said, "I was a tampon once, back in the old days, before you were born. All warriors became tampons. It was better then."
"You have never been a tampon," Malink stated, although he couldn't be sure. "Only a king may be a tampon."'
This too, when Tuck gets grabbed by the locals and tied up:
'The native said something in his own language, which Tuck took to be "Cut him down," because a second later he found himself falling into the arms of four strong islanders who lowered him to the ground.
Tucker's arms and legs burned as the blood rushed back into them. Above him he saw a circle of moonlit brown faces. He managed to grab enough breath to squeak, "Soon as I'm on my feet, your asses are mine. You all might as well just go practice falling down for a while so you'll be used to it. Just order the body bags now 'cause when I'm done, you're going to look like piles of chocolate pudding. They'll be cleaning you up with shovels—you . . . " Tuck's breath caught in his throat and he passed out.
"Malink looked at his old friend Favo and smiled. "Excellent threat," he said.
"Most excellent threat," Favo said.
Sarapul pushed his way through the kneeling men. "He's dead. Let's eat him."
"He no like that," Kimi said. "Not even for free."'
And here, a reporter is musing on his job:
'The notes read: "They caught the pig thief. Now what?"
You could run down leads, pound the pavement, check all your facts with two sources, then structure your meticulously gathered information into the inverted pyramid form and what you got was: The pig's owner had gotten drunk and beat up his wife, so she sold his pig to someone on the outer islands and bought a used stun gun . . . The next time her husband got rough, a group of Japanese tourists found him by the side of the road, sizzling in the dirt like a strip of frying bacon. Mistaking him for a street performer, the tourists clapped joyously, took pictures of each other standing beside the electrocuted man, and gave his wife five dollars. The whole intrigue had been exposed when police found the pig-stealing wife in front of the Continental Hotel charging tourists a dollar apiece to watch her zap her husband's twitching supine body. The stun gun was confiscated, no charges were pressed, and the wife beater was pronounced unharmed by a Peace Corps volunteer, although he did need to be reminded several times of his name, where he lived, and how many children he had.'
It's a funny story, even if the subject matter is rather horrible and very sad.
Here is a review of the story by Kirkus Reviews.
Copyright for this book is 1966 and 1967. In this collection we meet Grog, the prehistoric man, who is basically a head on legs. And also the apteryx (aka a kiwi bird) both of which are fun additions to the comic strip.
Rumpy is a pot-bellied pig that is originally from the New York City area. But she moved away when her humans moved away too. Now she is back in NYC, living on the roof of a posh hotel with Ellie, the mom and Ellie's two kids, Barley and Maple. Ellie is a pastry chef at the hotel and their accomdation was supplied by the hotel, the apartment on the hotel's roof.
The problem is that the hotel does not permit exotic pets, like pot-bellied pigs. So Rumpy has to be smuggled in to the rooftop apartment and out for walks and exercise. This chore is left mainly to the two kids, Barley and Maple. They figured out a way to sneak the pig in and out by hiding her in a room service trolley.
What no one in Rumpy's human family knows is that Rumpy is a pig on a mission. She wants to find her twin brother, Lukie, with whom she lost contact when she moved with her family away from NYC. Fortunately, she has made contact with a squadron of pigeons, the Pigilantes, who patrol the skies above the local environs and who know everything worth knowing about the area.
I don't know how I ended up with this book. It became quite obvious that this is meant for kids. I expect they would find it funny and exciting and interesting. I found it boring. Oddly, Google's AI says the book was intended for general audiences. I don't really understand how that could be. It's not even slightly funny.
