A collection of daily strips of Doonesbury, dating from the early 1970s. The copyrights are from 1971, 1972 and 1973.
A trip down memory lane for an old-timer like me. A look back to an era of change and confusion for those who didn't live through it.
It's about 1958 or 59. A young British woman, Camilla, is in Greece on vacation. By mistake, she comes into possession of a car just when she is running low of funds and yet she still has several places that she wants to visit. She was told the car was needed in Delphi by someone named Simon and since she wanted to go there anyway, she takes the car and heads out.
Arriving to the Delphi area, she tracks down a Simon, but this Simon denies knowing anything about who ordered the car. But he decides to help Camilla track down this other Simon who needed a car. However, their inquiries lead nowhere. Their trips around the area trying to find the missing Simon lets them also indulge their interest in Greek ruins and Greek history. It also allows Camilla to find out more about her Simon and his reasons for coming to Delphi.
Simon's brother Michael was in Greece, working for the British government, helping the resistance against the German occupation during World War II. Michael was killed there and Simon is there to find out more about his brother's death. Something about Michael's last letter to his family hinted that he had found something important.
Camilla and Simon visit the Greek family that Michael was close to just before he was killed. They are told that Michael was attacked and killed by a member of the resistance who was piling up weapons, money and stores to be used in a communist plot to overthrow the Greece's government. And that Michael found the stockpile and was murdered to silence him. Further, the man who did it has recently returned to Greece for reasons unknown.
Together Camilla and Simon dig deeper into the circumstances that led to Michael's death and come up against some very dangerous and unsavory characters in the process.
This was an OK read. One problem I had with it were the many detailed descriptions of the scenic points of interest in the Greek countryside. There are a lot of them, it sometimes reads more like a travelog than a mystery story. After reading through a couple of them, I just started skipping them. Also I found it odd that this diffident young woman was so willing to travel around Greece in company of a man who was a total stranger to her. But other than that, the mystery story itself was interesting.
Poor Smedley Cork is a bird in a gilded cage, yearning to escape to freedom. When his wealthy brother died, the terms of his will required his widow to take care of Smedley for the rest of his life. And the widow, Adela Cork, follows the terms of the will to the letter, providing room and board for Smedley but nothing more. Plus she makes him drink yoghurt everyday, something Smedley deeply resents,
But Smedley has a plan. Before the Corks bought their mansion, it used to be the home of a Hollywood star who was known for the many lovers she entertained in her bedroom. She died in a plane crash and the Corks bought the mansion fully furnished with all her belongings. Rumor has that she kept a diary that has never been found. Smedley has a plan to search the premises for this diary and then sell it for $50,000. And thus gain his freedom from his hated gilded cage.
But there are snags. Mainly Wilhemina, who has loved Smedley since she was a young woman and a Smedley running free with $50,000 in his pocket is not a Smedley who would be willing to settle down and marry "Bill," as Wilhemina goes by. Second is a larcenous butler who also knows about the diary and feels it will be much better off in his hands than in Smedley's. And finally, when the diary is found, there's Adela, who has snatched the diary right out of Smedley's hands and locked it up in safe. She also wants that $50,000 to pay, as she says, for all the money she has spent maintaining Smedley in her home. She's not a very nice person. But all will come out right in the end, although probably not the way that Smedley was hoping for.
This is a typical Wodehouse plot, just reworked with different characters. But even though the plot is quite familiar and predictable, it still is a good, funny read.
Althacazur is a demon prince who fell in love with a human woman in the early 1900s. She died while giving birth to her two babies, conjoined twins Esme and Cecile. The babies were raised and loved by the damned souls of Althacazur's cursed secret circus. The damned perform in his circus as part of their punishment for their sins. But one day, paying a visit, Althacazur is repulsed by the babies being conjoined and he uses magic to separate the two girls and to give them the organs they lacked. It was very hard on the two girls who were adolescents at the time. It was especially hard on Cecile and Althacazur wiped her memory of the whole process. As for Esme, on her was placed the burden of maintaining the magic which required the spilling of human blood.
Forward to modern times, and Lara is on the verge of marrying the love of her life, Todd. But the day of their wedding, Todd vanishes, leaving behind everything that is important to him. As Lara tries to cope with his disappearance, she learns that Todd was not the first man to disappear in the same strange way, on the same day thirty years ago. And who also had a connection to the women of Lara's family.
This was an ok story. Lara travels to France to track down the connection between her family and the secret circus of the demon prince Althacazur. Althacazur didn't seem very demonic though. Also, the ending was rather flat and disappointing.
Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
They call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. They are a group of four retirees in Britain who have a knack for solving mysteries. Now they have some new mysteries to investigate. First, there is the letter from a man decades dead. Next, the mystery of who mugged and beat Ibrahim, one of the murder club members, putting him in the hospital. Linked to the dead man's letter, there is the question of 20 million British pounds worth of missing diamonds. And the gangster banker who needs those diamonds back or blood will flow. Throw in a local drug lord and someone is going to end up dead. Or many someones.
I enjoyed this book although I did find the plot got a too convoluted for me. The characters are interesting but a bit hard to understand if you haven't read the first book, The Thursday Murder Club. The story is told with a light touch, for example, the gangster banker is less concerned about the dead bodies buried on his property than he is about his forthcoming garden party. And the drug lord (who is a woman) is constantly worried about her appearance and if she is attractive enough. These humanizing touches make the villains seem almost endearing even though they are the absolute scum of society. But they all get what the deserve in the end.
Check out the review by Kirkus Reviews.
Retief, the super diplomat, is back again, saving a planet and its people from the ills of galactic civilization, from the greedy Groaci and the locals from themselves.
The Quopp are composed of many tribes, each tribe unique and quite different and with most tribes cheerfully dining on the members of other tribes. Quopp is a world rich in metals and the Quoppina evolved to be partially mechanical and partially organic.
A newly discovered world, the Terrans were quick to set up an embassy on Quopp. The leader of the diplomatic mission, of which Retief is a member, is Ambassador Longspoon. Longspoon came up with the "bright" idea of turning Quopp's criminal class, the Voion tribe, into the police force. But one ambitious Voion, Ikk, gets himself appointed Prime Minister and decides he and his tribe will take over Quopp. In short order, the embassy is bombed and the members of the Terran delegation locked up. All except Retief, who slips away, determined, with the help of any of the locals he can convince to stand up to the Voion and with the help of some Terran settlers, to get to the bottom of Ikk's takeover.
Disguised as a Quoppina, Retief travels to the jungle countryside looking for allies and inspiring the local tribes into not fighting each other and instead fighting against Ikk's army of Voion. In the process, he discovers that the Groaci are involved and backing, advising and arming Ikk's troops, for their own greedy reasons.
In addition to trying to fend off the start of a world war, Retief also has to rescue a group of women whose space ship was shot at in space and it crashed landed in the jungle. Among those women is one who, unknown to Retief, is someone he cares greatly about. But it's all just business as usual for Retief of the CDT!
This was an ok read. A lot of it is about the various conflicts and battles that Retief engineers and gets involved in. The most interesting thing is the variety of Quoppina, the intelligent beings of Quopp, who come in all sizes from tiny to gigantic and who have wheels instead of feet. Some of the Quoppina are like trucks, some are like bulldozers, some are like cargo planes and some have specialized nippers, cutters and manglers depending on their evolutionary niche in the world.
What wasn't so interesting were the many fights and battles to wade through. I just skimmed the battle scenes. I don't care about the action, I don't need a play-by-play, I just care about the outcome.
I think this was one of the first Doonesbury collections to be published back in the early 1970s. In it Mike Doonesbury is just a lad freshly launched into college life, probably still a virgin and striving to find a girl friend.
Here we meet some of the recurring characters that featured in the strips, B.D. the jock; Mark Slackmeyer the rebel; Berne, the science nerd and Calvin, the black activist.
Sample from the book:
The story of a woman's search for love, getting married, having kids, getting tossed aside for someone younger but hanging on to her man in the end, probably.
It's told oddly. No names mentioned, not even her name. It's told in snippets with lots of blank spaces between the snippets. The copy I read had 177 pages but it has so many blank spaces I read it in less than two hours. The style really put me off at first and I started the book then stopped and left it sitting for several weeks. I did finally get around to it but I still didn't care for its anonymous style. It was an OK read, other than the annoying style, pretty much a typical depiction of a marriage.
Here is a review by NPR.
Radtke takes a look at why people feel so isolated and lonely these days. She talks about her own struggle with loneliness and also looks at other professionals' thoughts about and studies of loneliness, including the negative effects it has on people and on society. And I also enjoyed the illustrations.
I picked this book up in the new book section of our local library. It was classified as fiction and I thought it was a graphical romance novel. OK, I was disappointed when I started to read it and bit angry at the library for misclassifying it. But I decided to keep on reading it and I quickly overcame my disappointment. It is a really worthy look at the way people are affected by loneliness and how, in the end, it just pushes us deeper and deeper into our isolation. It was interesting and surprising and I liked it. But I'm still not happy that the librarians decided it belonged in fiction. Just because it is a graphical essay? I suppose they had their reasons.
Go here for a review by NPR.
Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are young witches, direct descendants of a goddess. They live with their parents and grandmother who run a small, popular restaurant. That they are witches is a secret they keep from everyone because the persecution of witches still continues among the local populace.
Emilia and Vittoria are as close as most twins are. At least that is what Emilia always believed. But when she finds Vittoria's dead body and sees that her sister's heart has been ripped out, Emilia, in her effort to track down her sister's killer, discovers that Vittoria has been performing dark, dangerous magic, magic she was using to discover who has been murdering other young female witches in the area. Emilia takes up Vittoria's quest, vowing to find her sister's killer, no matter what it takes. And to do so, she calls forth a demon prince, Wrath, who she forces to help her in her quest for justice for Vittoria. It isn't long, though, before Emilia realizes that she is not the only one who has called forth demon princes and that the gates of Hell are weakening and all Hell is about to break loose.
This was an OK read. Prince Wrath turns out to be a pretty nice fellow, devastatingly handsome, of course. And Emilia, of course, finds herself attracted to him against her better judgment. But since this is a Young Adult novel, they most the two do is exchange a few kisses and have a naked, but chaste, bath together.
The book ends on a cliffhanger designed to keep the reader coming back for the next book in the series. But I wasn't interested enough by this book to follow up with the next one in the series.
Here is a review by Kirkus.
Naill Renfro finds himself on Janus, a frontier world. He signed up to be a laborer and ended up in near slavery. But his life is about to undergo a startling change, beginning with the day he uncovered a buried alien treasure.
He and all the new hires had been warned about these treasures, warned not to touch them and told to report any found. For those who handle the treasures fall ill of the Green Sick, a deadly fever. So frightened of this disease are the settlers, that any who fell ill are abandoned in the wilderness, presumed to die there either from the fever or eaten by predators.
But Niall was fascinated by the beautiful glowing objects he uncovered and he couldn't keep himself from touching them. As he had been warned, he was infected and he lapsed into unconsciousness and his body was dumped into the forest.
How long he lay there he didn't know. But when he woke up, he was a changed man, no longer even human. His body was stronger, his skin the green of growing plants, his eyes able to see in the dark, his ears large and pointed and his entire body completely hairless. And his mind was filled the thoughts of another person, Ayyar, the Lord of Ky-Kye. And he was soon to realize that he was not the only human so changed, not the only human to be converted by the Green Sick into an Iftin, the long-vanished original inhabitants of the planet Janus.
This was an interesting story, as Niall grapples with the conflicting parts of his new life, human vs alien. He no longer can be part of human society but the memories of Ayyar are not complete enough to guide him in his new life. In addition, he and the other changelings have to deal with the doom that took out those who came before, the Iftin.
Here is a review by Patrick T. Reardon.
It's a tontine!
It all begin with a gathering of New York millionaires at J.J. Bunyan house. In addition to the millionaires, also in attendance were an art expert, Mortimer Bayliss, who worked for Bunyan and Bunyan's butler, Augustus Keggs. It was the Bayliss who suggested the tontine. Each of the ten millionaires would contribute $50,000 to the pot. But instead of the last millionaire standing getting the approximately $500,000, the money would go to the millionaires' son that was the last one to get married. Of course, the sons were not to know about the tontine.
Jump forward about twenty-five years. All of the millionaires' sons except two have gotten married. One is J.J.'s son, Roscoe who is now living in England as is J.J.'s former butler, Keggs. Turns out Keggs was listening in when the tontine was formed and it also turns out Keggs is a man with rather flexible morals. He goes to Roscoe and reveals to him the facts of the tontine, expecting Roscoe will pay him well for the information. Instead all he gets from Roscoe is 50£. In revenge, Keggs fingers the wrong man, namely one Stanhope Twine, as the other man in the running for the tontine payout. Knowing Twine is an unsuccessful artist who is engaged to a friend of Keggs and that Twine is too poor to actually marry his fiancee, Keggs suggests that if Roscoe bought a piece of Twine's art for a hefty sum, about $20,000, then Twine would be able to marry his fiancee, Jane Benedick. Roscoe decides it's a good idea and spends $20,000 on Twine's sculpture.
Meanwhile, Bill Hollister, whose father was one of the tontine millionaires, is also in England, working at an art gallery. He happens to meet Twine's fiancee, Jane Benedick, and he falls in love at first sight. Jane's uncle, Lord Uffenham, is trying to sell off some of his old family paintings and is working with Bill's art gallery. Uffenham doesn't like Twine and when he discovers Bill has fallen for Jane, he bonks Bill in the head in order to make Jane realize she loves Bill too. And it works, Jane rushes to his side with bandages and gentle caresses.
And Keggs springs his revenge on Roscoe, revealing that Roscoe wasted his money on the wrong man. Keggs also tells Bill that his dad was part of the tontine and if Roscoe marries first, Bill will get the $500,000. But if it means Bill can't marry Jane, Bill is not interested. He would rather be with Jane than with the $500,000.
But somehow true love will triumph and Wodehouse makes all right at the end.
This is a typical later Wodehouse story of lovers overcoming complications and finding each other, and usually getting a bit of loot in the process. Same story, slightly different circumstances. Still I thought the tontine plot was pretty good and I did enjoy the story.
Illustrations by David Boyd.
A huge collection of Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck" jokes. His jokes poke fun at the more countrified denizens of all parts of the US, but especially the South. It's not literature but it is a lot of fun. I've included an image of the back cover which shows David Boyd's art work and a few of Foxworthy's jokes. Enjoy!
Mount Olympus, but in modern times: the gods have cars, apartments, cell phones. New girl in town is innocent Persephone who attends her first adult party and drinks too much. As a joke, a boyish god put her, passed out, in the back of Hades' car. Hades leaves the party and heads home to the Underworld and so Persephone finds herself in his kingdom. They kind of hit it off and Hades gives her a white fur coat to wear because it is cold in the Underworld. He then takes her back to her apartment.
Once she gets back, the other gods tend to tease her about her feelings for her new boyfriend. She sends Hades a message but number shows as unknown so he just deletes. His lack of response confuses Persephone about whether they had a connection or not. Complications ensue.
Did I really need a retelling of the myths of the Greek/Roman gods? No. I have no affinity for myth and superstition. Frankly, I only picked up the book because I was in a hurry and I couldn't find anything better and I was looking for an easy read to soothe a stressful day. So this book was definitely not for me. Gods and myths don't interest me.
Here is a review by Etelka Lehoczky on NPR.
A Leaphorn/Chee mystery.
Delbert Nez assured fellow office Jim Chee he didn't need help apprehending a vandal who was painting rocks in the desert. But when Nez failed to join Chee for coffee, Chee became concerned and went looking for him. He got to the location in time to pull Nez's body from Nez's burning patrol car, injuring himself in the process and to arrest a drunken Navajo man who was on scene and holding a gun. But Chee was too late to save Nez, who was already dead of a gunshot wound. And all the drunk man, Ashie Pinto, would say, when questioned, was, "I am ashamed."
Chee has to spend some time in the hospital due to the burns he suffered pulling Nez's body out of the car. Still recovering and facing more surgeries, Chee is off duty and feeling guilty. So he starts to investigate Nez's murder unofficially. He is helped by Nez's defense attorney, Janet Pete, who is also an ex-girlfriend of Chee's.
And of course there is Lieutenant Leaphorn, who, even though the murder did not occur in his area, is drawn into the investigation because it turns out Pinto is a relative of Leaphorn's recently deceased wife, Emma. Leaphorn feels like it is what his wife would have wanted, that he help prove Pinto's innocence.
This was an interesting story with a bit of a twist at the end. It all pins upon whether Butch Cassidy, the bank robber, didn't die in Bolivia, but came back to the States and continued to commit crimes and possibly died in the badlands of New Mexico on the run after a train robbery. And upon the antics of a shy teenage boy who wants to declare his love to his crush. But before the mystery of Officer Nez's death is fully solved, two more bodies will be found.
And here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
Delilah is just a teen but one of her videos went viral and now she is the new Influencer phenomenon. In fact, she has gained so many followers, that her parents moved the whole family from Minnesota to Los Angeles to help Delilah further her career as an influencer. In Los Angeles there are so many events and opportunities to get the attention so vital to a career as an Influencer.
Delilah meets two other teen influencers who become her friends, Jasmine and Fiona. Jasmine is a famous former child star of a hit TV show That's Hot! and has a huge following. Fiona has become famous with her online fashion critique show, Sizzle or Drizzle and she too has a large following. Delilah is thrilled to be recognized and included in these two girls' lives.
On the other hand, there is Scarlet, a very aggressive and manipulative Influencer who is not afraid to do what it takes to come out on top. She too has a large and profitable fan base.
And finally there is Jack, who is famous for his YouTube prank channel and who is also known to be Scarlet's boy friend. And who promptly begins to pursue sweet, innocent Delilah behind Scarlet's back.
All these young people have secrets: Delilah's is that she doesn't discourage Jack from chasing after her like she should and she is hiding from Scarlet's angry fans who have discovered Jack's unfaithfulness to Scarlet. Jack's, of course, is that he would rather be with Delilah but is finding it difficult to be honest with Scarlet, whom he selfishly keeps in the dark. Jasmine's is that she is tired of the role of child star and wants to move on from that part of her business life. And she is also not straight and is tired of keeping it a secret. Fiona's is that she believes she is responsible for the death of a classmate and finds herself being blackmailed by someone who claims to know her secret. And finally there's Scarlet, who may not be quite as in charge of her own life as she wants the world to believe she is.
So this is a murder mystery but it is also a fun look at the behind-the-scenes lives of the Influencers that are so important to today's online communities. I frankly enjoyed it although I think the murder plot was not necessary to the story and it would have been just as enjoyable without anyone having to be bumped off.
And here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
When Stella was ten, she was left with her grandmother who had a small farm in the hills of Tennessee. Motty, as everyone called her, was a hard woman who used brute force to discipline her granddaughter.
It doesn't take Stella long to figure out that Motty and other members of the family have a secret they all share. And that the secret involves a small church located on Motty's property. Sneaking around, Stella discovers that there is a hidden chamber in the church that leads down into a cave. And in that cave is a strange creature that needs and takes and gives, but only to the women of Motty's and Stella's bloodlines.
The story then jumps to the about 10 or so years in the future. Stella no longer goes to the family church and attends its weird "god." She has become estranged from her family after the death of a teenage boy for which she is blamed. But when she finds out a new girl has come to stay with Motty, she feels she must intervene to protect this child, even though the girl, Sunny, seems completely enthralled by the church and its cave creature.
It took me a bit to get into this story, but once I did it really grabbed me. I didn't start out liking Stella much. But I began to understand her view point more and more as the story moved along. At first she seemed a real bitch. But she had her reasons. And her efforts to protect young Sunny were admirable if, it turns out, misguided.
Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
Retief is a First Secretary in the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne. His boss is Magnan, Assisstant Deputy Undersecretary of Inter-species Affairs. The inter-species Magnan is currently concerned about are the Haterakans, a warlike species making inroads against a group of frontier Terran worlds. Magnan's solution to Haterakan aggressions is four fold:
A few parts of this story are amusing like Magnan's three programs meant to contain the Haterakans with what are basically bribes and Retief and Harrumph being tortured as Retief finds the torture mildly annoying at worst. But other than that, the book is mostly about the struggle between the local Terrans and the invading Haterakans, with battles and plotting and even a fist fight. I think Laumer is at his best when he is being funny and funny is mostly lacking in this story.
Barry travels around his home state of Florida and reports on some of the more out-of-the-way attractions.
As a fan of Dave Barry, this book is right up there as one of his funniest, which is saying a lot because he really is an amazing, funny wonderful writer. His books never disappoint. Here are a few of the jokes I encountered that made me laugh out loud:
"The Fountain of Youth is purely mythical, like the Easter Bunny, or edible vegan food."
"As an aging Boomer . . . if they really are having wild sex up there [The Villages], I say more power to them. It's good for people our age to have sex. It upsets the children."
. . ." I shot my brother Phil with it [BB gun] at a fairly close range and he did not die. In my defense, I had a good reason for shooting Phil; namely, I wanted to find out what happens if you shoot somebody with a BB gun. (Answer: He tells your mother,)"
It a fun book and almost makes me want to visit Florida. Almost.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
Anyone who supported the Pretender in the recent Scottish rebellion is going to end up dead if they fall into the hands of the English government. So perhaps this reason enough for Prudence and Robin to switch their genders and for Prudence to pose as young Peter Merriot and for Robin to pose as her sister, Kate. Anyways, this is what their enigmatic father has commanded them to do and he further wants them to travel to London and stay with a friend of his, Lady Lowestoft, and to be introduced to London high society. But on their way, they encounter a young woman in distress. The woman, Letty Grayson, set out to elope with Gregory Markham. But she has changed her mind and wants to return home to London. But Markham is a scoundrel and Prudence and Robin overhear him threatening young Letty. So they step in and rescue Letty and send Markham off on a false trail. Shortly after he is gone, Sir Anthony Fanshawe appears. He is a friend of her father's and set out to stop the elopement. He discovers she no longer needs rescuing, thanks to Prudence and Robin, who he believes are Peter and Kate Merriot. This chance meeting will change the lives of all four of these travelers on the London road.
The logistics of this masquerade are a bit problematic because it requires Prudence and Robin to remain in disguise continually without let up. Prudence is described as a tall woman, who is passing as a beardless youth. Her brother, Robin, is a short man with rather feminine features. At the time in which the story is set, the late 1740s, male and female clothing was bulky enough to make such a fraud possible, perhaps.
Basically, the story is a romance novel, with Robin and Letty falling in love, and Prudence and Anthony falling in love. The Robin and Letty plot line is a bit more believable because Letty falls for Robin when he is in his masculine persona, not knowing he is also Kate. But Anthony falls for Prudence without ever seeing her dressed as the woman she is. He sees through her disguise and decides she is the woman for him.
Anyway, it's a pretty enjoyable read although it does have some grim undertones: the threat of execution if Prudence and Robin are caught and Markham's continued plot to capture Letty and force her into marriage.
Here is a review by Austenprose.
