"The Case of the Glamorous Ghost" by Erle Stanley Gardner

Friends, I think I have a new comfort author.

So, a few months ago, my 17-yr-old mentioned he would like to see some episodes of Perry Mason (1957-66), as I've mentioned now and then how much I liked that show when I was a kid watching reruns in the summer on cable at my grandparents' house.  Not long after, I found a couple seasons on DVD and bought them.  He tried some eps and liked them, so it was a win :-)

Not long after, my mom and I were looking for something to watch together in the evenings when she is staying with me.  I mentioned I had just gotten some Perry Mason DVDs, and she thought that sounded great.  So, we have been watching them 3 or 4 evenings a week when she stays with us.  And that has been an absolute blast!  I had forgotten how much I adore Paul Drake (William Hopper), Perry's on-call detective pal.  And I love Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) and Della Street (Barbara Hale) too.

Well, then I was at a used bookstore with my mom and some of her friends this spring, and I stumbled on a big hardcover collection of seven complete Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, some of the books that inspired the TV show.  And I bought it, remembering that my grandpa used to read Perry Mason books once in a while and figuring maybe they would be enough like the show I would enjoy them.

Y'all.  Oh, y'all.  They are so much like the show.  I mean, I can hear and see the actors and actresses from the show on every page.  Perry Mason might be a little more impulsive than his TV counterpart in the two I've read so far, and Della might be a bit more sarcastic than her TV self.  Paul Drake is also somewhat more lackadaisical, though they clearly took a lot of details from the books for his portrayal on the show.  Right down to having a special, secret knock he uses to let Perry Mason know it's him before he enters, just in case there's a client or a policeman he maybe shouldn't encounter just yet.  A very specific knocking pattern that I glommed onto while watching the show before the age of 11, as I vividly remember mimicking it when on an overnight outing with my mom.  I've used that knock many times ever since.  I may have forgotten for a while how much I love Paul Drake, but not how much I love the way he knocks on doors!

The main difference between the books and the show thus far are that there's some mild cussing in them, and a bit more innuendo.  (Actually, the show gets pretty suggestive for something that aired on network TV in the 1950s and '60s -- but like all good '50s and '60s shows, it's all in the suggesting and implying, no overt hanky panky shown or explicitly talked about.)  (Though I watched a season 5 episode the other day where they did talk about a guy dealing with a lot of lawsuits that involved paternity tests, which I betcha raised some eyebrows pretty high even in the early 1960s when that one would have aired.)

Anyway, The Case of the Glamorous Ghost is about a girl who is picked up by the police because she's running around a public park at night, wearing a thin negligee and a clear raincoat.  She appears to have amnesia.  Perry Mason gets hired to defend her, just in case it turns out she's in any kind of serious trouble.  Which, of course, she is.  Jewel smuggling and clandestine trips to Las Vegas and elopement and murder all come out in the open by the end of it.  

And it's all so... cozy, somehow.  Like a mug of hot chocolate with a little kick of chili powder in it that just warms you up all the way through.  Or like hanging out with friends you have known three-quarters of your life.  Comfortable.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussion of unmarried couples going away for weekends and sharing hotel rooms, some mild cussing, and violent murder.

Top Ten Tuesday: There Has Been an Addition

I didn't get many books for Christmas this year, but that's because I didn't ask for many.  I've been working for several years to cut my massive TBR stacks down to a manageable size, and part of that is being more intentional about what books I acquire.  

Still, I did get six books for Christmas, plus I bought a few more over the past weeks, so here are the "Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection," which is our prompt for Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl this week.

Guy Williams: The Man Behind the Mask by Antoinette Girgenti Lane -- a biography of the actor who played Zorro on the Disney TV show back in the 1950s.  I adore that show, as Williams's portrayal of Zorro is my absolute favorite.  My dad gave me this for Christmas because he also loves that show.

The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes by C. S. Lewis -- a collection of essays, articles, letters Lewis wrote pertaining to how rewarding reading can be.  My in-laws gave me this for Christmas -- it's one of the few books I did put on my wish list this year.

Persuasion by Jane Austen -- but not just any edition, an edition that includes handwritten copies of all the letters in the book!  And since this is the book with the finest love letter of all time in it, this is pretty much a must-have version of my favorite Austen novel.  A friend surprised me with this for Christmas.

(From my Instagram)

Srsly Hamlet by Courtney Carbone (and William Shakespeare) -- my beloved Hamlet retold as a series of text message conversations.  It's quirky and funny, and was a gift from a friend who also loves the Melancholy Dane.

The Lost Chronicles by Mark Cotta Vaz -- a companion to one of my favorite TV shows, Lost (2004-2010).  I'm having great fun paging through it.  This was also a gift from a friend.

Come Forth as Gold by Erica Dansereau -- a book that involves a gold mining town AND World War II?  I must read it.  This was a "secret Santa" gift from a member of the Christian Mommy Writers Group.

The Gold in These Hills by Joanne Bischoff -- it's about a mail-order bride and a gold rush and a ghost town.  I just wrote a book with a gold rush ghost town in it.  Obviously, I'm intrigued by this!  I bought it for myself.

A Classic Christmas Story Collection: The Christmas Hirelings and Other Stories from Moncreiff Press -- a wealth of lovely stories from classic authors like Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen, O. Henry, Kate Douglas Wiggin, and Washington Irving.  I chiefly bought it because it contains The Christmas Hirelings by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, which I read this year and loved.

Silent Night; Holy Night by Colleen Coble -- two Christmas mystery novellas.  I bought this because I enjoyed All is Calm; All is Bright so much.  I reviewed it here.

All is Calm; All is Bright by Colleen Coble -- two more Christmas mystery novellas.  This was my book club's pick for our December read, and I very much enjoyed it.  My review is here.

Did you get some new books this month?  Do share!

"Cranford" by Elizabeth Gaskell

What a lovely, gentle book!  I've seen both seasons of the 2007-10 BBC series based on this, so I felt like I knew the characters already a bit, and that only added to my delight.  I chuckled aloud many times over the foibles of the people in this book, and then the last two chapters brought tears to my eyes.  Happy tears, as I tend to cry over joyful things more than sad ones.

A young woman named Mary Smith visits the small English town of Cranford repeatedly over the course of several years.  Through her, we get to know the people of the town reasonably well.  Most of them are women, and most of the women are aging and a bit poor.  Some become quite poor over the course of the story.  But they all behave, dress, and talk in the most genteel way they can manage -- sometimes that becomes ridiculous and laughable, and sometimes that becomes endearing.

The whole point, obviously, is to poke a little fun at societal conventions and those who adhere strictly to them, as well as to make plain the very narrow world women were forced to inhabit in the mid-1800s.  It's at once a bit satirical, a bit ironic, and very sympathetic.

Particularly Good Bits:

Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other's proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other's opinions (p. 5).

"Ah!" he said, "we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet somehow one can't help it" (p. 42).

"I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!" (p. 43)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G for being good, wholesome, lovely, and genuinely charming.

This has been my fourth book read for my fourth Classics Club list, and also my 51st book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"The Cherokee Trail" by Louis L'Amour

When I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was Five Mile Creek (1983-85), which was "inspired by" The Cherokee Trail.  You can read my overview of that series here.

My whole family enjoyed Five Mile Creek -- we rented two episodes on VHS every weekend to watch as a family -- but I absolutely loved it.  (It's still in my top ten for favorite TV shows.)  So, my mom found The Cherokee Trail at the library (presumably at my insistence) and read to see if it would be something she could read aloud to my brother and I for our bedtime read-aloud.  I was probably nine or ten at the time, and I remember being really disappointed because, as I remember it, she said it wasn't appropriate for us.  She said it had too much bad language and was "too grown-up", and we wouldn't like it.  

So, I've resisted reading this book for thirty years.  But I've also been curious about it.  Recently, a couple of friends recommended it to me, and I decided to just take the plunge and read it.  And guess what?  I didn't hate it!  In fact, I'm kind of confused by my memory of my mom's judgement of it.  Because there's hardly any bad language, and there's no inappropriate content.  Like, there's zero romance.  The word 'rape' does appear once, in connection with something that happened years earlier and in a different place, but she could have just read over that if she had read it aloud to us, same as she would have read over the bad language.  

She was probably right that I wouldn't have liked it at the time, though.

Why?  Because it actually doesn't bear much resemblance at all to Five Mile Creek.  They're both about a stagecoach way station being run mainly by women, and that is it.  That's the only similarity.  The Cherokee Trail is about one widow and her daughter and an Irish girl running a way station along a Colorado stagecoach route.  Five Mile Creek is about an unmarried Australian woman and an American woman with her daughter running a way station along a New South Wales stagecoach route.  The book is extremely serious, and the TV show is fun, family-oriented fare.  The characters and the plot are entirely different.

In The Cherokee Trail, widowed Mary Breydon takes on the job of running a way station along the Cherokee Trail in Colorado, a job her husband had been hired to do.  But he was murdered in cold blood by the man who, a few years earlier, led a band of guerillas that looted and burned down their plantation and stole all their horses.  This man is now living in Colorado and has high political ambitions, and no word of his past behavior can be allowed to spread because that would ruin his high hopes.  But Mary Breydon knows who he is and what he did, and so, even though she rapidly wins friends and respect with her handling of the way station, her life is in serious danger from her husband's murderer.

It's an awesome story, and Mary Breydon herself is a marvelous character.  I want to hang out with her, which you know is about the highest praise I have for fictional characters.  I am SO glad that my friends urged me to try reading this!

Here's one random thing that surprised me, though -- I always thought this book was published long before Five Mile Creek aired.  But it wasn't!  It was published in 1982, one year before Five Mile Creek debuted!  My mind is blown.

Particularly Good Bits:

If a man could do it, why couldn't she? (p. 33).

Like many another western man, his past was his own secret, and he never spoke of it (p. 39).

"If one has a book, Mr. Boone, one is never alone. They will talk to you when you want to listen, and when you tire of what they are saying, you just close the book.  It will be waiting for you when you come back to it" (p. 61).

"Never read much, myself.  Seen a few plays from time to time.  That Hamlet now, seen that one twice.  There was some mighty fine talkin' in that play, but folks were makin' a lot of what they called his indecision, and that seemed kind of silly to me.  After all, he had no evidence of wrongdoin' there, on the word of a ghost.  Now, a man's got to be reasonable.  A man who would attack somebody or even accuse somebody on the word of a ghost would have to be off his trail mentally" (p. 99-100).

This was their land of Canaan, the land where dreams came true, but here there was a difference, for each on of them seemed sure that he had to make the dreams come true, that it would be the result of something he did (p. 179).

"A family is a place where a body can share the no-account things, can talk of the little matters important only to ourselves, where we can laugh and cry and tell of the day-by-day happenings and then forget them" (p. 193).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for western violence and a little mild cussing.

This is my 45th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Five Seasons of Angel" edited by Glenn Yeffeth

I don't talk about it much on this blog because this is my book blog, not my movies/writing/life blog, but Angel (1999-2004) is my second-favorite TV show of all time.  This spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) follows vampire-with-a-soul Angel (David Boreanaz) to Los Angeles as he seeks to make amends for all the harm he had inflicted on others before being cursed with a soul.  It's kind of a supernatural film noir series, especially for the first couple of seasons.

Angel debuted my sophomore year of college, and my roommates insisted I watch the premier episode with them.  I thought it was okay.  Okay enough that I watched the next few with them too, and by episode three, I was hooked for good.  I started watching Buffy with them too, and became a fan of it as well, though not as devotedly.

This book is a collection of essays in which, as the subtitle says, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Vampire.  Which is a bit misleading, because several of the essays don't focus on Angel himself at all, so maybe it should say Favorite Vampire Show instead?  But that's just quibbling.  This book, as a whole, delighted me.  Considering I've watched this whole series through twice, once in its initial run and once via DVD, and rewatched many episodes many more times than that, I thought I knew the series and Angel's story arc in it pretty well.  But, in fact, this book taught me some things about the show, pointing out nuances I hadn't noticed, and was generally as informative as it was enjoyable.

My favorite essays were:

• "Angelus Populi" by Don DeBrandt
• "That Angel Doesn't Live Here Anymore" by Laura Resnick
• "A World Without Love: The Failure of Family in Angel" by Jean Lorrah
• "It's Not Easy being Green and Nonjudgmental" by Abbie Bernstein
• "Why We Love Lindsey" by Michelle Sagara West
• "The Good Vampire: Angel and Spike" by Peter S. Beagle
• "Victim Triumphant" by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
• "Death Becomes Him: Blondie Bear 5.0" by Nancy Holder
• "True Shanshu" by Laura Anne Gilman
• "There's My Boy..." by Joy Davidson

Um, yes, that's like half the essays.  There were SO MANY excellent ones! If you're a fan of this series, definitely find yourself a copy of this book.

Particularly Good Bits:

Sometimes, when reality is too grim, fantasy is all we have (p. 4, "Angelus Populi" by Don DeBrandt).

It's all about pain.  Ridicule is a way to get rid of your own by forcing it upon someone else (p. 6, "Angelus Populi" by Don DeBrandt).

If we look at the opening credits of every Angel episode, we see a graphic representation of Angel's eternal isolation.  Yes, there are some changing shots of Angel interacting with the cast of each season, but the end of the montage never changes.  our final image of Angel remains that dark silhouette walking away from us into the night. Angel alone (p. 62, "A World Without Love: The Failure of Family in Angel" by Jean Lorrah).

Lorne's not stupid -- he understands the advantages of being a good fighter -- but he sees it as just another quality, like an ability to read auras: nice if you have it, but nothing wrong with you if you don't (p. 71, "It's Not Easy being Green and Nonjudgmental" by Abbie Bernstein).

Angel reveals that life's victims -- not heroes, but people just like us -- are all that stand between us and annihilation (p. 137, "Victim Triumphant" by Jacqueline Lichtenberg).

In [Cordelia's] humanity, we see the best points of the Angelverse: not the strong defending the weak, but the weak learning how to be strong (p. 185, "True Shanshu" by Laura Anne Gilman).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for frank discussions of sexual situations and themes and some bad language.  Not a book kids are going to want to read anyway.

This is my 19th book read and reviewed for #theunreadshelfproject2020 :-)

"The Edge of Over There" by Shawn Smucker

I think this book would have been easier to get into if I'd read the book that precedes it, The Day the Angels Fell.  But I haven't.  And I didn't have time to go find and read that one first because I was reading this for the INSPY awards and I was on a deadline.  So the first hundred and fifty pages felt like I'd never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer before, and somebody grabbed a random disc from season 5 of the show and made me watch it by myself, with no friends or internet to fill in background info for me or even explain what in the world was going on.

However.  I did eventually wrap my head around this book's worldbuilding and, by the end, it did make sense.  And I liked it a lot.  More for the writing than the story itself, though I did enjoy the story.  It actually reminded me a lot of Buffy and Angel, which are some of my favorite shows (though, when I started watching Buffy, I had friends to explain stuff to me during the commercial breaks, as I joined the fandom when season 4 was airing).

Basically, there are angelic and demonic beings trying to help and hinder people on earth, and there's a problem with the demonic ones trying to raise trees that will make humans sorta immortal, and there are some semi-immortal humans who created a sort of purgatory world halfway between this earth and eternity.  And some teens have to try to stop them.

Does that make any sense?  Sigh.  I'm really bad at explaining Buffy too.  Can I just say that this book was cool, and I enjoyed it once I got into it?  Smucker has a very lyrical, evocative writing style that I definitely liked.  Oh, and my fellow judges and I chose it as the winner for the YA category for the INSPY Awards this year!

Particularly Good Bits:

We want things to stay the same, but the roads between "now" and "back then" are always changing, and by the time you manage to return home, if you can ever find your winding way, you realize it was never actually yours, not forever (p. 23).

Time stumbles under the weight of deep sadness (p. 68).

"Maybe children are the only ones brave and true enough to save the world" (p. 118).

"Words should only be used as a last resort, a final attempt to communicate when all else has failed.  They are unsteady ground.  Words are nothing more than manipulated air" (p. 150).

Cemeteries are the one place on earth where people can stop talking whenever they want and no one will press them for more.  Which makes sense, since cemeteries hold so much unfinished business (p. 161).

"Stories will do that if we let them.  They'll work their way inside, to the deepest parts, and they'll live there, and they'll change us" (p. 360).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for danger, violence, suspense, and scary imagery.

"If I Live" by Terri Blackstock

Well, that didn't take me long, did it?  I'm all done with this book after like 3 days, which means I'm also done with the If I Run series!  

Overall, I liked the series a lot.  Blackstock has an engaging writing style with great energy and flow.  Her characters were human, relatable, and likeable.  Her dialog stayed crisp through the series.  Her pacing got a little lax in a few places -- there were a couple spots where I felt like monkey wrenches got thrown into the plot just to make the books longer.  However, in the author's note at the end of If I Live, Blackstock said that this series was initially inspired by the classic TV series The Fugitive and the way that Dr. Kimball (David Janssen) would find a modicum of peace and comfortability somewhere doing a job or helping someone, maybe even start to make friends, and then the police or the one-armed man would show up and he'd have to flee again.  Once I read that, I was like, "OH!  That's what she was going for.  Okay."  In retrospect, it really did have that feel to it, so if you're a fan of that series (::cough:: Eva ::cough::), you would probably dig the way this is set up.

This book had a lot of nice, believable, non-mushy romance in it to go along with the thrill ride, which was extra fun :-)  I also liked how it didn't end with the end of the manhunt for Casey, but went on to show the aftermath of the whole plot, how it affected not only Casey and Dylan, but people in Casey's family, the bad guys' families, and the families of victims too.  It didn't wind up too quickly, which some suspence novels do, and I liked that.

I didn't like the amount of decision-based theology that this one had, though.  The first two books stayed pretty neutral, theologically, but this one definitely weighed in on the "you have to make a choice/decision to believe in Christ" side in a heavy way.  

(From my Instagram)

As an individual book, I liked If I Live better than If I'm Found, and maybe better than If I Run too, just because it has a very satisfying ending.  As a series, these books gave me a good ride.  I'm going to see if the library has more of Blackstocks books, as I'd really like to try more of her stories.

Particularly Good Bits

"I'm more myself when I'm with you than I've ever been with anybody else" (p. 226).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence and suspenseful situations.

"The Mother Hunt" by Rex Stout

I've seen the Nero Wolfe Mystery version of this many times, so I was never in doubt of how Nero Wolfe would solve the mystery of who left a baby in a wealthy widow's vestibule and then killed a couple of women.  I must admit that anymore, I don't read these books for the mysteries in them -- I read them to spend time with Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe and their cohorts.  Hanging out with my imaginary friends for a hundred pages or so is what keeps me coming back for more, and the superb mysteries are simply a bonus.  Because the mysteries are excellent too!  If you love mysteries and haven't tried this classic series, you are missing out.

Archie is at his most charming here, romancing their client in his own delectable Archie way.  He almost never enters a relationship with a client, and this one gets pretty serious, so you know this woman must be fairly special.  

This one was written in the 1960s, and it does have a more modern feel to it than many of the earlier novels.  The issues of unwed motherhood and marital infidelity are important parts of the case, and while no salacious details are shared, the word "abortion" does crop up once.  Very edgy for the day, I'm sure.  But as usual, Wolfe is not interested in who is hooking up with whom, except as it might have bearing on who murdered whom.


Particularly Good Bits:

He was tall and broad and handsome, with a big smile that went on and off like a neon sign (p. 58).

"Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overpowering" (p. 59).

No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him (p. 98).


If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for the content mentioned above, and for a few more swear words than I'm used to in a Nero Wolfe book.

Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award

My hearty thanks to Fawnabelle Baggins for giving me this award!

Here are my answers to her questions:

What is your favorite fandom?

If you mean, what's my favorite fandom that I'm in, then Combat!, my favorite TV show about WWII soldiers that aired from 1962 to 1967.  I co-run a fansite for it called Fruit Salad, where I share episode reviews and fanfic.  I've written or co-written more than 30 stories for Combat!, so yeah, it's my favorite <3

Are you obsessed with that fandom?

Not as much as I was about 10 years ago, but I do still love the show, and I'm still good friends with lots of people I met through the fandom.  Combat! has been an amazing blessing -- it gave me my best friend, and I continue to find new friends through it.

What is your favorite book and why?

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.  I love the characters -- determined, strong-willed Jane and angry, remorseful Mr. Rochester in particular.

What is your favorite hobby?

Since I don't make much money at it yet, I think I can still call writing my hobby.

How much time and effort do you put into your hobby?

Um, not as much as I ought to?  I only spend 2-5 hours a week on my fiction writing, though of course if you add in blogging that number more than doubles.

Where would you live in any fictional world and why?

I think I'd like to live in Avonlea, in the Anne of Green Gables books.  It's rural, quiet, and full of people who care about each other.  Second choice would probably be Mitford from Jan Karon's books, for basically the same reasons.

What is your favorite movie and why?

The Man from Snowy River (1982).  I've loved it since I was 2 years old, when I saw it in the theater with my parents.  I love it because it's full of horses, it's got great themes of "proving yourself" and "doing what's right even though it's hard."  And as I said in this post, I think by this point, it's mostly because I have seen it so often, I am best friends with all the characters, in a way. Partly, it's because it inspired a life-long love of horses and Australia. This movie has so many themes that resonate with me: false accusations, forbidden love, proving yourself when others doubt your abilities... do I love the movie because of those themes, or do I love those themes because of this movie? At this point, there's no way I can know.

What is one meal that you think you can eat every day forever?

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I ate them for lunch for five years straight when I first got out of college, so yup, pretty sure I could eat them every day forever.

You just won the lottery. What would you buy first?

I'd pay off our mortgage (so boring, I know).

If you were a cookie, what kind of cookie would you be?

An Oreo.  I go equally well with milk or coffee!

I've done a bunch of tags recently, here and on my Soliloquy blog, so I'm not going to tag anyone today, for fear of overtagging my friends.  If you want to do this, feel free to answer Fawnabelle's questions yourself and consider you've been tagged by me :-)

"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck

I hate this book.  It's sad, it's depressing, it's basically pointless.  I read it in high school and hated it, and when I re-read it this week, I hated it even more.  I have come to the conclusion that Steinbeck was an unhappy man, and that he enjoyed being so.  He seems to have delighted in creating miserable characters, sticking them in hopeless situations, and then watching them squirm.  This strikes me as cruel.  He deliberately creates worlds where the only choices are bad ones, where kindness and innocence are stomped upon, where there is no possibility for a change for the better.  That is not good writing -- in fact, it smacks of laziness.  I recently read a wonderful blog post called "Why the Hunger Games Needs Yellow Boots," and I have concluded that John Steinbeck's books needed yellow boots.  This one certainly did.

Of Mice and Men is about two drifting farm hands, George and Lennie, during America's Great Depression.  They get work on a ranch baling alfalfa, and George tries to keep the others there from learning about the trouble Lennie has gotten into in the past.  Lennie is feeble-minded, but a brutishly strong giant.  He loves soft things, like mice and puppies, but has a tendency to accidentally kill them.  Nothing good can possibly happen in this book, there is no uplifting lesson to be learned, and all told, I find it dreadful.

There is only one reason why I re-read this book, and why I read it all the way through to the end instead of chucking it back in the library bag after a few pages.  That reason is named Sawyer.

(Josh Holloway as James "Sawyer" Ford on Lost)

Yes, I re-read a book I hate because of how much I love a fictional character.  I'm a sad, strange little woman, I expect.  But it's the truth.  Sawyer reads the book while in prison during one of Lost's flashback sequences, and the book itself is referenced or discussed several times throughout the show.  One of these years, I'm going to embark on a quest to read all the books that Sawyer reads throughout the series, but I'm not really feeling up to that yet. 

Anyway, at one point in the show, Sawyer said that his favorite author is Steinbeck, and while he may have been lying (Sawyer is a consummate liar, after all), I take that statement at face value because I find it revelatory.  From what I know about Steinbeck's novels, they are about miserable, lonely, dysfunctional people.  What would draw a character I love so much to books like that?  Well, possibly the fact that he himself is miserable, lonely, and dysfunctional, for starters.  

As I read this, I kept trying to imagine Sawyer reading it.  In prison, isolated not by choice this time.  Would he have identified with George, the drifter trying to protect and care for the simpleminded giant, Lennie?  At the time, I think he would have scoffed at George for being soft, for making the mistake of letting himself care about someone who could do nothing for him.  But I like to think that, subconsciously, Sawyer would have understood, maybe even wished for a devoted friend.  

Later, on the island, I see echoes of George and Lennie in the way Sawyer interacts with Hurley.  Hurley, like Lennie, is large physically, but almost childlike in his kindness and innocence.  He is just about the only character who is nice to Sawyer throughout the first season.  Sawyer, like George, repeatedly says hurtful things to his only friend, then feels kinda sorta bad about it.  Sawyer, like George, is a drifter, a dreamer, and a pragmatist.  But unlike George, Sawyer has options.  There are plenty of yellow boots on the island.  Again and again, Sawyer has opportunities to grow, to change, to make good decisions or bad, to learn.

I can see why Sawyer the con artist might have been drawn to Steinbeck's books.  I hope that later in life, though, he saw them for the contrived exercises in misery I find them to be, and found a new favorite author.  Even Dickens would be a more cheerful choice.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for lots of bad language, discussions of whorehouses, and innuendo.

This is my 24th book read and reviewed for the Classics Club.

"True Strength" by Kevin Sorbo

I wrote this review back in May when I was visiting my parents, and then I didn't post it right away because I was in the middle of the Little Women read-along, and it just got shoved so far down on my post list I forgot about it!  So here it is at last :-)

This is not a book I anticipated reading.  I've never particularly been a fan of Kevin Sorbo, though I've seen a few episodes of Hercules here and there since I have several friends who are fans.  And I recently saw Shadow on the Mesa (2013), an enjoyable made-for-TV western that features Sorbo.  I mentioned that movie to my mom, asking if she's seen it because I believe it aired on the Hallmark channel, and I know she enjoys Hallmark movies.  She did see it, and she asked if I'd read Sorbo's autobiography.  I was like, "Um, no, I'm not especially a fan."  She said, "You should read it!  I think you'd really like it.  He's a Christian, and it's all about how his faith saw him through this really awful illness."

Well, my mom probably knows my reading taste better than anyone else, so if she says I would probably like a book, I generally try it.  I tried out the ebook version on her Kindle, and was quickly hooked, much to my great surprise!  Sorbo tells his story very compellingly, and it feels very much like it was written by him, not entirely ghost-written by some professional.  I have no way of knowing if that's true, but that's the impression I got.  Several of the chapters are by other people, including his wife Sam and costars from Hercules, like Bruce Campbell and Michael Hurst.  They share their perspective on how Sorbo handled his illness and how it changed him, that sort of thing.

Basically, back in the '90s while on hiatus from filming Hercules, Kevin Sorbo suffered an aneurysm and several consequent strokes, which left him with lasting health problems.  This book is about his struggle to recover from the strokes and deal with his wobbly health, and how he finally learned to accept that his life would never go back to "normal."

Sorbo was raised a Lutheran, though he later began attending a different church with his wife.  He speaks frankly of his reliance on God during his struggles, and also how he questioned why God would allow him to become so very sick.  However, there are also a lot of obscenities in this book, mainly in the dialog, and I would not recommend it to young people as a result.  He doesn't take God's name in vain, it's all the more crass language you'd expect from Hollywood actors, etc.  

If you're a fan of Sorbo's, or enjoy reading about people dealing with major illnesses, and don't mind the rough language, you'd probably like this book.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  R for language and occasional non-graphic sexual references.

Classics Club Monthly Meme: August 2014

I wish I remembered to do the monthly meme from the Classics Club more often.  I think the last time I did one was... March?  Oh dear.  Anyway, here's this month's question:

What are your thoughts on adaptions of classics? Say mini-series or movies? Or maybe modern approaches? Are there any good ones? Is it better to read the book first? Or maybe just compare the book and an adaptation?

This is a subject that has come up a LOT in the last couple of years, since I really began interacting with other bloggers.  I've seen flame-wars erupt over people attacking or defending various adaptations.  While I do think it's great that people can take books so very seriously that they become irate over what they feel to be "unfaithful" adaptations... that's not me.  I love movie and TV show adaptations.  I can't get enough of seeing how someone will take a story and show me a new twist on it, bring out themes I hadn't noticed before, even give minor characters more development than they got in the books.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't love every adaptation.  There are times when filmmakers take things in a direction that I really wish they hadn't.  Or skip something I really loved in the book.  But the number of adaptations I love far, far outweighs the number I don't.

And maybe this is partly because of Hamlet.  I've seen probably ten different versions of Hamlet, and liked all but three so far.  But nearly every version of Hamlet cuts things out.  If you do the full text, you end up with more than four hours of story.  And Kenneth Branagh did a magnificent job of keeping audiences engaged with the full text, but not everyone can convince a studio to make a four-hour film, or convince audiences to see it.  So they trim the play.  The 1990 Mel Gibson version clocks in at 130 minutes, and it tells the whole story.  They cut out pretty nearly half the scenes, reordered several events, and the story is not only still there, it's still beautiful.  The 2000 Ethan Hawke cut is only 112 minutes long!  And it's so powerful it might be my favorite film version.  The 2009 David Tennant is a much more modest cut, running a full 180 minutes, but even there -- a whole hour of play is missing.  And is that a bad thing?  No!  The 2009 is brilliant.  Do I sometimes lament when a favorite scene or line is missing?  A little.  I'm much more likely, though, to cheer when a favorite line gets used, and not waste my time thinking about the ones that aren't there.

I believe an adaptation needs to be its own thing.  If you're just going to recreate a book, word-by-word and minute-by-minute, then what is the point?  That's what the book is for, or the play, or the poem, or the radio drama, or the amusement park ride, or whatever your source material is.  An adaptation should bring something new to the table, whether it's in period, in tone, in social commentary, in theme.  Otherwise, there's no reason to make it, other than thinking the book has a lot of fans and will make you buckets of money.  I'd much rather see stories and characters from a new angle than watch the same thing over and over and over.

The truth is, I'm fine with making changes to a story when it's adapted, as long as those changes serve the story being told in the adaptation and aren't just made because they felt like changing things.  You want to take Dr. Temperance Brennan from Kathy Reichs' books, put her in the DC area instead of North Carolina and Canada, make her socially inept, give her a completely different back story from the books, make her single instead of divorced with a daughter, and give her an FBI agent for a crime-solving partner?  Does that serve the story you're telling?  Go for it!  In fact, I love the TV show Bones, but I have quit reading the Kathy Reichs books it's based on because they annoy me.  That's probably the biggest example of me liking an adaptation better than the original, though there are others.

I'll tell you something that might shock you:  I prefer to see the movie first, then read the book.  If I read the book first, then sometimes I do get a little miffed over things that are left out.  Maybe not miffed -- more like I spend time thinking, "That's not how I would have done this."  But if I see the movie first, and like it, then I can go read the book too, and it's like getting an expanded version of a story I already like!  Like watching a three-hour director's cut of a favorite movie.  More to love!

Now, with all that being said... I can get especially excited when an actor precisely fits my concept of a character.  But I can get equally excited by seeing a new and original take on a beloved story.  As long as the story works, I'm happy.

"Death of a Doxy" by Rex Stout

I think that the first episode I ever saw of the A&E series A Nero Wolfe Mystery was the one based on this story.  Because the actors for that show are most indelibly fixed in my head in these particular roles.

If you've never watched the show, I need to explain that the show is kind of a throw-back to the idea of a local repertory theater group.  By which I mean that while the regulars (Archie, Wolfe, Fritz, Saul, Fred, Orrie, Lon Cohen, and Inspector Cramer) are all played by the same actors all the time, there's another group of actors that all play different characters depending on the story.  For instance, this story has a character named Avery Ballou played by actor James Tolkan.  Tolkan plays 11 completely different characters in other episodes.  So while some series regulars on the show always play the same characters, other series regulars play a different character in every story.  Which took a little getting used to.  And for me, all those regulars are most indelibly stamped in my head as the characters they play in this story.  When watching other episodes, I'll sometimes think, "Oh, her!  She was Stella Fleming."  Or "Oh, him!  He was Avery Ballou."  So I think I saw this one first, and possibly more often than some of the others just because I only had a couple of eps on VHS at first, though I know have both seasons on DVD.  And a t-shirt, which I serendipitously am wearing today.  Hmm.

But enough about the show!  (It's wonderful.  Try to see it.  Swell period costumes, great acting, top-notch plots... sorry, I said enough, didn't I.)  I'm supposed to be reviewing the book here.  I hadn't read it before, so that was an added bonus :-)  But any trip through a Nero Wolfe novel is a delight for me.  I simply love these characters and their world.  Archie Goodwin might be my favorite narrator of all time, even over Philip Marlowe (!) -- he's got such zest and zing, and is generally cheerful.

The plot of this one, as you might have guessed, involves a dead doxy.  "Doxy" being another name for a "kept woman."  The doxy in question was two-timing her sugar-daddy with none other than Orrie Cather, one of the freelance detectives Nero Wolfe sometimes hires to help tail a suspect or gather information, etc.  When the doxy dies, Orrie lands in jail on suspicion of murder.  Wolfe, Archie, and the other tow freelance operatives they sometimes hire (Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin, just so you know) decide they don't believe Orrie did it, and they set out to find out to did.

Particularly Good Bits:

He uttered a French sound, loud, maybe it was a word (p. 142).

Cramer said a word, loud, which I omit because I suspect that some of the readers of these reports are people like retired schoolteachers and den mothers (p. 148).

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for allusions to people being in a sexual relationship.

"Joss Whedon: Conversations" edited by David Lavery and Cynthia Burkhead

This is a rather unique book.  It's a collection of eighteen interviews with Joss Whedon done by a variety of different people, magazines, websites, etc. from 2000 to 2009.  It covers everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Angel to Firefly and Serenity.  And, of course, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.  There's also a lot of discussion of Whedon's work writing screenplays for various movies, and his many disappointments there.  Obviously, since it ends in 2009, there's no mention of The Avengers other than this one, which amused me greatly:

[Interviewer] Kozak:  Given how you seem to embrace ensembles, does Marvel's Avengers project over at Paramount offer any particular appeal?
Whedon:  Y'know, the thing about the X-Men is they have a coherent core.  The Avengers to me is tough.  I wouldn't approach The Avengers, I wouldn't approach the Fantastic Four.  The X-Men are all born of pain, and pain is where I hang my hat.
(Interview with Jim Kozak from In Focus, August 2005.  Page 102.)

Hee.  Clearly, he found a way to rethink that.

Anyway, this is a fascinating look inside the mind and creative process of one of the greatest writers of our time.  And, according to these interviews, Joss Whedon does see himself as primarily a writer, despite his successes as director, show-runner, etc.  He has a lot of good insights into what makes stories tick, what makes characters work, and other things that greatly intrigued my writerly self.

Ultimately, this is a great book for fans of Joss Whedon and for writers, but I'm not sure anyone else would enjoy it much.  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  R because Joss swears a lot, which disappointed me.

Particularly Good Bits: 

"I'm not an adult!" he says, shaking his head.  "I don't want to create responsible shows with lawyers in them.  I want to invade people's dreams."  (p. 70)

"I can't stress enough that I believe the best thing in the world is for everybody who feels like they have a story to tell, to tell it."  (p. 182)

"Deja Dead" by Kathy Reichs

Deja Dead is Kathy Reichs' first novel, and it's a riveting read. Her dialog can be a bit stilted, but her characters were excellent, and the plot kept me guessing, which is actually a bit unusual for a mystery.

I don't mean that in a conceited way -- I love reading mysteries, and I don't usually try to figure out whodunit or anything else. I like letting the stories unfold before me, without me spending time trying to outsmart the author. If I do figure the ending out ahead of time, I get all disappointed and feel like the author didn't do their job very well.

But while I read Deja Dead, I couldn't stop the story from popping into my head while I wasn't reading it. I had theories on who the bad guy was (all wrong, yay!) and who would die next (I was mostly wrong, so mostly yay!), and I kept trying to figure out how I was going to get creeped out next.

Yes, this is a somewhat creepy book. Reichs is a real-life forensic anthropologist, like her protagonist, Dr. Temperance Brennan. She fills this book with all sorts of vivid details about death and other not-so-yummy-things -- so vivid sometimes that my skin started to crawl. If you're a fan of forensic TV shows like Bones, NCIS, and the CSI: shows, then you'll probably do fine here. If those churn your stomach, you might want to avoid this book.

Boreanaz and Deschanel on Bones

Speaking of Bones, these books by Kathy Reichs spawned that show. I've been a fan of the show right from the start, due to the presence of David Boreanaz (who had starred in my second-most-favorite-show-ever, Angel). Bones is a really fun show, revolving around the characters of Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (Boreanaz). I think my biggest surprise while reading this book wasn't at all related to the plot -- it was regarding how different the book's Dr. Brennan is from the one on the show. On Bones, Dr. Brennan is socially awkward and has a pretty unusual view of life, people, relationships, everything. The Deja Dead Dr. Brennan is cerebral, but not to the point of social awkwardness. She's actually a divorcee with a college-age daughter, and seems to have no problem relating to "normal" people. There was no Seeley Booth, but I'm hoping he pops up in one of the next books in the series.

So, I enjoyed Deja Dead, and I hope to read the next book or two later this summer. If you like forensic mysteries, you'll dig it!

(Originally posted on The Huggermugger Blog on Jun. 23, 2009.)