PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Song of the South

 
For some reason Disney hasn't had a nice dvd release of Song Of The South yet so the bootleggers will have to do if you want to see this 1946 film. You can find copies all over the place. Most seem to be from the Japanese Laserdisc or the British DVD. Someone gave me a copy of what I think is the British DVD. You can find a copy here, here's a place that has it for $7.99. Perhaps someday Disney will do up a nice disc and we can buy that too. It's a tough one, people are unhappy no matter what you do. I'm prefectly happy to watch the one I have right now, but I'd sure like a nice Platinium Edition 2 - dvd set that had lots of production art and the like on it. It could happen. I know it's a hot potato, but once you explain how to handle them, they aren't so dangerous.

It's post Civil War and Johnny and his Mom go to live with his Grandmother who lives on a nice plantation in the south. Lots of black people live on the plantation, working as share croppers. Johnny takes a likin' to Uncle Remus and his stories but mom thinks the elderly man is a bad influence on her son. It gets worse and worse and Johnny is knocked down by a bull. It's sad but he'll be ok. Uncle Remus can fix it with a dose of Brer Rabbit. Johnny makes friends with two local children, both of them poor, one black and one white. You can read a more detailed synopsis of the movie at Christian Willis's site. There's a puppy in there too. It's sentimental melodrama, and I got a tear at the end. It's pretty to look at and the animation is some of the companies best. I even like the songs by Johnny Mercer.

    
That's Uncle Remus in his cabin with the three kids, then it's Johnny, Toby and Ginny. They're all pretty cute. Uncle Remus tells the Brer Rabbit stories to illustrate a moral lesson. The kids learn. There's some conflict with Johnny's mom and just about everyone else. She'll get over that eventually, fixed by singin' and story tellin'. I like stories.

    
 
I really developed an affection for the Brer Rabbit that Paul Murry drew in Walt Disney Comics and Stories. Murry drew a ton of art for Western, all kinds of characters and stories. Western Publishing was the company that made Disney Comics from the 1930's to the 1970's. Disney tried doing comics back in the 1990's but it was a failure. I'm mostly interested in the old books. That's Dell Four Color 129 from December 1946. That's pretty old. It adapts some of the animated parts of the Song of the South. You can read the rest of the tar baby story plus another whole story here. The inking is by Carl Buettner. I really have a great respect for both Murry and Buettner. They created some very entertaining stories and some really nice artwork in their comic stories. For me Paul Murry is right up there with Carl Barks as a comic creator.

What I Read In September 2009

Vampire Brat by Angie Sage is the fourth in the Arminta Spookie series. Arminta lives in a big ol' haunted house with her Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Drac. They live there with another family who had come to live there in the first book. The family has a little girl about the same age as Arminta. Her name is Wanda. The two girls are not quite on the same wavelength. Uncle Drac's nephew comes to visit and Arminta is kind of jealous that Wanda gets along with him better than with her. Arminta has some issues. She's kinda bossy. That's kids for ya. The kids in the book act pretty much as kids do, kids who live with vampires and ghosts. They're not very scarey, those vampires and ghosts. The other subplot has something making noise in the basement tunnels. What could it be? Arminta thinks it's a werewolf. Could be. It's not a ghost, he's asleep upstairs. As if Arminta doesn't have enough to deal with. So far these have been enjoyable. I like the covers and the illustrations inside by Jimmy Pickering. I picked them up used or remaindered at Half Price books. They seem to get a lot of British editions and the occasional British author that isn't even being published here. The first two books I bought were American editions and the character is called Arminta Spookie. The other two were British and the character is called Arminta Spook. I like the Spookie name better. It's weird but I understand. I'll keep an eye out for the 5th in the series. Sage also writes the Septimus Heap series. I'm still reading the third in that series. It's my bedside book but I haven't been reading all that much in bed lately. Too tired to read. That's sad.

The Complete Idiots Guide To The World of Harry Potter by Tere Stouffer was something that I picked up remaindered and on sale. It was Half Price Books 20% off everything sale so it was around 5 bucks. I pick up books about HP when I find them cheap enough. I've got a couple of dozen already, and there are plenty more. I've read most of the ones that I have picked up over the years. I got 5 HP related books at that sale. I tossed them on the top of the to read stack and this was the first one I picked up. There isn't much to this book, a list of people and places with short descriptions takes up the bulk of the pages. You can look someone or something up and get a few lines of info. You can find out the same info over at the Harry Potter Lexicon website. This is supposed to cover the 7th book but it doesn't spend much time on it. There's some off topic material, often poorly tied into the series. Nothing outstanding about the book. It's kind of dull and there are a few mistakes that I found. I wouldn't read it again that's for sure. Once was enough. Might be good for some readers who want to have a reference book about but the Lexicon website is so much more infopacked. I think the cover sucks too.

Happy Time Stories  by Enid Blyton was ok. A series of short stories about various characters. Each had a bit of learnin' or a moral. Most of these stories were published first in the children's magazines that Blyton wrote. She did this for nearly 30 years. There were hundreds of stories and they have been collected over an over again since the 1930's. There are 883 books listed in the short story collection page at The Enid Blyton Society website. It was a quick read and slight. I hadn't read any of these when I was younger. At least I don't think so. I know I had read Blyton's Adventure series. I liked those and had fond memories of them. I picked up a set while I was in Winnipeg in 2003. Blyton isn't readily available here. Most of the books I find are in the used book stores. I enjoyed re-reading the Adventure series and started picking up Blyton books when I can find them.

  

I picked up the book on the left remainered at HPB in that stack I was talking about. Turns out it's a retitled jacket on a copy of the The Potter Pensieve: Trivial Delights from the World of Harry Potter by Karen Farrington & Lewis Constable. The book thinks it's TPP, only the jacket is a lie. Luckily, I didn't have a copy. I wonder what might have caused that title change? The original book is rather drab and the retitled jacket tries to jazz it up a bit. Under the dust jacket is a plain black book with some nice lettering on it. Maybe the publishers found that the original title was something that people wouldn't pick up, let alone know how to say. Pensieve, sounds French, must be dirty. Now a companion, that's sounds like a friend. The book is written by a mother and son according to Amazon.UK. She's written a lot of non-fiction books. I've never read any and wouldn't based on some of the titles I see. This was ok. There are random bits of info about the HP books with an index. The pieces are short, rarely more than a page. Much like the previous book but smaller size pages. There's an appendix with a good list of characters all in one spot. Still, glad I got it cheap. It's going on the shelf with the other HP books. There are a bunch now.

The Enchanted Tree by Enid Blyton is first in the Faraway Tree series.  The edition I have collects all three novels. Some kids move to the country side and after meeting up with some fairy folk they discover that they are living next to an enchanted wood. It's a forest with a very special tree. It's a magical tree. It's a good thing. The magic tree has other odd people living in it and if you climb up to the tip top it'll lead you to another whole whacky world. Each world has a theme and some are great, like the Land of Birthdays where you get lots of presents. Some are not so great, like the Land of Slaps, where you get slapped. Or at least you'd get slapped in the original edition. In the cleaned up version I have it's the Land of Snaps and Dame Snap (Slap) doesn't put the smack down, she just yells. I don't see that as a problem, though some would like the original format. Probably they like the slapping more than me. I'm kiddin' I like the slappin' too. I know I would rather read the original Hardy Boys than the rewrites but they are hard to find cheap. Most of the stories are fun and the kids have adventures in some crazy places. Occasionally they get in trouble because they don't know the customs or they didn't listen. There's a fair bit of magic, both the kind that gets you into trouble and the kind that gets you out. I'm going to read the other books in the series and I'll save this one to look at again in a few years.

The Unauthorised Harry Potter Companion - Colin Duriez is another one of the stack that I got for 20% off. I usually don't see that many at one time. I wait until I find these books used or remaindered and one usually turn up every few months. To find 5 at once, well, that was unusual. This book was a step up from the previous two. It's got an A-Z of people, things and places, and it's also got a few longish essays on various topics. They aren't too bad, mostly interesting. I enjoyed reading it.

What I Read In August 2009

Nine books for the month, seven new ones and all keepers, though I am waffling on The Railway Children. I'll probably wind up dumping the Nesbit books on paper and keep the digital versions. You can pick them up at the Gutenberg Project, as well as many other interesting books.

Cave of the Dark Wind - A Neverland Book - Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. This is the second of the series of Neverland chapter books which are aimed at the younger crowd. I have really liked the Peter and the Starcatchers series that they are spun off of and I enjoyed this book too. There's something that lives up in the cave of the dark wind. It takes goats the Mollusk's leave near the entrance. While Peter's away The Lost Boys join forces with Shining Pearl and Little Scallop to see if they can figure out what's living in the cave. There's some action and some comedy. There are nice illustrations and the book is short which means you can read it fairly quickly. There's a third book called Blood Tide but I haven't picked that up yet. I'm waiting for a used copy. A couple of weeks ago shiny new copies the fourth in the Peter and the Starcatchers series arrived in the stores. I haven't seen one used yet. As said I like 'em used, especially when I have a coupon over at Half Price Books.

The Mad Scientists' Club - Bertrand R Brinley. This was the first of the series to come out in book form. It collects the stories that appeared in Boy's Life magazine. They were edited for space in the magazine and Purple House Press uses the original manuscripts to restore them to what was originally written. The stories are fun, there are solutions involving science, and a bit of stuff to think about. That's a hat trick in my eyes. In one story the boys help Dinky cover his butt when he tells a big lie. He claims the reason he was late getting home was because he had seen a sea monster out on Strawberry Lake. The boys make a sea monster and run it about the lake. It causes quite a stir and puts the scare into some people. In another story the guys rescue a downed jet pilot using good common sense, scouting survival techniques, and some science. They haunt a house, they solve a 100 year old mystery and create a new one. The stories read well, are entertaining, and you could learn something. I like the cover on this book, too. I lucked out and picked this one up used and that prompted me to pick up the others. That was a few years ago, when I had all that nudie magazine credit. Now I'm finally getting to 'em. I know I'll keep this series to read again. Probably be a while, I still have a huge backlog and there seems to be a few new additions to the heap coming in each year.

 
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - JK Rowling. For some reason felt I needed to read the last three books of the Harry Potter series one more time. That way I will have read them all 7 times each. It seemed like the orderly thing to do. Probably some anal retentive shit goin' on there. I fight an constant battle between order and chaos. It seems less scarey than fighting a battle with Lord Voldemort. It might just be that any flimsy excuse to reread the series again is all I need. I feel I have to restrain myself from opening the books again and again. I seem to love the familiar even though I have such a nice backlog of intriging new books to read. Right now I'm fighting off the urge to watch The Saint TV series again. I just watched them a year ago. Needless to say I succumbed to the lure of the wizarding world and in July I read the 5th book. I still liked it and I liked the 6th book even better. I really enjoy the Tom Riddle backstory that Dumbledore passes along to Harry, arming him up for his upcoming battle. That's the Mary GrandPré cover to the special edition. It's Harry and Dumbledore in the memory of Bob Ogden. They are visiting the home of Voldemort's mother. What a piece of work is that family. Everything that's wrong with people and magic only makes it worse.

Bertrand R Brinley's The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club was sandwiched in between the two HP volumes. I took it to work instead of luggin the larger copies of HP around. I often have two or three books going at the same time. This is the 2nd collection of stories about these boys of science and adventure. The boys make it rain for the water starved farmers but when it doesn't stop the boys are in trouble. The kids buy an old WWII midget Japanese submarine and they fix it up so it works. That causes them some trouble. Then they build a working flying saucer that they buzz the town with. That gets them in trouble with the airforce. I enjoyed this almost as much as the first book. Some of the stories have the boys doing stuff that makes them less than heroes. Maybe they are a little older and more rebellious. Maybe it's Brinley. Maybe he wanted to remind people that even scientists fail and sometimes ego gets in the way. We never want our mad scientists to get too mad. No one needs that.

 
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling. That's the Ukranian cover to book 7 from publisher A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA. It's one of my favorite covers. There's so much going on. And there's so much going on in the 7th book. I still haven't gotten bored reading them. I'll try to wait a bit until the next go.

The Big Chunk of Ice - Bertrand R. Brinley was the last novel in the series. It never got published until recently. I didn't find it as satisfying as the rest of the series. The boys go over seas to Austria in a blimp with a professor from the local college. He's a cartoon character who's just there to give the boys access to the blimp they ride. He's not very scientific. They stay in a mountain town in the Alps and solve a mystery. It's not greatly mysterious. There isn't enough of the science for me. I would not go back and reread this any time soon. I'd read the first three more readily. Not to say it's a bad read, just not up to the rest of the series.

The Calder Game - Blue Balliet. This is the third book in the series. I thought it was ok but not as interesting as the first two. There's too many elements that seem contrived. Calder, a young boy named after the artist Alexander Calder, and his dad head for a small town in England. His dad has stuff to do during the day and he lets Calder wonder around on his own. Petra and Tommy are stuck in Chicago. They don't get along as well without their pal Calder, neither of them having been friends before. The trio and their class had just seen an exhibit of mobiles by Alexander Calder  a few days before Calder leaves for England. The kids seem to like the artist's work more than I do. When Calder arrives his finds there's a Calder statue in the town. A statue that the town's people don't like. A couple of nights after Calder gets there, both he and the Calder statue disappear. What a mystery? The English police are not up to it and they call in Petra and Tommy to solve the mystery. They do. That part of the plot didn't seem natural to me. Pulled me out of the story a bit. The series is about art and artists as well as these kids. I wasn't liking the art connection so much in this book. Maybe I'm just not enough of a Calder fan. I do like some of his statues more than his mobiles, but I only have a passing interest in his work. I know all the pieces they talk about in the novel. I've even seen them in their natural setting, the city of Chicago. I was at the dedication of the giant red Calder staute to the right. It's called Flamingo and when I was visiting Chicago in 1974 I just happened to be wondering by, so I stayed. There were balloons. I believe in coincidence and sometimes the real world seems contrived. That's why I so readily accept it happening in books and movies. I'll keep the book and probably reread it. It won't keep me from checking out future books in the series. I like the illustrator, Brett Helquest, though the cover is not a favorite of mine. There are more interesting illustrations inside.

The Railway Children - E. Nesbit. I wasn't sure how much I would like this 1906 novel. There were no fantasy elements in it. Turned out it's ok. Some posh kids get turned out of their house when their dad goes off somewhere mysterious. The kids and mom settle in a small house in the country. She goes back to writing children's stories for magazines to keep some bread on the table. The kids learn to be nicer than they already were and they have some low level adventures. The kids make friends of the locals. They watch the trains that go by the cottage and become friends with an old gentlemen who takes the train everyday. He later helps them out in a jam. They help out his nephew and he helps free their dad who was jailed for a crime he did not commit. The family is whole again.

Frognapped - Angie Sage. This is the third of the series. I found number 3 & 4 at Half Price Books and picked them up a few months ago. As I started to read these British copies I couldn't understand why Araminta Spookie's name seemed wrong. I went up and looked at the copies I had of the first two books. The UK version calls her Araminta Spook. I like the Spookie name better than Spook. It sounds better to me. I can only speculate why the USA publishers changed the name from Spook to Spookie. I bet you can too. This was as much fun as the other books in the series. Araminta lives in an old house with her uncle and aunt, and the Wizzard family. Mr. Wizzard is missing his trained frogs. He thinks Araminta had something to do with it. She hadn't but in order to clear her name she sets out to find those frogs. Turns out they were stolen by a local creep who wants to turn his mushroom farm into a tourist attraction.  Araminta and Wanda Wizzard inlist the aid of a ghost to retrieve the frogs and they score a pile of gold for their troubles. All turns out well. Angie Sage is also the author of the Septimus Heap series. I read the first two of those and am reading the third right now. Well, not right now. Right now I got to go to work. I'm late. Story of my life.

What I Read In July 2009

More books in July than any other month this year. Many were small. I found a rash of younger kids books on the surface of the pile this month. Some of them got read.

Here's a couple of Enid Blyton's books first up for the month and both read on a sunday afternoon. Mr Twiddle In Trouble Again by Enid Blyton is another collection of her short pieces from the Enid Blyton Magazine. Mr. Twiddle is a character who likes to help but it always leads to trouble. Glad I don't know that guy. Reading about him is more enjoyable than a visit, that's for sure. These are silly little stories that would make kids laugh more than me but I still enjoyed them. The book I have is a repackage of some of the stories from the original three volumes of Mr. Twiddle stories. Those stories were collected from Sunny Stories. That was Enid's own magazine. Many of the short stories she wrote were collected into volumes, It was the same for Mr. Meddle's Mischief by Enid Blyton. That was fun too.

Peter and the Secret of Rundoon by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson is the third book in the series. I had enjoyed the first two quite a bit and the third was another good adventure fantasy. The evil Lord Ombra returns to trouble the star catchers. He captures Peter and Hook and takes them to the desert kingdom of Rundoon. It's kind of crappy place and the king sucks. He has a rocket that they are going to use to send starstuff into the atmosphere. By blowing it up he'll create more starstuff. It sounds weird but it seems to work. Ombra's creepy friends want to use the starstuff to destroy the universe, so you know they're goin' down. More is revealed about Peter's past. While Peter and Hook are away Neverland is invaded by some nasty warriors from the Scorpion tribe. They capture the Mollusks and enslave them. Oh, yeow! Luckily Shining Pearl, Chief Fighting Prawn's daughter has escaped and joining forces with the remaining pirates she leads a rebellion until help arrives. After Peter and the gang kick the bad guys asses they return to fight the Scorpions. Well, you know who will win that fight. I thought it was a fun series. Peter and the Sword of Mercy is due out Oct 13, 2009. It's 23 years after the third book. Hook and the pirates and Peter and the Lost Boys are still the same but Molly has grown up. She's married George Darling and had three children. I wonder if they have a dog?

Escape From The Carnival - A Neverland Book by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson is a book written for younger kids. When compared to the main series it's a slight book at 144 pages, more a novella. It's nicely illustrated by Greg Call, who also illustrated the main series. I think his covers are great. It's what attracted me to the books in the first place. This new series takes place on the island after the first book of the series. Peter is away, the Mollusks are up the mountain for some ritual or another when some bad guys in a ship stop by the island to get water. They find more than water. Mermaids! They capture Surf, one of the mermaid children, and Little Scallop, who missed the ritual, has to get aboard that ship and rescue her friend. It's a pretty exciting tale with some amount of danger. This 2006 book is the first of five. I got the first two remaindered at HPB and I'm keepin' an eye out for the third. They were entertaining enough to want to keep reading them.

This is the last of the five Merlin Lost Years series by T. A. Barron. The Wings Of Merlin. I think Merlin learns to fly or something. I'm still not down with the writing. There is some good amount of story there and that would keep most people happy. It scores well on Amazon with a 4.5 stars rating. There's some bad guys and some even worse guys but they all get smoted in the end. This book is destined to find it's way into the hands of someone else since I will be casting it out as unworthy of re-reading. It wasn't a bad book but just not one I will be interested in reading again. Many have liked it and I'm sure that many will like it in the future. I don't care much for this books cover either.

Enid Blyton's Tales of Ancient Greece is a slim volume of Greek myths. It was ok but nothing special. That cover is sure yellow. There are 17 tales in about 100 pages. Not too much detail for each one. You can polish this book off in no time. Blyton did several historical books like this, retelling old myths and legends. It's a good primer on some of these stories, sometimes that all you need to get started and sometimes that's all you need. When I was young I had an interest in ancient cultures but that's waned as I grew older. Now I'm barely interested in anything but my ancient culture.

Allen Kurzeil's Leon and the Spitting Image is something that I picked up on a whim. I got it in the clearance section so it was under a buck. It turned out to be pretty entertaining. Leon is in 4th grade. He lives in a small hotel where his mother works as the night manager. How cool would that be for a place to live? He sleeps next to a noisey ice maker. That part isn't so cool, keeps him from having a good night sleep. They have interesting conventions at the hotel. One week it's people with animals and this week it's plumbers with wrenches. The latter are less exciting but more helpful and when they fix the icemaker for coffee and donuts it's a step ahead for Leon. Too bad his creepy teacher can't be fixed too. She's got some poor ideas on teaching kids. Leon's got a couple of friends and there's this bully. With the help of a spit soaked voodoo doll things are soon better. Don't try that at home. It'll just get you into trouble.

Beverly Cleary's Ramona and Her Father was another book that I got on clearance at HPB. It was under a buck too. I enjoyed it pretty much. Ramona is in grade two. Her dad looses his job and that worries the family. Ramona tries to get her dad to quit smoking. Beezus is in the Christmas Pagent and Ramona talks her teacher into letting her and two friends be the sheep. Her mom, now working full time, doesn't have time to make much of a sheep costume but it all turns out A-ok. There's the expected happy ending and some nice family moments. It's not a keeper, I won't need to re-read it. Glad it was on clearance. I didn't like the cover at all.

I had read Charles M Schulz's Young Pillars years ago. It surfaced and got left out so I decided to re-read it. It's a bunch of cartoons that Schulz did for the Church of God Youth magazine. It's only 64 pages so you can read it in a few minutes. I didn't find the cartoons that funny for some reason. Gentle and folksy maybe but I sure don't need to re-read it again. I don't know that I'll put it in the sell pile yet but it's not looking too good. I bought the first few volumes of Peanuts but so far I haven't read more than the first 2 volume set. I used to be a big Peanuts fan when I was in my late teens and twenties. By the 1980's I had given up the strip but I kept the collections that I had bought when I got my first job and had some spare money for books. I traded them in a few years ago. They aren't complete and the year to year collections are so much better.

Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle is the first book of the three in the series. I had read the second but not the third. Don't even have a copy. I got this on clearance like some of the other books this month. Good week at HPB for me. I don't always find something, expecially at the store nearest me. It was an ok book. The mouse gets his mororcycle and make a friend of young Keith. It was Keith's motorcycle. The mouse has some adventures and he does enjoy that motorcycle. Me, I'll enjoy taking this book (and some of it's pals) into some store to get some new books. I like me some new books.

Leaping Beauty by Gregory Maguire was a real hoot. There are eight fractured fairy tales to enjoy here. Animals fill in the place of humans in these retellings. Cinderella is an elephant with giant glass slippers. It's great goofy fun. I'll certainly be keeping this one for the odd redip. I have liked Maguire's kids books and I recently read his first adult novel Wicked. Not as much fun, nor as slight, as LB or his Hamlet Chronicles series but still enjoyable. I slowed down when I was reading it and I can't put my finger on why. I have a few more of his books and will read those eventually. Just got to get more time.

  

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J K Rowling. For some reason I figured to read the last three books in the series. That would make it 7 times that I have read the series in total. Seemed like the symmetrical thing to do, in a balancing sort of way. I still enjoy reading the books after so many returns. I don't know many other books I could do that with. Lost Horizon is still on the top of my list for rereads. I wonder why. It's been a while since I read it last. I bet I could find a copy around the house. I have two or three somewhere.

The Big Kerplop! by Bertrand R Brinley is the third book in The Mad Scientists' Club series which started with two collections of short stories. Some of the stories were published in Boy's Life magazine first. There were two novels written after the collections. The second novel was not published until recently. I had read the first two collections when I was a kid and hadn't thought much of them until a few years ago when Greg got the current reprint hardcovers in at DreamHaven. I had a lot of credit from selling a huge pile of nudie magazines I'd gotten for free, so I bought the lot. Then they sat on my shelf for a long time. Finally they surfaced and caught my attention. TBK! takes place before the first two books so I read that first. It tells the story of the incident, an atomic warhead dropping into Strawberry Lake, that brings the boys together. They are the ones who create the club. It's a fun bunch of boys, some smarter than others, some more fun than others, some more sensible than others, all pulling together using thinking and science to solve their problems. The boys show up the military and figure out where that pesky old nuke went. Of course no one believes them and the news media makes fun of them, but you can imagine how the story turns out. There's humor and fun mixed with science and a bit of social commentary. I found it enjoyable and wanted to read some more, but July is over and I would have to wait until next month.

Red Shark by Andrew Colunga

The whole title is Red Shark - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson. I think it looks pretty darn cool. I love the eyes on Hunter and the way the car seems to be popping out of the picture. You can see more pictures over at Andrew's MOCpages post. I read that book back in the 70's and a couple of other Thompson books. Haven't read anything since. Never felt much need to. It's almost better in my memory. I like the movie versions, both of them for different reasons.

What I Read In June 2009

Another short stack for the month. One a collection of drawings, three novels and a slim volume of children's stories. I don't remember what I was doing but it sure wasn't reading. Hittin' the bricks too much I guess.

The Wolverton Bible is a collection of drawings that Basil Wolverton did for Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God. I've been hoping for a collection of these drawings for ages. The only place to get most of them is the 6 volume set of Bible Stories that the Church put out. There are 2 editions that are pretty costly. The first usually runs about $300, if you ever see them. The second edition is a bit cheaper. I wouldn't want to pay that and after waiting for a long while someone at Fantagraphics put the whole shabang out in one 304 page hardcover. And it's only $24.95. What a gret collection. The drawings are nicely printed, very black, on nice white paper. The cover is printed on the book, there's no dust wrapper. The book is sturdy and feels good.

That's got to be Eve hangin' in the garden and a nice shot of the moon, which I think is from God's POV. I've been a fan of Wolverton's art for ages and have always wished more was available. This is a windfall. It's a wonderful additon to any art collection. There are some more Wolverton books out there to be had. He's one of those guys with a unique style that isn't mainstream enough to have made him real popular. Lucky, for me, there are some publishers, and his son Monte, who have worked to keep his work in print much of the time. He's definately worth a look. Here's a page of one of his wonderful science fiction stories, and silly picture of Basil himself.

The Mirror of Merlin by T A Barron is the fourth of the series. Merlin has a bit of a run around and after passing through a magic mirror he meets himself. I don't know if I would like to meet the older me, not being magical and all. I'm still not groovin' on these books but wanted to read them and put them in the trade in bag. That bag is getting really full. I actually need a second bag. If I would have read faster and more often that bag could be even fuller.

Hellboy - The Fire Wolves by Tim Lebbon was pretty entertaining. Hellboy travels to Amalfi Italy and fights some evil demons who appear in the form of a firey wolves. They hide as humans when they aren't being fire wolves. They are rich and evil and Hellboy takes them down after some major damage to people and places. It's a tough world that Hellboy universe, people are getting slaughtered by the handfulls. Big giant handfulls too. It was pretty well told and since I was pretty interested in the story I was breezin' through this one quickly. I can't say that for my next book.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan was an ok thriller but once I found out it was some new version of the vampire tale I kind of checked out. I slogged along and the book would often sit the day without a page being read. Not a good sign. Greg had loaned me the Advanced Reading copy he got at DreamHaven and I finally got to it the same week the actual hardcover came out. I just wasn't too keen on reading it. I'm not a big thriller fan and this is pretty much that formula. Plane lands and just about everyone is dead and drained of blood. Oh, what's that going to lead to? The dead will rise warns the old pawn broker with a complicated backstory involving Nazis and Vampires. Man, this books got everything, you'd expect in a vampire thriller. I've never read any Chuck Hogan but this the sort of book I figured he'd write based on his book's covers and thickness. I'm just not a big fan of the genre. I don't think Del Toro, whom I like as a director and movie story teller, had written any books before. If I get to read the rest of the trilogy, I'll be surprised. Too many other books to read and time is getting short. No matter what's left it's short. I can't count on being turned into a vampire in our "real" world. That's probably for the best, I never liked lying on dirt. There's always some bugs in there.

Mr. Pink-Whistle Has Some Fun by Enid Blyton was really entertaining. It's a collection of short stories about a little guy with magical powers. He turns invisible and helps people out. He usually goes right after the bad kid and makes him do the weirdest things. He's really good at tormenting people into being better. In one story he turns invisible and picks on two bullies in the local elementary school. They get the treatment and soon learn their lesson. Nice. A great book for people who like the get their own back. That's a great British term for revenge. Everybody loves them some revenge. The edition I have squeezes 6 stories out of the two books here. These were stories that had originally run in Sunny Stories for Little Folks or The Enid Blyton Magazine. Enid wrote a bi-weekly magazine from 1926 to 1959, all by herself. Many of the short stories that she wrote got collected in books. Mr. Pink-Whistle was one series, Brer Rabbit was another, and a couple more characters I'll be looking at next month. I love the covers on these old editions. You can read more about Enid Blyton, an amazingly prolific writer at The Enid Blyton Society. It's hard to find her books in the USA, she was never that big here. In Canada we had her books in the libraries and bookstores all the time I was growing up there. That's when I read her Adventure series. I re-read them in the last 5 or 6 years and plan to read them again soon. They are my favorite series by Blyton.

What I Read In May 2009

May was another poor month for books read. June wouldn't be much better and July is off to a slow start. I blame the internet. Spending too much time staring at pictures and reading blogs until the wee hours. (Sadly, it's really 10pm when I start to nod off. )

     

The Mystery of Harry Potter - A Catholic Family Guide by Nancy Carpenter Brown. Besides reading and re-reading the Harry Potter books, I like to read books about the boy who lived. Especially when I find them used or on clearance. This book is a Christian's prespective on the Harry Potter series and she's for Harry. It's a short read, only the first 6 books are covered. She posts a look at the 7th book on her website. She finds a good story and a good message in the books. She points out the age appropriate material in the books and the movies. Mostly it's read the books before you give them to your kids and discuss what they have read. There are lots of examples and discussion topics. Pretty darn straight forward. Good for her.

The Lost Years of Merlin by T A Barron is the first of a 5 books series in which Barron writes about the lost years of Merlin. Oh, you didn't know Merlin had some lost years. Yeah, neither did I. I had bought the whole series a few years ago, as well as another series by Barron. I didn't care for that first series, one of the books co-starring Merlin, and I don't care a lot for these either. It's not a bad series and the story was fairly interesting but I wasn't excited to read the book. They languised. I got more physical exercise than mental exercise from carrying the books around. It took me most of the month to real the three books. In the first book Merlin washes up on the shore of an island. It's a magical place filled with all sort of weird things. Merlin spends the series gettin' his trials and tribulations on and that leads him to adulthood and his magical self awareness. There's lots of characters and places to go see on the island. It's a dangerous place, that island, and people are often killed. Even with all that I just wasn't excited. My pal Joe says he's old enough now and not interested in wasting time on books he's not really down with. He'll just stop and zip they go into the bag destined for the second hand bookstore of his choice. Sadly I think I should read them to the bitter end, and only because I bought them. You never know when a book will pick up after a slow start, I hate to give up. Foolish I know. Other's might like them but I've already placed them in the 'to go' bag. The other two in the series I read this month were The Seven Songs of Merlin &The Fires of Merlin. Barron on the other hand seems an interesting guy, too bad I wasn't down with the lost years.

It will be a bit better next month, 5 titles. One of them is a book of Bible illustrations. There's text but it's no novel. Sometime soon I'll get to that.

What I read In April 2009

It's certainly not shaping up to be a great year for reading masses and masses of books. April was another poor month with only 4 titles. Knowing what the future has in store from May does help add any numbers onto the annual total. I haven't got that many years left and there's a shit load of good books to read and read again. Speaking of good books to read I'm going to mention a really nice review of Freddy The Detective by Walter R. Brooks before I get going. I'm thinking of reading the series again. It one of my favorites. Not like my next book.

Richard gave me an advance reading copy of Shadowmancer by G P Taylor. He had read it and I think I remember him saying he liked it well enough. He didn't want it back when I was done. That cover isn't to the book I have. Couldn't find a pic online and this has the same illustration in the same colors as the book I read. The story is set in a fantasy England a couple of hundred years ago. There's a naughty Reverand who is seeking a pair of powerful amulets that will give him great power. He has one and wants the other for his nefarious plans. He's not so much religious as a greedy power mad sorcerous pig. Nothing at all likable about that guy. There's a kid who befriends the human half of the amulet who has come to town to retrieve the stolen half. There's a smuggler who comes to help our hero and the amulet guy. It mostly an ok story and the writing isn't too bad some of the time. Taylor, an ex-vicar, and an authority on wicca and witches, wrote the book to promote good Christian kind of stuff. The problem is he's promoting his message so hard that it kind of elbows the story aside. It's often touted as the Christian Harry Potter but it's no where near that league. It's too heavy handed a book. I wouldn't re-read it again and I doubt that I'll pick up the rest. Here's an interesting bit from the Wikipedia about GP's early life when he worked in the music industry: Taylor grew up in Yorkshire, but moved to London in the 1970s where he worked in the music industry with such bands as The Stranglers, Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello and Adam and the Ants. He became involved in the occult, and lived a life that was, in his own words "into all sorts of weird and wonderful things and wasn’t leading a godly life" . It was then that he turned to Christianity, and he later became a vicar with the Church of England

t's now been 24 hours since I started this. I got reading junk online last night and it got late. Too many distractions on the internet. I'm glad I don't have a wireless laptop so it can follow me around like a warm plump scrumptious pastry all wrapped up in a sweet sugary coating of yumm. I digress. I went and had some Cheerios. Now I'm going to bed.

It took me a couple of weeks to read Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory MaGuire. I had read some of his kids books and enjoyed those. I thought I should finally get around to reading one of the four or five adult novels I'd been sitting on. They are alternate or revisionist fairy tales. This is The Wizard of Oz told from the presective of the Wicked Witch of the West. She's green and she has a backstory to tell you why. It's a complicated backstory with lots of characters who lead complicated lives. Lots to think about, like serious thoughts on good and evil, religion, opression and betrayal, which reads slower than an adventure story. There's monkeys. Glad to have read it, going to keep it for the future, and I'll read the two sequels. I have the first one, Son of a Witch, and I'm sure I can find the second one, A Lion Among Men used. MaGuire is pretty popular so there are lots of copies in the used stores. There's some humor, some tragedy, much death and weirdness. Oh, yeah, those monkeys can fly.

Another day has past. This is the third evening that I have been tackling this post. Busy at work makes me lazy at home. Sloth, compounded with all the emails from being on MOCpages and Flickr sure make it hard to get back to work at home. I've been on MOCpages for over a year and I mostly like it. The price is right. Free Rocks! I'm getting used to Flickr. It has some advantages and some disadvantages over MOCpages. I can upload non-LEGO pics and quite a bit each month. I certainly won't use the 100 MB a month that they limit me to for a free account. I don't care for the presentation and it takes more time to flic through someone's pics. I do like the webpage look of MOCpages, especially since they started offering large pictures as an option. When presenting several pictures of a moc the viewer can see them all in one page.

The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander is a collection of short stories that relate to his Chronicles oF Prydain series. I have not read them and I think I have some of them. I picked up a stack of his books used during a harvesting several years ago. I had become enamored with Harry Potter and was looking at all sorts of YA fantasy. I bought a couple of hundred books around 2003 and 2004 and they overflowed my reading shelf. Many were packed in boxes for later perusal. I unpacked most of one of those boxes recently and there were some Lloyd Alexander books in there.  Start with a small one. I don't remember a thing about the stories. Even after I went to the Wikipedia  and read the synopsis of each I could barely remember anything about them. That's not good. Hope they were just not so memorable and it's not my mind going. I thought when I read it the stories were ok but I wasn't going to keep it. I sure don't like looking at the cover of this edition, and Prydain just is not an attractive word to look at or say. I'll work my way through some of those other Lloyd Alexander books on the to-read shelf. I hate to buy something and not finish it. Joe says he has no problem tossing a book aside, forever, and not worry about it again. I always have this nagging doubt that it might get better and turn my lack of enthusiasm back on. It certainly doesn't happen enough.

I picked up a copy of Walpulski's Typewriter by Frank Darabont because I enjoyed his films. The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile are my favorites but I do like The Majestic for the most part. Roger Ebert, unlike most critics, liked the film. He said Darabont was trying to make a Frank Capra film. I would agree with that. Darabont wrote several films before he started directing. You can read more about that over at the Wikipedia. He doesn't make many films. Walpulski's Typewriter is a novella, in a small hardcover, produced by Cemetary Dance Publications. They're a small press publisher who specializes in horror and like that. Not something I am much interested in reading as a rule. I got this cheap, I think it's a $25 book, or I wouldn't have bought it. It's about a bad writer who can't make any money. His typewriter is broken too. He takes it to a guy who fixes it by installing a demon in it. The demon writes great books and eats small animals. As the books sell better and better the demon wants some bigger and better meals. People are next on the menu, so you know that it's all going to end badly. It's kind of funny, but certainly not worth the cover price, even as a collectible. I just looked on Amazon and there are copies over there for $5.06. It's also illustrated by Berni Wrightson but I don't think that we're seeing his best work. Looking back at the Wrightson work from the late 60's to the mid-70's is a treat for the eyes. Finding his early stuff might be hard though. I know his illustrated Frankenstein is still on the shelves of DreamHaven. Nothing is impossible to find nowadays with the power of the internet. Electrons Rock.

What I read in March 2009

  

Not a very good month for reading, March wasn't. I read 7 titles and two of them were slim comic 100 page collections. I finished off The Dragon Chronicles series by Susan Fletcher. I read the second volume, Flight of the Dragon at the beginning of the month. It was more interesting than the first volume. I think the writting had gotten a bit smoother and the characters more interesting. It's a prequel to the first book and all the characters are new to us. One young girl who's had a brush with a dragons as a baby developes the ability to talk to birds and the king thinks she can call to dragons. He's got a secret revenge in mind and any dragon will do to fall under his blade. The young girl can call the dragons and does. Bad for the dragon who shows up. Horrified the girl runs away from the king and with the help of a hunky guy she saves the rest of the dragons and get them out of the kingdom. There's a whole lot of falconry in the book too. It isn't going to be a keeper.

Next I read the two volumes of Walt Kelly's Our Gang comics. There is a third volume out but I haven't gotten it yet. Each Fantagraphics collection reprints 8 stories by Walt Kelly from the Our Gang comics. The Dell Comics series started in 1942 and ran through 1949. The kids from the Our Gang (Little Rascals on tv) film series, were joined in the original comic books by other MGM stars. Tom & Jerry and Barney Bear each had stories in an issue. The covers of the Fantagraphics books are sadly not by Walt. Jeff Smith, of Bone, did a pretty good job, but they just aren't Kelly. Mind you Kelly isn't Kelly either. The Our Gang stories start with a pretty different style than the Walt Disney or Pogo work. The stories are ok little morality tales, or adventures. There's some danger on a regular basis and they are humorous. More for the fan of Kelly or some nostalgic interest in the 1940's. They are nice little volumes, fairly well produced with pretty good art. Some times the reproduction of old comics is not so good. The original art would all be gone and the source is often the comic itself. Better scanning software today, a lot can be cleaned up.

I still didn't care much for the Inkspell by Cornelia Funke. I kind of skimmed a bit each night for most of the month. Just a series and writer that I don't find I'm on the same page with. Into the sell pile with you. Nice cover on the book.

 

E Nesbit's The Book of the Dragons is a collection of short stories from 1901. Most of them were entertaining. Easy to read and often humorous. You can read E. Nesbit over on the Guttenberg Project. I didn't care for Elmore Leonard's A Coyote in the House. The cover makes me think animated cartoon and the writing screams make me into a movie. There are several reason's I didn't fit well with the book. Most everyone on Amazon gave it 4 or 5 stars. It wasn't a bad book, I just didn't care for the style, but then I've never been an Elmore reader. I read Get Shorty back in the days I used to man the counter at Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore three nights a week. That was 10-12 years ago and I haven't gotten anymore. This was loaner from Simba that was returned. I think she took it back to the bookstore. The third book in The Dragon Chronicles finished out the month. Sign of the Dove by Suzanne returns to the characters of the first volume and there's more dragons, danger and running about. Some stuff does catch on fire. I liked this one better than the first, and about as much as the second. Still going into the bin to get sold.

What I read in February 2009

Another slow month for the reading. Only 6 books. March would fare much worse. Movie watching is holding steady with a weekly fresh load of crap from the Sci Fi Channel, but I can do that and build or sort LEGO at the same time. Reading requires some time, and a good book. It's always a treat to read a good book. The best are the kind that pull you through their pages, wrapping you in the story so you don't even notice you're reading. It's a zone thing. Most books can't put you there. There's been a series of books lately that kept me from the zone. Those books take longer to read.

  

Hatching Magic by Ann Dowling was one of the books that was right on the edge. It was kind of dull and pretty slow going. There was some humor and some average writing. A baby dragon travels through time from the 13th century to our present day and discovers chocolate. Ancient people had a sucky life, huh. Some gal gets involved with the guy who comes looking for the dragon. He's a young mage of sorts and he's got some competition, a bad guy, who also comes from the 13th century. He wants the baby dragon for evil kind of stuff so you know he's going to have a big red fail stamped on his forehead when the story is over. It's light hearted but not a keeper.

Pinky Pie by Eleanor Estes was fun. The Pye's get a cat. The cat likes the typewriter. He pokes the keys. There's a mystery and a lost owl. The family is vacationing on a small island for the summer. Dad, a famous ornithologist, is there to study the birds. Mom and the kids are there for the fun and quiet island life. It's a nice gentle book with some fun stuff. She got some of the best written kids. I like them and I like the animals. The Pye  family and Moffat family books are the best of her work. At least for me. I'd recommend those books.

Br'er Rabbit's a Rascal by Enid Blyton is a collection of Br'er Rabbit stories. They appeared in her magazine back in the 1930's. I picked up a collection from 1965. It's has no jacket so I used that one above. It's from the same time period and publisher. The stories are short bits of fun with Br'er Rabbit tricking some other critters or occasionally himself. The Br'er Rabbit written stories get their start with Joel Chandler Harris back in the mid 1800's. He collected Br'er Rabbit and  Uncle Remus stories from the descendents of slaves. I'm sure I first heard of the character from the Disney comic book stories I read when I was kid. I enjoyed them then and still enjoy them today. Most of them were illustrated by Paul Murry, who's one of my favorite comic artists. That's his Br'er Rabbit up there. Blyton simplifies the writing some. Her original audience were little kids. They were fun to read and I picked up some more volumes to read in the future. That's always nice, having some good books to read in the future.

 

I picked up the two Holly Black books, Valiant and Tithe, after reading her Spiderwick Chronicles. That was a while ago. I liked The Spiderwick Chronicles. A series that told one story in 5 really short volumes. They had nice illustrations, but they were about 10 bucks each in little hardcovers. Cheaper in the box set but still no bargin. I bought them back then I was living high on the book buying hog with tons of credit from the vast collection of nudie magazines I had aquired from the wife of a late friend. I was selling them at DreamHaven for a couple of bucks each and they sold steady and well. I had a lot of credit, hundreds of dollars, and bought some stuff on spec.  I finally got around to reading these two books and they didn't pan out so well. I didn't like the characters very much and I started kind of skimming. Some girls get involved with some elves or something. I was glad when they were over. Other people would like them more than me. Just the type of book that I don't care for that much.

Dragon's Milk by Susan Fletcher was the book that really dragged me down. I had a hard time getting into that story. I just wasn't into the characters or the writing. I suspect there was some residual negativity from reading Holly Black. It took me ten days to read that book, so you know I wasn't into it. It's the first of a trilogy and it turns out I will like the the second and third books better when I read them in the future. The first book is set in an ancient time where there are dragon's. I like dragons. Wouldn't want one as a pet. I saw what happened at Hagrid's. I should re-read those books. Maybe it would revitalize me. The main character is a young girl who winds up taking care of three small baby dragons after the mother is killed by men. Men suck. She travels over land and sea to unite the dragon with their kind in a safer place. Hardly any men there. That would be nice sometimes, huh. I think the story is better than the execution. Not a keeper but not a complete loss either.

I'm only keeping one book out of the six. A bit after I read the Blyton Br'er Rabbit I found that there were 4 Br'er Rabbit books in the kids section. They were nice paperbacks from England. That's about half the series there. One of the four was Br'er Rabbit's a Rascal. I bought it anyway. It's in better shape than the one I have and it will last longer. I should get rid of the older one but I haven't yet.