April 2024 Books Read

 There were nine days of travel last month, which seriously cut into my reading time.  The long eclipse day and the week in Sudbury cut my reading time down by nearly a third.  Though I did manage some reading in Sudbury on our week long visit, it wasn't anywhere near the usual time allowed for such pursuits.  Two of the books read last month were 500 pagers, also limiting the number of books read.

I have finally run out of SF from Robert Silverberg.  This month I dove into his recently republished crime and sex novels.  Though pretty mild by today's standard best sellers, in the 1960s he chose to use a different name on those book covers.  From 1960 and republished in 2022, even more of Silverberg's early output is now making its way into mainstream publishing.  I have the Kindle edition of The Hot Beat, now published under his own name.  The story is short, though there are 25 chapters.  A news reporter and a former girlfriend of a suspected killer try to prove his innocence.  The police don't care; they have a suspect in custody and he looks guilty to them.  Though not up to top notch crime writing standards set by Hammett and Chandler, the book gets to the nitty gritty aspects of sordid lifestyles.  The girl, Terry, gets pawed by creeps, and we get a queasy enough feeling when it happens.  The suspect is a former popular big band leader who hits the skids via alcoholism.  Two people put him at the scene of the crime.  The novel is preceded by a short intro by Silverberg, who seems as amazed as this reader regarding the republication of his crime stories.  In addition, there are three short stories included.

 

Jailbait Girl is from 1959.  Sorry readers, but the girl is 23.  She has a scam going with her boyfriend.  After finding guys to seduce her, the two crooks return later, she dressed as a high school girl, to extort money.  They score four times, but the fifth time turns out quite different.

 

The Drunken Sailor is from 1958.  A young sailor looking for his first time with a woman is sold out by a buddy, who has a scam going with the girl who does the trick.

 

Naked In The Lake is from 1958.  A murder story with an ironic twist at the end, like most of these tales.  A man kills his pregnant lover, but his wife manages to outdo him without violence.

 

I own the Kindle edition. 

 

From 1976 comes the 157 page on-going troubles of Dray Prescott, titled Captive Scorpio.  Dray goes off in search of a daughter he has never seen, who is living with scoundrels and trouble makers.  Imagine his surprise when he does encounter her (see cover art, below).  Of course she hates him; he is a coward, etc.  He ends up having to leave her among the group of traitors planning his death and that of the Emperor.  Meanwhile, back in the capital city, the Emperor's armies have been tricked and defeated.  The evil Wizard of Loh, 'Phu-si-Yantong' is behind the attacks on Vallia, and there seems little that can be done to stop him.  In the shocking finale, another very important person close to Dray and Deliah is killed, forever altering the leadership and destiny of Vallia.  Along with the shocking revelation regarding Dray's daughter, and the death mentioned just above, it is obvious that Bulmer is taking his series very seriously.  None of these happenings were expected, and end up shocking the reader, who expects most things to continue on as as before.  Nope.  A very good entry in the series. 

 

Cover by Josh Kirby. 

 

From 1973 comes Monster of Metalaze, a 125 page pulp SF novel from one of the best of the trade.  This time around Cap Kennedy works with a (male) team on the planet Metelaze to stop the government there from completing a series of towers that are supposed to give limitless energy to the planet.  It's obvious to the Terrans that the towers will kill all life on the planet when turned on.  To find out what is going on, Cap gets himself into the planet's dictator's good side, eventually becoming his body guard.  Assisted by a professor, a large and very strong man, and a person who is able to blend in anywhere like a chameleon, they go to work to find out the truth.  The story jumps back and forth between the various Terran operatives, and becomes quite complex at times.  Once the truth is known, the political ruling council has to be convinced they are in danger.  Some suspect it, but others support the dictator in everything.  To add to the confusion, a fake religious leader out for power is harnessing his followers to overthrow the present system so he can take over.  It's all very messy, and not a terribly satisfying read.

 

From 2013 comes the 482 page 3rd part of Moorock's epic series detailing the life and adventures of Colonal Pyat, Jerusalem Commands.  The events now take place between 1925 and 1929.  At some point in this wonderful series I suspected that I would begin to tire of Pyat, and that process is now well underway.  I am reading the volumes too close together, so I will rest Pyat for a while, and possibly even rest Moorcock for a time.  Pyat is the cocaine sniffing Cossack from Kiev who continually denies his Jewishness.  His rants against Moslems and what they ultimately represent to the world are pretty much non-stop, as are his rants against Jews.  Sometimes his insights are quite enlightening, and at other times one wonders why there isn't a fatwah laid upon the author.  I guess not many people have read it or drawn undue attention to these books.

Pyat is an entertaining person, very full of himself, and his fictional memoirs are among the best travel writing ever laid down on paper.  This time we begin in the USA, slowly making our way to New York from Los Angeles and back again, with many adventures in between.  Pyat is a 1920s silent movie star, as is his best friend Mrs. Cornelius (mother of Jerry).  With his beloved Esme, they embark on a ship to Egypt (from LA) to make a desert epic film.  The journey is long but great fun to read.  Filming doesn't end up going so well in Egypt, and Pyat and Esme become sex slaves, forced to make pornographic films.  Mrs. Cornelius, who knew better and gave fair warning, leaves the country unhindered.  Poor Pyat.  He goes through a living hell, and doesn't talk much about the details.  These are left to the readers' imaginations.  Esme is now taken fgrom him, never to be seen again.  Then it's finally an escape into the desert, followed by a balloon ride to Morocco.  In Morocco Pyat slowly recovers from his nightmare in Egypt, but again gets into deep trouble, becoming a captive of the rich Arabic leader of Marrakech.  Escape finally comes, but not in the expected way.

The book is often tiring to read, though admittedly it is very good.  I recommend taking a lot of time to read these novels.  I have been gobbling them.  Pyat's Egypt experience is certainly a low point, but there are many high points to balance things out.  Whether amidst a bustling city or stranded in the middle of the Sahara Desert, Moorcock always uses just the right words to get the mood and the atmosphere down perfectly.  Highly recommended series.

 

#6 in the Lone Wolf Series, Chicago Slaughter, is from 1974 (Malzberg was writing one of these per month) and it is 165 pages long.  The tone of these books is shifting.  Wulf is now sick and tired of killing, and the killings that he does undertake get more and more difficult.  He is on his way to Chicago with his now famous briefcase of pure cut heroin.  He wants to turn it into the DA there, where a grand jury is trying to get to the bottom of the country's drug problem.  But as the story moves along, sometimes over familiar ground and sometimes not, Wulf begins to realize that the system is rotten from top to bottom.  The Chicago DA gets his orders from that city's drug kingpin.  Wulf goes through an amazing thought process at one point where he realizes that even the Vietnam war is being fought so that the supply of drugs from Asia can continue, rather than be stopped in its tracks by the Communists.  And closer to home it appears that the CIA wants the drug trade to continue, though reasons for that are obscure.  Williams, his one time partner on the NYPD, is badly knifed on an undercover operation, and spends much of the book in hospital.  But he finally wakes up to the fact that Wulf has been right all along--the system is rotten, and it's rigged.  Today we might ask "So what else is new?"  There is a short postlude by the author at the novel's completion.

 

On to Delphi Classics, beginning with the continuation of the complete works of Virginia Woolf.  Night and Day was published in 1919, four years after her first novel, The Voyage Out (See January 2023 Books Read entry).  Lasting for 579 painful pages, the 2nd novel is a huge disappointment.  It's a love story involving two couples and an odd person out that takes place mostly in London, though it is a cardboard London, a city we get no feel for.  Had there been some humour involved it might have been a less painful read, but alas, it is all so serious.  Katherine, daughter of a prestigious family, becomes engaged to William, whom she does not love.  She loves Ralph.  When William takes notice of her younger cousin Cassandra, the engagement is called off.  But no one tells her father.  Ralph proposes to Mary, but she realizes that he is in love with Katherine, and refuses him.  It is all so dreadfully boring.  The 'young' people (the youngest is 22, the others 25 or over) act like tongue tied high school students when they encounter one another.  No one seems to know anything about love and what it truly is.  The only non-hopeless person is Mary.  She works at a society trying to garner the vote for women (but after a while she doesn't work there).  The novel seems truly endless, but I stuck it out, being stubborn enough.  It sounds like something Woolf might have written for close friends to hear it read to them.  In most articles about her writing, Day and Night isn't even mentioned.  I wonder why.  I think she was trying to achieve a prose version of something vaguely Shakespearean.  Or not.

A collection of poems and a play by Yeats came next.  The play and poetry were first published together in 1892.  The play was revised and published separately later, as was the poetry, under the title The Rose.  The play, a mystical one, is called The Countess Cathleen.  I really liked three of the poems, one of which is probably his most famous one.  "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" was written in 1888, and served the poet's needs much as Knight Peak in NM does for us--somewhere spiritual and pleasant to think about during the duress of living and working day to day.  "When You Are Old" and "A Dream of Death" are also quite remarkable works.  As to the play, it is in five scenes, and according to Yeats should take about an hour to perform.  A woman gives up her land, house, and gold to feed the poor and starving of Ireland by selling her soul to agents of Satan.  At the end, the angels find a loophole in the bargain and manage to save her soul.  Not exactly an engrossing bit of theatre.  However, it was part of the search for something home-grown in Ireland.

Lastly came Sherwood Anderson's 2nd novel.  Marching Men is from 1917, and follows the fortunes and misfortunes of the son of a Pennsylvania coal mining family, as he escapes the small dreary town where he was raised and goes out into the world (Chicago) in search of something bigger and better.  This is one of fiction's strangest characters, and one of the strangest novels I have ever read. Nearly as strange as Vita Sackville-West's 2nd novel (see January books read blog).  I won't say much about this book (stop me if I do), but Mr. McGregor has some serious social issues to deal with.  His attempt to bring order to a chaotic world by having men march around after work is, of course, symbolic.  They do that sort of thing in China, perhaps, but it would never catch on over here.  The brotherhood of men is a widely misunderstood concept, and Anderson realizes this.  But his shallow attempt of proving it likely turned off most readers (at least I would hope).  Today we have sporting events and Taylor Swift concerts to unite people.  The college football stadium in Ann Arbor Michigan holds over 100,000 people, and autumn football weekends are always sold out.  That is just one example.  Books like Harry Potter have united millions of people in ways Anderson could never have dreamed about.  A professional symphony orchestra is probably the best example of a finely tuned brotherhood, uniting with one goal in mind.  Though a mighty strange book by almost any standard, it is at least capable of starting discussion about topics most writers never touch.

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

Film Festival Weekend

April 27th and we are getting June weather.  The heat is on this coming week, and I don't mean the furnace.  Very warm temps and humidity have arrived a month early.  No surprise there, after this past year of record temps in these parts.  The grass received its first cut of the season yesterday, after the tractor was returned to us following its annual oil change and tune up.  And I got my teeth cleaned!  Let's see, what else happened yesterday.  Ah, we had a small natural gas leak fixed, and the gas was off much of the day.  And the new beer fridge was delivered, and is up and running in the basement.  But there is still a lingering smell of gas in the basement.  Just waiting a few minutes before going to check it again.

 

For travel buffs, I have finally completed my road trip blog on our recent trip to the deep south.  Find the road trip blog in the upper left margin, and scroll down towards part 1 (it's in 5 parts).

 

It's my turn for the film festival this month.  Each month one of us gets to pick three extra films to watch.  Combined with the two regular choices we each get in turn, that makes five in a row for me every two months (and for Deb).  At least one of the films must be chosen from the 'leaving soon' list, either from Mubi or from Criterion.  The others can come from anywhere.  So far we have completed watching three of my five choices.  Most recently we re-watched The Tale of Zatoichi #1 in the terrific samurai series from Japan starring Shintaro Katsu as the blind swordsman.  This first film, in widescreen b & w, contains all of the ingredients of the films that would follow in the series, though the pacing is much slower and more meditative here.  Ichi does not kill a mass of warriors, either.  He dispatches two who are sent to kill him for hearing a conversation, and he kills another master swordsman at the very end.  At this point he is bothered by killing, finding it a huge waste of human life.  Though we have seen this film at least four times now, there is always something new to discover or appreciate.  Highly recommended series, best watched in order.

 

Always showing on Criterion. 

 

Before that came a short BBC film part of their Screen Two series.  From the description on Prime:  Sin Bin stars Oscar nominee Pete Postlethwaite as a psychiatric guard at odds with a brutal system in this unflinching but darkly humorous view at humanity at its best and worst. In a prison for the criminally insane, Mitch witnesses an assault on a patient who dies 24 hours later. Compelled by his conscience to speak out, Mitch is forced to choose between self-preservation and justice.  Quite a disturbing and tension-filled little film, from a play by Catherine Johnson.  The tension builds as the union fully supports the offender.  Postlethwaite is a fine actor who can share slight nuances really well.  Recommended viewing.

 

Showing on Prime.

 

My leaving choice came first in this festival, a b & w comedy from 1941 called Here Comes Mr. Jordan.  Robert Montgomery stars as a boxer who crashed his plane on the way to a big prize fight, and is killed.  Only he wasn't.  It was a clerical error.  Or something.  He ends up having his personality placed inside another body, a man who has just been murdered.  The film was nominated for 7 Oscars (it won two--best story and best screenplay).  Mr. Jordan is a bureaucratic angel who helps the boxer get along in his new shoes.  Diverting, but not essential.

 

Leaving Criterion April 30th. 

 

Two films remaining, one of which is another BBC screen Two production, and the other the winner of the Oscar for best foreign film.  Stay tuned.  And it's almost time for the monthly books read summary, too. 

Mapman Mike

 

 

Routines Are Back

We've been home five days now, and are happily ensconced in our daily routines.  Piano practice has resumed, after travelling for 17 days in the past month.  Things weren't as ugly as expected!  The pieces are very close to being ready for the final phase before performance.  The group meets again May 5th.  After that I should be able to pick a date for a recital.  And reading took a bit of a beating for the past month, too, but I am forging ahead once again.  A new routine about to be started up is the mowing of very fast growing grass.  It has been an early spring; our white and pink lilacs are blooming already, as is the apple tree next door.

 

Last night was a Full Moon.  Though it rained all day yesterday and was very windy, it cleared up by sunset.  We saw the sun for a short while, and now the moon is up pretty high and is very bright.  We had a wood fire, made a chick pea chocolate brownie Moon Cake, and listened to Handel's Solomon, one of his finest operas.  A good time was had by all.

 

When we were in Sudbury we visited Cafe Obscura.  It used to be a cafe and film camera store.  It is no longer a cafe, but the film and cameras are still there.  I picked up some fresh 35 mm film.  Deb bought herself a super 8 movie camera.  It is in mint condition, and only cost her $20.  She has ordered film for it from Toronto, and wants try some film experiments with it to use as one of her projects.  My special little Rollei camera is now loaded with film again.  Of all the many cameras I have ever owned, that little Rollei takes the finest pictures of them all.  There is no zoom, and I have to set the exposure by hand, as they don't make the correct battery size for its light meter any longer.  Like the good old days, you have to set the focus, f-stop, and shutter speed.  Still my favourite way to take pictures, though the Polaroid camera is loads of fun, too.

 

I'm trying to collect images of my Dad for the upcoming memorial, to be shown in the background in a loop.  I have a pretty decent collection so far, and have yet to scan a bunch that I brought back from Sudbury.  

 

L to R: brother Stephen, Dad, Mom, and me, a really long time ago.  Lake Michigan in the background.  I think we were in St. Ignace MI. 

In movie news, there are a few to report.  My leaving April 30th choice came from Mubi.  The film is called Eve's Bayou, from 1997.  Filmed in Louisiana, it is a bittersweet look at one summer in the life of a family, mostly seen through the eyes of 10 year old Eve.  Her dad is an M.D., and is very unfaithful to his beautiful wife.  Eve has an older sister, 14, and a younger brother, 9.  The acting is quite good, the story seems true to life and very well told, and the setting authentic deep south bayou country.  It's seldom that such a sensitive and truthful look at a Black family that gets torn apart as a result of several things that happen.  The young girl and her aunt both have prescient powers, though nothing that finally happens in the film could have been foretold.  I was strangely attracted to this film, and would highly recommend it.  The kids in the story, especially the two girls, do a lot of growing up in a short time period.

Showing on Mubi until April 30th.

 

Deb's leaving choice also came from Mubi.  Blind Spot is a German film from 1981, directed by Claudia Von Alemann.  A woman leaves her young daughter and husband in Germany and travels alone to Lyon, where she tries to get beneath history and find some unknown and unsuspected truths about a 19th female workers' crusader.  She spends hours in a lonely and nearly empty city walking and visiting places where her historical heroine might have lived and walked.  She knows the facts of her life and her work, but wishes to somehow get beyond these to more inner truths.  She records sounds that might also have been heard at the time.  It is a search doomed to failure, something she finally comes to terms with at the very end.  The early morning summer street shots of an empty Lyon and its buildings, streets, and river would easily fill a very good photography book.  It is a meditative film to watch, but one keeps hoping that the woman might be able to better articulate what it is she wants to find.  She never really does, as she doesn't really know what she is doing, either.  What the film does show is how dry and lifeless a history of a person can be, even a fairly interesting person.  It often takes imagination to bring that person into full bloom, and only then can we truly imagine their experiences and their daily lives.  This woman seems to lack imagination.  Also, she wears the same expression all the way through the film, a neutral one best described as "beige."  It is a good film, though, with many memorable scenes, especially in the restaurant. 

 

Leaving Mubi April 30th. 

 

Lastly comes a nautical noir film from 1950 and directed by Michael Curtiz.  Called The Breaking Point, it stars John Garfield and Patricia Neal.  With his fishing boat excursion business doing poorly, Garfield takes an offer from the devil to transport some Chinese immigrants from Mexico to the US.  It doesn't go very well at all, leaving him even more desperate.  Next time he agrees to take four violent robbers out to a waiting boat.  They shoot his best friend as they cast off just after their robbery and throw him overboard.  Garfield is a war vet, and ends up taking them all on once aboard the boat and near Catalina Island.  A tense movie, and never has a man made so many poor choices and lived to tell the tale.  His relationship with Neal, a barfly, and his wife, a treasure, are quite interesting.  Similar in some ways to Key Largo, this one does go off in a few new directions.  Worth watching for.

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

I have managed to publish the first four entries from our deep south road trip last month.  The final segment, dealing with New Orleans proper, should be up tomorrow.  Look on my Road Trip blog page (left margin).

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

A Week In Sudbury Ontario

It has been many years since I have stayed 7 nights in Sudbury.  I was born there, living at home until age 22, when I married Deb and we moved to Windsor to attend university.  We used to come home for about six weeks in the summer, staying mostly at the family camp on Lake Penage.  But since the camp was sold many years go, we have only been back for shorter visits, to Sudbury itself at the family home.

 

The occasion this time was to spend time with Mom, helping her to go through Dad's belongings.  Most went to charity, though I came home with a few nice shirts, a cozy new bathrobe, a few books and records, and a sport jacket.  Mom is doing pretty well, though I doubt she has had much time to process Dad's passing.  Cards and flowers and visitors have kept her occupied.  Her sister will come and visit her at the end of April.  Mom will be 95 in one month, and still climbs three flights of stairs at home and does laundry, some cooking, and many other things.  We took her grocery shopping one day (she still insists on buying her own food), and to church for a mass that was said in my father's name.

 

Mom lives in the upstairs of a large 3-unit apartment building which she owns.  My brother Steve and his wife and daughter live below her.  The basement apartment has been a bar and TV room for a long time now.  Steve and his wife went for a week long cruise from Miami, so we came up north to stay with mom.  The weather was quite beastly a few days, so it was mostly an inside visit.  I read, we watched a lot of TV, went through Dad's things, looked at old family photos, and just talked.  Mom and Deb are both early risers, so they had conversations in the morning while I slept on.  A few days were quite nice, and Deb and I managed some hilly walks, mostly to a vegan cafe and bakery.

 

The household has a few channels that we don't buy, so we were able to catch up on some Star Trek series, and watch all 4 new Doctor Who specials, starring David Tenant and Catherine Tate.  there are in the first 3 specials; the 4th one stars the newest Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa.  While all four episodes were fun, they were pretty much even in quality, with nothing too exceptional.  It was nice to see Mel Bush back in action.  She was a companion to two much earlier doctors, and could scream mightily on command.

 

We watched the first episode of Picard, a series about the retired Star Fleet admiral.  it seems like he will soon be back in action.  We will likely subscribe to Paramount for a few months in order to watch the rest.  And we have now seen six episodes of Star Trek Discovery, finding it worth a look, too.  I watched the first two episodes on our flight to and from New Orleans last month, rewatching them on Mom's giant screen so Deb could see them, too.  We also watched the first episode of the most recent Lost In Space series, from 2018.  It looks promising, but as it is on Disney, we will not be seeing more until another visit to Sudbury. 

 

And finally we were able to watch Dune, the first half of the epic film directed by Denis Villeneuve, from 2021.  The director and writer were obviously heavily influenced by the exploits of T. E. Lawrence, and the film by David Lean.  The movie ends just as Jessica and Paul are being tried by the Fremen, to see whether they will live or die.  It is a good film, but not a great one.  Of course there is a lot of exposition, and comes pretty close to echoing Herbert's great SF novel.  But everything is so compressed that it is difficult to get a sense of epic.  Perhaps watching both halves together would be better, but even with this film we had to break it up over two evenings.  Fans of Herbert shouldn't have too much to complain about, and there is some hope that the second book might be filmed, too.  Now we just have to try and see Dune Part Two.

 

We watched this in Sudbury on CTV SF Channel. 

 

We have done so much travelling lately, especially driving.  Our New Orleans road trip in late March was followed by a long day trip to Ohio for the eclipse.  Then came Sudbury, which is 470 miles each way.  So for now we are done with major trips.  It's been interesting trying to maintain a full piano program during this time.  Today's practice has been a bit mechanical.

I'll finish up with another picture of Dad....

Dad in Greece. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

Eclipse Day

It was one of the great highlights of our adventurous lives.  We enjoyed a long stretch of totality, and came away stunned and imprinted by one of Nature's greatest spectacles.  I have written up a blog on my astronomy blog, found in the left margin under Deep Sky NGC.  There are several photos there, too.  We left home at 9:15 a.m., driving to Ohio to be in the central area of totality.  We were back home by 11:20 p.m., exhausted by the heavy traffic, but uplifted by what we had experienced.  It is unlikely we will ever see another one, but we certainly would like to.

 

We brought one of our smaller scopes to Ohio to view the eclipse.  We had a sun filter to observe with, and the glasses.  It is one of the most memorable experiences we have ever had.  Totally sublime.
 

 

We also finished playing/watching Syberia 4.  A game in 32 chapters, much of it is a movie with some puzzles thrown in.  Most of the puzzles are fun, while a very few aren't.  Overall it is a superlative game to play.  It takes place in a fictional fantasy Vienna-ish city, and the graphics are really superb.  The story, about Kate searching for her roots, is one of the very best in any game ever played.  It is by far the best of the 4 Syberia games, and is probably one of the top five games we have ever played.  If you are into PC gaming, this is one to run out and play immediately.  Benoit Sokal, the creator of the series, passed away during the making of 4.  The series seems wrapped up, and it is unlikely there will be another one.

3 screen shots from Syberia 4, a  truly amazing gaming experience. 

 

In movie news, there are two to report.  Apollo 11 is a documentary from 2019 by Todd Douglas Miller.  Using only archival footage and dialogue from the 1969 first human lunar landing mission, this story, for me, never gets old.  As the years pass and our technology zooms ahead faster than we can cope with it, it seems more and more impossible that this thing could actually have been done back then.  Five times successfully, no less.  A don't miss film, whether or not you were around for the actual mission.  One of humanity's greatest all-time achievements.

 

Leaving Mubi soon.  

 

Mambar Pierette is a 2023 film from Cameroon/Belgium, about a woman with three children trying to raise them and survive while working as a seamstress.  The father is absent and gives no support of any kind.  The film mostly takes place in her little shop, and her home.  One night both places are flooded in a bad rainstorm.  Then she is robbed of her day's earnings.  Her sewing machine breaks down.  Through all this she is stoic and calm outside, but reeling from the hardships inside.  Directed by Rosine Mbakam, somehow the film is not depressing, and becomes a fascinating window to life's hardships, and how people somehow manage to continue despite the things that come at them from all angles.  Highly recommended, the film is showing on Criterion.

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

Lastly came a weak Noir film called My Name is Julia Ross, from 1945.  A young woman is kidnapped and gaslighted, to replace a woman who was murdered.  As a result of the murder, family funds would soon be cut off.  So a replacement is needed.  Even though the woman (played by Nina Foch) is smart and tires everything to save herself, no matter what she does (until the very end), the bad guys are always smarter and a step ahead.  I soon grew frustrated with the film, and left before the end.  Deb managed to finish it, but said it just got very ridiculous at the very end.

 

A silly and not recommended flic showing on Criterion. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

April Arrives

 

Though it's colder than it was in early March, April is here!  Birds are tweeting (the real kind of tweeting), flowers are blooming (and freezing cold), and the Great Total Eclipse of the Sun is six days away.  Our house gets a 99% eclipse, so will head south to Ohio on the day of.  Weather so far looks cloudy.  We shall see.

 

I've decided to post a picture of Dad on every blog written in April, and maybe then some.  Today's picture is from his ski trip to the French Alps.  As a travel agent he was able to score many free trips, more than he could actually take.  So he could pick and choose, and he mostly chose well.  Dad was a skier (as was I), and he had his chance at the big leagues.  On this trip he was even given a helicopter ride to the top of a mountain, skiing down with a small, select group of skiers.  How cool is that?

 

Dad (3rd from r, no hat) in the French Alps.  

 

Brother Steve and sister-in-law Lynne have a cruise booked for April, so Deb and I will visit Mom for a week while they are away.  Hopefully it will warm up some before we arrive.  Sudbury is expecting a snowstorm tonight and tomorrow.  Sudbury has at least one good brewery, a vegan restaurant, a vegan cafe/bakery, and large hills for streets that we enjoy training on.  So there will be good eating and drinking, and enough exercise to wear it all off.  The drive is long, however, and involves bypassing Toronto, always a nail-biting event.

In movie news, there are three to report since returning from New Orleans.  The Marriage Circle is a film by Ernest Lubitsch from 1924, and one that we expected much more from.  It is a melodrama about a vamp trying to seduce a respectable doctor, who is happily married to his wife.  Meanwhile, his partner is putting the moves on his happily married wife.  And so it goes.  Expecting a comedy, there are virtually no laughs here.

 

The movie has left Mubi by now. 

 

We had better luck with Black Cat, White Cat, a Yugoslavian film from 1998.  Imagine Tex Avery making a feature live action film about small time grifters and gangsters, all of them quite mad.  The characters take time to warm to, but once they are ensconced in your brain, it's time to sit back and watch the madcap adventures.  Nearly every scene is like a wild cartoon ride.  The plot, such as it is, involves a gangster wanting to see his diminutive sister married.  Also, a grandfather wants to see his grandson married.  A Shakespearean comedy of errors and mismatches follows, until, at the very end, all's well that ends well.  We nearly gave up on this film after the first fifteen minutes, but went back to it and had a great time.  The director, Emir Kursturica, won the Silver Lion in Venice for this film, a followup to one he made that won at Cannes previously.

 

The film has left Mubi by now. 

 

Lastly came a Noir from William Castle called When Strangers Marry.  From 1944 it stars Dean Jagger, Robert Mitchum, and Kay Francis, along with Commissioner Gordon from Batman, Neil Hamilton.  Mitchum stars in one of his earliest films.  He couldn't be the bad guy, because he has a cute little doggie as a pet.  Or could he?  But Dean Jagger sure looks and acts like he murdered somebody.  But did he?  Kim Hunter loves him anyway, and aids and abets his escape and hiding.  the police don't seem to mind that she did this at all.  Not one of the great 40s crime films, but the little dog is cute, and so is Kim.

 

When Strangers Marry was also released under this title.  

Leaving Criterion April 30th. 

 

In piano news, my program, mostly memorized and complete, has been put on simmer for a time.  We were away 8 days to New Orleans, and will also be away again later in the month.  There is a performance group gathering this Saturday, but I will have to miss it this time (and likely next time).  So I am just trying to maintain the program for now.  In reading news, I have began the month again with Silverberg.  I have no more of his SF to read, so have switched to his pulp crime fiction for a few books.  I also found a Kindle copy of one of his historical books, the one about the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in New Mexico.  More than 90% of my reading is now done on Kindle.  

 

More news as it happens.

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

March 2024 Reading Summary

March saw us do a week of travelling, and though I managed to read some at airports and at night in hotels, I did lose a lot of reading time overall.  There were also several astronomy nights in there, where I traded my night time reading for star gazing.  Despite this, I managed to get through 11 books, one of them a slim volume of poetry.  So here they are....

 

This month included my last Silverberg SF reading.  All done.  Tout fini, as they say in Montreal.  This time I read the last volume of his short stories, published in chronological order.  So these were stories from the late 90s  up to around 2010.  VOLUME 9:  THE MILLENNIUM EXPRESS 1995-2009 contains 16 stories, each one introduced by the author.  Several are novellas, which was Silverberg's preferred length of story (70-90 pages, usually).  Many of the stories are quite poor and not really worth reading, but there were a few gems.  "A Piece of The Great World" is from 2005, and is 72 pages long.  This novella is directly related to Silverberg's brilliant full length novel series told in At Winter's End and The New Springtime.  He had plans to write a third novel in the series, but it never came to be.  However, a detailed outline was written, and this novella relates one part of that unfinished trilogy.  Though a good enough story, it cannot replace the missing epic novel we all hoped would be forthcoming one day.  The story takes place 200 years after people have left the long winter cocoons.  Readers get to fly across the country this time, and then visit part of the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, on an anthropological expedition to find the last remaining group of a vanished race.  The entire premise of the story is quite sad, though.  Well worth reading for fans of the two novels.  "Defenders of The Frontier" is from 2010, and is 40 pages long.  A depressing but well told tale that Silverberg wrote for an anthology of stories about warriors.  This would make a great little film, or even a theatrical live stage production.  11 men at a frontier outpost have lost contact with their home city over the years.  When no other enemies can be located, they contemplate leaving their fort and attempt to return home.  Well done!

 

Cover art by Tomasz Maronski.

 

Savage Scorpio is the 16th book of Kenneth Bulmer's Dray Prescott series, and the second one in the Valian Cycle.  Bulmer is now so comfortable with his Dray Prescott hero, as are we, that we can enjoy seeing his character trying to grapple with his own character development.  He considers himself a peaceful man, even as he goes about chopping up enemies with his sword.  These enemies, however, are usually asking for it, and attack first.  The ones who survive an encounter with Dray are usually conked on the head and put to sleep while he carries out various clandestine actions.  There is usually some form of humour on nearly every page, which also helps keep the pages turning.  In this adventure, the Emperor of Vallia, Delia's father and Dray's father-in-law, is being poisoned by enemies, and Dray and Delia must get him to the sacred pool in time to save his life.  There is no love lost between the two men, and Dray only helps because of Delia.  This adds to the frustration level of things for readers, for Dray is never thanked for his life saving heroic deeds, but it also adds to the humour, as the tense scenes between the two men are often quite funny.  As usual for each successive volume, we learn a bit more about the Star Lords, those mysterious figures who seem to control Dray as if he were their puppet.  This is another solid entry in the series.

 

From 1956 comes E. C. Tubb's Trail Blazers the kind of story that most people would recognize as a 'true' western.  It concerns a cattle drive from Texas to Cheyenne, Wyoming, before there were any cattle trails to follow.  Besides natural obstacles such as desert, gullies, rivers, mountains, etc. there were also Indians to consider, and an evil bunch of gangsters in Kansas called the Jayhawkers.  Once again Tubb's very enlightened view of Indians comes through loud and clear in the voice of his hero.  But that doesn't stop a lot of Indians from getting killed, as well as whites who get in the way of the drive.  One of my favourite TV shows as a kid was called Rawhide.  It starred a very young Clint Eastwood as the assistant head drover, and Eric Fleming as the man in charge.  It ran for 8 seasons and a total of 217 50 minute episodes.  The unforgettable theme song was by Dmitri Tiomkin.  Tubb's novel predates the series by 3 years, but is so close to the Rawhide series in spirit that it's hard to believe that it wasn't part of it.  As usual with Tubb, this is a good read, and not far from the truth of what the early west was like.

From 1995 come the first book in Michael Moorcock's Second Ether Trilogy.  It is called Blood: A Southern Fantasy, is 336 pages long, and is a truly awful book.  Mixing SF pulp fiction (the really bad kind) with some kind of avant garde style of writing, there isn't a single redeeming page in this unholy mess of a novel.  This isn't the first Moorcock novel this reviewer has panned, but I hope it will be the last.  There are four main characters, two men and two women.  They are gamblers, after the Earth has pretty much been swallowed up by a vast black hole sort of thing near Biloxi, MS.  After all, what else do people in Mississippi do but gamble.  Our heroes inject themselves into the Game of Time, and play for stakes that only Moorcock might understand.  As usual, it's Chaos against Law, and the gamblers are hoping to keep a balance in the multiverse.  So what.  Many reviewers of Moorcock are truly afraid to call him out when he goes off the rails and wastes our time.  This novel goes way off the rails (deep into the muddy Mississippi River) and wastes our time.  I dread the thought of reading the two sequels, and may not...

 

Lastly from the Avon/Equinox stable of writers comes the next book, Havana Hit, from 1974, in the exciting series of adventures undertaken by Burt Wulf, vigilante.  It is 154 pages and is book #5.  Formally of the NYPD narcotics squad, and before that a Vietnam veteran, Wulf is out to single handed take down the drug trade in America.  So far he is doing a pretty good job, too.  Though this one has its share of murder and explosions, and even a sort of car chase, it is a much more restrained story than the previous ones.  Leaving Las Vegas for New York with his valise of recaptured heroin, Wulf's plane is hijacked to--where else--Cuba.  Virtually everyone there who comes in contact with the valise becomes instantly corrupted by the financial possibilities.  Wulf wants his captured valise back, where he has plans to take it to New York, where it had been stolen from the evidence room at the precinct by a bad cop.  But he has his work cut out for him in Havana.  There is a lot more introspection and existentialism in this novel, mostly involving thinking about death.  Wulf is helped by an American freelancer, before ultimately being betrayed by him.  For the second time we see Wulf getting close to someone, but this relationship goes sour at the end.  As usual, Malzberg's writing can get the reader's blood flowing quickly and the heart pounding at times.  Chapters often fly past without readers even knowing they have begun a new one.  A good series so far, and definitely a guilty pleasure.  Still, it's not that much different from a good samurai tale.

 

Now we can move on to my collection of Delphi Classics writers, which seems to grow each month.  Moving alphabetically through the list of writers use to take about a year before I'd be back at the "A" authors.  Now it's more like a year and a half.  I began with a collection of 40 poems by Rabindranith Tagore.  Called The Crescent Moon, it is from 1913.  Several poems, each one about a page long, are accompanied by watercolour images done by friends, harkening back to the tradition of Indian miniature painting.  The earliest poems express feelings towards a new baby (which he compares to a crescent moon), while later ones give a child's perspective looking out towards mother and father.  "Authorship" is quite charming, as the child questions his mother as to why father is always writing at the desk.  They are easy to read, but offer no hint as to what is to come from this man's pen.

 

Next is Olaf Stapledon's third novel.  Odd John is from 1935, and purports to be a case study of a rare and unique child growing up in England.  The author acknowledges the influence of another British writer.  J. D. Beresford's The Hampdenshire Wonder is from 1911, and it's genius child, Victor Stott, is mentioned in Stapledon's book more than once.  Beresford in turn credits Jules Verne for influencing his writing.  Now we just need to establish who influenced Verne.   John's  life is short (he will die at 23, we are told near the beginning).  After 11 months he is finally forced from the womb, but is still premature and only just manages to survive.  He finally decides to walk at six years, and his talking starts late, too.  By ten he is a criminal and murderer, but manages to get his life back on track, though his 'experiments' continue on Homo Sapiens.  The narrator is a journalist, a friend of the family, and becomes John's companion in many of his adventures.  The book becomes much more interesting in the final chapters, as John and others like him establish a colony on a remote South Sea island.  Many races are represented, including two Africans, something I cannot recall from any other novels until recent time.  All are telepaths, and far beyond humans in most things.  In addition, these people are not just freakish in their intelligence, but also in their physical features, which are more than somewhat grotesque.  The main thing that the book makes clear is that a very few people are so far beyond being human in intelligence that they find it impossible to remain sane while living among them.  Stapledon, so far as I have read (first 3 novels) is not so much a storyteller, but a chronicler.  The difference between an author telling us a story and a journalist, if you like.  But he is a pretty amazing journalist.  This book is an odd one, like its main character.  It's difficult to put it into a category of SF, as like his two previous books, it pretty much stands alone.  Worth a read, especially if you sometimes feel like you don't really belong to society.

 

Jules Verne's From The Earth To The Moon was published in 1865.  Like other novels by Verne, this story is filled with the latest up to date science from its day, as well as geographical knowledge of America.  But it's not all about the science; the satire is priceless.  Parts of this book, especially the early chapters, are among the funniest things I have ever read.  Largely poking fun at Americans and their love of guns (some things never change), many other countries also take a hit, especially Britain.  But the author also pokes fun at France, Switzerland, Spain, and many others.  Having recently visited the Florida State Highpoint (345'), it is amusing to see the giant gun built atop a Florida hill over 1800' high.  Also at the time, the highest point in the American Rockies was 10,600', where a large telescope was needed to build to see the projectile once launched (!).  And that mountain was in Missouri!  But geography and science facts aside, Verne hits a home run with this fanciful tale of three men launched to the moon from Earth.  Great fun!  The sequel came later, and will be reported upon here someday.

 

First English edition cover art.

 

Next came another great old classic, H. G.Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, from 1896.  This is much more a horror story than a SF one, and indeed becomes quite horrifying at times.  Some of the atmosphere comes through well in the 1930s Charles Laughton version, but the book itself provides all the necessary inner pictures necessary to imagine the island, the doctor, and the native inhabitants.  There have been so many novels set on uncharted Pacific islands, but this must remain as one of the best of them.  What the storyteller has to go through by the end of the novel has to be one of the most harrowing adventures ever told in fiction.  Permanent damage is done to his pysche; even once back safely in London he can no longer view people as harmless and with the ability to love one another.  Moreau's vivisection experiments and his alteration of beasts into men would likely drive anyone mad.  Some parts are actually difficult to read.  A completely amazing and original novel, and one that I would likely read again.

 

The original cover from the 1877 edition. 

 

The Duchess of Padua is a five act play from 1883, and was Oscar Wilde's 2nd play.  It was written for a specific actress, who refused it.  The play has never done well, though in the late 1890s it played in New York for 3 weeks.  It reads like a weak Shakespeare entry.  The action centres around a young man who is groomed to avenge his father's death at the hands of a cruel duke, and the duke's wife, who falls in love with the young man.  It's all been written before, and there are no new lines of any value here, despite a bit of Wilde's wit coming through in the later acts.  It certainly shows promise, however, as the events, action, and writing show the writer to have been very well read and able to maintain a certain tradition and uphold its values.  But we must be patient.  Soon the Wilde we all know and love will be ready to show his stuff.

I finished up with an early Edgar Wallace crime novel called The Four Just Men, from 1905.  The story is about a small group of vigilantes who carry out assassinations of people worthy of being murdered.  In this case, an unjust law (in their humble opinion) is about to be passed in the British House, and they threaten to kill the minister in charge unless he retracts the bill.  Wallace stretches credibility somewhat in his attempt to make the four men super intelligent and infinitely resourceful.  However, in the end, while they do achieve their goals, they barely manage it, and one of them gets killed.  This is pretty good writing, and the pages turn almost on their own.  It helps that the novel isn't overly long.

Mapman Mike