Good Reads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.88 by 6784 litizens.
DNA: Brit; Species: Royalty.
Verdict: One liked it.
Tagline: Look what Santa Claus brought.
Members of the British royal family travel to Sandringham House on the Norfolk Coast for Christmas, where they have been many times before. The peace and quiet they seek is unsettled by a macabre discovery on the beach, teenage drug dealing, a hit and run accident or was it, and a death in odd circumstances. Sandringham sounds worse than Newtown on Saturday night.
While plod takes these events one at a time, with years of experience at the jigsaw puzzle of humanity, Her Majesty sees a whole, and sends forth her paladin, one time artillery officer Rozie to connect the dots.
Bennett makes the members of the royal family human, and in the main likeable. Similarly the local residents are several and varied. Nor are the police reduced to cardboard.
Still I niggle, Her Majesty seems to be in a hurry and has three direct confrontations that cut against her softy-softly approach. The sulky teenager who appears early on then disappears, and likewise the drug haul that misled the police also goes poof! There is also a reference to Greenland that had me consulting Google Earth to see if it made sense. Barely. Contrived.
Finally, I found it hard to keep the characters straight. Those with titles have three names: their aristocratic one, a birth name, and a nickname. It was like reading a Russian novel with patronymics, eponyms, retronymics, and nymbics.
For pedants only: Sandringham House is the personal and private property of Elizabeth Mountbatten née Windsor. It was purchased by her father and willed to her. Wikipedia says it has, get this, between 100 and 200 rooms! ‘Between.’ That made me wonder about all the staff. The maids, janitors, tradesmen to keep the place running. Then there are the grounds of the estate, which are extensive. Who pays them?
Third in the sequence and one hopes for a fourth in due course.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2h and 9m, rated 7.0 by 20,000 cinemtaizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Verne.
Verdict: Fun.
Tagline: What waits below?
Pretty sure I saw this on the wide screen as a boy, and marvelled at it. The character studies stand the test of time even if the special effects don’t. James Mason is, well, James Mason. He can’t act but he doesn’t have to. Arlene Dahl can and does. Then there is Pat Boone in his underwear. Something for everyone. Though I thought the villain wouldn’t scare fourth graders.
Declaration: I have tried to read Jules Verne and found his prose impenetrable. So mannered, so stiff, so roundabout, so ponderous, so unyielding that I did not make it past page 10 in either 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or Five Weeks in a Balloon.
There is a genre of JCE films. I count more than dozen on the IMDb using that exact title, and many others with variants.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1h and 30m, rated 4.1 by 2,000 extended family members.
Genre: JCE
DNA: Verne.
Verdict: Uncle! I gave up.
Tagline: Bore.
A consistently tedious rendering of the Jules Verne story. Made for television to eclipse a big budget version due out later that same year. In this mishmash, a corpulent child (actor) plays the romantic lead, disbelief was disbelieved right there. Later he is superseded by another as if the producers also disbelieved the early scenes.
Declaration: I didn’t make it to the end.
There is a cottage industry of JCE films. One day I might try to watch a few of them for a comparative perspective. Or I might hit my foot with a hammer instead. Hard to decide which would be less painful.
Eugene McCarthy: The Rise And Fall of Post-war American Liberalism (2005) by Dominic Sandbrook
Good Reads meta-data is 402 pages, rated 3.74 by 85 litizens.
Genre: Biography.
Verdict: Speaks Minnesotan.
Tagline: Hindsight aplenty.
I was looking for a biography of the man and found this to be the best bet, though the author specifically sets aside the label biography, still there is much biography in it.
Starting points:
1 born to farmers and farmed himself as a young married man
2 considered monastic life seriously enough to start on it for a year Benedictine
3 college school teacher
4 disciplined, serious, spare (no rhetorical flourishes), used to being in front of room of young people. – be on time, target, and budget (both as farmer and teacher)
5 ready to do the work without the limelight monastic modesty
6 compromise is a good not an ill, and necessary because everything is not malleable (farm)
7 In the US Navy he was a code breaker
Personally got on well with Southern conservative democrats as well as liberal Republicans like Harold Stassen. (And like Stassen he became addicted to running for president in later life.)
Got bored in four terms in House of Representatives so tried for the Senate with the support of organised labor and he unseated an incumbent Republican. Became easily bored and more ambitious, these traits stayed with him. The more he interacted with more senior leaders the more he saw himself taking a place among them: Ego now enters the equation.
The feet of clay that are relentlessly examined in this book show him to be a man who, finding things coming to him easily, developed hubris. All that is said, repeatedly, yet the fact remains he did what no one else would do in challenging a sitting president from his own party almost single handed at the beginning. He did indeed stand up alone.
Remind me who has done that since. As the Senator said himself as the dust of 1968 settled: ‘I may not have been the best man to make it [the challenge], but I was the only one who was willing to try.’
Of course, there was no chance he would secure the nomination from the Democratic Party as he often said himself. His purpose was to present an articulate, identify, and mobilise an alternative. That he certainly did. The dynamics of the following campaign in 1968 are many. First the incumbent president withdrew, and then another candidate was murdered. While that makes the whole thing seem chaotic, as the author shows and as McCarthy said many times first Johnson and then Humphrey would secure the nomination. What McCarthy’s campaign could do however was to influence changes in policy, program, and personnel.
At the outset his campaign had been single-issue of the Vietnam War, then with Johnson’s withdrawal it shifted to a campaign about the office of president itself to be less an executive and more a chairman of a board. McCarthy did not handle either the entry and then demise of Robert Kennedy with any intelligence or decorum, but then who did.
His campaign was disorganised and disjointed in itself with managers, writers, canvassers, and pollers coming and going. While funding was reasonable, talent was in shorter supply. But in any event McCarthy seldom took advice from members of his campaign. That led to frustration on both sides.
Somewhat inadvertently the author shows that the qualities that gave McCarthy credibility also meant he could not win. He was distant, aloof, intellectual, poetry-quoting and he just did not do the handshaking a candidate is supposed to do, but he did autograph the book I had. On many occasions late in the going when given a chance to state his case he simply replied ‘People know my position.’
In his personal manner he was detached and reserved rather like John Kennedy, whereas Robert Kennedy became a firebrand, often without focus. McCarthy’s appeal was cerebral; Robert Kennedy’s was visceral.
There is some speculation prior to Kennedy’s death that Humphrey and Kennedy would arrive at a stand-off in the convention, and McCarthy might then be a compromise both sides would accept: A straw in the wind of fate. This line is pursued on several alternative history web sites for those who wish to consider it.
Realising the cause was all but lost after June, he did less and less. Instead of handshaking at factories, school, or sidewalks, instead of prepping for interviews, instead of going here and there to meet labor leaders or black communities, he would read poetry, and worse, per our author, write poetry.
In paraphrase I’ll give his fellow Minnesotan Garrison Keillor the last words here on McCarthy:
He was the last man in American public life to quote from Yeats or Frost, and to do so because he had read their poetry not because a speechwriter had inserted it.
While this book more than once dismisses McCarthy’s poetry in 1968 both Time Magazine and the New York Times labeled him as that. In that whimsical manner that so irritates the author on his nomination papers in the primaries he often listed his occupation as ‘Poet, unpublished.’
Return to the Batcave; The Misadventures of Adam and Burt (2003).
IMDb meta data is 1h and 30m, rated 6.5 by 2,300 batfanatics.
Genre: Docucomedy.
DNA: Nostalgia.
Verdict: Batusi!
Tagline: Kapow!
Senior citizens Adam and Burt attend a charity fundraiser at a car museum, where the Batmobile is stolen right out from under their….selves. ‘Holy grand theft auto, Batfans!’ The elderly duo set off in pursuit of the krim(s) by foot, by car, by bus with the help of citizens they….reminisce about the good old days between popping ibuprofen.
Check that utility belt! It is a good natured reprise which it is hard not to like though the New York Times reviewer at the time managed to not like it. What a fuddy-duddy!
It is certainly more diverting than the ever so self-important retakes of the Caped One, Citizens.
IMDb meta-data is 2h and 7m, rated 5.3 by 198,000 cinematizns.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Hollywood.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: It cost so much to make, it must be good!
An insipid blend of Dune and Star Wars. I tried to like it, really I did, but I failed. I tried because a trusted source recommended it, then I realised this same source had recommended the shrill Valerian (2017) and the somnambulant The Tangle (2019). This makes three strikes; the trust badge for this source has been revoked.
A similar but much cheaper, less pretentious, more amusing telling of a like story is Vagrant Queen (2020) rated 5.4, which probably cost less than the catering budget for Jupiter Ascending.
Good Reads meta-data is 317 pages rated 3.66 by 3,658 litizens.
Genre: Satire.
DNA: D.C.
Verdict: Reality.
Tagline: They beamed him up, but not for long.
TV Host is the Prince of D.C., then…. His smug ever so polite attack journalism irritates a minion in an deep state agency so secret it may not exist. In a fit of pique Minion hits the keyboard and things are never the same for Host again, nor for Minion. Host’s wealth, his status, his influence, his marriage, his friends, his sponsors, his home, all are soon lost. But like Phoenix he rises to become leader of the Abductees Alliance. Yes, you read that right. The little Green Men got him and he is going to make them pay.
Meanwhile, rejected by the deep state for his ill discipline, Minion joins forces with Host to reveal…. But wait, it is not that simple….
Christopher Buckley
It is a satire on the D.C. establishment, but how can one parody what is already absurd. Buckley tries very hard to do so and does succeed in landing some stingers, but by and large, read today, it seems understated.
Oh, and when it is finally resolved the plot holes are big enough to accommodate the starship Enterprise.
Yes, of that Buckley, born with a silver keyboard in hand.
Good Reads meta-data is 255 pages rated 3.91 by 663 litizens.
Genre: Magic Unrealism.
DNA: North Woods; Species: Vermont.
Verdict: Picturesque.
Tagline: They went thatta way!
The escapades of the ever optimistic Quebec Bill and his coming of age son Wild Bill told in episodes. Many involve the unseen border between ‘Canady’ and US in the news now. Different taxes, different laws, different religions, different languages, different women, different police, are all reasons to cross that boundary, even in depth of winter. Some of their adventures defy one or more laws of nature, but suspend disbelief and go along for the roller coaster ride. Think of it as a cousin of Latin American magic realism with snow, ice, sleet, floes, sheer, piercing winds, hungry critters, and other wintry delights.
Quebec Bill comes up with one fantastic scheme after another, and each one…fails more spectacularly than the one before, but his glass remains half full.
***
This was Mosher’s first novel in the sequence of Kingdom County. I had read four or five others before I backtracked to this one. Ripley, the book explains a lot about both the Vermont Country Store and Bernie Sanders.
I couldn’t help thinking how fragile the ego of some readers must be when I read the comments on Good Reads from those who scored this book ‘1.’ They seemingly cannot let go enough to suspend disbelief. ‘Tant pis,’ as Quebec Bill might say. I have heard it said that it takes all kinds but I can’t see why in many cases.
Good Reads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.88 by 1,842 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
DNA: Thai.
Verdict: tour de force debut!
Tagline: Bangkok’s mean streets.
He has lived there long enough to speak Thaiglish and, more importantly, to learn the Bangkok glide and now aspires to sweat less. Yes he is a European ex-pat living cheap in Thailand, writing travel guides for the, ahem, adventurous rough travellers. He is tough and cynical, he thinks. Then he meets several people who give him masterclasses in being tough and cynical.
While I found both subject matters at issue repellant [guess], the reader’s nose is not rubbed into it, and I flipped some pages, but the ride is a mile-a-minute with some unusual (to this jaded hack) characters and unexpected twists and turns.
Bangkok itself is the major character, its human tides and lulls, its uneasy relationship with the eponymous river, its scorching days and hotter nights, its sex tourists, its Buddhist rectitude and venal corruption, its crowded streets and desolate corners, the human flotsam and jetsam that have beached there ….from typhoons , revolutions, wars, tsunamis, crimes, and more. The spine and title page but not the front cover have the subtitle: A Novel of Bangkok.
There are corrupt cops, another who quotes English philosophers, a reluctant and apologetic murderer, a murderous murderess war criminal, a sadist worse than the war criminal, a loving niece, two street kids, Go-Go dancer 47, a righteous seeker of vengeance, all in a rich mélange of characters. There are two plots that interweave but do not combine. Deft. There is no Great Attractor that brings everything together.
The aside on the woeful influence of Nescafé appealed to me because I saw the same thing in Greece, where its convenience displaced some of the best coffee in the world with brown glug.
It just about reads itself, and that is partly due to the very short chapters that speed along with energy on the page.
First in a series: Much as I liked this one I am not going to read another one soon. The repellent subject matters leave a long and unpleasant aftertaste. I have had this one on my shelf for a decade or more, the pages have yellowed, before I got around to it. When I got the first Kindle I switched to reading mainly on it, and only lately have gone back to my stash of paper books.
Timothy Hallinan
The Bangkok glide is to walk slowly and barely lift your feet leaning a few degrees forward as you almost slide/glide forward: Energy conservation in the perishing climate. Hero can work on that. As for sweating less, well maybe that is covered in the later volume of the series.
Good Reads meta-data is rated 3.82 by 4,917 litizens
Genre: krimi.
DNA: Finland
Verdict: TMI.
Tagline: DOA.
He went to the doctor with a headache and the doctor diagnosed something far worse. (See my review of the Brazilian short Instant Doctor elsewhere on the blog.) Hero finds that he has been irreparably poisoned and there is so much internal organ damage he has but weeks, perhaps days, to live. He sets out to find out who has killed him.
He suspects his unfaithful wife or her toy boy and …. Then his business rivals look like prospects. A satisfying array of red herrings are tested before he gets to the least likely candidate. Bingo!
This is a trope used before. The most vivid example I can recall at the moment is the film Dead on Arrival (1949).
