The Best of Best

The Best of the Best: 2017
By Julie Sara Porter Bookworm

2017 has been a great first year for the blog
I have had some very memorable reads. This is a list of my number one favorites in all categories this year. All reviews are intact as they were on the original blog entry.

Well two are the second reads because the number one pick was in another category as well. I hope you have had as enjoyable year as I have had. Watch for 2018 when the Bookworm Reviews will go through some changes.

Introductory Review "Best Book Friend": Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
How can I express in words what this book has meant to me my whole life? It seems that a blog of reviews could only begin with one of my all-time favorite novels, the one that I have read more times than other's, the one whose lead protagonist I have considered "my best book friend" (more on that later).

My journey with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass began when I was seven years old. I had seen many of the film versions such as the Disney version and a miniseries from 1985, but I had never read the whole book before. I finally ordered it in a book order form and felt myself transported to the world of madness, word plays, and goofy characters that in a strange way made sense to me. At first, I read it as an ultimate escape from the worries and problems of any normal school girl. I would read and imagine myself falling down the rabbit hole as it took me to this strange world and I could be alongside Alice having tea with the Mad Hatter, listening to the Cheshire Cat's instructions, playing chess with the Red and White Queen and having so many adventures.

As I grew older, I began to appreciate the book for its satire of Victorian conventions. I recognized the parody of Queen Victoria that could be found in the temperamental Queen of Hearts and the Duchess who was so fond of finding morals in things. I recognized the poems "You Are Old Father William" and "How Doth the Little Crocodile" make fun of poems that were meant to instill proper behavior. I also saw the lunacy behind rules such as "sentence first-verdict afterwards" and could see how they made no more sense than the real rules at the time.

Most of all, I recognize and pay tribute to the character of Alice. I have identified with her struggle going through Wonderland and Looking Glass World. She was a young lady who wasn't afraid to challenge rules that made no sense, argue with characters when they were rude to her, but she still continued to play the game. In many decisions, I feel that I have fallen down the rabbit hole or am playing an endless game of chess against opponents. I keep playing, but I hope that I can stop and think and be myself so that I don't lose sight of who I am through all the changes as Alice often does. I own a book called, You've Got to Read This Book in which people discuss the books that changed their lives. I know beyond a doubt that Alice has changed mine. That's why I call these books "my best book friend."

 Newbery Medal Winners: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (1963)- The Science Fiction Classic which follows the adventures of Meg and Charles Wallace Murry who search a tesseract for their missing scientist father is well-known. But many of the themes and characters still resonate today. The eccentric Mrs. Who, Mrs. What's it, and Mrs. Which are fascinating tour guides on this world of centaurs, mediums, and the Black Thing (,a dark cloud that is the symbol of all evil.) The science fiction worlds of L'Engle's classic compare to the enchanting worlds of OZ,. Middle Earth, Wonderland, and Neverland for the Reader to remember and long to visit. Underneath all this weirdness, the book has some strong themes about fighting against conformity as the Murrys take on the telepathically IT.

Favorite Feminist Literature 19th Century:  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The plot: Orphaned, Jane Eyre is abused by her aunt and cousins then is sent to a cruel Dickensian school for girls. After she grows up, she is offered a position as a governess to the ward of the wealthy mysterious, Edward Fairfax Rochester. While she tutors Rochester’s ward, Adele, and becomes fascinated by her employer, Jane hears unusual laughter and encounters mysterious circumstances in the house. These weird happenings threaten Jane’s happiness in the Rochester home and her and Rochester’s growing affection for each other.

Why it’s a favorite in Feminist literature: Jane is no wilting naïve Victorian heroine. Even as a child, she is not afraid to stand up for herself. She fights back when her cousin, John Reed bullies her and tells her cruel aunt, “I am glad you are no relation of mine.” When she gains employment with Rochester, she is not afraid to call him out when he manipulates her with a phony engagement even though she is in love with him.

 When she finds out that Rochester’s first wife is imprisoned in the house, mad, Jane refuses Rochester’s offer to marry him or live as his mistress. In all of her decisions, Jane displays a great deal of self-sufficiency and strength that allows her to fight against her antagonists even if they think of her as inferior because of her gender and her poverty. Only when Jane is able to become Rochester’s equal, and in some ways his superior, in the end does she accept his proposal.

I also highly recommend the novel, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which is the story of Bertha Rochester, Rochester’s first wife. She also has a passionate independent spirit that allows her to stand up for herself against antagonists like Rochester.

Favorite quote: Jane: “I tell you I must go! Do you think that I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?-a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drops of my living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soul and heartless? You think wrong!-I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you love leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you through the modicum of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the Grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal, as we are!”

Favorite Feminist Literature Early 20th Century-WWII
 The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The plot: Edna Pontellier, a dissatisfied married Creole wife and mother falls in love with a young man. Edna is awakened to the idea of her own desires and lives independently, becomes an artist, befriends an outspoken female musician, and engages in an affair with a known seducer. She worries that her new independent life is only temporary and agonizes about returning to her role as wife and mother.

Why it’s a favorite in Feminist literature: The book is filled with imagery about sleeping and awakening, which reflects Edna’s life before and after her transformation. Once she is awakened to the idea of being a liberated woman, she pursues this desire to the fullest. Edna discovers her sexuality in her affairs with Robert Lebrun and Alcѐe Arobin. She also finds fulfillment in her talent for painting and swimming. She awakens to being an independent woman.

While the book ends with Edna drowning, the plot and characterization suggests that Edna does not commit suicide so much as she is unwilling to return to the confinement of marriage even to the point of swimming to exhaustion.

Favorite quote: Narration: “There were days when (Edna) was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.”

Favorite Feminist Literature Mid-Late 20th Century; May-20 Favorite Books For Mental Health Awareness: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The plot: Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel focuses on Esther Greenwood, a brilliant scholarship student working at the prestigious Ladies’ Day magazine. Esther becomes overwhelmed by her work at the magazine, writing her thesis on twins in Finnegan’s Wake, her failed romances, and her failing relationship with her dim mother. Esther’s sanity ebbs, so she suffers a nervous breakdown and attempts suicide.

Why it’s a favorite in Feminist literature: Esther is the worst-case scenario of a woman who is so overwhelmed by her unhappiness that she cannot find her way out except to surrender. Many women who are mentally ill or engage in addictions or self-destructive behavior can completely relate to the struggles that both Esther and her author, Sylvia Plath felt.

Esther is not fulfilled, but she sees little hope in her future. Her self-consciousness against other women hamper her pursuit for a career. She also finds little romance and companionship in her relationships with men ending any possibilities of marriage. She wants so much in her life, but feels unable to pursue any of her goals and desires. She even wonders, “I wonder what terrible thing it is that I had done.” This inability to find satisfaction in her life leads to her psychological downfall.

Plath herself also suffered from mental illness until her suicide in 1963. Many of her poems recounted such emotional struggles as her unhappy marriage to poet, Ted Hughes, her difficulties with her parents particularly her father, and her struggles with her psychological state. Her writing made readers share her pain and suffering and explore what the mind of a brilliant, but troubled woman was like.

Favorite quote: Esther: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Eee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Atilla and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these fights were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Our Sides of the Story Alternate Points of View: November-Favorite Historical FictionMists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley Original tale: The Legends of King Arthur/La Morte D’Artur by Sir Thomas Malory;

The best alternate point of view tells of the Arthurian legends through the eyes of its female characters primarily Morgan Le Fey and Guinevere.

The two become a study in contrasts in their narratives. Morgan Le Fey, called Morgaine,

is trained on Avalon’s community of magical women. Her aunt, Vivienne AKA The Lady of the Lake rears her to study magic, practice divination, and honor the Goddess. Guinevere is trained in a rigorous convent where she practices Christianity but fears the outside world full of sin and what she deems as black magic. Morgaine is raised to be a powerful leader and advisor to royalty. Guinevere’s only goal is to be the wife of a king and possibly the subject of someone’s courtly love poems.

The religious and feminist aspects of the two characters come to a head in their involvements with Arthur. Morgaine and Arthur become involved in a pagan ritual which alternately fascinates but then disgusts Arthur when Morgaine bears their son, Gwydion (later called Mordred). Guinevere tries to get her husband to embrace Christianity and to honor no gods but the Hebrew-Christian one. Guinevere and Morgaine also have to deal with their romantic feelings for Lancelot in the former and Accolon in the latter.

The struggles between the two are fascinating to read as the known events of the Arthurian legends become turned around. The book’s best character is Morgaine who fights the male dominance of Camelot to protect her pagan beliefs and the connections to the Goddess.

15 Funniest Frivolous Literature to Bring Out the Fool
The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse-I always say that Wodehouse’s anthology is

the cure for what ails you. Every page is filled with hilarious situations usually involving upper-class twit, Bertie Wooster and his love-lorn friends all soliciting the help of Bertie’s valet, Jeeves. The plots are clever filled with madcap situations such as when Bertie finds himself unwittingly engaged to a horrible domineering woman. (The only way out is to convince her psychiatrist father that Bertie is mad).

Wodehouse’s writing and Bertie’s narration stands out. Bertie constantly waffles in his description, misquotes or forgets literary quotes, and makes a fool of himself when he tries to command Jeeves but often acquiesces in the end (usually involving Bertie’s fashion faux pas or Jeeves’ desire to travel). Many of the passages are laugh-out-loud hilarious even after multiple readings and are perfect for a beautiful spring day or a not-so-beautiful stressful winter day or any day that isn’t so beautiful or not-so-beautiful.

Favorite Quotes: From the original story, “Jeeves Takes Charge,” Bertie (after Jeeves tells him that he doesn’t approve of a checked suit that Bertie has selected): “Again there was that kind of rummy something in his manner. It was the way he said it, don’t you know. He didn’t like the suit. I pulled myself together to assert myself. Something seemed to tell me that, unless I was jolly careful and nipped this lad in the bud, he would be starting to boss me. He had the aspect of a distinctly resolute blighter.

Well, I wasn’t going to have any of that sort of thing, by Jove! I’d seen many cases of fellows who had become perfect slaves to their valets. I remember poor old Aubrey Fothergill telling me with absolute tears in his eyes-poor chap!-one night at the club, that he had been compelled to give up a pair of brown shoes simply because Meekyn, his man, disapproved of them. You have to keep these fellows in their place, don’t you know. You have to work the good old iron-hand-in-the-velvet glove wheeze. If you give them a what’s-its-name., they take a thingummy.”

Bertie (later after Jeeves has helped him out of an obstacle): “Oh Jeeves, about that checked suit.

Jeeves: Yes sir?

Bertie: Is it really frost?

J: A trifle too bizarre in my opinion.

B: But lots of fellow asked me who my tailor is.

J: Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.

B: He’s supposed to be one of the best men in London!

J: I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.

B: All right Jeeves, you know. Give the bally thing away to somebody.

J: Thank you, sir. I gave it to the under-gardener last night. A little more tea, sir?"

Favorite Poets & Lyricists to Sample For National Poetry Month: Poets Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Emily Dickinson lived an isolated life in her home of Amherst, Massachusetts. Indeed during the last 20 years of her life, she hardly ever left her home, often wearing the same white dress almost like a living ghost. However, Dickinson’s poetry left a bigger impact than she would ever have known in her lifetime.

Dickinson’s over 1,700 poems are mostly brief but they retain strong emotions and imagery throughout. Her poems like “Some Keep The Sabbath Going to Church” or

“I Never Saw Another Moor” are invocations to nature’s beauty in finding complex meanings to sunsets, insects like spiders and bees, or birds’ songs. She also wrote of emotions in her poems like “This is My Letter to the World,” or “I Felt A Funeral In My Brain” that describe speakers that get their hearts broken, grieve for deceased loved ones, or feel emotionally disconnected from everyone around them.

Dickinson revealed deep connections to the Spirit and the Mind, considering her inner thoughts better company than the fickle outside world.

Example “This is My Letter to the World” by Emily Dickinson

 This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

Favorite Poets and Lyricists to Sample for National Poetry Month: Lyricists

1. Bob Dylan (1941- )

In 2016, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Bob Dylan with the Nobel Prize in Literature, a much deserved recognition. Dylan’s lyrics gave voices to the anti-war movement of the ‘60s and still are relevant today.

His lyrics contain images that are unforgettable such as in “Blowin’ in the Wind” when the narrator asks “How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?” wondering about the futility of such gestures or in “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in which the narrator pleads for the older generation to understand and learn from their children.

Other lyrics such as “All Along the Watchtower” (most famously and excellently performed by The Jimi Hendrix Experience) portray dark Biblical imagery to convey a sense of fear, confusion, and imprisonment. Bob Dylan not only spoke for his generartion but for the later generations to come.
Example: All Along the Watchtower by The Jimi Hendrix  Experience

The Times They Are A-Changin' by Bob Dylan

Shakespeare in Popular Culture 20: Favorite Adaptations of the Bard of Avon

"The Mirror"/"City of Stone, Gargoyles

TV Animated Series Episodes; Director: (“The Mirror”) Frank Paur, (“City of Stone”) Michael Reaves, Teleplay: (“The Mirror”) Lydia Marano, (“City of Stone”) Brynne Chandler-Reaves, Lydia Marano, Cast: Keith David, Salli Richardson, Marina Sirtis, Jeff Bennett, Ed Asner, Thom Adcox Hernandez, Bill Faggerbake, Frank Welker (both), Brent Spiner (“The Mirror-“only), Jonathan Frakes, John Rhys-Davies, Kath Souci,

Neil Dickson, Emma Samms, Ed Gilbert (“City of Stone”-only)

Connection to Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth

There is a personal reason that I chose this as Number One: While I read Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth in high school, these episodes made me love Shakespeare’s works. I adored “The Mirror” and a day after “City of Stone” aired, I borrowed a book on Shakespeare’s plays from the library and instantly became hooked.

Anyone who grew up in the ‘90s remembers this brilliantly written and amazingly animated Disney TV series about gargoyles that turn to stone during the day and arise at night to protect Manhattan’s residents from villains. The series was quite intelligent bringing in characters from Shakespeare like Macbeth, Puck, and the Weird Sisters (the latter two are members of “The Third Race, The Children of Oberon, fairies” introduced in the series’ second season) into the mix giving the animated series a literary dimension not seen in many other cartoons before or since. The best episodes in the series, “The Mirror” and “City of Stone” develops the regular Gargoyles characters but also Shakespeare’s as well.

“The Mirror” is one of the funniest and the best episode of the series. After being defeated many times by the protagonists, Demona (Marina Sirtis) one of the show’s primary antagonists uses a magic mirror to summon Puck (Brent Spiner) and binds him in iron to obey her commands. She commands Puck to get rid of Elisa Maza (Salli

Richardson), the Gargoyles’ human friend and potential love interest for lead gargoyle, Goliath (Keith David). Puck turns Elisa into a gargoyle which Demona (who hasn’t seen the results of Puck’s transformation) tells him to do the same to the rest of Manhattan. When she sees an island filled with humans-transformed-into-gargoyles, an incensed Demona demands that he turn the gargoyles back into humans, which he does-to Goliath and his clan.

This episode is filled Shakespearean comedy concepts of mistaken identity and confusion, such as when they are under a spell Elisa and the Gargoyles believe that they have always been a gargoyle or human. There is also the idea of transformation that is so paramount in Shakespeare’s comedies. A scene that illustrates this is when

when the bemused Gargoyles first see the island filled with gargoyles wearing clothes, shopping, and riding subways (including a trio of pretty female gargoyles giving the younger clan members the eye). “It’s kind of weird, neat but weird,” says Lexington (Thomas Adcox-Hernandez). Of course the episode pays tribute to Shakespeare’s romances in a scene in which Goliath looks at Elisa’s gargoyle form and says that “(he) never noticed how beautiful (she) was.” “You mean I was ugly before?” Elisa teases.

Above all, the scene stealer in the episode is Spiner’s Puck who is clearly having a good time throughout playing on Demona, Elisa, and the Gargoyles. In the end, he emerges the victor, as he gives Demona a parting shot that changes her throughout the rest of the series.

If “The Mirror” is a winning tribute to Shakespeare’s comedies then the four-part story arc, “City of Stone” is a memorable tribute to Shakespeare’s tragedies using Macbeth

(John Rhys-Davies) as a centerpiece. Demona is once again planning on using magic to attack the humanity of Manhattan, this time by turning them into stone at night by chanting a spell on television. The Gargoyles are determined to stop her, teaming up with multimillionaire/antagonist, David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes). Meanwhile Macbeth and The Weird Sisters (eerily played by Kath Souci) are observing the situation with their own private agendas.

While the modern story is solid and suspenseful, the highlight is the flashback storyline which details the backstory between Demona and Macbeth. The show’s writer's reference

Shakespeare’s portrayal of the Scottish king by surrounding the storyline with the magic, fatalism, and sinister aspects of the play, such as when The Weird Sisters (here fairies instead of human witches), prophesize that both Macbeth and his cousin, Duncan will become kings and fathers of kings.

The writers also acknowledge the historic Macbeth, by revealing the king as a wise and just ruler and Lady Macbeth as a loving wife who are undone by the brutish Lord Gilcomgaine and the scheming Duncan whom Macbeth wants to seek revenge against for murdering his father and attempting to murder him.

 Demona also is involved in the life of Macbeth by aiding Macbeth in attacking his enemies for her own benefits waging war against humanity for the betrayal and murder of her clan-a betrayal that she helped arrange. The two become further linked in a pact with the Weird Sisters that makes them immortal until one destroys the other. In writing the backstory of Demona and Macbeth as figures who seek vengeance and justice ultimately bringing about their own ends, the writers of Gargoyles play on one of ShakespGgeare’s tragic themes of characters that bring destruction to themselves by their own behavior and choices.

Favorite Books For Mental Health Awareness Month (#2)
Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America by Elizabeth Wurtzel (1996)-Descriptions of: Acute Depression

Elizabeth Wurtzel's autobiography is the best description of depression and how it is a long continuous process that effects every aspect of the depressed person's life.

Wurtzel's first encounter with depression began at summer camp when she was 12 and lay in her bunk, listening to Bruce Springsteen, and overdosing on medicine. The depression continued throughout Wurtzel's life in school as she challenged her absent father and her argumentative mother after their divorce.

Wutrzel's depression worsened when she attended Harvard University where she took too many drugs, had affairs with men who broke her heart, and traveled from one place to another from one job to another hoping to find some semblance of peace and happiness.
 The symptoms are well-written. Sometimes Wurtzel's despair gave way to frenzied activity, particularly during her time working at the Dallas Morning News where she enthusiastically jumped from one article to another. She later learned that behavior is not uncommon among people with depression when they are in an upswing, when things are going well.

Wurtzel describes her depression with depth and understanding. When she related her problems to friends, particularly her former roommate, she is aware that she comes across as annoying to them. She knows that to people who don't have depression, those that do can seem irritating and emotional. All Wurtzel knew was that she couldn't control her feelings and needed help.

Wurtzel even retains some humor in her situation, particularly in her epilogue. Recovering from her depression with the assistance of therapy and Prozac, Wurtzel is bemused by the publicity Prozac received in the 90's media and how many people revealed their struggles with mental illness, citing the suicide of Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain. She contemplates the issues in society such as economic uncertainty and unhappy home lives that cause mental illness and believes more could be done to help such people so their depression doesn't lead to suicide.

20 Favorite Books About Hollywood: Fiction

 What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg (1941)- There are certain literary characters where even if you have never read the work, there is instant identification. An overtly optimistic person is called a " Pollyanna" even by those who have never read Eleanor H. Porter's novel. Butlers are often referred to as "Jeeves" even by those unfamiliar with P.G. Wodehouse's writings. ( and are unfamiliar with the fact that in those works, Jeeves was a valet not a butler.) Another one of those identifiable characters is " Sammy Glick" eponymous anti-hero of Budd Schulberg's brilliant character study novel. The name "Sammy Glick" conjures up images of a sleazy Hollywood backstabber/ con artist who schemes his way to the top. While all that is certainly true of Sammy, like many characters whose names become shorthand for a personality type or concept,  Sammy is a much more fascinating and multifaceted character in the original context.

Sammy first enters the life of the book's narrator, Al Manheim as a 16-year-old copyboy at the newspaper where Al works as a drama critic. Noticing Sammy running from one station to another never stopping causes Al to ponder the book's title,  "What Makes Sammy Run?" ( Running is a constant theme as Sammy runs from place to place job to job to reach success.) Al watches appalled and fascinated as Sammy rewrites one of Al's columns, gets his own radio column next to Al's, then steals a screenplay from Julian Blumberg, a naive screenwriter. Sammy passes the work off as his own earning a Hollywood career as a screenwriter and later producer and abandoning a sweet doting girlfriend in the process.

While Al acquires his own screenwriting career and becomes romantically involved with fellow writer, Kit Sargent, he still observes Sammy'meteoric rise to fame.  Al chronicles Sammy's story with bemusement, contempt, derision, and maybe a touch of awe and protectiveness over the man who wouldn't hesitate to screw someone over but thinks of Al as his best most honest friend. Sammy continues to use Julian as a ghostwriter passing off Julian's work as his own ( and paying Julian a pittance under the table for his efforts) and when he displays his first major Hollywood play with much success, only Al notices that it's a blatant rip-off of the Broadway play, the Front Page. Sammy also schemes to conquer the Screenwriter's Guild and conspires with film and business executives to have elderly studio mogul, Sidney Feinman removed and Sammy promoted in his place. It becomes almost a running gag throughout the book that everywhere Al goes throughout Hollywood he either hears Sammy's name or runs into "the little ferret himself."

If the book had just been about his schemes to get ahead, Sammy would just be a contemptible little worm of a cardboard character. Luckily Schulberg took as much care in writing Sammy as he did in his victims. This is shown best in the chapters when Al returns to New York and visits Sammy's impoverished Lower East Side childhood home. Visiting with Sammy's widowed mother, resentful brother, and former bullying classmates gives Al insight to not only Sammy's upbringing but the upbringing of other Sammy Glicks out there, young poor hungry people wanting desperately and doing whatever they can to get a better life. While it doesn't make Sammy sympathetic or even likeable Al and the Reader both begin to understand him more and realize why he chooses to act as he does. Sammy is still a contemptible little worm, but an understable contemptible little worm.

Another scene that makes Sammy a believable character is the final chapter when Sammy thinks that he has everything he could possibly want and in one final confrontation with his sophisticated newly wedded wife realizes that he, the player, had been played. He is filled with the hollow realization that his successful life is only temporary and that there is always someone younger, hungrier, more ambitious, another Sammy Glick, waiting to take his place.

20 Favorite Books About Hollywood: Non-Fiction
1. You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again by Julia Phillips(1991)- One thing we can say about Julia Phillips' tell-all. It's​ title is dripped in irony and foreshadowing. Shortly after the book was published, Phillips was denied service for life in Morton's, a swank restaurant. However, Phillips' bitingly honest and witty memoir proves the adage that if you go down, you might as well go down in flames.

Julia Phillips was the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Sting, and was the producers of  Academy Award nominated films, Taxi Driver and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, her book is less about her successes than it is about her struggles with cocaine addiction, living the high Hollywood life in the '70's, and her relationships with the members of New Hollywood which she calls " a Rogue's Gallery of  Nerds."

Her book is honest about her own problems. She wrote that she spent Oscar Night 1976 high on a variety of drugs. That her frequent drug use interfered in her relationships with men especially her former husband and business partner, Michael and enabled her to be involved with an abusive drug dealer, she called "Rottweiler"

She also has a lot to say about the Hollywood crowd. Some gossipy like Goldie Hawn ("always dirty but you have to love The Giggle."),  actresses, Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt ("best friends and roommates until they fell out over a man.") Some more serious like Martin Scorcese ("complete mysoginist.....only hired Cybil Shepherd for Taxi Driver because he loved her ass."), Richard Dreyfuss (always getting Phillips to try new drugs like one called "The Green."), and Steven Spielberg whom Phillips shared more than a love of filmmaking.

While there are plenty of targets for Phillips' rancor, two men in particular stand out: director/actor, Francois Truffaut and head of the Creative Artists Agency and Hollywood Power Player, Mike Ovitz. Truffaut earns Phillip ire after he pens an open letter accusing her of being unprofessional and difficult to work with on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind which he featured. Phillips wrote that she spent a great deal of time working with Truffaut's accent and paying him concessions. The fight becomes a factor along with an expanded. budget and Phillips' frequent drug use that causes Phillips to be fired from Close Encounters during post-production thereby ending Phillips' once promising career.

Phillips spent the'80's trying to revive her career but getting rejected for one picture after another such as Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire. She only produced one film,. The Beat, which was a critical and commercial flop. She blamed much of her inability to find work on the "Hollywood Boy's Club" particularly agent, Mike Ovitz whom she accused of sexism.
She implied that if she were a man, she would have been forgiven for past sins and produced a blockbuster. Phillips also blamed Ovitz for the decline of filmmaking in the'80's because of people like him who cared more about profit than about artistic challenges.
 Many debated and challenged her claims. Some defended her. Richard Dreyfuss has gone on record to say the truth was far worse. One thing that can be said: Until her death in 2002, Phillips stuck to her claims and never refuted them proving that she had the last word in the end

20 Favorite LGBT Books For Pride Month: Fiction
1. Maurice by E.M. Forster (1971)- On his deathbed, E.M. Forster left the complete manuscript of his final novel originally written in 1915, , Maurice with a note that said, "Publishable, but is it worth it?" Well, the short answer is, "Yes." The long answer is that this is a beautiful story about a young Englishman coming to terms with his sexuality in repressive Edwardian England and challenging expectations by daring to have a happy ending.

Maurice Hall, a confused snobbish Cambridge student befriends Clive Durham, a handsome freethinking gentleman who talks about Plato and religious philosophies. The duo's friendship evolves to near physical touch until one night when Clive unguardedly confesses that he loves Maurice. Bewildered at first believing this declaration to be "rubbish", Maurice leaves his friend with a kiss and a return of his affection.

Maurice and Clive's relationship becomes merely Platonic, involving sharing of words and ideas and very little else. Just as abruptly as it began, Clive's relationship with Maurice cools, the one weak spot in the book. (The equally well-done Merchant-Ivory 1987 film gives a further reason for Clive's rejection of Maurice: the arrest and disgrace of a friend for sodomy giving more understanding to Clive's decision and also more admiration for Maurice's later actions.)

Clive settles into public life and politics on  his country estate and married life with dizzy heiress, Anne Woods. Maurice is devastated and seeks help from others( His family doctor tells him not to let the thought enter his head. A hypnotist urges him to adopt manly poses:. "Stroll around with a gun.") It is not until Maurice falls in love with and sleeps with the assistant gamekeeper, Alec Scudder that Maurice becomes awakened to the idea of true love.

Some of the best passages are Maurice and Alec's time together particularly when Maurice tries to convince Alec to remain with him instead of moving to Argentina like he initially planned. Their reunion, plus the conversation Maurice has with Clive where he can't " hang his whole life on the five minutes (Clive) can spare on ( Maurice) between Anne and politics."is the stuff of good romance.

There have been criticism over the years whether Maurice and Alec's would have a chance of being happy ever after. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert's wrote "in a few weeks or months the British class system would have driven them apart." Forster wrote that when he showed his book to friends, some gave them six months at most. There are two reasons to dismiss the naysayers. 1)Forster believed there should be a happy ending. In his afterward, Forster wrote "I was determined that in fiction anyway two men  should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense Maurice and Alec's still roam the Greenwood." 2) Maurice Hall and Alec Scudder were based on a real-life couple, friends of Forster's. Edward Carpenter, a writer and philosopher and George Merrill, a working class man, lived together as a loving, for all intents and purposes, married couple for over 30 years. Sometimes truth can go hand in hand with fiction

Favorite LGBT Books For Pride Month: Non-Fiction
 And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts (1987)-As many know AIDS does not only affect members of the gay community, it affects everyone. However it was first identified within gay men in 1981 and unfairly, they have been tarnished with the disease ever since. Randy Shilts' groundbreaking book peels open the early years when AIDS was first identified. The book becomes not a comedy but a Tragedy of  Fatal Errors and Missteps when public ignorance, scientific arrogance, and denial from the Reagan Administration created a perfect storm of an incurable epidemic.

During the early years, there was little progress made to identify or contain the disease let alone cure it. Shilts wrote of various attempts from individuals to receive funding, but being turned  down and the CDC fighting a disease that they know little about. Arrogance is abound from various immunologists and retrovirologists, such as Dr. Robert Gallo who care more about getting their names heard than helping sick people. Because of the backbiting and arrogance, it takes many years for the HIV virus to be identified.

The book also finds blame in the Reagan Administration and from the Religious Right who  tasted political power on behalf of  the Conservative government. Reagan never referred to AIDS in any of his speeches until 7 years into his Presidency and offered very little support to services that tried to help AIDS patients. Many Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant felt that AIDS was punishment from God and that the gay men brought it on themselves.

Shilts also points at the media giving the disease very little attention referring to people who died from it as "from unknown circumstances" or "possibly cancer." By comparison the Tylenol Scare of 1982  which killed 7 people received one article everyday from the New York Times through the month of October of that year. It is only after heterosexuals and actor Rock Hudson ( who was believed to be heterosexual through most of his lifetime.) succumbed that the Media began printing articles on the disease that had been in existence for over five years prior and had already affected over thousands of lives.

The book also found blame within the gay communities. Many were in denial that they had the disease wanting to go on with their lives having sex with multiple partners. Many members of the gay leaders such as Bill Kraus wanted the bathhouses to close so casual sex could be avoided and many fought to keep them open calling Kraus "a sex Nazi." Then there's Gaetan Dugas, a French-Canadian flight attendant who was rumored to be "Patient Zero," the person who may have brought the AIDS virus to North America.  ( More recent findings since the book's publication dispute Dugas' role in spreading the virus.) Dugas is portrayed as a sociopath who not only is aware he has a dangerous virus but eerily displays his lesions to future conquests saying, "I'm going to die and so are you."

Besides the rage, fear, and sadness And The Band Played On is filled with stories of warmth and compassion. There is the story of San Francisco grandmother, Frances Borchelt who was lovingly cared for by her husband and family. Matt Krieger who wrote in his journal about his tender nursing towards his lover, Gary Walsh and his caregiver fatigue in caring for him. There is also the moving story of Cleve Jones who exhausted from fighting his gay colleagues, the media's lack of attention, and the HIV virus itself became an alcoholic. He recovered from his alcoholism and created what is unquestionably the symbol of AIDS, The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

20 Favorite Non-Fiction Books About American History: Specific Event
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963 3^rd Ed. 1997)

Subject: Feminism, Second Wave, National Organization for Women, Women’s Suffrage-Chapter  4 The Passionate Journey

1957-1963 (Chapter 4-1846-1920)

Like many important works in history, The Feminine Mystique gave voice to a problem and allowed people to articulate and organize. No one could formulate problems with the environment until Rachel Carson told us to imagine a Silent Spring. No one recognized the violations inside slaughterhouses until Upton Sinclair’s protagonists experienced them in The Jungle. And the problems that suburban housewives felt was not recognized until Betty Friedan brought it to life in her controversial, but thought-provoking and memorable book, The Feminine Mystique.

Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), interviewed several of her fellow graduates from Smith College and saw that many of them shared the symptoms of what Friedan called “The Problem That Has No Name”: listless expressions, boredom with their lives, and a desire to end the boredom by turning to drugs, alcohol or other means of self-gratification. Friedan writes, “The problem lay unburied unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction,  a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches  with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night-she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-‘is that all?’’

Friedan called to task many that have contributed to the creation of the Feminine Mystique, including media representation. She cited the magazines that feature short stories and articles about women who have the ultimate goal of finding and keeping a husband and managing their children. (As compared to early articles and short stories from the 1930’s where while romance was a key factor to the stories, the most important plot points usually involved the female characters finding success in their careers).

Friedan also cited the different portrayals from actresses when one generation sacrificed the gutsy career women popularized by Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Rosalind Russel, in favor of the dizzy kittenish innocents played by Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, and Brigitte Bardot.

Advertisement also contributed to the Feminine Mystique because of the advertisers’ awareness that women were the main consumers in the home. “Why is it never said that the really crucial function, the really important role that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house,” Friedan writes.

Many of the ads displayed women using cleaning and baking products and gaining satisfaction with how they helped them in their housework. She also refers to ads like fur coats, perfume, and jewelry that were meant less to make the woman happy than to turn her into a sexual creature to arouse her husband.

Even the educated women who attended college to get degrees were not free from the Mystique, Friedan discovered. Many of the textbooks rigorously followed the beliefs of Dr. Spock, Sigmund Freud, and Margaret Mead who felt that women’s role was to function in the home.

Many of these women were only interested in attending college to find husbands. Others thought that their classes were boring, and slept through their studies considering their education “not worth it” if they weren’t going to pursue any further learning after graduation. Friedan listened to bull sessions between young female students that were hardly the sessions of Friedan’s college years where topics like “art for art’s sake,” America’s involvement in politics, and surrealism were discussed by women wanting to be part of the larger world around them.

 Instead, these sessions featured students comparing engagement rings, discussing future intendeds, and what their home was going to look like. Unfortunately, Friedan would find  that these same women would years later regret their lack of education and wish they had learned more for themselves rather than stifle their learning to raise a family.

Some of the most fascinating aspects of the book show what happens to the families when the women were trapped by the Mystique. Some turned to tranquilizers and alcohol to cope with their boredom. Others had affairs or dreamed of them to achieve some form of sexual satisfaction.

The more frightening accounts were from two women who had deep psychological problems: One woman would lie down and stomp her feet in a temper tantrum before she slashed her wrists in an attempted suicide and another woman performed her housewife duties such as arranging her daughter’s birthday party before she hung herself.

Since Friedan conducted her studies in the 1950’s around the same time as the rise of juvenile delinquency as seen in films like Rebel Without a Cause and The Blackboard Jungle, Friedan found correlations between this rise and the mothers who were trapped, unfulfilled, and fallen into a stupor from “the problem that has no name.”

Besides identifying the problem, Friedan offered probable solutions such as encouraging women to work outside the home and for husbands and wives to divide the household labor, so no one feels slighted. Some of Friedan’s views are outdated (particularly her view of homosexuality which would later lead to division in NOW led by author, Rita Mae Brown). She also limited her research on middle-upperclass white women and did not focus as much time on lower class women or minorities.

However, the Feminine Mystique was a landmark book in American History because it kick started the feminist movement and  showed what was behind the scenes of these suburban homes and revealed that all was not pleasant inside.

 20 Favorite Books About American History: General Events
: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn (1980 5^th ed. 2003)

A People’s History of the United States could be considered the older sibling of Lies My Teacher Told Me. While James W. Loewen wants high school students, teachers, and text book authors to look at history differently, Howard Zinn wants everyone to look at American History differently. In this eye-opening thought-provoking and sometimes controversial treatment of history, Zinn tells the story from the point of view of Native Americans, African-Americans, women, European immigrants, lower class workers, and just about anyone and everyone who has ever been slighted by previous accounts of American history’s parade of dead rich white men.

Zinn uses various primary and secondary sources to capture these various voices and he captures them well. When the Puritans declared war on the Pequot tribe bragging about their kill of 600 tribes members, one account reads that the Pequots learned three things: “That the Englishman’s most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage, that the English way of war had no limit of scruple or mercy; and that weapons of Indian making were almost useless against weapons of European manufacture. These lessons the Indians took to heart.”  Those lessons that the Native Americans took to heart lead to many centuries of displacement and near extinction of the Native tribes.

Many chapters report on mutual distrust between the Native Americans and their conquerors who originated from Europe even after the United States was formed. When many Presidents sent representatives to the tribes describing them as “Children” to the President as “Father,” the tribes were less than responsive. When William Henry Harrison faced Tecumseh, his translator told the chief “Your father requests that you take a chair.” Tecumseh replied “My father! The sun is my father and the earth is my mother; I will repose upon her bosom.”

Another told President James Monroe after he argued for the tribe’s removal: “I’m sorry I cannot abide with the request of my father…We wish to remain here, where we have grown up as the herbs of the woods; and do not wish to be transplanted into another soil.”

Zinn also speaks of the treatment of black people and when they arrived in America. They already had a disadvantage being removed from their country and forced into slavery leading to centuries of racism, oppression, anger, and mistrust between blacks and whites.

 “The Indians were on their own land,” Zinn writes. “The whites were in their own European culture. The blacks had been torn from their land and culture, forced into a situation where the heritage of language, dress, custom, family relations was bit by bit obliterated except for the remnants that blacks could hold onto by sheer, extraordinary persistence.”

They also used their sheer extraordinary persistence to challenge their enslavement even while still in Africa where one trader reported that some of the captives leapt out of canoes, boats, and ships and drowned rather than submit to being caught.

While resistance was controlled and slavery remained from the 17^th century to 1865, African-Americans rebelled by running away, organizing slowdowns, and fighting back. In 1742, seven slaves were put to death for murdering their masters.  

While slavery had ended in the North after the Revolution, it continued in the South. Benjamin Banneker, a black man who was appointed by Thomas Jefferson to plan the new city of Washington appealed to the President to “embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevails with respect to us.” Of course it would take until 1863 when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation for this to become a reality and even through the Civil Rights movement for African-Americans to be given equal treatment under the law. (something many

 are still fighting for to this day.)

Zinn’s book takes a comprehensive look at other groups as well. Women were looked upon as inferior-only good for their biological role as childbearers. White women were often coddled by their parents and later husbands.

Black and Native women were often used for sexual gratification or to breed more slaves. Linda Brent (later known as Harriet Jacobs) said that “My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import.” Women were deprived of any possessions, even propery. The husband was entitled to her wages, and joint labor of the husband and wife belonged solely to the husband.

The status of women was pretty dismal as Catherine Beecher wrote of the difficulties that mill girls in Lowell, Masssachusetts had to live through working 12 to 16 hours in front of dangerous machines and Frances Trollope wrote of the ennui of the upperclass Philadelphia women.

However, some women led early feminist acts such as Elizabeth Blackwell, who attended medical school despite derision and became a doctor, Lucy Stone, who upon her marriage kept her maiden name, and Amelia Bloomer, who made famous the long pantaloons that would bear her name.

The crowning moment of the early Feminist movement was the 1848

 Seneca Falls Women’s Convention in which Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott rewrote the Declaration of Independence by saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.”

Among the most famous speeches of the “First Wave of Feminism” is from escaped slave Sojourner Truth who said that no one ever helped her into carriages, that she had ploughed, and planted, bore 13 children, worked as much as a man always asking “A’n I a woman?”

Zinn also writes of the problems of workers many of which like the Lowell Mill Girls in 1847, shoemakers of 1844, and the Mechanics Association in 1860 went on strike to speak out against their ill treatment, dangerous conditions, and low wages. In what he refers to as “The Other Civil War,” Zinn tells how the strikes continued through the early 1860’s by America’s poor who began to feel slighted and unheard. The Fincher’s Trades’ Review wrote in November 21, 1863 a list of activities from various unions including “The City Railroad employees struck for higher wages, and made the whole population for a few days, ride on ‘Shank’s mare’” and “The lithographic printers are making efforts to secure better pay for their labor.”

In 1877, during a series of railroad strikes particularly in St. Louis and New York among other places resulted in several riots and over 100 people dead, 1,000 in jail but 100,000 workers had gone on strike and roused other workers. This resulted in concessions from the railroads, but strengthened their “Coal and Iron Police” against the strikers and led to Congressional railroad regulation and the advents of the Robber Barons and Tycoons. Zinn wrote that while 1877 people paid attention to the workers, the working people “learned they were not united enough, not powerful enough, to defeat the combination of private capital and government power.”

The 20^th century proves interesting accounts of anti-war movements. While the people who protested the Vietnam War are well documented, not many Readers may know about those who protested the World Wars. In the summer of 1917, Socialist Party members called America’s declaration of being involved in WWI “a crime against the people of the United States.” When Woodrow Wilson passed the Espionage Act, Charles Schenck was arrested for printing and distributing leaflets that denounced the draft and the war. Zinn writes that about 900 people were arrested under the Espionage Act, but this statistic was buried under the rug of “military bands, flag waving, the mass buying of war bonds, the majority’s acquiescence’s to the draft and the war.”

Popular Culture during WWII focuses on the support for it. Many call it “The Good War” or considered it one of against the evil of Hitler and his Nazis. No American could have possibly been against it could they? Zinn writes “The atmosphere was too dense with war fervor to prevent them to be aired.”

Zinn suggests that many of the protesters had a lot to protest about particularly America’s early relationship with Germany and Italy. While the Americans would later be at war with Germany, their previous policies allowed the Germans to gain ground in the countries that the American

government would later criticize them for.

 In the ‘30’s, the U.S. had joined England and France in appeasing Hitler. Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull was reluctant to openly criticize Hitler’s Anti-Semitic policies. The U.S. allowed American businesses to send oil to Italy in huge quantities which allowed Mussolini’s soldiers to continue to take the lead in their war. Even after America’s involvement in the war after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt did not see freeing Jews as a high priority “He left it to the State Department and in the State Department, Anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles in action,” Zinn said.

There were 43,000 refusers who did not show up after the draft and Zinn cites the anti-war literature such as Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and James Jones’ From Here to Eternity, and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead which captured many people’s, especially former soldiers’ true feelings about the so-called “Good War.” One character even says “There isn’t a good officer in the world.”

 Of course, America’s hands weren’t clean regarding segregation and racism. The Jim Crow Laws had been in effect for about 50 years prior, armed forces troops were segregated by race, so much that even black soldiers in the navy were placed in the depths of the ships near the engine room far from the fresh air on deck. The Red Cross had separated black and white blood, even though a black physician Charles Drew, developed the blood bank system. Blacks were still discriminated against for jobs. Many African-Americans were openly indifferent and hostile to fighting in the War. One said, “The war doesn’t mean a thing to me. If we win I lose, so what?”

Asian-Americans were also discriminated against during the war. Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were placed into internment camps. One Congressman said: “I’m for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps…Damn them, let’s get rid of them!” Of course the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to much debate, one military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote that the Japanese army was already in a hopeless position before the bombs dropped: “Need we have done it? No one can of course be positive, but the answer is most certainly negative.”

A People’s History of the United States forces its Readers to look at American History in a new light to see it as a place where what we were once taught may be a lot murkier than we thought. That history isn’t always made by the winners and that we need to hear all voices to truly tell and understand where we came from.

Forgotten Favorites
: Fifth Grade Monsters by Mel Gilden

Besides introducing lists of favorite recommended books by topic, the other goal that I want to achieve with this blog is to bring to light some long-forgotten favorites to introduce the Readers to some older books either for the first time or to dig up some old memories. Not all of these will be readily available and some maybe out of print, but it’s like looking for buried treasure. The search is often worth it. If you know of any Forgotten Favorites that would be good for a future entry, please let me know here or on Facebook.

The first of the “Forgotten Favorites” is a favorite series from my childhood: Fifth Grade Monsters created by Mel Gilden, written by Gilden (and one book by Ann Hodgman) and illustrated by John Pierard. The 15 book series was published by Avon-Camelot from 1987-1991 and is unfortunately out of print. It was meant for a 3^rd-5th grade reading level but there are plenty of layers for adults to laugh at and understand.

The series focuses on Danny Keegan, a normal 10-year-old boy from Brooklyn, NY who on his first day of fifth grade in P.S. 13, meets some new students, who are stranger than most. That’s because they are monsters in the Universal movies tradition. They are:

 Howie Wolfner, an English boy turns into a werewolf at will and during thunderstorms. C.D. Bitesky the son of “an old and respected Transylvanian family” is a vampire that turns into a bat and sucks on something called Fluid of Life from a thermos (more than likely a kid-friendly substitute for blood). Frankie and Elisa Stein, a pair of twins from West Germany with bolts on their necks can harness electricity from their bodies like a couple of Frankenstein’s Monsters. Thankfully, their personalities aren’t like the ones in the movies. These kids are bright, eloquent, sweet, and very mature for their ages

(Sometimes too unbelievably mature for their ages.).

As with many long-running series, new characters are added to the gang: Barbara Keegan, Danny’s younger sister is at first scared of the monsters, but then emerges as a true friend. Ryan Webler, a normal 10-year-old boy and Danny’s next-door neighbor has ambitions on becoming a journalist. Gilly Finn, a Broadway show-tunes singing mermaid has fins on her wrists and ankles.

Many of the books in the series feature the kids encountering other supernatural creatures from horror films and books such as zombies, ghosts, witches, sea serpents, and blobs. In later installments they delve into the worlds of fantasy by meeting trolls, dwarves, and will o’ the wisps and science fiction by stumbling into parallel universes and encountering time travel.

But the worst monsters they encounter are human; usually the school bully, Stevie Brickwald and his sidekicks class clown, Jason Nickles and school gossip, Angela Marconi.

The books are treats for lovers of speculative fiction, because they are riddled with inside jokes and references that even the most casual horror movie buff will get. Many of which are featured below. Any Reader could flip open the pages and find a new reference that will cause them to smile and laugh or groan at the cringe-worthy puns.

There is a deeper subtext to the Fifth Grade Monsters which makes this series stand out from many of the other horror books for kids like Goosebumps or even the Bunnicula series. The Monster Kids are compared to humans with special abilities or physical and mental disabilities which often make them capable of doing things or thinking differently from their peers and are often sources of derision from other kids.

Besides the ability analogy, the Monster Kids are also treated like racial minorities or different immigrant groups that arrive in America simply because their parents want to take part in the American Dream. Like the ‘Toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Gilden used this odd premise of monsters to make stronger points about racism, ethnocentricity, and the problems faced by immigrants.

The kids are repeatedly taunted with insults like “Go back to your own country,” by classmates particularly Stevie. The Monster Kids look upon monster movies about as favorably as modern African-Americans look upon the silent film Birth of a Nation, holding them up as negative stereotypes made to make their families appear villainous.

In one book, the kids particularly C.D. give a presentation in class about how their ancestors were ostracized and derided by local villagers in their home countries. In another book, a group similar to the Hitler Youth is formed to deport monsters and other supernatural creatures. It’s brilliant and frightening at the same time, that a long-cancelled juvenile series still can retain relevance today.

The Eclipse Summer Science Fiction Special: The Best of Ray Bradbury

 Fahrenheit 451 (1953)-Bradbury’s greatest work not only demonstrates how much society depends upon the knowledge and imagination that is found on books, but the terrors of a society that lives without them.

Through the eyes of Fireman Guy Montag, Bradbury reveals that the Fireman’s job is to burn any books that they see. Montag takes pride in his work saying the “kerosene is like perfume to him,” believing that he is the latest in a long line of Firemen since Benjamin Franklin burned the pro-British books before the Revolutionary War. Without books and checking references, it is easy for authorities to manipulate historic events by saying the Firemen have been in place since 1790 and not for the past sixty years. The authorities can also manipulate the present such as when they show a man being shot down on television even though he is still alive and on the run.

Montag does not question anything about his life, his job as a Fireman, or his marriage to Mildred, a flighty drug-addicted couch potato who feels that the people on her wall screen are her “family,” closer to her than her husband. Then he meets Clarisse McClellan, a girl who proudly describes herself as “17 and crazy.” She tells him how she notices things that other people do not like expressions on others’ faces, the grass and plants that young people don’t see because they speed by them, and the rain on her face and dew in the morning. She also isn’t afraid to ask personal deep questions like “Are you happy?” and whether Montag actually reads the books that he burns. Montag is shaken and confused, taken out of the stupor of his life.

Montag is further shaken when during a routine burning, a woman strikes a match and burns to death rather than let them take her books. He also meets Professor Faber who hides his books and does not make waves for fear of being discovered, but recognizes the transformative power that reading holds for him. People like the woman, Clarisse, and Faber are characters who are able to recognize how important reading is to them and how books provide knowledge, thoughts, escape from a dour reality, and above all allows people to see and question things that are outside of the norm.  Through them, Montag becomes aware that “there is a man behind each book and a thought.”

He secretly takes one of the books home with him and reveals to a confused Mildred that he had been hoarding books without reading them. Then he begins to read and becomes aware how false and shallow his life really is. Furious with the self-involved dialogue between Mildred and her friends, he reads out loud a poem to them. He then goes from being the Firemen’s Employee of the Month to Public Enemy #1 when Mildred and her friends turn him in.

Montag goes on the run and meets a very fascinating group of Human Books. These are people who become books by memorizing them line by line and page by page. Then they burn the books themselves, so as to leave nothing behind. The Human Books are aware that “they are not important,” that the ideas and thoughts that they carry in their heads are important. The ideas and thoughts are being saved by these brave people and transferred orally, so when society ends, the Human Books will be able to teach and help others start over again.

Some of the most revealing chapters occur when Montag’s employer, Captain Beatty suspicious that Montag may be hiding books admits the true history of the Book Burners. They did not begin with a government edict or laws that encouraged censorship. The censorship started with the people slowly getting shorter attention spans because of faster films, digested books, shorter articles, schools that discouraged independent thought, a job outlook that encouraged rote movement, and a society that encouraged fast driving, violent games, and instant gratification.

“Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery, there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more,” Beatty says gleefully of the world around him.

After the decline of knowledge and intelligence came the various groups that sought to ban books and learning, various religious and ethnic groups offended with how books portray them and sought to remove anything offensive from the works. “Authors full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did,” Beatty says. “Magazines became a nice blend of tapioca. Books the damned snobbish critics said were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said….There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.”

Through his history, Beatty shows that sometimes in society, the government doesn’t need to push censorship laws. Sometimes the people do it for them. The Firemen burning books were simply the end result of many decades of a less educated and angrier society. This society did not lose their right to read. They gave it away and only people like Montag, Clarisse, Faber, the Woman, and the Human Books are aware of what was lost and are also aware of what can return again.

The Best Banned & Challenged Books For Banned Books Week
: Beloved by Toni Morrison

They say (among many): Retained on the Round Rock, TX Independent High School Reading List after a challenge that the book “was too violent;” Challenged in the Sarasota County, FL schools in 1998 because of sexual material; Pulled from the senior Advanced Placement English class at Eastern High School in Louisville, KY in 2007 because two parents complained that it contained “antebellum slavery depicted the inappropriate topics of bestiality, racism, and sex."

I say: My favorite book on this list, Beloved is one-third a Gothic ghost story about a spirit that haunts the people around her literally and figuratively; one-third a family drama about a mother who escapes from slavery with two small children and makes the ultimate sacrifice to save them from a fate worse than death ; and one-third a feminist tale about the solidarity of women and the men who support them. 

Sethe and Denver, an escaped slave and her daughter suffer from figurative and literal ghosts. The figurative ghosts come in the forms of nightmares about lives of slavery, the stories that Sethe tells Denver about her escape, and her guilt over the death of her daughter.

The literal ghost comes at first in the form of the poltergeist of a baby destroying their home. The poltergeist drove Sethe's sons away and many of their friends. When Paul D., a friend from slavery days arrives and shouts for the poltergeist to be gone, a  mysterious young woman arrives She is dressed all in white, calls herself Beloved (the same word that appears on Sethe's daughter's tombstone.) and is oh about the age that Seth's daughter would be if she lived. Despite the objections from Paul D. and the apprehension of Denver, Sethe takes Beloved in.

As soon as Beloved arrives,  she strikes a sinister appearance in the house. She asks questions about things that only Sethe knows such as what happened to a pair of diamond earrings Sethe's former mistress gave her. She also asks various questions about Sethe's past in a way that indicates that she already knows the answers. Most disturbingly Beloved grows larger and resorts to violent outbursts and tantrums while Sethe becomes smaller and weaker. Above all Beloved's very presence opens up Sethe's guilt and confronts her past decisions.

The family drama aspects emerge when Sethe confesses what she did in one of the most heartbreaking passages ever. After moving in with her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, a group of men from the ironically named Sweet Home,  the former plantation where Sethe worked, arrive to reclaim Sethe and her children. Sethe makes her fateful decision: to cut her daughter's throat. She is about to kill the other children and herself before she is caught and arrested.
This aspect of Beloved was based on the true story of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who actually did kill her children. Even though both the real Garner and the fictional Sethe were acquitted, their actions reveal the cruelty in the institution of slavery that someone would rather see their children die by their hand than see them return to it.

The Feminist aspect to Beloved lies in the relationships between the female characters starting with the God-fearing strong-willed Baby Suggs. In Ohio,  she heads an African-American community consisting largely of escaped slaves and free blacks. She accepts Sethe and her children into the community without a even a moment of hesitation. Baby leads her community with a strong work ethic, motherly affection,  and words of advice. This advice resonates even long after she dies,  particularly from Denver who often quotes from the older woman such as "I should always listen to my body and love it" and thinks about what "Grandma Baby" would tell her if she is at an emotional crossroads.

Denver takes Baby Suggs' words to heart when Beloved joins the family. Denver plays and dances with her,  fills in the blanks about her mother's past,  and when she realizes that Beloved may be the ghost of her dead sister (long before their mother does) bonds with her like a sister. Sethe also draws the confused ghostly young woman and looks Sethe, Denver, and Beloved play off each other with their affection as well as the guilt and buried anger within. Sethe feels guilt about the death of her daughter and filters that in her relationship with Denver and Beloved. Denver finds a connection with the sister that she never know and Beloved finds some answers to her own identity.

The female connections aren’t just limited to the members of Sethe’s family but are found in the society at large. During her escape, Sethe gets assistance from Amy Denver, a street-smart white woman who helps Sethe escape and give birth to her daughter whom she names her for.A group of local women give Denver a job when she is frustrated with living with Sethe and Beloved and they also work together to remove Beloved's spirit from the house. These connections reveal the strong circle of communication and love between the female characters.
They are also found within the male characters as well, particularly Paul D. Paul D. begins as an old friend of Sethe's but he longs to be something more. At first, he is shocked and dismayed at Sethe's murder, so he leaves. But when another friend tells him that "she was trying to out hurt the hurter," he returns to help Sethe. His greatest gift towards Sethe is to help her forget the past and to finally accept being in the present and having a new family.

A ghost story, a family drama, a feminist story, and a romance all make Beloved one of the greatest books of all time and make it greater than any of the challenges that had thrown at it.

 20 Best Boooks For Halloween
 Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner
This book is not by any means the scariest book on this list but it offers a different  side to why a person would embrace the supernatural and living a magical life. It shows a woman often ignored and neglected who embraces witchcraft to gain some significance and meaning to her life. Lolly Willowes, first published in 1926, is a little known classic, but deserves to be remembered as a well-written feminist parable of a middle-aged woman learning to embrace independence, her own identity, and paganism in the proces

Laura "Lolly" Willowes is the product of a stifling middle-class Edwardian upbringing. After her beloved, but stern father's death, Laura becomes shuffled between her siblings’ families who are alternately vain and foppish or rigid and uncompromising. To her nieces and nephews, she's nothing but strange spinster Aunt Lolly. To her siblings and in-laws, she is just an afterthought, someone to take up space in the spare room and awkwardly be introduced to at parties and family gatherings.

In almost supernatural coincidence (probably intentionally so considering later events), Laura finds a way out of her confining existence. She takes up residence in a small cottage in the Great Mop, a village near Cotswold, England, supplements her own income with creating herbs and potions, encounters some very eccentric friends including a mysterious figure that may or may not be the Devil, and learns to embrace witchcraft.
Lolly Willowes works well as the story of a woman finding her own individuality.  There are parts that don't work quite so well. One of Laura's nephews comes to live with her and wears out his welcome within the first few lines perhaps to remind Laura of her family looming over her, a constant presence in her life. One of the more refreshing qualities to the book is the magical figure that appears in and out of the story who may or may not be Satan. While Laura calls him Satan, it is implied that the term is only from her frame of reference. Instead the figure is friendly, welcoming, and kind-hearted towards her decision to become a witch. When Laura realizes that her pact has made her become a witch, she is thrilled thinking of other women who have been isolated and thought dull throughout Europe who had a chance to become powerful and known. The figure, I hesitate to call him Satan, seems to hearken back to the early pagan religions as a Father God, like Pan or Cernunnos, who helps women explore their darker aspects and embrace their independence and sexuality. He just probably should not have been called Satan.

However, the witch angle is mostly fascinating, partly because of the lack of theatrics making her decision to become a pagan as natural as the other choices she makes. A cat appears and though Laura is at first apprehensive that it is a minion of Satan; she is matter-of-fact as though it’s just the natural way of things. When she is invited to her first coven meeting, she is just as shy and as much a wallflower as at her family parties. She becomes a pagan, not through some magic spells, but because of her closeness to nature and for the freedom paganism provides for women.In some ways, Laura Willowes could be a forerunner to many men and women who become Wiccans or Pagans because they believe in what Paganism has to offer: environmentalism, feminism, freedom from restrictions, and independent ways of thinking.

Lolly Willowes is similar to the character that many of us knew and feared as a child, or that some of us were fascinated with and grew up to become: the strange woman who lives alone, the odd lady who talks to her animals as though they were children, who grows weird plants and herbs, and who never goes out except at night, the woman who is the stuff of rumors and gossip: The Witch. Warner however does us a favor, by taking the reader into that character’s mind shows us the whys and how she became that way. Instead of giving us a hoary stereotype, Warner gives us a full and complete character, one in which we are proud to share with the journey towards her independence.

20 Favorite Historic Fiction
# 2 The White Queen/The Other Boleyn Girl (The Cousins' War/The Tudor Court) by Philippa Gregory; Historic period:
15th-16th centuries,The War of the Roses, The Court of Henry VIII, The British Monarchy, Plantangenet and Tudor Courts, England

Good historic fiction takes a character only known from historic accounts and puts us inside their heads. The Reader learns their thoughts and feelings about situations that otherwise we would not know them at all, or only know them through secondary sources. Philippa Gregory is among the best to write about English royalty. She wrote a wonderful ongoing series about the Royal family from Henry VI to Queen Elizabeth I. Each book in the series offers an inside look, usually first person from a female character, that gives u the power struggles over who will take the throne and whose heirs will leave the longest lasting legacy.

The whole series is a marvelous look of English royal history told through various eyes including Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII, Lord Robert Dudley, the lover of Queen Elizabeth I, Lady Margaret Pole, who was beheaded by Henry VIII, Henry VIII's wives including Katharine of Aragon, Anne of Cleves, and Katharine Howard, and Hannah Green, a fictional Jewish girl in the court of Mary I "Bloody Mary. The two that stand out the most and certainly have the most attention are The White Queen and The Other Boleyn Girl.

The White Queen stars Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of King Edward IV and sister-in-law of Richard III. Elizabeth has been portrayed differently in various sources (usually depending on how the writers and filmmakers perceive Richard III who has been classified as one of her sworn enemies.) Anything from a naive innocent to an emasculating bitch. Gregory's account portrays her as a strong-willed multifaceted woman, a commoner who dares to greet King Edward to ask for restitution for her family. She not only gets it but receives a proposal of marriage from the king who is besotted by her good looks and charm. King Edward and Queen Elizabeth's marriage for love brings dissension in the court over a king daring to marry a commoner and put her family in positions of trust and power.

Elizabeth encounters many enemies, none more so than Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick AKA "The Kingmaker" who helped put Edward on the throne and Edward's greedy younger brother, George Duke of Clarence. When a battle results in the death of her father and brother, Elizabeth blames both Warwick and George for it. Using her powers that her mother says were descended from Melusine, a water spirit from French legend, Elizabeth curses them.She also brings about curses to other enemies such as when her sons, Edward V, and Richard, the young Duke of Gloucester are sent to the Tower of London and never return.

Elizabeth is a fascinating character as she pushes herself forward in life. She is a strong guide to her husband, such as when she argues for executions of his enemies or for their release. She also knows when to keep silent. In one frightening moment, she has a  vision that Edward and his brothers suffocate King Henry VI in his sleep even  though he was practically catatonic and no threat to him. However, she does not question or challenge it since she believes that Henry is her husband's enemy and therefore hers. She also  rewards the loyalty of those closest to her, particularly when she gives Warwick's orphaned daughters the chance to be her ladies-in-waiting despite their relations with their fathers and husbands (Isobel marries Edward's brother George and Anne marries his brother, Richard). She then strives to become a mentor figure to the Neville sisters even though they fear her.

Even though she is forced to spend some her time in sanctuary (particularly in one memorable passage where she has to give birth to her eldest son), before and after her husband's reign Elizabeth is never at a loss for a plan. She is someone who is always able to use her wiles, supernatural abilities, and alliances to her advantage. When Richard III becomes king, she forms an alliance with her family's enemies the Lancasters so their son could marry her daughter, seeing them as the lesser of the two evils.When her daughter Elizabeth of York marries Henry Tudor, it ends the War of the Roses by combining the Houses of York and Lancaster forever.
The strongest statement is in her curse after her sons were believed to be killed. She curses that whoever killed them would have no male issue on the throne for very long and that the family line would end with a barren girl. (Of course history shows how that turned out with the subsequent reign of the Tudor family).

While Elizabeth Woodville is able to bring about power with her alliances and supernatural abilities, Anne Boleyn possesses no such abilities. Instead she achieves her goals by using charm, beauty, and an ability to win a monarch to her side. In Gregory's novel, The Other Boleyn Girl, Anne is just one of the many ladies-in-waiting to Queen Katharine of Aragon hoping to catch the eye of Henry VIII. Not wanting to be simply bedded and discarded like her sister, Mary, who is also the narrator of the book, Anne wants to play the long game. She wants to be Queen of England.

Anne is equal parts prostitute and CEO as she manipulates and seduces Henry. Anne uses the tricks she learned in the French court to seduce the king just enough and then withhold so she and her family can receive favors. She also brings books about Protestantism that challenges Henry VIII's Catholic court and his way of thinking so he can believe "Hey maybe a religion that allows a monarch to divorce is not such a bad idea."She also subtly uses hints that bring about suspicions in Henry's mind about Katharine, comparing her appearance and fertility to Katharine's as well as challenging the idea that Katharine had been married to Henry's older brother previously and how it could be considered a sin against God. (Hence why God has punished Henry and Katharine with only one girl and various miscarriages and deceased infants). While she does not exhibit as many positive traits as Elizabeth such as strength or intelligence in making alliances (in fact Anne loses many), Anne is also a memorable character because she is so bad. She is conniving, charming, and very skillful in her abilities to win Henry.

Anne of course is not alone in her plan. She is backed by her mother's family, who behave almost like a mafia family with their control over others' lives. Her sister, Mary, Henry's earlier mistress is aware of the fact that her husband received titles just because he allowed Henry to sleep with his wife. Her brother, George, is also very encouraging towards Anne's progress particularly as he hides his own disgust at his conniving wife, Jane and his lust for a young nobleman. Then there's her uncle, who behaves like the Mafia Don. Her uncle Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk pimps out his nieces to the king so he can gain power for himself. He is able to control Anne from behind the scenes until she decides that she no longer needs him. With a family like that, it is easy to see where Anne gets it.

Anne's position in court is challenged not only by her disassociation with Norfolk but also her inability to produce a male heir resulting in the birth of only one girl, Elizabeth. Anne begins to also fear the accusations of witchcraft that somehow she seduced the king  with her powers away from Katharine. In one last desperate attempt at survival, so she doesn't end up divorced and abandoned like Katharine or tried and executed, Anne does something desperate to conceive a baby. Her decision and its aftermath resulting in a monstrous dead baby are rather graphic but show Anne's anguish about doing anything to stay alive and foreshadows the monster that Henry becomes.

There are some historic inaccuracies to these books (The story about Anne Boleyn's monster as well as its conception were merely rumors and not factual as the books imply; While the books portray Henry VII as uncaring and abusive towards Elizabeth of York, in reality theirs was a very loving marriage; Not to mention the identity of a young man claiming to be the younger of the two Princes in the Tower is verified in the book but was under much suspicion in real life) But Philippa Gregory's writing gives us very real believable characters whose struggles, triumphs, family relationships, and love affairs are identifiable and understandable. These characters just happened to have sat on England's throne.


Well these are the best of 2017. Have a great new year and an even better 2018. Happy Reading! 😃📚