Having been raised with the adventures of Tom Swift, Jr. -- my father brought from his chidhood the first thirteen books in the series -- I was quite pleased to find a copy of the series' sixth book at a recent used book sale. Tom Swift, Jr. does not appear to have enjoyed the popularity of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys and I have not found his adventures easy to come by. This is, in fact, only the second I have found in several seasons' worth of garage and used book sales.

This book begins with Tom and his friend Bud Barclay cruising in Tom's nuclear-powered flying lab, the Sky Queen (his first major invention) testing a solar-powered battery that Tom has been working on. Before long, however, the boy-inventor and his chum are embroiled in an adventure involving a competitor in the solar-battery market, and international spies who seem determined to kill Tom (though not his well-known inventor father, Tom Swift, Sr.), Tom's "space friends" (alien beings who contact him from time to time) and the construction of, you guessed it, an outpost in space.

It's best not to think too deeply about the Tom Swift books, nor indeed, about any of the books written by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Characterization is practically non-existent or based on stereotypes that make the modern reader stare in disbelief -- in this particular volume, the Chief Bad Guy looked like a gorilla, which was how we knew he was a bad guy, and in the chapters set in the South Pacific, we have superstitious Polynesian natives who don't speak English, as well as the white folk giving beads and trinkets to a native youth who warns them of treachery. As for the good guys, Tom is a genius; his best friend Bud is brave and staunch and true; his sister is, at the same time, a dardevil pilot and paragon of virtue; and his mother would win the Good Mothering Award away from June Cleaver (in fact, I picture Tom's parents as June and Ward Cleaver).

Another point about the Tom Swift, Jr. books: don't look too closely at the science -- you'll get a headache, especially if you remember anything at all about high school science classes. But, in Outpost's defense, it was published in 1955, three years before the foundation of NASA (according to Wikipedia, anyway), but Tom had already been in orbit several times by then.

We won't even discuss the fact that Tom is only eighteen years old and his test pilot sister is only seventeen.

While the Tom Swift, Jr. books provide an interesting window into the attitudes of another era, their chief purpose is to provide rollicking adventure stories for young adults. And that, they absolutely do.

Cross-posted to webofbooks.

When I was a teenager, I snatched up Pocket's Star Trek tie-in novels the instant they appeared in the local bookstore and read them voraciously. I had approximately two hundred of the things until one day I looked around my library and realized that the books all blended together and I couldn't differentiate one from another. Only a few had outstanding plots that I remembered for more than an hour after reading them. Those few, I kept. The rest were given to a friend.

The current crop of urban fantasies/paranormal romances are much like those long-gone Star Trek novels. There really aren't that many differeces between them, and Lori Handeland's Any Given Doomsday is a typical example of the breed. The snarky, first-person narrator is a kick-ass heroine with a slightly murky past (orphaned, gymnast, ex-cop at the tender age of twenty-five), who has had her heart broken. She's also -- like so many of her fellow heroines -- something of a Mary Sue*. She's special (witness her name: Elizabeth Phoenix) and she only gets more special as the novel progresses. And because she's special, it's her job to save the world. Plus, she gets spectacularly laid several times.

In keeping with the genre, there isn't just one man who reappears from her past, but two. And they -- naturally -- both want her. But neither of them is what he appears to be.

All of that aside, I still read the novel in two days, and it might have been one had it not been for that pesky day job. The novel's pace is right smart quick -- almost rushed in places, but that only makes it the more readable; the faster the pace, the harder it is to put down.

Our Heroine, Liz, is saved from being a complete Mary Sue in that she doesn't want the special powers that keep coming her way. She doesn't want to have to save the world. But she's stuck with it, so she makes the best of it.

Probably the highest praise that I can give a book is to say that I'll read the sequel. I will read the sequel to Any Given Doomsday.

*If you're not familiar with the term, go look it up. I think Wikipedia probably has an article on Mary Sues. Go on. I'll wait.

Cross-posted to webofbooks

The subtitle of this books says it all: "How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills." In one of my other online lives, I read a lot of TV- and movie-related books (and review same). When I saw this was available via PaperbackSwap.com (which I highly recommend), I snapped it up.

Unfortunately, the book is not as entertaining as one might suspect. Yes, you get actual tips and step-by-step instructions from actual experts in their fields on how to do all sorts of action hero-ey stunts, but it's really all rather dry. There are touches of humor, but unfortunately, the most interesting thing about the book -- unless you really are studying to be an action hero -- is the authors' choices of movie quotes for the beginning of each chapter. Alas, this one is destined not to remain in my library, except perhaps as a writing reference for when I write my own thriller/espionage/mystery novel, just so I can have the hero climb down the face(s) of Mount Rushmore correctly.

Cross-posted to webofbooks

Under the Tuscan Sun tells the story of how Frances Mayes bought Bramasole, a villa in Tuscany which had stood empty for thirty years, and over the course of three summers, slowly rehabbed it with the help of Ed, her Significant Other (the book never states whether he's her husband or not) and various workmen, including a group of Polish laborers. From olive trees, gardens, and wells to floors, ceiling beams, and hidden frescoes, the house and grounds slowly become a jewel where Frances and her family live in quiet summer contentment. (She and Ed are both college professors, so have summers available to spend in Italy.)

The story doesn't end with the work at Bramasole, however. After the initial work is finished and the workmen are packed off, then Frances and Ed have a place from which to explore Tuscany, and explore they do, from local Etruscan ruins to Roman roads to churches.

But there's even more to Tuscany than this. Mayes writes lovingly of the local cuisine, the local customs, even the Italian language. She includes both summer and winter recipes -- in addition to summers free, she also has long winter breaks. Her love of Italy in general and Tuscany in particular shines from the pages.

If you've only seen the movie based on the book, then you haven't seen the whole story. For one thing, the book is a memoir, while the movie is not. The movie compares the rehabbing of Bramasole to the mending of fictional Frances's broken heart, while the real Frances has already moved on and found someone else. I love the movie, but, I have found, I love the book also, in a very different way. And if you don't come away from the book wanting to a) travel to Tuscany yourself (whether or not you also then buy a neglected villa), b) wanting to bake bread, c) wanting to cook robust meals with lots of fresh ingredients, or d) all of the above, then you may possibly have missed the point.

Cross-posted to webofbooks

I learned today that within the mystery genre is a sub-genre known as the "cozy mystery" in which the main character is an amateur detective, rather than a member of any law enforcement profession. Instead she (for, I learned, the detective is most often female -- though right after I read that Father Dowling sprang to mind) may be anything from a grocery-store clerk to a piano teacher. Cozy mysteries are generally set in a small town or village, and "cozy" is an apt description of the atmosphere.

The Aunt Dimity series definitely falls into this sub-genre. Neither of our heroines were law enforcement professionals: Lori is a rare book curator and Emma is a computer programmer with a passion for gardening (though Aunt Dimity and the Duke may be the only book in which she is the main character).

Oh, and Aunt Dimity is a ghost who appears only in the pages of a journal.

Aunt Dimity's Good Deed is the third book in the series, following Aunt Dimity's Death and Aunt Dimity and the Duke. It has been two years since Lori married her Prince Charming at the end of Aunt Dimity's Death, but she found that happily ever after wasn't. From the moment she and Bill returned to Boston from Aunt Dimity's lovely English cottage, Lori has barely seen her workaholic husband. While Bill's father remained the charming gentleman he always had been, the same could not be said for Bill's harridan aunts who disapprove of Lori's less than blue blood and keep pestering her about whether or not she's pregnant. At the end of her rope, Lori proposes a second honeymoon in Aunt Dimity's cottage, but true to form, Bill cancels at the last minute and she ends up going with her father-in-law instead.

At least William's suddenly leaving the cottage with a barely coherent note gives Lori something to do other than mope over her failed marriage. It seems that William is investigating the family quarrel that exiled one Willis brother to America in the eighteenth century (to found William's branch of the family). But it isn't always a good idea to go poking about in the past, and William may be in considerable danger. At least Aunt Dimity is keeping an eye on him. So it's Lori to the rescue, accompanied by her twelve-year-old neighbor Nell, Lori's stuffed rabbit Reginald, and Nell's stuffed bear Bertie.

The characterization here is great, from Emma, who will not leave her garden to go haring off with Lori in pursuit of William, to the astoundingly mature Nell, and Lori herself who is a bit dim when it comes to certain physical symptoms. We'll forgive her, though, as she's too worried about her father-in-law to worry about herself.

There is a sense in Atherton's writing that she's enjoying herself as much as she hopes the reader will. And this reader certainly did.

Cross-posted to webofbooks

Hôtel Transylvania is the first book in the long-lived Saint-Germain series. Having recently read the nineteenth (set in late-Imperial Rome) and the twentieth (set in early nineteenth-century Europe) novels in the series, I was curious to see how it all began.

The novel is set amid the grandeur of mid-eighteenth-century Paris during the reign of Louis XV, 40 some years before La Revolution. Le Comte Saint-Germain is a mysterious figure in Parisian society: a foreigner -- though no one knows whence he hails -- he is filthy rich, a composer and musician, and dresses always in black and white. He is cultured and popular, especially with the ladies, though his attentions to them are always strictly within the bounds of honor.

This first book of the series takes place approximately three-quarters of a century prior to the latest. Where Hero in Borne in Blood is jealous of Saint-Germain's affection for Madelaine de Montalia, in this book, Madelaine is the heroine. She is a young noblewoman who was promised to a circle of Satanists by her father before her birth. Her father later repents of his actions and involvement with the Circle and flees Paris, but when Madelaine goes to Paris to visit her aunt, the Circle comes to claim her, and her only hope is Le Comte Saint-Germain with whom she has fallen in love.

Saint-Germain, of course, is a vampire, born some four thousand years ago. However, Hôtel Transylvania isn't really a vampire book, in the way that, say, Dracula or some of the current paranormal romances or urban fantasies are. The point is not that Saint-Germain is a vampire; the word is used, in fact, fewer than ten times in the course of the novel. Yes, his vampiric nature comes in handy for rescuing Madelaine, but at its core, this is a love story between Madelaine and Saint-Germain (but not of the squishy romancey variety).

As is fitting for the first novel in a series, Hôtel Transylvania sets the pattern for the rest of the series. The book begins with a letter and each chapter ends with a piece of correspondence, sometimes from characters that appear in no other way (which is, in fact, how Madelaine appears in the aforementioned Borne in Blood).

Because the author is also a historian, eighteenth-century Paris really comes to life. I am looking forward to reading more of this series.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is, surprisingly, a movie with layers. On the surface, it tells the story of a trio of teenagers playing hooky from school on a fine May day, having more fun and excitement than some people do in years. The deeper layers concern friendship, love, and family interactions.

The movie's tone is set very early on when Ferris Bueller (played by Matthew Broderick), after persuading his parents -- over his sister's protests -- that he's too sick to go to school, sits carefully up in bed, looks straight at the camera and announces to the audience, "They bought it!" He continues to address the audience throughout the film. In fact, except for two telephone conversations with his best friend, all of his interaction early in the movie is with the audience.

From this, we learn that Ferris is a clever, thoughtful young man with a low opinion of high school. Less than happy with his parents' decision to give him a computer instead of a car, he has, nevertheless, learned to use the computer well enough to remotely change his school attendance record (under the very eyes of the principal, unfortunately, but more on that later).

As is obvious from the very beginning of the film, Ferris is a consummate con artist; he treats us to a lesson on faking out the parents while elaborately preparing his room to look as though he's sleeping, should his parents come home from work to check on him. It's easy to see Ferris as a bully, as well, especially in his treatment of his best friend Cameron, who really is home from school sick. Cameron has a car, you see, and Ferris needs him in order to accomplish his plans for the day. But though Ferris does bully Cam into participating in his plans, it's only partly because Ferris needs Cam's car. He also genuinely cares about Cam and wants to see him happy. He admits to this -- to the audience, though not to Cameron -- late in the film when he gives his clear-eyed assessment that their friendship is coming to its natural conclusion. It's more obvious, however, when he offers to "take the heat" for the destruction of Cameron's father's beloved Ferrari.

Adult authority in the film is represented mainly by Edward R. Rooney, Dean of Students -- the principal at Ferris's high school. Although Ferris's parents are present, he has them so wrapped around his fingers that they accept whatever he tells them without so much as blinking (though there are a few moments in the course of the film when it seems as though Ferris is about to get caught by his father). Cameron's parents are mentioned numerous times, but never seen, and Cameron impersonates the father of Ferris's girlfriend Sloane to get her released from school for the day.

Ed Rooney clearly thinks a great deal of himself. He is positive that he is far more intelligent than some punk like Ferris Bueller, and he's determined to catch Ferris in truancy, especially after he witnesses Ferris's computerized attendance record being changed.

Unfortunately, Rooney isn't particularly intelligent. Unlike Principal Vernon of The Breakfast Club, Rooney has no redeeming qualities (and Jeffrey Jones seems to prefer characters that have no redeeming qualities). When, in his obsession with catching Ferris, Rooney decides that breaking and entering is okay, he loses any sympathy the audience might still have had for him (especially when he already knows, from the repeating "doorbell" tape, that Ferris is not home in bed). His attack on the Bueller family dog is nothing short of unforgivable. His subsequent humiliation in front of a bus-load of students, with the implication that his battered condition will be the talk of the school the following morning, is completely deserved.

A good story requires growth and change. This is most often shown in the main character, but throughout the course of the movie, Ferris remains Ferris: a likeable con artist. It is a pair of secondary characters who experience growth as a result of Ferris's truancy: his sister Jeanne, who fumes throughout the movie about everything always going her brother's way, and his best friend Cameron, whose spectacular murder of his father's Ferrari will more than likely have him spending the rest of his school days in the Buellers' guest room.

In Jeanne's case, her acceptance of her brother is predicated on two events: falling for the philosophical druggie (played by Charlie Sheen) at the police station, and her desire for revenge on Ed Rooney, whose invasion of the Bueller home is what caused her to end up at the police station (accused of making a false report to police) to begin with. Her alliance with and acceptance of her brother may be temporary -- and she does make him sweat a bit when it appears that Rooney has finally caught him -- but for the moment, the Bueller siblings are allied against the authority represented by Edward R. Rooney, Dean of Students.

Cameron's case is a bit more problematic. It is obvious from the beginning that Cameron does not have a good relationship with either of his parents. He wishes his mother would stay in Decatur, for instance. During the course of the movie we learn a little more from Ferris about how cold Cam's upbringing has been, and even more from Cam's outburst near the end: "Who do you love? A car!"

As much as we might admire Cam's clear-eyed determination to face his father in the matter of the car, we can be fairly certain that while the confrontation will certainly clear the air between father and son, the outcome is not likely to be the one Cam clearly desires, a deep father-son bond. Far more likely is that Morris Fry will kick his son out of the house -- or even have him arrested for destroying his beloved Ferrari. But in the end, even that would serve to launch Cameron into his future. So it is Cameron, in the long run, who will benefit most from Ferris's decision to play hooky on a beautiful spring morning.

Members of the Brat Pack: None, unless we count writer/director John Hughes.
Instances of defiance of adult authority: Have you seen this movie?
Break ups: None
Pair ups: One, sort of: Jeanne and the druggie.
Who's going to the prom: Probably everyone. Ferris will go with Sloane, of course, and Cam will go stag. It sounds as though Jeanne has enough admirers that someone will ask her, as well. And Rooney will probably be there to glare at Ferris and Sloane.