MORTY'S TRAVELS

The author sent me a copy of his book to review. Review done by Children's Picture Book Specialist, Pat Koelmel:

Author/illustrator Anderson Atlas calls his 2016 space romp, Morty’s Travels, a cross between a picture book and chapter book, and I would have to agree. I would suggest for next time, though, to either expand on a story until it’s a real chapter book or chip away at the text until it’s a 600-word maximum (an industry standard) picture book. After all, a book for children should be one or the other as age ranges differ with each. Okay, let’s move on to the story. What’s it all about?


After inhaling the pollen from an unknown species of flower (later identified as the humongo flower), Morty finds himself transported from Earth to another planet. The story follows him on his quest to return home which takes him to yet another planet called Lan Darr. Youngsters will enjoy the tension created by the strange characters and numerous obstacles Morty encounters as he searches for the elusive pollen that will bring him back home. They will also get a kick out of the many aliens pictured in the colorful illustrations. In this reviewer’s opinion, drawing aliens is Mr. Atlas’s forte. Readers can also try their hand at drawing aliens with the help of the bonus step-by-step “Draw an Alien” tutorial, which comes included.

What wasn’t so successful was Star’s (the space woman Morty befriends during his travels) explanation to Morty on how he could tell which people are bad and which are good. This is preachy (a big no-no in children’s literature). Kids just want to be entertained like anyone else. Additionally, while kids enjoy stories with adult figures (as in the 2011 picture book Those Darn Squirrels by Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri), I feel, in this particular case, the Star character would have been more relatable to children had she been the same age as Morty verses an adult.

There are also some editing issues. I found several inconsistencies throughout the book. For instance, when Morty first comes across the humongo flower on Earth, he doesn’t know what it is. However, when he meets Star, he calls it by name. I found some typos, too, as well as missed opportunities to tighten up the text.

So, do I recommend this book or not? After weighing the good and the bad, I say, “Heck, yes!” In spite of some of the negatives mentioned, Mr. Atlas has a flair for delivering a kid-friendly tale, and his detailed, imaginative drawings are, well, out of this world.

 RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: While by no means have I read every picture book on space travel, a favorite of mine is The Way Back Home (2008) by Oliver Jeffers. And after checking Goodreads list of picture books on the subject, it appears to be preferred by many as it ranks #6 out of 107.

Who Was Joseph Pulitzer?

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

The lack of notes in this somewhat historical novel impinges on the validity of the genre. Terrence Crimmins has written a decent story about Joseph Pulitzer, but without defining notes, it just becomes a novel. I’m certainly not accusing Mr. Crimmins of making this story up; it’s just that without the appropriate notes...it’s merely a novel. There were also some storytelling errors, such as on page twenty two. Joseph was just fired as a waiter at a popular restaurant, when one of the restaurant’s regular customers says, “Aw, Joseph, don’t feel so bad. Being a waiter is a tough job...some friends of mine own a law firm and they could use somebody to run errands, and maybe more. What do you think?” Joseph says, “Can I start right now?” The very next line says, “So began Pulitzer’s career in journalism…” What happened to the law job? The lack of continuity is a big bugaboo of mine among other literary malfunctions. I’m not trying to be gruff to the author, but if you are writing a historical fiction novel...make it 100% believable. We all know that Joseph Pulitzer established his prize in various literary categories (in his will) upon his death, and Mr. Crimmins does enlighten the reader to the Hungarian immigrant’s rise to fame. But why does the reader have to refer to SparkNotes to verify the legitimacy of Mr. Crimmins claims. Again, I’m not charging Terrence Crimmins of anything...just make it easier for the reader to presume what you wrote is accurate. Make sense?
 
A seventeen year old Joseph Pulitzer didn’t approve of his mother’s second husband, so he left home trying to enlist in various armies including his homegrown Hungarian Army. He was rejected because of his frail looking body. Finally, when he went to Germany, he found a American Union Army recruiting office looking for men to fight in the Civil War. But when he arrived in the Port of New York, he found out that he was going to be cheated out of his bounty money, so he dove overboard and became a runaway. Subsequently, he joined the Lincoln NY Cavalry and received his bounty. But after striking a non-comm officer, he became a orderly for a officer throughout the Civil War. After the war, Pulitzer headed to St. Louis in hopes of finding work. “He had a huge ambition and a lofty opinion of himself as a man who could achieve great things, and in this he was correct. He was also very sensitive, did not take orders well, and was what we would today call a control freak. Pulitzer had an ego that made him feel he could do things better than other men, and considered it a gross injustice when any other occupant of the planet earth ever questioned his judgement...today we might call Pulitzer bi-polar.” Pulitzer goes to the library every night, “becoming a self-taught man who not only learned the intricacies of the English language, but passed an exam to obtain a law license.”

After many lowly jobs in St. Louis, he became a cub reporter for the St. Louis Post. The owner of the paper, Mr. Schurz, took him under his wing. Pulitzer exposed injustices throughout St. Louis thus making enemies of the greedy opposition (this habit would last a lifetime). He quickly rose in rank inside of Mr. Schurz’s newspaper, eventually buying the paper from Schurz. When he met his future wife, Kate, she wanted to know what his goal was. He said, “To help the millions of immigrants who weren’t as lucky as me.” Doesn’t that sound like today’s plight in the USA? Somethings seem to repeat themselves every hundred years or so. Pulitzer ultimately merged with The Dispatch and it became the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer hires a cub reporter, William Randolph Hearst, who recently dropped out of Harvard University. However, the golden spoon Hearst soon left for San Francisco to start his own newspaper empire. Meanwhile, Pulitzer’s continuing editorial attacks of “the powers that be” caused problems for his now wife, Kate. “Pulitzer had to hire bodyguards to accompany both himself and Cockerill (his main man) about town, and they continued to be snubbed in high society. This was deeply disturbing to Kate, who had never considered the possibility that her marriage would affect her social standing.” The rest of this book is history. It’s up to you to grab your own copy of this novel to unearth the conclusion. I know that I criticized the author in the first paragraph, but his novel deserves to be read.
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RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I especially liked page 263 (two pages from the end):

"So, now that we are at the end of our little story, who was Joseph Pulitzer? He was a man with a fascinating life, who came to America as an angry seventeen-year-old who barely spoke English, yet developed and owned two major papers in the country some twenty years later. Despite numerous challenges, including poverty and antisemitism, he succeeded, and not only did he succeed but he brought out a new and different kind of journalism. He reached out to people who had not previously read newspapers, connecting with them on a gut level that raised their expectations of their own fate. It was odd that, as an immigrant, he brought about a very American cultural revolution, and helped to shake the ground under the powers-that-be that changed the whole tone of political life.”    

EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY

Mon Dieu, Lesley M. M. Blume has written more than an historical novel revolving around Ernest Hemingway’s writing of The Sun Also Rises (1926). This novel gives the reader the details behind the birth of the modern movement of literature and the death of descriptive writing. Goodbye to Victorian Literature writers like Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Hardy, Lewis Carroll, et cetera. Say hello to the 1920’s writers, such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and, of course, Ernest Hemingway. Also say hello to Pablo Picasso and his Surrealism art movement. It’s the 1920's in Paris, France, and America’s talented expatriates flock to it. The leader of the movement in Paris is American poet Ezra Pound. His new rules of writing are: never use superfluous (unnecessary) words, never be descriptive and distrust adjectives. “It was time for a revolution.” “Some expats likened their Paris experiences to an extended, drug-fueled party.” If Ezra Pound was the king of the movement, Gertrude Stein was assuredly the queen. Hemingway was warned before he met Gertrude at her apartment “to maintain a reverential hush as she spoke.” and “don’t frighten her or she won’t talk.” Stein’s preferred term when describing herself was “genius.” Hemingway’s rival in America would be F. Scott Fitzgerald, who published The Great Gatsby in 1925, but “his style remained decidedly old-school.” Publisher Charles Scribner, who published both authors, said, “Fitzgerald was a nineteenth-century soul. He was wrapping up a grand tradition; he was the last of the romantics. He was Strauss. Hemingway, by contrast, was Stravinsky. He was inventing a whole new idiom and tonality.” Is this good stuff, or what?  

Hemingway married his biggest fan and helper, Hadley Richardson, when he was twenty two and she thirty. They planned to go to Italy where Hemingway served in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps during WWI, “...where he was wounded within weeks of arrival.” Hemingway planned to make a living as a freelance reporter for the Toronto Star and supplement their income with Hadley’s $2,000-$3,000 Trust Fund. But before they could go to Italy, they met American novelist Sherwood Anderson who told them about Paris. “During his visits, when he wasn’t reading aloud from his own manuscripts, he extolled the wonder of Paris to the Domicile crowd; the city was now a magnet for creative types from all over America.” Sherwood made a convincing case for Hemingway to ditch plans for Italy and book passage for France. “Paris was, after all, now a laboratory of innovative writing and the supposed creative center of the universe.” Sherwood recommended the Hotel Jacob et d’Angleterre in Paris. Once settled in, the Hemingways headed for the Cafe’ Le Dome, the gossip center for the Left Bank’s expatriate colony. Luckily for the Hemingways, they were able to stretch their monies because the dollar was very strong compared to the franc after the war. “Other writers must also have sensed that Paris was a treasure trove of literary possibility...for the American writer Malcolm Cowley, Paris was like cocaine, and just as debilitating a habit when it came time to pull himself together and work.” Hemingway was not overwhelmed by Paris like many Americans. “In holding back, Hemingway gave himself a distinct advantage as a clearheaded, removed observer. Later, many of his fictional protagonists would share this attribute.” Would you believe that so far all that I have reviewed is the Introduction and the first seventeen pages of the novel?

The Toronto Star is now sending the twenty three year old reporter all over Europe. His interview with Italy’s Benito Mussolini helped get him front page stories. Meanwhile in Paris, the expat literary gods were now known as The Crowd and didn’t meet in bars or cafes, instead they met in private homes and salons. These are the same artists I mentioned in the first paragraph. When Hemingway went to Switzerland, he sent for his wife Hadley. For some reason Hadley decided to bring all of Hemingway’s manuscripts with her. When she momentarily left her compartment on the train, the manuscripts disappeared. A frustrated Hemingway was sent back to Toronto for a prestige weekly salary of $125. Hadley informed him that she was pregnant. After a trip to Spain with the newly met founder of Contact Publishing Company, Robert McAlmon, and Bill Bird, co-founder of The Consolidated Press Wire Service, Hemingway quit his job and went back to Paris with Hadley and the baby. “There would be no more freelancing, no more deadlines, and no accepting faraway assignments. There would be only the writing - real writing.” In Paris, Hemingway starts writing in a rented flat overlooking a sawmill. “However gently administered, the sound of a buzzing saw-combined with the cries of a newborn-continually drove Hemingway out of the apartment to write.” With Hadley’s Trust Fund now being mismanaged by a friend of hers, they entered a period that Hemingway called their “complete poverty period.” Hemingway started to work for a new publication, the Transatlantic Review supervised by British novelist and literary editor, Ford Madox Ford. Although Hemingway didn’t get paid, Ford published everything that he wrote (short stories). “I knew I must write a novel,” Hemingway recalled. “...and here he was, practically over-the-hill at twenty-four, still without a major work to his name.”

Ford became one of the Crowd’s greatest host, throwing tea parties in his little Transatlantic office. At one of the tea parties, “Hemingway made a tea party appearance, at which he first encountered expat editor and writer Harold Loeb. This meeting would alter the course of both men’s lives.” “When they weren’t bludgeoning each other (Hemingway loved to box with all his friends) or whacking balls across a net, Hemingway and Loeb frequented cafes and bars together, drinking and trading stories.” What was important to Hemingway’s career was the fact that Loeb was about to publish his first novel, Doodab, with Boni and Liveright, a major American publisher. Why was that important? Because, so far, every Manuscript that Hemingway sent to America was rejected and Loeb would soon prove an invaluable asset in correcting that problem. Don’t panic! I’m not giving the story away, I’m only on page 56. This is a must read for potential reviewers, if you want to build a good literary foundation while establishing your writing skills. I, for one, have learned a lot from reading this historical novel. I patently advocate this novel and lecon livre.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I think it’s interesting that in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda came to Paris loaded with cash off the success of The Great Gatsby novel and his other bestsellers. They rented a luxurious apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway yet lived in his Sawmill apartment and was still repressed in the money category. Would the last great descriptive writer meet the first great modern writer? Yes, indeed.

At the Dingo bar in Paris, Fitzgerald bumped into Hemingway, who was with Lady Duff Twysden (the object of every man’s eyes) and her boyfriend Pat Guthrie. Fitzgerald bought champagne for the group and later passed out. It was an unusual first meeting, but the two writers became staunch friends. By June 1925, “Hemingway and Hadley had been seeing quite a lot of Fitzgerald and the two writers had even taken a road trip together.”

“Zelda is crazy”, Hemingway informed Fitzgerald one afternoon. What did Zelda think of Hemingway? “She called Hemingway a phony he-man and a pansy with hair on his chest.” Yet Fitzgerald highly respected Hemingway. “His literary crush on Hem, the sportsman-stylist, the pugilist-storyteller” as John Dos Passos (American novelist and member of The Crowd) put it, quickly became apparent to everyone in the Paris Crowd.”

One thing for sure was that Hemingway had dealt descriptive writing the coup de grace. Hemingway reduced writing down to it's most simplistic form, "The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare to the bone," he said. "And that takes work." Yet his friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald continued to write bestsellers in his old fashion descriptive way for years to come.

I’m not sure what genre this book is. Some reviewers and I are calling it a historical fiction novel, while others state that it’s an almost obsessively researched biography. Either way, it’s a must read.

HELLO, MY NAME IS OCTICORN

This is a guest review from Children’s Picture Book review specialist, Pat Koelmel:

Most children, if not all, at one time or another feel like they don’t fit in, and as a result, they have a tough time making friends. Also tough is crafting innovative stories on the subject of this popular (sometimes even overdone) universal theme. But in this 2016 picture book (created by Kevin Diller and Justin Lowe for children ages 4-8) a friendless, one-of-a-kind Octicorn puts a charming, oh so fresh spin on it.

So what is an Octicorn? Well, it’s what you get when you mate a unicorn with an octopus. How could this have happened, you ask? Hey, it’s a quirky picture book. Anything can happen in a quirky picture book. But if you still insist on having it spelled out, it happened the usual way: a unicorn and octopus meet, fall in love, and, well, you know the rest. The story goes on to give the many reasons why an Octicorn, in particular, makes for an especially good friend. I guarantee that it will have children and adults alike chuckling, but at the same time, it will tug at your heartstrings. Well-paced and undeniably child-relatable, this tale also comes with an ending that tickled my fancy but, sorry folks, that’s for me to know and you to find out.

Now, a word about the illustrations by the talented Justin Lowe who perfectly captured author Kevin Diller’s forlorn Octicorn with simple yet expressive (a combo not so easy to pull off) black and white drawings. By the way, both Mr. Diller and Mr. Lowe have impressive credentials. While Diller currently focuses on writing children’s books, once upon a time he was a screenwriter, playwright, and producer. And Justin Lowe? Besides being an artist, he is also a filmmaker. 

This brings me to my closing paragraph where I planned to sum up why you should buy this book. But if all those glowing comments above haven’t already sold you, I doubt if anything else I say will change your mind. As for me, this book had me at hello.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Hello, My Name is Octicorn was self-published prior to catching the eye of HarperCollins. That’s right. So, to those authors and/or illustrators who are self-published, you could be next.

DAVE! parts 1-3

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

Initially, I didn’t think Marc Richard’s novel was very funny...until I warmed up to his unique style. He has a way of making the reader laugh at the simplest things. I think that the best word for his humor is silly. I must say that once I snuggled up to his modus operandi, I starting enjoying his zany novel. The novel had a touch of Jack Finney’s 1955 novel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers but with a comical political twist. The author has President Donald Trump building the border wall between the USA and Mexico in 2017, but has President Mel Gibson (that’s right, he of Mad Max) finishing the wall in 2030. But President Gibson, who wants to be know as Uncle Mel, continues the wall until it rings the entire United States of America including the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and Canada. Since Alaska and Hawaii are outside the wall, he sells those states. He has evicted all the Muslims and Mexicans. The wall was so expensive that 75% of it had to be made of wood. CNN News reported that 94% of the population are in poverty, 5% are rich and 1% are middle class. Mom and pop stores are gone. “Wal-Mart had completely taken over the country...now that it’s government run, it is the one-stop shop for all your clothing, cereal, beer, porn, marriage license, hot-air balloon rides, and party planning needs, and so much more. Some of them even have churches in the back, so that you could spend your entire Sunday there if you so chose.”

The protagonists are for the most part; Starlet Richter, a transgender woman; Eric Tisdale, a pool hustler and one time lover of Starlet’s (when she still had a penis); Carlton, a transgender man, who is involved with the overthrowing of the government, and of course, Dave. Starlet has now had the full transsexual surgery to be a woman, however Carlton still has a vagina (I told you this story was silly). Eric was home watching TV when a Uncle Mel ad came on, and Mel said, “Hey America, it’s me again, Uncle Mel. I’ll tell ya, I’ll never tire of looking at that wall. What a fine job our craftsmen and craftswomen did constructing that beauty.” The President is overjoyed that we got those who didn’t belong here back to their homeland. He says, “They were not true citizens.” Haha. Eric’s friend, Ray, calls and wants to know if he noticed that the President’s face slipped. Eric said that he didn’t notice. Meanwhile, Eric goes off to 'the protest wall' where he hears the same story from a few of the other protesters. His other friend, Nick, shows him the video replay on his phone, “You see that shit, yo? His chin just about hit his chest. That face be slippin’. It ain’t real, homie. That’s some straight alien shit. Uncle Mel ain’t from this world, dude.” Has President Mel Gibson been replaced by a alien...was Donald Trump an alien? If so, how many people in America have been replaced?

Eric, Ray and Nick are conscripted by Carlton into the Invaders. The Invaders are led by Dave (who is Dave?) with the mission to destroy the forces in Washington, DC and take back the country. In the meantime, Starlet is protesting at the wall between Maine and Canada. She meets a couple with a motor home that befriends her. Their assignment is to knock down the wall between the USA and Canada. As Starlet and the Topplers (that’s the name Dave gave the protesters who were trying to knock the wall down) start hacking at the wall, a Canadian on the other side of the wall says, “We fine over here.” Starlet says, “Don’t you want to come back to America?” The voice on the other side says, “Nope. We like it ‘ere. Dis is ‘ome.” Another Canadian says, “Ya.” Starlet says, “Okay, well f**k you guys.” This novel for the most part is a riot. As the boys (well Carlton is not fully a boy yet) rush to Annapolis, Maryland for a big meeting with Dave, Starlet discovers that some of the people at the wall are aliens. She also discovers that the aliens are knocked out by touching a 3.7 volt battery (from a mobile phone) and killed when they touch a 12 volt battery (from a car). Wow, how can she pass that information along to the Invaders. I have to stop my review here. I’ve only touched on some of the doings in this amusing novel. You will have to get your own copy of Marc Richard’s novel to find out what happens in depth. The novel is smartly divided into three parts (all in the same volume). By the way the last few pages are ridiculous. I highly recommend this funny sci-fi novel.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I was wondering what were the funniest sci-fi books ever written and I saw that Best-sci-fi-book.com had a 19 novel list. I’m only going to show you the top three:

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979 )- “It begins with the destruction of Earth, and things go downhill from there.”
2. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (1997) - “Willis’ delectable romp through time from 2057 back to Victorian England.”
3. This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It. by David Wong (2012) - “Two reluctant and generally irresponsible heroes are aware of huge invisible spiders that live in people’s heads due to their earlier ingestion of a drug called soy sauce."

the GIRL BEFORE

This is the best psychogenic thriller I’ve read in a long time. Not only is this story avant-garde (I love that word), it also has a taste of ergodic literature in it, although mild if you compare it to Mark Z. Danielewski’s, House of Leaves (see my review of 2/1/2013). Author JP Delaney has left some pages unnumbered, a lot of chapters without quotation marks, such as the THEN: EMMA chapters, and various pages are left nearly blank except for questions that applicants must answer before they can be approved for the rental on One Folgate Street. The action is in London, England. The tension is breathtaking. Do you think I liked this novel? Did James Cagney play tough guys in the movies? For some reason, the word ‘girl’ is very popular in recent bestsellers; such as, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (see my review of 8/16/2015), Armando Lucas Correa’s The German Girl (see my review of 11/13/2016) and Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin Ten (see my review of 9/7/2016). Okay, a woman is not a girl, but it’s close. Anyway, all of the above novels are bestsellers, and JP Delaney’s novel is no exception. This was one of those novels that you hated to end. You know the feeling...Wait, it’s over? That’s it? Anyways, let me tell you a little about the novel’s characters.

The main characters are kept to a super friendly (Cormac McCarthy?) five if you count the exclusive self-operating house on One Folgate Street in the London area of England as a character (I did). You might ask, who are these people? Let’s start with: Edward Monkford, One Folgate Street’s architect, owner and renter of the capricious house in question. He considers himself an alpha male, as do all of the woman he meets in the novel. He is a extreme controller and perfectionist. Did he kill his wife and child, or was it an accident? He got permission to bury them under the house. Why does he only rent the house to women who look like his deceased wife? Did he kill ‘the girl before’, Emma? Emma Matthews, a troubled girl who had a bad break-in at her previous address. We learn early in the novel that she is dead. That’s why her chapters are THEN: EMMA. She was getting therapy because of the anguish she suffered in the attack. Was she murdered in the mysterious house or was it an accidental death. Why did it always seem like she was lying? Did Edward Monkford or her previous boyfriend, Simon, kill her? Did Simon’s best friend, Saul, kill her? How about the recently caught burglar, Deon Nelson, who attacked her and burglarized Emma’s old apartment? He says he didn’t do it.

Simon, Emma’s boyfriend before Edward Monkford. He is big time in love with Emma, but he reacts badly when Emma tells him that she gave oral sex to the burglar. After an argument she throws him out of their new rental on One Folgate Street. Is he angry enough to kill Emma? If he killed Emma, why does he leave a bouquet of lilies on the doorstep of the house every day after she died? Why does he tell everyone who will listen to him that Edward Monkford killed her? Jane Cavendish, the current renter of One Folgate Street. Her chapters are headed NOW: JANE. She had a stillborn birth...a daughter named Isabel. She needed a fresh start, which included a new address and new job. She moves into One Folgate Street and becomes the novel’s main protagonist. Jane finds out about Emma’s death. Emma had an affair with Edward Monkford, the same man she is having an affair with. She starts to suspect that Edward killed Emma. The House (the fifth main character) is accessed by a smartphone, computer or bracelet worn by the renter and is run by a program called Housekeeper. Sometimes Housekeeper will disable part of the house’s systems until you answer some inane question on the computer. Is the house capable of murder? Does the house punish you, if you don’t follow the over 200 rules of the rental agreement you signed?

I found the house disturbing. When Jane got the rental, she had to have the Housekeeper app installed on her phone, laptop and on a “special bracelet that triggers One Folgate Street’s sensors.” The Housekeeper app controls all functions of the house and will not let you Google anything. On page 13, the rental agent gives Jane the lowdown on a few of the many rules, “Basically, it’s a list of dos and don’ts. Well, don’ts mostly. No alterations of any kind, except by prior agreement. No rugs or carpets. No pictures. No potted plants. No ornaments. No books-” Jane says, "No books! That’s ridiculous!” The agent says, "No planting anything in the garden; no curtains-” Jane says, “How do you keep the light out if you can’t have curtains?” “The windows are photosensitive. They go dark when the sky does.” “So, no curtains. Anything else?” “Oh, yes,” Camilla (the agent) says, “There are about two hundred stipulations in all…” And I’ve only touched on a few the idiosyncrasies of the house. Sometimes it almost felt like the house was alive. I have to say that I was a little surprised when Emma’s murderer was revealed. I would tell you who it is but then you wouldn’t read the novel. And, that would be a shame because you would miss out on this year’s best thriller.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: In the ABOUT THE AUTHOR page, the following is recorded:

The Girl Before is the first psychological thriller from JP Delaney, a pseudonym for a writer who has previously written bestselling fiction under other names. It is being published in thirty-five countries. A film version is being brought to the screen by Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard.

I did a little research and found out that the author is Tony Strong, bestselling author of The Death Pit , The Poison Tree, The Decoy and Tell Me Lies.

the OARSMAN

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

Okay, get your thinking caps on, because Zubin Mathai decided to write his novel metaphorically and not literally. I’m sorry, but I’m not a big fan of that type of writing. I don’t like to read a chapter and then think about what I just read; such as, Okay, what did that river represent, or what does ‘making it to the shores’ mean? These are the things that were in my head as I read this novel. Just tell me, when you say ‘getting to the shores’...do you mean the heavens? Some reviewers think that this kind of prose is artsy...not me. I’m not disparaging the story, just the way it was told. If I had my druthers, I would've liked to have read this novel literally, that’s all. Okay, enough of that. The story was sound enough, but it has been told many times before (visiting one’s past to correct your faults in order to be granted heaven)). You’re probably saying to yourself, this reviewer really hated this novel, that’s not true. I somewhat liked the novel. Alright, what’s this story about?

A oarsman takes a man, who has given up on life, down a river in a rowboat until he is stopped by the Judge standing on his island. The Judge says, “I said it every hour you have been here, and I will say it again. You cannot pass!” The Oarsman pleads the Man’s case and while the Judge was moved, he says, “Go back along this river, and this oarsman of yours will know how to use it’s currents in their special way. Go back and review your life and find reasons for that unworthiness I see pooled in your eyes and face. Return here a changed man, and I will let you through.” Now do you see what I mean about metaphors? Who is the Judge? Who is the Oarsman? What does the river represent? As soon as they rowed away, the Judge and his island disappeared. The Oarsman tells the Man that he doesn’t have to row, the currents will take them where they will. “The river also twisted and turned through time, one of it’s special tricks…”

The Man is eighty. The rowboat takes him back to where he got on the boat one month ago. The man gets off the boat and sits down under a large tree that bears plump green and blue fruit. He tells the Oarsman, “I used to live up that hill, and here was my favorite spot to sit.” What does the green and blue fruit denote? It reappears chapter after chapter. More metaphors? As the Man starts whittling a branch, a large warrior dressed in red armor appears out of the trees. Apparently the warrior has been harassing the Man to lead his warriors into an East versus West battle. Do the warriors kill the Man’s wife in order to get the Man to join them? Read the novel. The Man gets back into the boat with the Oarsman and continues his quest. The Oarsman asks the Man, “Are you truly willing to go on this quest of yours?” “Yes,” said the Man…”All I know is that I am unworthy. My life is empty. I need to know what went wrong in it so that I can make it to the shores and feel their salvation.” That’s a review of the first 19 pages.

The quest continues with the Man getting younger and younger as he tries to find the worthiness in his life. The figures of speech are sustained throughout the rest of the novel. Even Dan Brown’s professor of symbology, Robert Langdon, deals with less symbols in Inferno (see my review of 8/29/2013). Anyway, the novel was kinda interesting. I certainly found no fault in the writer’s composition, just his storytelling. I do recommend this novel with the caveat...read slowly.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Children can learn figures of speech through many young YA books; such as, Loreen Leedy’s 2004 book, There’s a Frog in my Throat (a great book for teaching idioms), or Hanoch Piven’s 2010 book, My Best Friend is as Sharp as a Pencil (teaches school-related similes), or Marvin Terban’s 1993 book, It Figures (introduces simile, metaphor and hyperbole with definitions).

So come on kids, read these books and get a head start on adult novels!

I Remember? a short story

Recently I was remembering my two year Marine Corp tour of duty in Hawaii from November 1964 to November 1966. Not the whole tour, just the time that I spent on The Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol Team (Pac/West). I put the question mark (?) in the title of this short story because after fifty plus years, my memory gets a little foggy, especially in the chronological order department. I do remember that when I first got transferred from Camp Pendleton, Ca to Hawaii - it was because my Company Commander said that, “I was running around with some bad Marines.” They weren’t bad, they just liked to booze it up and stay out late. Okay, there were a few fights but that was a normal happening in the Corps. Anyway, my Company Commander, a Major (I’m positive that was his rank), asked me, “Where do you want to go, Vietnam or Hawaii?” Being a single nineteen year old wiseguy (punk?), I said, “I don’t care.” He sent me home for my thirty day leave. While home in New Jersey, I received orders for a two year tour in Hawaii. If I would have gone to Vietnam, I’m sure that I would have been killed...and I wouldn’t have met my wife in Hawaii. So off I went to Hawaii to guard secret weapons in “hobbit-like” bunkers on a base that was hard to find. By the way, a couple of weeks after I arrived in Hawaii, my entire old regiment in Camp Pendleton got sent to Vietnam. Whew!

In the Marine Corps, during those years, you had to qualify with a rifle (in my time it was a M14 rifle) every year. As it so happens, when I qualified in Hawaii, I shot either a perfect score or close to it (I’m a tad vague on that). That impressed the “Green Mother” (the term we used to describe the Marine Corps since we wore green utilities, not camouflage). Anyway, that got me transferred to the rifle and pistol team in Ewa Beach (a thirteen man team). Talk about good duty! I would practice in the morning, sometimes firing rounds in the sky just to get rid of the ammo. Then I would drive (yea, I bought a 1951 Dodge wagon for $125.) to Honolulu where I moved in with two high school classmates who were going to the University of Hawaii. Mike never left Hawaii...he’s still there. A funny story is that one day when we were partying in our apartment at the U of H, we ran out of booze. So one of the guys said he would drive downtown and get some more beer. I flipped him the keys to my three-speed on the column wagon and continued to party. Well, he came back real soon and said that he didn’t know how to drive a stick. Apparently, he started the car and leapfrogged across the street and smashed in the side of a parked car. We all went down stairs and couldn’t believe what we saw. So we went upstairs and wrote a note to the owner of the smashed car concerning the accident. We took the note downstairs to put on the windshield of the car in question and guess what? The car was gone!

I didn’t take shooting seriously...I was a partying Marine. Every Marine had ‘crossed rifle’ insignias on their lapels; I imagined mine to be ‘crossed martini glasses’. I even took a job in Waikiki Beach parking cars for a nightclub called the Romney Room. If a customer didn’t tip me properly when I brought their car to the door...I would close the door on their ankle. Ouch! However, I did meet some great people who lived all year round in Hawaii that frequented the nightclub. Who? Richard Boone, who starred in the TV series Have Gun-Will Travel, Curtis Aiakea (I’m not sure I’m spelling his name correctly), the Hawaiian heavyweight wrestling champion, and his tag-team partner Tosh Togo (Harold Sakata). You would remember Tosh Togo as the villain Oddjob in James Bond’s Goldfinger movie (he killed people by throwing his hat). They would get tipsy and judo chop a table or so in half. Great fun! I wouldn’t have but two or three hours sleep and head back to the barracks for more shooting ammo into the sky. Occasionally, I would pick up a hitchhiker in order to try to stay awake. One time when I arrived at the base, the hitchhiker was ashen. I asked what was wrong. He said, “You must have run off the the road a hundred times.” Oh well, that happened every day. In spite of my drinking, when a shooting match came about, I became serious and came in second or third many times against the world’s best.

Then one day the CIA (they didn’t say who they were to me) showed up at the barracks. Apparently the New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, reopened the JFK assassination case in respect to Lee Harvey Oswald’s involvement. If I remember correctly, they showed me and the twelve other team members (individually) a Italian .38 carbine rifle with scope (not the actual one used by Oswald). Supposedly he fired three shots (one must have missed) killing JFK and wounding Texas Governor John Connally. I told the CIA (?) that it would have been a miracle for Oswald to do what he did with that piece of crap rifle. That was the end of that. Not long after (my memory is a bit cloudy), the barracks for the Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol team burnt down to the ground. The team was split up and we went back to our original posts. That was big trouble for me since I was used to partying and not guarding bombs in hobbit holes. I wasn’t your typical Marine...yes I had the ‘Semper Fi’ thing, but I was a free-thinker. The Corps didn’t like that. Once I got to Lance Corporal, I refused any further promotions. Why? Because I wasn’t going to stay in and I thought the promotion should go to someone who was going to re-enlist. The honorable thing to do, right? Well, the Green Mother didn’t think so. As a matter of fact, when it was my turn to get a re-enlistment talk when I had six months left in the Corps, the Sergeant in the office said, “Ohlarik, read a magazine for ten minutes and then get the f**k out of the office." Okay, no problemo! Haha!

Being back on guard duty spelled big problems for me since I lived in Waikiki and was used to the ‘good life’. By the way, (I told you I’m a little hazy) I forgot to mention to you that when I was still on the Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol Team, I was winning the Hawaiian long range (prone) championship with one round to go. It was either 1965 or 1966. Anyway my buddy Sergeant Brissey kicked me in the foot as I fired the last round. It went into the four ring instead of the bullseye, and I came in second. No big deal, Sgt. Brissey was a great guy. But once again I ran into some bad Marines. This time it got me and two others arrested in Waikiki. What happened? A screwball named Private Brassman, another guy (I don’t remember his name), and I went to Waikiki to have a good time. Luckily, I didn’t have my .45 pistol in my back waistband. Why did I go to town many times that way? People would look at me and think I was a cop? A gangster? I don’t know, but it was stupid. However we went to town that night without weapons (thank God). We got drunk and decided to go to the hotel’s rooftop and empty all the fire extinguisher’s on the parked cars and floor. We went downstairs and broke into the closed kitchen and made ourself dinner. It was the famous Princess Kaiulani Hotel. What were we thinking? We went to the bar area and danced with the guests and local girls, but Brassman disappeared. Where did he go?

My unnamed buddy and I went to my car to leave, but it wouldn’t start. Suddenly a large Hawaiian cop appeared at my driver’s window holding my car’s distributor cap. He said, “get out of the car!” Several more officers surrounded us. The big guy said, “What’s under that tarp in your back deck?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He lifted the tarp and there were many women’s purses and two gold hotel ashtray urns laying on my back deck. What?? Suddenly, the idiot Brassman barges through the officer ranks holding more purses. So that’s where the stolen goods came from! No wonder he was missing when my buddy and I were dancing. Obviously, we were arrested and the Marine base was contacted. As a sidebar, during our night of havoc, we saw a Marine and Sailor out together all night. Every time we saw them, they were drunker and drunker, arm in arm, prancing down Kalakaua Avenue. Then I saw them with the Sailor wearing the Marine’s hat and the Marine wearing the Sailor’s hat (I would say cover, but you probably would not know what I meant). The reason I’m bringing this up is because when we were put in a Honolulu jail cell, I saw the Sailor and Marine in different cells...all beaten up. What happened? I don’t know. The Marines came to pick us up in the morning. The hotel dropped the charges, but not the Marines. Fortunately, Brassman confessed to the whole crime. The last time I saw Brassman, he was in a cell wearing a straightjacket.

Okay, I was off the hook...not! The Gunnery Sergeant at the base hated my guts, and he brought me up on trumped up charges (not really, I was real bad that night). So now I have ‘Office Hours’ in front of the Captain. When my date in court came, the Gunnery Sergeant was all smiles as he read the charges against me. The Captain listened and took the papers from the Sergeant. Then the Captain said to me, “Before I go further, would you shoot for our local team and go to California for the state Championships?” I said, “Of course, Sir.” The Captain threw the papers in the waste basket and said, “Charges dismissed.” The Gunnery Sergeant was so mad he turned white. Wow, I’m off to California to reunite with one of my bad Marine buddies, who by now is out of the Corps. That’s going to be a problem...and it was. By the way, getting back to the Princess Kaiulani Hotel for a moment, Kui Lee was performing at the hotel the night of our arrest. If you never heard of this man...He wrote and sang I’ll Remember You, which was a big hit for many singers including Andy Williams, Elvis Presley and Don Ho (Kui Lee’s competitor at Duke’s in The International Market Place down the street from the Princess Kaiulani). Kui died of cancer at the early age of 34. His ashes were scattered over Waikiki.

Anyways, I was off to California with my new team. The Championship was being held at my old base, Camp Pendleton. By the way, the longest road on the base is named after John Basilone (a Raritan, N.J. native), who was a Marine Medal of Honor recipient from WWII. So my team got to the barracks late the first day. The next day was a off day, and everybody was outside stretching and getting ready for the big match the next day. Except me. I called my old buddy Jerry and his wife, Helen. I grabbed a bus and headed to Los Angeles. Jerry now worked for a race track (I can’t remember which one) because his brother, Bobby, was a big time jockey. Helen picked me up at the bus station, and we meet Jerry at the race track. Jerry was among many men holding down two horses that were about to mate (wow, that was something to see!). We finally got to Jerry and Helen’s house around 5PM. Jerry was dead tired and fell asleep. Okay, so Helen and I hit the town and many bars. Somehow we wound up at an amusement park on a pier. I can’t remember for sure, but I think it was the Santa Monica Pier. Needless to say, by the time Helen got me to a bus, it was very late (or early, depending on how you looked at it). I arrived back on the base in the wee hours of the morning...drunk as a skunk. Skunks do get drunk when they eat fallen fermenting fruit (I thought I would throw that in).

So that morning the team heads to the Championship’s site and our first event is the 200 yard offhand with a M14 high power rifle. This was my specialty event when I’m not blurry eyed, hungover, and shaky. The Captain wants me to shoot first...ouch, I wasn’t sober yet. So I went to the line and aimed in on the target. The barrel of my rifle was waving all over the target and my breathing was out of sync...but I fired my first shot anyway. The pit pulled down my target and it stayed down for awhile (they were trying to find where my shot went). I knew where it went...I missed. Can you imagine a world-class high power shooter missing the target? I was a lifetime Master in the NRA. So finally the target came back up and they waived a maggie’s drawers on me. This is a red flag on a long pole that the pit crew waives when you miss the target. Score = zero. I told the red faced Captain to challenge. If the challenge was denied and they still say I missed the target, it would cost the Captain ten dollars. Well, it cost him ten dollars because they reviewed the target and said, “Yes, you missed.” He was furious at me. I told him they were wrong. I fired my second shot. I knew I missed again (I could see my shooting career coming to a swift end). Again the pit crew waived the maggie’s drawers, again the Captain challenged and again it cost him ten dollars. I fired my third shot and I missed for the third and final time before the Captain jerked me out of the lineup. As quick as a flash, I was on a military plane heading back to Hawaii.

So what do you think? Was this a true story, or did I make the whole thing up?

Rick O    1/24/2017

        

the little VOICE

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

I’m not really sure why Joss Sheldon wrote this rather depressing novel. Was he trying to outdo J.D.Salinger in cheerless writing? There are similarities between Sheldon’s novel and Salinger’s 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye (see my review of 12/23/2012), although I don’t want Mr. Sheldon going narcissistic on me because Mr. Salinger’s novel is considered an American classic (I’m not sure why). Salinger’s seventeen year old Holden Caulfield seems to feel less depressed when he hears the lines, If a body catch a body coming through the rye, sung by a child (from a Robert Burns 1796 poem). Mr. Sheldon’s Yew Shodkin seems to feel better when he quotes the sixth century BC Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu. Neither character ever seems to reach a state of enlightenment. In my review of Mr. Salinger’s novel, I said that while in school, Holden Caulfield seemed to be drowning in boredom. In Mr. Sheldon’s novel, Yew Shodkin never gets a handle on school. At first, Yew lets a devil-like demon in his brain make him become rebellious in class, but after seeing that punishment is no fun, he becomes a rule-follower... but he is never happy with either strategy. Holden Caulfield likes to drink, smoke and make an ass of himself. When Yew grows up, he likes to take drugs (the modern variant) and make an ass of himself. In any case, neither character reach a position of nirvana.

Yew Shodkin is six years old when the novel opens and is in his mid-twenties when the book ends (the author never confirms). In Yew’s early years, a devil-like demon in his brain called the egot is causing him to be rebellious in school. Although he is feeling energetic and frisky, repeat punishment from the school’s headmaster, Mr. Grunt, and daily meetings with the school’s psychologist, Dr. Saeed become mind-numbing for Yew. “The egot had got me into deep trouble.” Besides school punishment, parental sanctions were even worse. Yew makes an epic decision...he will ignore the egot and start following the rules. Hallelujah! Yew becomes a rule-follower and is back in the good graces of his teachers and parents, although he losses his popularity with his classmates. Every time Yew accepts punishment, the egot becomes frailer, his teeth start falling out, his skin turns white, and he shrinks to half his size. “The egot died. And then it decomposed...I was finally free.” That’s the last the reader sees of the egot. Yew thinks, “Our society encourages us to obey authority. It’s a matter of Operational Conditioning; we’re rewarded when we follow authority’s rules and punished when we break those rules. Slowly but surely, we’re gently coerced into a state of total obedience.”

As Yew grows older, the rest of the novel challenges the previous statement. What will Yew do? Will he snap back to his natural form, rebel against the capitalistic state, join protest groups, turn to drugs, find happiness, or will he consider suicide? That’s a lot of questions! So, if you feel like pulling your hair out...get your own copy of this somber novel and find the answers to my questions. Although this novel was depressing, it can’t supersede the all-time depressing novel, Jay Asher’s 2007 novel, Thirteen Reasons Why (#1 on Goodreads depressing novel list). Okay, I do recommend Joss Sheldon’s novel, because it did make me ponder the societal decisions that are made in one's lifetime and whether they were good choices or bad choices.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Okay, what are the most depressing novels ever written? Well, Goodreads has a list of 131 novels that are the most depressing. I was surprised to see that I only read three of them. All three were read many years ago when I was probably still a teenager. What are these three books? I’ll list them in the order they came on Goodreads list:

#39- Fahrenheit 451 (1953) written by Ray Bradbury. A dystopian nightmare. The book title reveals the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns.

#53- 1984 (1949) written by George Orwell. Was this the first modern classic of “negative Utopia?”

#114- A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens. “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”

Well, I only read three, but they are all classics!