Preface

It’s been a little over three years since my last Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O was published. Well get ready, because Volume three is out. It features one hundred forty eight reviews, two Rambling Comments, one promotion, a short story by Rick O (I Remember? A Short Story) and one Christmas remembrance (Memory of a Bygone Christmas) by review contributor Pat Koelmel. I had a lot of fun doing these reviews and enjoyed the numerous emails the authors sent me after seeing my review of their book. Almost all of the writers agreed with my comments with a few exceptions. I pointed out their strengths, weaknesses, and tried to compare their book with another writer’s similar book. Kind of like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of literature (I didn’t find anything ugly). I would like to thank contributors Deron O, Kai O and Pat Koelmel for their energetic guest reviews. In my previous review book, I listed the top ten books that I read during that time period. Well, let’s do this time period (8/27/2015 to 9/10/2018), but this time I’ll also include the first line of my review of the their books:

Number one- Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier. Sometimes I wonder why I’m wasting my time reading contemporary novelists when I can read classic authors such as Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989), who wrote this 1936 romantic suspense novel.

Number two- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. “Shiver me timbers”, this novel was a treasure.

Number three-The Virginian by Owen Wister. Is this 1902 story by Owen Wister the blueprint cowboy (the author designates them as cow-boys or cow-punchers) novel for thousands of novels and movies yet to come?

Number four- God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell. Erskine Caldwell’s 1933 novel God’s little Acre is Southern Gothic at its best.

Number five- The Girl Before by JP Delaney. This is the best psychogenic thriller I’ve read in a long time.

Number six- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Betty Smith’s entertaining 1943 novel is reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ novels of the mid 1800s.

Number seven- A Gentleman in Moscow. What a wonderful novel. What marvelous prose.

Number eight-The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn. The author, A. J. Finn, has weaved a Alfred Hitchcockian type tale that reminds me of the 1954 movie, Rear Window.

Number nine- The Fireman by Joe Hill. This novel was literally on fire for 747 pages.

Number ten- Everybody Behaves Badly by Lesley M. M. Blume. 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).

The front cover photo is Rick O at his favorite vacation spot, Waikiki beach, Hawaii. Photo taken by Derek O. The back cover is Rick O and his grandchildren, Kalena O, Kaleo O and Kai O at Masa Sushi Restaurant in NJ. Photo was also taken by Derek O.

this ISLAND EARTH

What would you do if you ordered condensers from your regular supplier (Continental) and instead received superior condensers from another supplier that you didn’t order from? Meet engineer Cal Meacham from Ryberg Instrument Corp. Cal tested the new parts and they were phenomenal. They came from a company named Electronic Service-Unit 16 with no return address or phone number. Cal told purchasing agent Joe Wilson to order a gross more. When the gross was shipped to Ryberg they were only billed 30 cents apiece! Joe tells Cal that Continental doesn’t know anything about the order. Once again, they came from Electronic Service-Unit 16, but this time the order came with a catalog that listed and showed parts that Cal and Joe never heard of. On top of that, the pages weren’t even paper. “Joe, this stuff isn’t even paper.” Cal’s fingers merely slipped away. “That’s as tough as sheet iron!” The catalog lists catherimine tubes among other strange parts. Joe arched his eyebrows. “Ever hear of a catherimine tube? One with an endiom complex of plus four, which guarantees it to be the best of its kind on the market?” Cal says, “What kind of gibberish is that?” Cal turned the pages until “He came to a inner dividing cover at the centre of the catalogue. For the first time, the center cover announced, Electronic Service-Unit 16 offers a complete line of interocitor components. In the following pages you will find complete descriptions of components which reflect the most modern engineering advances know to interocitor engineers.” What’s a interocitor and who are these people that sent the catalogue? Welcome to the world of Raymond F. Jones, who wrote this 1952 sci-fi classic (later a 1955 movie).

On page eleven Cal finds out that a neighboring plant has also been receiving unknown parts...this time from Electronic Service-unit 8. That plant’s purchasing agent ordered special gears from a different company, but got two perfectly smooth wheels from Unit-8 instead. He said that, “He was about ready to hit the ceiling when he discovered that one wheel rolled against the other would drive it. So I mounted them on shafts and put a motor on one and a pony brake on the other. Believe it or not those things would transfer any horsepower I could use. And I had up to three hundred and fifty. There was perfect transfer without measurable slippage or backlash. The craziest thing you ever saw.” Cal decides to order all the parts necessary to build an interocitor. Almost two weeks go by. Then suddenly fourteen crates arrive. “They stood seven feet tall and were no smaller than four by five feet in cross section.” There are no instructions. Cal needs to use all his past knowledge of engineering and the pictures in the catalog to try to put this together. If he does succeed in putting it together, how does he turn it on? What does it do? Cal is stunned when Joe tells him that the bill for all those crates (4,896 parts) was only twenty-eight hundred dollars. On page twenty-five, after many trials and tribulations, Cal finishes assembling the interocitor. It’s some kind of communicator with a TV- like screen attached to it. He plays around with it and finally gets a fuzzy image on the screen. A masculine voice suddenly says, “Turn up the intensifier knob.” After Cal adjusted the knob, the image came in. Cal said, “Who are you? What have I built? The man (who has a high forehead and white hair) on the screen said, “We’d about given you up, but you’ve passed. And rather well, too.”
 
The strange man says, “You have passed the test!” Cal says, “What do you mean? I have made no application to work with your-your employers.” A faint trace of a smile crossed the man’s face. “No. No one does that. We pick our own applicants and test them, quite without their awareness that they are being tested. You are to be congratulated on your showing.” The man convinces Cal to come to work for them. Cal couldn’t think of any reason not to go. “There were few that he could muster up. None, actually. He was alone, without family or obligations. He had no particular professional ties to prevent him for leaving.” The man says on page twenty-eight, “Our plane will land on your airfield at six p.m. It will remain fifteen minutes. It will take off without you if you are not in it by that time. You will know it by its color. A black ship with a single horizontal orange stripe.” This is where I will stop my review so you can enjoy the meaty part of the story uninhibited. This sci-fi novel could have easily been read in one day. But then I wouldn’t have had this pleasurable feeling that I’ve had for the past three days. You have to savor this novel like a fine wine.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Raymond F. Jones’ sci-fi novel was made into a movie in 1955. It starred Jeff Morrow as Exeter (his name in the novel was Jorgasnovara), Rex Reason as Cal and Faith Domergue as Ruth. The movie finished 74th in gross earnings that year. Oddly enough it opened as a double bill with Abbott and Costello meet the Mummy! Oh, the good old days. I remember when you went to the movies you saw two movies, several cartoons, and the world news all in one sitting. You were armed with popcorn, soda and a candy of some sorts (that’s the only part that’s the same as today). And maybe later...a food fight.

The movie was remade for TV in 1992, but I didn’t find much info on it. It starred Gloria Estefan and Kenny Loggins (two singers).

The 1952 novel and the 1955 movie had many differences, especially the ending.

Mad Mischief

The author sent me a copy of her novel to read and review:

I have a menza menza opinion on Susan St. John’s first novel. I assumed that a novel set in East Africa (Kenya & Tanzania) would have a lot of excitement...it didn’t. Throw in a safari with all the wild animals roaming freely...there has to be some sort of mishap, right? No, there were no incidents, no attacks, no narrow escapes involving the wild animals. That disappointed me. Then I said to myself, but this novel is so well written, so I kept going for all of its 437 pages. And I’m glad I did. Gadzooks, I loved the descriptive writing except when it occasionally got overdone. What do I mean about overdone? Well on pages 93 through 95, the author describes a man and woman in a Toyota Land Cruiser that approaches and passes (going the other way) the vehicle of our female protagonist, Sarah. How can you write three pages describing their immaculate clothing, or the man’s jewelry, “A loose-fitting gold-link chain encircles his neck, sparkling above a chest full of dark, curly hair visible through his half-unbuttoned shirt.” And guess what? That’s three pages describing a couple that you will not see or hear from in this story again. There are other things that somewhat annoyed me; such as Sarah didn’t seem to realize that she was bipolar until a doctor near the end told her so. Then she totally accepted that and took his advice. And the ending? Let’s not talk about that. So what did I Like? A lot actually. I loved the way the author kept the main characters to a handful. Other than the above mentioned exaggerated pages 93-95, Susan’s descriptive writing was refreshing...as was her prose. I can see that she has storytelling abilities, she just needs to add some pizzazz...get the reader excited! Surely a lion could have attacked one of the minor characters. Somebody could have been rescued from a quicksand pit! One of the rhinos (that the safari goers saw) could have charged the truck...something was needed. Susan’s novel reminded me a little of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen's 1937 book (later adapted into a movie) Out of Africa, also set in Kenya. Is that a compliment to the author? I guess it depends on whether you liked or disliked Blixen’s book. Enough already, what was the story about?

Sarah and her husband Peter hire Max Einfield to be their guide on a safari to East Africa. Sarah and Peter are not close anymore and Sarah hopes that this trip will revive their marriage. But it seems that all Peter is interested in is his new camera equipment. Max, who has a PhD in Zoology, is also the pilot of the safari plane and a known big game spotter. Sarah wants to record their trip’s experiences in her journal. But Max and Peter spend the whole trip harassing her to stop the journal. I never understood why Max, in particular, also berates Sarah about walking barefooted (a safety issue) the entire book. I could never figure out why these two men were so mean to her. By the way, the reader finds out that Sarah is bipolar, but I didn’t notice her having any severe mood swings. She only complained about a strange bronchitis or pneumonia cough throughout the novel. The threesome are later joined on the safari by Thad and Julia and the safari event’s owner, William. Later you will meet “world renowned” wildlife photographer, Brandon Howard. He flits in and out of the story, as does William, making it a Cormac McCarthy friendly five main characters novel. The following are some lines from Susan’s novel that illustrate her ability to write descriptive prose: Sarah describing Thad, "Sarah judges that Thad is above six feet tall and probably weighs in over two hundred pounds. His head juts forward so as to hear every word. His ears look like a pair of catchers' mitts, making the sentences of others into baseballs each glove reaches out to catch. He has the appearance of a yuppie poster child for the forty-something success story that he is.”, the sun setting, “The sun goes down as if being swallowed by the sky.” and to avoid scurvy, “Max picks up a slice of lemon covering the cut fruit and sucks it hard, using his tongue to wipe the acid from his teeth. He picks up a second piece and repeats the ritual with the sourness reflected only slightly in his expression.” Nice clean (not overstated) subtle descriptive lines.

I think that it is sad that Ernest Hemingway and his lost generation of writers decided that descriptive writing was passe. What possessed these writers to change the rules. Anyway, I for one, still enjoy reading the out of style way...descriptive.  

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I mentioned Ernest Hemingway’s group of American and British expatriates. The whole group went to Spain in 1925 to see the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain and watch the bull fights (and drink heavily). The trip’s result was Hemingway’s first novel published in 1926 - The Sun Also Rises.

As far as the movie I mentioned, Out of Africa starred Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. It garnered seven Academy Awards and three Golden Globes. But my favorite African movie (also set in East Africa) is the 1951 adventure film The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart (he won the Academy Award for Best Actor) as the drunken riverboat captain and Katherine Hepburn as Sister Rose. I also liked the 1964 movie Zulu, which featured the epic battle between the British Army and the Zulus in 1879. Finally, I also enjoyed the 1995 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1980 sci/fi adventure novel Congo.    

LINCOLN in the BARDO

George Saunders’ avant-garde novel gives me plenty of fodder to chew on...so to speak. Since Abe Lincoln is in it, one would say the genre is historical fiction. But I saw a new genre the other day that some people are putting this novel in...magical realism. Where did that come from? And I thought weird fiction was a far out genre. Silly me. This novel is experimental and also ergodic at the same time (in this case, many pages with limited writing). It has endless narrators with their names in lowercase under every line they say, such as, “As the man continued to gently rock his child.” (under that line, the reverend everly thomas), “While his child, simultaneously, stood quietly leaning against him.” (under that line, hans vollman) and “Then the gentleman began to speak.” (under that line, roger bevins iii). Do you see what I’m saying? This same model of identifying the narrator is also used when a line is borrowed from a book or article; such as, “The doctor assured Lincoln that Willie would recover.” (under that line, In ‘The President’s Hippocrates,” by Deborah Chase, M.D., account of Joshua Freewell). Did you notice that when a book is mentioned, it has the proper capitalization? Finally, there is heavy use of “op. cit.”, which means, “in the work already cited.” Of course that adverb is likewise under a line of text. Anyway, I thought I would mention these technical things before you plunge headlong into Saunders’ novel. By the way, I’m not complaining...I liked the inventiveness of the author.

Although the story is strange, it is quite simple. Basically, eleven year old Willie Lincoln is dying from a horrible cold and fever upstairs while Abe and Mary Todd are entertaining downstairs at a State Dinner in the White House. “They dined on tender pheasant, fat partridge, venison steaks, and Virginia hams; they battened upon canvasback ducks and fresh turkeys, and thousands of tidewater oysters shucked an hour since and iced, slurped raw, scalloped in butter and crackermeal, or stewed in milk.” “Yet there was no joy in the evening for the mechanically smiling hostess and her husband. They kept climbing the stairs to see how Willie was, and he was not doing well at all.” The next day...Willie dies. Mary Todd is too distraught to go to the burial. Judge Carroll loans Lincoln a space in his family’s crypt at a Georgetown cemetery, so Abe can temporarily bury his son (Willie will be buried at a later date in Illinois). Unknown to anybody is that the cemetery is populated by many ghosts that are in a bardo state. Bardo is a Tibetan term for existing between death and rebirth. Most of the cemetery’s population didn’t even know they were dead. Some people have gone to the final judgement; one scurried back after he saw what his punishment was going to be (was it the reverend everly thomas?). How did he do that? They socialize during the night and go to their sick-beds (they don’t say coffin, because they believe they are sick, not dead) at dawn. When Lincoln arrives to bury Willie in the borrowed white crypt, the whole cemetery citizenry is abuzz. What’s in store for Willie after the Lincoln burial party leave? And how do the ghosts handle Lincoln coming back in the evening to hold and coddle his dead son for the last time? Is Willie now a ghost?
  
The story behind the novel is interesting. According to Wikipedia, “The novel was inspired by a story Saunder’s wife’s cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie’s crypt at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown on several occasions to hold the body, a story that seems to be verified by contemporary newspaper accounts.” And according to The Guardian (a British newspaper), George Saunders said the following in 2017, “Without giving anything away, let me say this: I made a bunch of ghosts. They were sort of cynical; they were stuck in this realm, called the bardo (from the Tibetan notion of a sort of transitional purgatory between rebirths), stuck because they’d been unhappy or unsatisfied in life. The greatest part of their penance is that they feel utterly inessential-incapable of influencing the living.” The only ghost that understands their plight is Reverend Everly Thomas (the Judgement Day escapee from paragraph two). His friends, Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman don’t have a clue on what’s going on. The reverend says, “Many times I have been tempted to blurt out the truth to Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman: A terrible judgement awaits you, I long to say. Staying here, you merely delay. You are dead, and shall never regain that previous place. At daybreak, when you must return to your bodies, have you not noticed their disgusting states? Do you really believe those hideous wrecks capable of bearing you anywhere again? And what is more (I would say, if permitted): you shall not be allowed to linger here forever. None of us shall. We are in rebellion against the will of our Lord, and in time must be broken, and go.” Grab your own copy and enjoy this very strange novel.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: The Lincolns had very little luck with the health of their children. Three of their four sons didn’t make it to adulthood. Edward Baker Lincoln died at the age of four in 1850 from tuberculosis; as you know, Willie Lincoln died at the age of eleven in 1862 from fever; Thomas Tad Lincoln almost got to adulthood but succumbed to heart failure at the age of eighteen in 1871.

Robert Todd Lincoln (8/1/1843 to 7/26/1926) lived to the ripe age of 82. Robert served briefly for Gen. Grant in the closing days of the Civil War. Robert’s grandson, Robert “Bud” Todd Lincoln Beckwith (died in 1985) was the last person known to have direct Lincoln lineage.

Call for the Dead

This is a guest review from my eldest son, Deron:

This is my first John le Carré novel as it was le Carré’s. In this spy thriller that takes place during the early Cold War, we are introduced to George Smiley, a member of the Circus, a British intelligence agency named for its location in Cambridge Circus, London. At home, he receives an urgent late night call from the Circus Head of Service - Samuel Arthur Fennan at the Foreign Office had committed suicide. Only two days earlier, Smiley had conducted a routine security interview with Fennan prompted by an anonymous allegation. He had judged the claim baseless and assured Fennan that he “could see no reason why we should bother him further.” But despite those assurances, in a letter found near his body, Fennan wrote, “...I have decided to take my life. I cannot spend my remaining years under a cloud of disloyalty and suspicion. I realise that my career is ruined…” Smiley was baffled. The letter was in complete contradiction to what he had expressed in the interview. He then conducts an initial investigation and finds even more inconsistencies that convinces him that this was not a suicide; it was a murder.

Chapter one, “A Brief History of George Smiley”, was jarring. Rather than beginning with the action, the novel begins with a biography. I generally expect to learn a character’s history through relevant flashbacks as the story progresses and not given it wholesale. Only after finishing the book did this chapter make more sense. John le Carré is loudly declaring who George Smiley isn’t, namely Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Right out of the gate in the first sentence, the “breathtakingly ordinary” George Smiley marries the beautiful Lady Ann Sercomb, and in the second, we learn “she left him two years later in favor of a Cuban motor racing driver”. One might as well replace “a Cuban motor racing driver” with “Bond, James Bond”. Dapper? Smiley is described as “Short, fat and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.” In his prime? “Smiley was no material for promotion and it dawned on him gradually that he had entered middle age without ever being young, and that he was - in the nicest possible way - on the shelf.” And as far as espionage and foreign intrigue goes, Smiley was told, “Anyway, my dear fellow, as like as not you’re blown after all the ferreting about in the war. Better stick at home, old man, and keep the home fires burning.” This chapter also provides some clever foreshadowing of both Smiley’s professional and personal lives.

I did feel that le Carré was hand-holding me through the entire novel. Smiley noted the questions needing answers. Problems were restated, and there was very little misdirection. I always knew what Smiley was thinking through interior monologues. This left me never guessing.

The prose is the real reason to read this novel. John le Carré’s character descriptions, such as Smiley’s, are precise and vivid. Of Fennan’s wife, he writes, “Although frail, she conveyed an impression of endurance and courage, and the brown eyes that shone from her crooked little face were of astonishing intensity. It was a worn face, racked and ravaged long ago, the face of a child grown old on starving and exhaustion…” He is even skilled at purposely writing badly. I chuckled when Smiley said, “My story really begins in 1938. I was alone in my room one summer evening. It had been a beautiful day, warm and peaceful. Fascism might never have been heard of. I was working with my shirt sleeves at a desk by my window, not working because it was such a wonderful evening.” This is shortly followed by Smiley saying, “I’m sorry, I feel a little inarticulate.”

While imperfect, Call for the Dead was entertaining, and I found myself rereading sections. I’m looking forward to the next novel in this series.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment:

Both John le Carré and Ian Fleming were members of intelligence services, utilizing their knowledge and experiences in their novels. Given le Carré’s awareness of James Bond, is it possible that George Smiley’s unfaithful wife was named after Fleming’s wife, Ann?

Caramel Part I

The author sent his novella to me to read and review:

If I was Haji Outlaw (he says that’s his real name) and had my druthers, I never would have done the story in the fashion that he did it in. Why write three novellas (are they long enough to even be called a novella?) totaling 171 pages instead of a decent size novel. Here are the page totals of each of the three parts: 84, 37 and 50. Haji Outlaw coulda been a contender (my favorite line from Marlon Brando in the 1954 movie On the Waterfront). A contender for what? A contender for the many sci/fi-fantasy awards that are available every year? Or the many dystopian novels adapted for film? The story is written in a crude and raw fashion (it’s almost still in it’s notebook outline), yet the reader is mesmerized by the author’s ingenuity. And although there are bits and pieces of other dystopian novels in Haji's story, such as, Hugh Howey’s 2004 Wool (see my review of 1/21/2016), it remains largely original and quite breathtaking.
 
I can’t tell the reader too much because, if you remember, part one is only 84 pages long. The year is 2112 (is Haji a Rush fan?). Most of the population live in the 135 story Giddings building. The rich and privileged in the upper floors and the downtrodden in the three basement areas (B1, B2, B3) which are overcrowded and toothless rat infested. The Giddings Building had been there since the winters turned sub-arctic at 50 below zero and summers heated up to 125 degrees. Why the weather changed is not given in part one. The novella opens with Stan mourning the loss of Donny, one of his fighters (I’m assuming that was the reason) in the drug infested B3, where there is always a blue haze in the stagnant air from the heavily smoked Scanoline drug. B3 is ruled by a gang of ruthless killers. “Stan was so consumed with these thoughts, that he did not notice the young woman who stood in the middle of the room with her head down."

Eventually gang members noticed her standing in the middle of the floor. They want her pretty jacket...or else. I will not tell you what happens next, but it’s not pretty. And Stan has his next fighter. She will not talk, so he names her Caramel, or Cara for short. He and Caramel are granted entrance to the higher floors where 16 full contact battle courts are located. Meanwhile in the ground floor tunnel, a line was forming to get in. New people were being granted entrance to serve the rich. “For the better part of the year the tunnel of life was vacant. But on this occasion it was filled with two miles of men, women, and children. These were the lucky ones. The ones who had made it out of the harsh winter beyond and had a chance to live and work in the Giddings.” Suddenly, there was loud crashing sounds in the tunnel. What can it be? Something is trying to get into the tunnel. Oh, I should have told the reader that with all the environmental changes, normal house pets mutated. The screams in the front of the line were horrible. “Whatever made it in...was killing. It was killing good. It was killing fast. And there was no end in sight.” You would never guess what was tearing the people apart. I’m not telling. It’s brilliant.

It’s a shame that I have to give this story three stars, because the author could have done so much better. His imagination is amazing. His storytelling is gripping. Haji can still fix this literature faux pas. Put all three novellas into one novel, embellish the the story with at least 200 more pages, grab a top notch editor to put it together...and wa-lah you will have a big time hit on your hands.
 
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: It’s almost like Haji Outlaw was getting paid to see how fast he publish. Since I mentioned in the first paragraph that I didn’t read Parts two and three, I don’t know what direction the novel will take. The prose is rudimentary at best, but like everything else...he gets away with it. Can strong storytelling overcome all literature and grammar rules? Ya think?

THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

Wow, what a second novel! Coming off his first novel, This side of Paradise, no one expected F. Scott Fitzgerald to top the bestseller list again so quickly. F. Scott once again uses The 1920’s Jazz age and WWI as a backdrop for his second novel. The effects of future wealth and power are fully examined on the two main characters of the novel: Anthony Patch and his eventual wife, Gloria Gilbert. I’m also happy to report that there were only six main characters, which allows the reader time to get to know each character’s modus operandi. Anthony, a recent Harvard graduate, was brought up by his multimillionaire grandfather, Adam Patch. Grandpa wanted Anthony to write a book, or anything else constructive other than wasting his life away in the NYC nightlife. But Anthony could not get motivated in any career when he knew he was going to inherit millions from his sickly grandfather soon. Anthony got along nicely, selling off a bond or two (inherited from his mother) when he needed cash to continue his NYC daily cabareting. “At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother has faded off almost imperceptibly.” So you see, it was a matter of time before his grandfather dies...where else would the money go? Oh, life is going to be so good! Whereas Anthony occasionally traveled back and forth from NYC to Europe, he decided to get an apartment in NYC (closer to grandfather’s Tarrytown estate) and wait for the old man to die before living permanently in Europe. It’s not that he hated his grandfather (he didn’t); he just wanted his money. And his parties. And his booze.

I forgot to mention that F. Scott Fitzgerald is known to be the last descriptive writer. Let’s see how F. Scott describes Anthony’s seventy-five-year-old grandfather Adam Patch on page 16, “The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows, the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweaked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others - callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paint-box. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a hand of harps and canticles on earth.” What did he say? Anyway, back to the story. Anthony continues to drink and party at the many NYC private clubs he has joined. He is usually with his two best friends from Harvard. Maury Noble and Dick Caramel, who is writing a book. One day Anthony runs into Dick coming out of a barbershop. He tells Anthony that his cousin from Kansas is staying at her parent's apartment at The Plaza. Dick tells Anthony, “Got a cousin up at The Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winter - has lately anyway - with her mother and father.” Later, Anthony runs into Maury and is informed that he also met Gloria...and she has the best legs he ever saw. Lets meet Gloria.

Before Anthony meets Gloria, I would like to talk about the chapter F. Scott titled, A Flash-Back in Paradise. The reader meets “Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting-room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star (is this heaven?). It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again (is the VOICE God)? She learns that she will journey to a country that she has never been to. Beauty asks, “How long a stay this time?” The VOICE answers, “fifteen years”. All Beauty knows is that she will be a “society gurl”, as a “ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp.” This is what I don’t understand...the few woman in the novel all lived way over fifteen years. None of them died in this novel, none of them left after fifteen years... Is this a continuation of something that was started in F. Scott’s first novel? If so, I’m lost because I didn’t read This Side of Paradise. Okay, enough already. Gloria was gorgeous and every man or woman agreed. She was a lifetime partygoer and a big tease. And a big drinker. To Gloria, “Beauty always came first. That’s why she didn’t have children, the menace (a pregnancy) to her beauty appalled her.” Then she met Anthony. Her cousin and Anthony’s friend Dick brings her over to Anthony’s NYC apartment. It’s page 48...let the romance game start! “On Thursday afternoon Gloria and Anthony had tea together in the grill-room at the Plaza (try to get in there now, haha) They play the society game saying hello and blowing kisses to all the rival debutantes and bachelors. But they know that they are the stars dancing on the Plaza floor. Life is good...unless.

Some of the language used by F. Scott is archaic by today’s standards, but no writer could put a sentence together better than Fitzgerald. Some say this novel truly emulates the romance F. Scott Fitzgerald had with his wife, Zelda Sayre. In reviewing the many quotes from the real life Zelda, I find a Gloria Gilbert in most of them, such as, “Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think - live - I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us apart another night.”

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: While Hemingway and The Left Bank Gang of Paris expatriate writers of the 1920s ultimately ended the descriptive writing era, I still prefer it, even though a novel like The Beautiful and Damned takes awhile to finish because it’s really a kind of textbook on writing. You really aren’t reading the novel...you are studying it. Fitzgerald never changed his writing style. That’s why I like reading the classics.

Did you know that Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (F. Scott's full name) was named after his father’s distant cousin, the author of the “Star-Spangled Banner”.

Many of Fitzgerald’s novels and short stories have been adapted to film. The Great Gatsby has been a movie five times, while The Beautiful and Damned has been done twice. Even his short stories have become movies, such as, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (you didn’t know he wrote that...did ya?)

In 1940 with The Last Tycoon only half finished, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, in Sheilah Graham’s (a gossip columnist) Hollywood apartment. He is buried in Rockville Union Cemetery in Maryland. He was 44 years of age.

In 1948 Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire at a hospital in North Carolina. She was 47.

ANIMAL FARM

This is a guest review from my fifteen-year-old grandson, Kai O:

George Orwell uses the animals of Manor Farm to re-enact the Russian Revolution of 1917. Throughout the book, I found myself drawing connections from the farm to the actual events. At first, I was a little bit annoyed at this because I kept stopping every few pages or so to compare the story to real life. This got in the way of my overall enjoyment of the book. Later, I realized that George Orwell’s book was so skillfully written that I couldn’t help but find deeper meaning. Animal Farm was written in 1945, so the theme in this book seemed unimportant. But as the saying goes, those who don’t remember their past are doomed to repeat it.

The story begins with Old Major, a respected senior boar, calling all the animals (living on the farm) to a meeting in the barn. Once the meeting begins, Old Major tells the animals his dream for the future of Manor Farm. The old boar tells the animals of a farm where the animals rule themselves, and most importantly, he teaches the whole farm a song called, The Beast of England. This would be the rallying cry of the animal’s revolution. Old Major dies...but his original ideas live on. Quickly the animals revolt against their human oppressor, Mr. Jones. Soon Manor Farm is theirs and renamed Animal Farm. The pigs, being the smartest animals on the farm, became the masterminds behind the running of the farm, while the other animals took to the fields.

The animals now reign supreme on the farm. There are seven commandants behind animalism, but the sheep boil it down to, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” How will animalism fair when put into practice? If you know anything about the Russian Revolution, you have probably drawn a few conclusions. George Orwell gets straight to the point. Animal Farm isn’t a very long book, but every page added to the story. In my opinion, there are no boring parts in this book. Overall, Animal Farm is a quick read that would help anyone visualize what happened in the Russian Revolution. I would recommend this book to anyone twelve years old and older.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Excellent short, but to the point review! As Kai gets older, he seems to dig deeper into the author’s mind to understand the true meaning of what the author is trying to say. I think he succeeded in this review.

I believe that it’s obvious that Orwell intended the Old Major to be Karl Marx; Napoleon, the pig, to be Joseph Stalin; and Boxer, the workhorse, the hard working peasant (serf). Snowball, the other pig, was the loser in a power struggle with Napoleon.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Finders keepers, losers weepers! That seems to be the premise of Catherine Steadman’s maiden novel. The above phrase tightens its noose around all the main characters in this gripping tale set in Great Britain. The novel’s protagonist and narrator is documentary filmmaker, Erin Locke, who will soon be married to the love of her life, “Mark works in banking. I Know, yes, boo, hiss. But all I can say is: he’s not an arsehole. You’ll have to trust me on that. He’s definitely no Eton, drinking-club, polo-team alumnus.” They both have money put aside, a beautiful home, and potentially exciting careers when the unforeseen happens. According to Mark, thanks to stodgy bank politics and economic hard times, he loses his job at the bank and waits to tell Erin on the cusp of their wedding/honeymoon arrangements to Bora Bora. Reluctantly, Erin agrees to trim off some of the expense of the wedding, including a week shorter in the honeymoon department. Mark, no longer the joyful future husband, agrees to keep his chin up and try to enjoy their once-in-a-lifetime adventure in Polynesia. Erin wonders why Mark didn’t tell her about the loss of his job and all the wedding cutbacks till now, “He canceled our honeymoon. No, he didn’t cancel it; he just rearranged some of it, that’s all. But without asking me?” Mark says, “Erin. Thanks for being, you know...I’ve got a lot on my plate right now...I tend to clam up when I’m stressed.” Liar liar, pants on fire!

The first part of Steadman’s novel seemed to take awhile to develop and then when it did, it seemed to come on too fast...go figure. I liked how she kept the main characters down to a minimum. The author also proved that characters could remain anonymous and still be vital to the story. I love that kind of creative writing. Whenever a bad guy (for the sake of another word) contacted Erin or Mark, it was in the form of a text; such as, “The screen flares to life. Text messages ping up on the phone. Two messages: The offer still stands  Contact me.” Do you see how a writer can make a character remain important without knowing their name? When Erin picks up the pursuing bad guy’s lost phone and dials him up, he doesn’t answer with his name, instead he simply says, "Who is it?" All of this adds mystery to the story. You are probably asking yourself (based on the book’s title), what did Erin and Mark find in the water? And who are these nameless people that are trying to find them? Are they bad, or just desperate to get back what was theirs in the first place? Who are the real bad guys...Erin and Mark, or the nameless hunters?

Based on the research I did, If you recover a lost item and return it to a police station and they can’t find the owner after thirty days...it’s yours. But if author/actress Catherine Steadman followed that thought, she wouldn’t have a novel. Anyway, I was impressed with this young Downton Abbey actress’ (she plays Mabel Lane Fox in the series) ability to understand the basic rules of good literature and deploy them in her first novel. My only dislike was her mad dash to end the novel. I think she could have added another fifty pages, or so, to slow down the pace, although she does have a style that encourages the reader to rapidly turn the pages. Like I said in the second paragraph...go figure. By the way, I forgot to mention that the (eight page) first chapter titled The Grave was a splendid idea...the proverbial putting the cart before the horse. It hooked me right into the creel. The first line is, “Have you ever wondered how long it takes to dig a grave? Wonder no longer. It takes an age. However long you think it takes, double that.” I dare you, I double dare you to buy this novel!

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Steadman's novel is original in its concept. I looked through a list of novels involving items lost at sea and didn't come up with a similar story.

I have no reason why I used those three children's phrases other than they just seemed to fit the text of its paragraph and my mood writing this review tonight.