Happy Memorial Day

In Loving Memory Of All Those Who Paid The Ultimate Price For Our Freedom.

Frog by Mary Calmes

Synopsis From Publisher:

Weber Yates's dreams of stardom are about to be reduced to a ranch hand's job in Texas, and his one relationship is with a guy so far out of his league he might as well be on the moon.  Or at least in San Francisco, where Weber stops to see him one last time before settling down to the humble, lonely life he figures a frog like him has coming. 

Cyrus Benning is a successful neurosurgeon, so details are never lost on him.  He spotted the prince in a broken-down bull rider's clothing from day one.  But watching Weber walk out on him keeps getting harder, and he's not sure how much more his heart can take.  Now Cyrus has one last chance to prove to Weber that it's not Weber's job that makes him Cyrus's perfect man, it's Weber himself.   With the help of his sisters' newly broken family, eh's ready to show Weber that the home the man' been searching for has always been right there, with him.  Cyrus might have laid down an ultimatum once, but now it's turned into a vow - he's never going to let Weber out of his life again. 

Every once in a while, you come across a book that makes you feel as if you are wrapped in a warm cozy sweater on a harsh winter day, lounging on a couch as you drink hot cocoa, safe and secure from the storm raging outside.  They are books filled with characters that make you feel right at home, surrounded by your nearest and dearest, enveloped by the love that only they can give you.  They are the books you escape into when you need to pretend the outside world no longer exists, that the fantasy playing out on the page is more real than what's outside your front door.  From the first time I read Frog by Mary Calmes, I knew that it would become one of those books for me.  After a half dozen or so readings, it just keeps getting better.

A large part of my love for this book revolves around the way the author writes.  It's in the way she structures her scenes, builds the world her characters inhabit, and in the loving way she brings her characters to life.  This is an author, and I've read quite a few of her books by now, that loves her characters as much as the reader does.  It shows in their personalities and in the way they interact with each other.  It shows in the way they think for themselves, and in the growth they develop.  They are fully formed, four dimensional characters.  They are characters that have a past, present, and future.  They are people that you not only want to be around, but they are men that you want to be.

Weber and Cyrus are perfect examples of what I'm talking about.  Weber is about as perfect of a man as I've come across in all the fiction that I have read.  He is kind, considerate, fearless, loving, gentle, caring, affectionate, comfortable in his own skin, and kids & animals adore him.  He should come across as a stock character, barely discernible from every other romantic lead out there, but he doesn't.  He shines instead.  He is his own unique self, struggling to accept the idea that the man everyone else sees, is not the man he thinks he is.  Weber is that perfect man, who has no clue of his worth to those around him.  He is a man who lost both parents at en early age, then lost the brother who raised him to a war nobody should have been fighting.  He is a man who sees himself in one light, and has come to peace with his version of reality, but doesn't seem to fathom that he is so much more than that.  Through the course of this book, and I leave the details on the how out, he comes to accept that not only is he worthy of loving someone, of building a life with someone, but that he is worthy of that love and that life.

Cyrus is pretty damn perfect too, except that man that Weber knows, is not the man that anyone else seems to know.  Cyrus is that guy who has been responsible his whole life, serious at work and at home.  It's only with Weber that Cyrus really seems to embrace all that life has to offer, and not just the success granted by working hard playing smart.  Where with everyone else, including his family, he's loving but distant, with Weber he has no walls, he is the man he is supposed to be, not the man he is expected to be.  What both men need to accept, and they do by the end, is that regardless of who they think they are, they are so much more than that.  They both learn to see themselves the way others do, and by embracing that reality, they are able to move forward together.

Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power by Kevin Peraino

Part Of The Synopsis From Publisher:

This is the story of one of the most breathtaking feats in the annals of American foreign policy—performed by one of the most unlikely figures. Abraham Lincoln is not often remembered as a great foreign-policy president. He had never traveled overseas and spoke no foreign languages. And yet, during the Civil War, Lincoln and his team skillfully managed to stare down the Continent’s great powers—deftly avoiding European intervention on the side of the Confederacy. In the process, the United States emerged as a world power in its own right. 

Engaging, insightful, and highly original, Lincoln in the World is a tale set at the intersection of personal character and national power. The narrative focuses tightly on five distinct, intensely human conflicts that helped define Lincoln’s approach to foreign affairs—from his debate, as a young congressman, with his law partner over the conduct of the Mexican War, to his deadlock with Napoleon III over the French occupation of Mexico. Bursting with colorful characters like Lincoln’s bowie-knife-wielding minister to Russia, Cassius Marcellus Clay; the cunning French empress, Eugénie; and the hapless Mexican monarch Maximilian—Lincoln in the World draws a finely wrought portrait of a president and his team at the dawn of American power. 

Somehow in all the reading I've done on American Presidents, I've managed to skip over President Lincoln,  I've never read anything about him, including one of President Obama's favorite books, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  I've read more about former First Ladies, than I've read about our 16th president.   I'm glad that with reading Lincoln in the World, that glaring oversight has been taken care of.

President Lincoln's foreign policy tends to be overshadowed by domestic policy in most school history books, which is understandable given the plethora of issue that gave rise to the Civil War. To be quite frank, I can't remember a thing from either high school or college on the subject., and that's assuming they even taught us anything about it, and that's highly doubtful. With Lincoln in the World, I was given a chance to not only learn the history of what took place during his administration, but it's given me some insight into some of the foreign policy issues that are still facing us today.

This could have been a dry, boring book, spouting off dates and names.  Instead, while it was meticulously researched and presented, it was engaging.  The author took a ton of information, and was able to not only condense it, but explain it in such a way that made me feel like Goldilocks.  Nothing was over my head, nothing was being dumbed-down to make me understand the implications of what I was reading, it was just right.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books, for this review.

Favorite Fictional Character --- Orko

In the world of long gone, Saturday morning cartoons, the sidekick reigned supreme.  Off the top of my head, I can think of 20 to 30 that served alternately as comic relief, and as their show's conscious.  They could quickly become the heart and soul of show, and at times, they overshadowed the main characters.  Some of them have gone on to be remembered with fondness, and other with derision, if they are even remembered at all.  Then there are the ones who have become cultural icons, instantly recognized by the masses.  They can be found merchandised to the hilt, in other works of fiction, and as a stand in for some sort of cultural ideal.  In the world of the cartoon sidekick, one of my favorites of all time comes from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a cartoon that existed to solely sell toys.  Oddly, Orko, the hero of this post, was the only character who started off on the show, before ending up as a toy.

Orko is one of those characters that has continuously bridged the line between annoying and heroic.  On one hand, the writers, when they couldn't think of any other way to get the action started, would have Orko screw something up, and the rest of the show would be him, and others trying to fix the problem.   The rest of the time, he was the one would somehow save the day, rescuing He-Man and the other Masters out of some predicament they found themselves in.  It was as if they could never really get a real handle on who Orko was, or at the least, couldn't figure out the way to use him. 

It's that bizarre dichotomy of character, that has endeared him to millions of us that grew up with him on our TV screens. He's so earnest, so eager to do the right thing, you can't help but find his bumbling charming, and forgivable.  He ended up on Eternia by accident, with no way of getting home.  Where many of us would have hunkered down, and wallowed in self pity for a while, he decided to make the best of the situation, even though he found himself at a disadvantage in his new home.  On his home planet, he was a powerful wizard, on Eternia, who has different natural rules, that magic doesn't work as well as it should. But he never gives up, he never feels sorry for himself, at least not for too long, and he's always willing to give all of himself when it's asked of him.  If you think about it, he is the whole reason He-Man even exists.  If he hadn't saved a young Adam in the swamp, Skeletor would have conquered Eternia long ago.  And if you take that logic to it's next level, that means Orko is in fact the hero of the show, not He-Man.

They tried to reboot the show, and the characters in the early 2000s, but it never recaptured the heart of the original.  Part of that was due to the changes they made in the characters personalities, including in Orko's, and part of it was simply bad writing and even worse animation.  Orko, at least for me is a cultural icon that can not be reproduced.  While I wish they would have done a better job of defining who he was as a whole character, not just good for a laugh or two, Orko is the one who has stuck with me all these years later.  Now I just need to see if I can find his action figure one of these days.  Besides, how can you not love a guy who is responsible for bringing Christmas to Eternia.

Ghost of a Smile by Simon R. Green

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Meet the operatives of the Carnacki Institute - JC Chance: the team leader, brave, charming, and almost unbearably arrogant; Melody Chambers: the science geek who keeps the antisupernatural equipment running; and Happy Jack Palmer: the terminally gloomy telepath.  Their mission: Do Something About Ghosts.  Lay them to rest, send them packing, or just kick their nasty ectoplasmic arses...

A distress call was received from the private research centre of one of the biggest drug companies in the world.  The police went in - and never came out.  A national security team stormed the place.  No-ones's heard anything further from them, either.

Now it's in the hands of the Carnacki Institute's rising stars. They have the wrong equipment. They have no idea what awaits.  And they have the clock ticking in the background.  But they also have a secret weapon; JC's very lovely - and very dead - girlfriend...

Part of the reason I love Simon R. Green's book so much, are the names he gives to his creations. Whether they are the good guys, or bad, they all just have cool names.  It can be a name that is very specific to the type of person they are; personality, abilities, that sort of thing. They can be bad-ass names, that come straight from a dark and twisted comic book.  Or they can be a simple definition of what the character is, as in the case of the main, terrifying villain in Ghost of a Smile, The Flesh Udying.

I've never really thought about it, but names truly are a powerful thing.  Yeah, we have all read a book, or watched a movie, where the bad guy is vanquished by the hero learning the true name of their foe.  If a demon is involved, the name hunt is going to come up, it's a sure thing.  Hell, just ask Superman and Mr. Mxyzptlk, names are important.

But that's not the importance I'm placing on names in these books.  After reading numerous Simon R. Green's books, nine of them now, I've learned, anew, how powerful names truly are. Sure, the whole vanquishing through uttering a name cliche has come up in his books, but it's more in the way he uses names that I've become intrigued by.  Since I don't know the author, I'm not going to say this as a definite statement, but I'm pretty positive that he puts some thought in to the names, and that they aren't picked out of a hat.   Each name he picks seems to have a very specific function.  And I appreciate that.  These are names that give me insight into the characters's personality.  They help me understand the character's thought processes, and their motivations.

I've always appreciated the author's style and humor in his writing.  He blends satire, horror, fantasy, and science fiction, just about better than anybody I've ever come across.  Ghost of a Smile, the second book in the Ghost Finders series, is a continuation of my love affair with his work, and it's the book that finally got me to look at the naming of his characters, and the insights those names give into what's going on on the page.  It's a madcap ride through a locked building, think a traditional haunted house story set in an office building, and involving a lot more than a ghost or two. Think more on the primal level, and you may get an idea of what our ghost finders are facing.  If you think of the name he gave his main monster in this one, The Undying Flesh, you get an even better idea of what it is they faced in that building.  Like they always say, names have power, and Simon R. Green is genius at utilizing that power.

Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe by Andrew Dickson

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Ranging ambitiously across four continents and four hundred years, Worlds Elsewhere is an eye-opening account of how Shakespeare went global.  Seizing inspiration from the playwright's own fascination with travel, foreignness, and distant worlds - worlds Shakespeare never himself explored - Andrew Dickson takes us on an extraordinary journey:  from Hamlet performed by English actors tramping through the Baltic states in the early sixteen hundreds to the skyscrapers of twenty-first-century Beijing and Shanghai, where "Shashibiya" survived Mao's Cultural Revolution to become a revered Chinese author. 

En route, Dickson traces Nazi Germany's strange love affair with, and attempted nationalization of, the Bard, and delves deep into their history of Bollywood, where Shakespearian stories helped give birth to Indian cinema.  In Johannesburg, we discover how Shakespeare was enlisted in the fight to end apartheid.  In nineteenth-century California, we encounter shoestring performances of Richard III and Othello in the dusty mining camps and saloon bars of the Gold Rush. 

No other writer's work has been performed, translated, adapted, and altered in such a remarkable variety of cultures and languages.  Both a cultural history and a literary travelogue, Worlds Elsewhere is an attempt to understand how Shakespeare has become the international phenomenon he is - and why. 

I'm going to put this out there before we even get started, I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan. It's not that I don't like him, but I can't say I would ever go out of my way to read one of his plays.  In college, I played Philostrate in a production of A Midsummer's Night Dream, set in feudal Japan.  I've enjoyed a few movie versions of Much Ado About Nothing, and I love the movie version of Titus Andronicus that I've seen.  And outside of mandatory reading in high school and college, that's the extent of my dabbling with Shakespeare  So for you die hard fans, I'm sorry that I'm not in love with the Bard, at least not as much as you are.

That lack of exposure to Shakespeare, is why I agreed to review this book.  I was intrigued by the concept; the author traveling the globe, learning how particular cultures absorbed and interpreted his works for their own.  For the most part, I really enjoyed the journey that Andrew Dickson took me on.  I do wish he would have been able to visit a few other countries, but I get that finances dictate how much global traveling you can really do.  And while there were moments that felt bogged down in detailed minutiae, I appreciated the work he put into the book, and his love for the subject shines through on every page.

After finishing the Worlds Elsewhere, while I can't say that my interest in Shakespeare's work has been increased, I will admit to having a little more respect for him, and the influence he has had on a global scale.  I don't think I truly had an appreciate, or understanding, of how popular he was across the globe, and how adaptable his works are to other cultures, at least not on the level I was exposed to in this book.  For that alone, for gaining a new appreciate for an author who is globally loved, I'm grateful for reading this book.

I would like to thank the publisher, Henry Holt, for providing a copy of Worlds Elsewhere, in exchange for an honest review.
                                                                                                                                                                               

Favorite Fictional Character --- Bookworm

Sidekicks are a tried and true archetype in the fictional world.  They don't always stand out, nor are they all that noticeable at times, but they all serve the same function.  They may perform that function in different ways, but they are all there to make their partner more relatable to the audience.  They do it through humor most of the time, but they can also act as storytellers and interpreters for their partners.  In other ways, and when they are utilized at their weakest level, they are simply there as a prop, something for their stronger counterpart to play off of.  That is the worst kind of sidekick, and one that a reader/viewer will never pay attention to, which is a waste of potential.  It robs the character of being memorable, and it robs the audience of a character they could care about.

On character that hovers around the line between being a great sidekick, and an almost overlooked one, is Bookworm from a few Merry Melodies cartoons.  He is the occasional sidekick for Sniffles, another character I absolutely adore, and though he never utters a word, he's frickin adorable.  We first meet him in Sniffles and the Bookworm from 1939, as they wind their way through various adventures in a closed bookshop, as book characters come to live.  Where Sniffles is a talkative little guy, Bookworm uses facial expressions and hand gestures, pantomime, to get his point across.  He is expressive and charming, and I wanted nothing more to hang out with the two of them as a kid.

Sadly, he was only used a handful of times, but he was the right anchor for Sniffles.  He would be scared, if Sniffles needed to be brave.  He would be cautious, if Sniffles needed to think things through a bit more.  Whatever Sniffles needed to be, Bookworm was the right catalyst for him.  Between the two of them, Bookworm is probably the one who sticks in the minds of most people, at least those reading this blog, because he was probably the more relatable to our lives.  He was a quite sort of guy, happier when he could bury his head in a book to read adventures, rather than living them himself.  At the same time, he was a true friend for Sniffles, never letting him face the world alone, ready to face his fears, if that's what was asked of him.