Mr. Burke's Reading List

The Shadow Glass by Josh Winning (2022) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This was a pandemic book club pick. It received a mixed but mostly positive reviews. For fans of the Dark Crystal or Labyrinth (I've seen the first, not the second), imagine a similar film that was created by a one-time director named Bob Corman that defined a generation and spawned a lot of ancillary material. This is the world of the movie The Shadow Glass, which created a word known as "Iri", pronounced "eerie". Jack is the son of Bob, who recently passed away. Jack was estranged from his father, and now in financial straits, he looks to sell off some of his father's things. He winds up encountering creatures from Iri in his father's attic, which seek the Shadow Glass. Bad times have come to Iri and they have unti...

Superman in the Fifties (2021) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) Last summer, I was in my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library , and while there, I picked up 3 graphic novels. I read part of this one, and then put the pile on the side. I've been renewing them every three weeks since then. Of the three, this was the one that it took the longest to read. Back in the fifties, the artwork in comics was much simpler but there was a lot more text to read. The pictures are interesting enough, but nothing is visually stunning. And, of coure, the story lines are about 70 years old. The funny thing about this was the number of other rockets that landed on Earth and how many of those came from Krypton. There were three villains, not the Phantom Zone villains, who were imprisoned in a rocket. There was Krypto and Supergirl....

Superman '78 (2022) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) Last summer, I was in my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library , and while there, I picked up 3 graphic novels. I read part of this one, and then put the pile on the side. I've been renewing them every three weeks since then. Superman 78 is a vit of an anomaly. Batman 66 holds a place in the hearts of many in a generation who grew up with reruns of the classic series day after day. At the same time, many of those same people, or their older siblings, grew up with the Adventures of Superman from a decade earlier. While people have fond memories of Christopher Reeve as Superman, there were only four movies to work with, the last time being a little different from the first two, and the mythology isn't quite the same as the comic book. Granted, some of th...

Power Girl: Power Trip (2014) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) Last summer, I was in my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library , and while there, I picked up 3 graphic novels. I read part of this one, and then put the pile on the side. I've been renewing them every three weeks since then. I finally spent a couple hours getting through the rest of Power Girl so I could return the book already. Power Girl has an odd history. For anyone past the half-century mark in their life's journey, they will recall that Power Girl was the Earth-2 Supergirl analogue, back when there was an Earth-2. Then in the mid-80s, DC Comics decided to "simplify" something that many of their fans didn't find all that complicated. (Yes, there were some contradictions that could've been cleared up by Fiat, but that...

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This was a pandemic book club pick. It received a mixed but mostly positive reviews. I watched the series while I was waiting for the book to become available at the library. I think I'm glad that I did it in that order. For one thing, it preparted me for the intelligent dog that was abandoned from the military. For another, had I read the book first, I might've been bothered by some of the changes made for the book, including an entire subplot that was created for the show. Elizabeth Zott is a chemist except that she doesn't have her PhD because of an incident in school. She stabbed the mentor who tried sexually assaulted her and then wouldn't apologize for hurting him. She works as an asistant at the only place that would hire ...