Rickles' Book: A Memoir (Rickles, Ritz)

Rickles' Book: A Memoir, Don Rickles, David Ritz, 2007

I was taking lunch, walking down Pennsylvania Ave in Brooklyn when I passed a Thrift Shop with stacks of books outside. I saw Don Rickles' face on a cover with a sticker price of a dollar. For less than a cup of coffee, I had my subway reading. I picked up the book and then perused most of the rest of the shop (as long as I was there).

A quick flip through the book showed that it was written in 2-3 page chapters or vignettes. I assumed that they would be a collection of funny anecdotes and jokes, but it wasn't. Some were serious. Some were amusing but didn't exactly end in a punchline.

This book might be of interest to long-time Rickles fans, but I doubt the appeal would go much further. Little is mentioned about his life before comedy. He was a kid for a couple of chapters, then in the U.S. Navy, and then trying to establish himself in comedy. Along the way, he drops a lot of names. He talks Vegas, and mentions Hollywood. Oddly, I had only recently seen the clip from The Tonight Show when Rickles broke Johnny Carson's pencil box when Johnny wasn't there and the following night, Carson marched across the hall to the studio where CPO Sharkey was filming and confronted him. That story is included. Also mentioned is the longtime friendship with Bob Newhart, his connections to the Rat Pack and even Elvis.

And, of course, there's a story about his grandkids and Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story.

The one other amusing connection with this book is that while I was reading it, Rickles appeared on Jimmy Kimmel's show along with John Stamos, and then proceeded to talk a lot about Bob Saget.

Last amusing thought: the "other books by" page notes that David Ritz has written about a dozen "autobiographies" featuring the lives of a dozen different people. I think I need to look up that word because I'm not sure that that is the correct meaning of the word.

The Darwin Awards: Intelligent Design (Northcutt)

The Darwin Awards: Intelligent Design, Wendy Northcutt, 2000

While covering for another teacher, I glanced at the books on her shelf, and I spotted this little gem of humor. The Darwin Awards are famous and shouldn't need an explanation. I read posts when they show up on social media, but I've never been to the actual websites where stories are posted, discussed and voted on. Nor have I read an entire book of them before.

THere are some amusing stories within these pages. On the other hand, they are also a bit sad. As you chuckle at others' misfortunes, you remember that these were real people, some of whom did very foolish things. And when they are grouped together by categories, they can get repetitive in nature. Maybe that's why I preferred some of the "Honorable Mentions" -- a person gets one of those, generally, by living through their spectacular lapse of judgment.

In addition to the anecdotes, each section has an actual science article as an introduction. It provides some insight as well as a needed distraction.

A quick read. Glad I read it, but I'm not quickly running out to find another one.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Van Gelder, ed)

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 2002, Gordon Van Gelder, editor

Catching up on my reading list, this is the first of several posts in the days ahead. >P?First off, okay, it's not a usual book. However, at 160 pages of mostly fiction, this one issue of the long-running genre magazine has more reading material than some of the actual books that I read.

I have quite a few SF/F magazines in the house. Most of them are issues of Analog because I had a subscription for a number of years, and I never could keep up with them. Where this issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction came from, I'm not sure. There's nothing to indicate that it was mailed to me (no label, or glue), so my guess would be that it was a freebie at a science fiction convention somewhere, most likely Lunacon, which is held (almost) every March.

I have a pool in my yard. I don't sit in read by the pool very often. On the other hand, I've started to like reading in the pool. This means no ebooks (obviously) and no books that I would care about if I "lost". That is, if they took the plunge. These decade-old magazines fit the bill nicely.

I can't say that I was ever a regular read of F&SF but this had a decent selection of stories. Also of note: there wasn't an editorial column up front, and of the "departments", Paul Di Filippo's Plumage From Pegasus: Press One For Literature read like another short story. Added bonus: to my knowledge, I've never read anything by Di Filippo before, but I have two novels in my closet in yet another "To Be Read" pile.

The stories covered a broad spectrum of the genre. There was a religious-based story, which I didn't quite understand, but didn't hate, and a cute retired superhero tale.

On the downside, the novella "Coelacanths" by Robert Reed left me scratching my head.

Albert E. Cowdrey's novelette left me wondering what I missed in his previous writing. This entry, "Ransom", was his third story in F&SF. It started in a different century than his prior two, so I thought I was safe. However, it quickly time-traveled farther into the future, into territory I felt that I should have been more familiar with. I must've put it down a few times before the actual story got going.

So there was some good, some bad, some ugly, but nothing to stop me from picking up another issue. Except that the summer is over, the pool is covered and I have stacks of books to read.

L is for Lawless (Grafton)

L is for Lawless, Sue Grafton, 1995

This is the 12th book in the series, in case you're counting letters of the alphabet on your fingers. After being a little disappointed by the ending of the K is for Killer, I went straight into the next book. I knew from the start, it wasn't going to be a good time for Kinsey, but at least this time, that fact is telegraphed in the opening comments before the story begins.

For the second time in four novels, Kinsey is involved in a wedding party. (You can't say always a bridesmaid, never a bride, because she'll bring up her two past marriages.) And as with the last time, she gets caught up in events that take her away despite the upcoming event. The last time, it was against her will and she wasn't free to go.l This time, she's following a duffel bag of stolen goods and she can't let her only lead vanish.

And as Kinsey points out at the start, for everything she's going through, she's not even getting paid.

The story begins with landlord Henry Pitts asking Kinsey to help out the family of a deceased neighbor down the street. The family has been trying to get death benefits paid for the grandfather, who had served in World War II. The only problem is that the military keeps saying that they've never heard of him. She volunteers to help look for information in his records that might provide some missing key information that would identify to prove to military service, so they can claim the few hundred dollars they believe he's entitled to.

While searching through old military books, she meets Ray Rawson, an old acquaintance of the deceased Johnny Lee from back East. Ray is looking to move to California and wants to rent the apartment. It doesn't told long to figure out that both Johnny and Ray are full of secrets, the first of which being that Johnny was never in the military -- that's just the story that was told to cover up his two-year absence.

After the apartment is later ransacked, Kinsey follows the thief all the way to the airport, where he gives a duffel bag to a woman who is boarding a plane for Florida. Kinsey buys a ticket and follows, with only what personal items she has in her bag, and a credit card that's nearly maxed out after the airfare. A wrench gets puts in the plans when the woman gets off the plane in Texas.

The mysteries unfold as we find out where Johnny had been, how Ray knows him and the connection to Gilbert Hays, who is both ruthless and persistent.

A satisfying read, and while the ending wasn't given away in the intro, you know it's not going to be the best outcome for Kinsey. On the other hand, it's probably the only one that would make sense, as it extricates her from some events of dubious legality.

As for the continuing elements: obviously there's the wedding between Rosy and Henry's brother, and his whole family is present for it. Also, there's some movement on Kinsey's newfound relatives.

This was an ebook loan from the libary.

K is for Killer (Grafton)

K is for Killer, Sue Grafton, 1994

This is probably the fastest I've read any book in the series to date, having extra time on my hand. (I finished a few days ago, but I had connectivity problems.) It's also the first one where I was disappointed in the ending. I won't give it away because there are a few people besides me reading this blog.

One thing I can say for the series is that they don't all end the same way. There isn't a shoot-out in every book. The guilty party doesn't end up always end up dead (although truth be told, I do prefer mysteries where the guilty party is named and caught, and not left flying in the wind).

Let me back up a bit. This novel takes places less than a year after the events of J is for Judgment. Kinsey takes on a cold case after she gets a visit in her office from a woman who a support group that meets in the same building after the woman spotted Kinsey's name on the building's directory.

Janice Kepler's daughter, Lorna, was found dead ten months earlier in an isolated cabin located some distance behind the main house on the owners' property. Her body was discovered a couple weeks after her death, and the state of the corpse made determining cause of death impossible. They couldn't even tell if it was a murder or an accident.

What makes the mother seek answers now is that she suddenly received a video in the mail, a professionally-made porno film, in which Lorna was the star. Why did someone send it to her now after all this time? And did it have something to do with her death?

Kinsey isn't sure that there is anything that she can do after all this time, but she agrees to look into the investigation (which is technically still open), going so far as traveling to San Francisco to talk to the people who made the movie. Likewise, finding out that Lorna was a prostitute, Kinsey finds and befriends another lady of the evening who knew the dead woman.

And to top it off, Lorna worked part-time at the water treatment plant, which was a cover for all her other activities. She had to make some honest money somewhere -- although she made sure to pay the IRS taxes on everything!

There's plenty to follow in the story, but it takes a sideways turn when a mysterious, shadowy figure is introduced who you know will play some part in the ending either for good or for ill. The character gets mentioned so little in the rest of the novel that it could have been excised entirely.

But that brings me back to the ending, where Chekov's Mysterious Figure must return. That in itself might not be so bad, but how he comes back bothered me.

I don't think Grafton wrote herself into a corner and chose to add this extra character to handle things. Other resolutions were possible, even some which wouldn't copy what she's done before. Likewise, I can't say that it was a lazy ending. After all, this is the eleventh book in the series and she plans to write fifteen more. I just not happy where the characters went.

On the continuing saga parts of the story, Rosie and William (Henry's brother) move things along, but Kinsey's newfound family don't make any appearances.

This was a library e-book loan, which I finished in just a few days. Record time for me.

I still enjoyed the book, even if I questioned its resolution. Hoping for better next time.

Next up, installment 12. L. I've already started it.

J is for Judgment (Grafton)

J is for Judgment, Sue Grafton, 1993

Summer's here, so I'm back to reading a couple more Sue Grafton Alphabet mysteries, featuring Kinsey Millhone, although had I been keeping up, I probably should be nearly up to date by now.

I'm pretty sure that J is for Judgment was totally new to me. That is, it's not one of the novels I heard on tape back in the 90s. It takes place a few months after the events of I is for Innocent although it was released a year later. This will probably become a timing issue somewhere down the line, particularly with Kinsey lugging around her portable typewriter and not owning a cell phone. She even uses pay phones on occasion.

Okay, so the plot goes something like this: she no longer works for California Fidelity, but they hire her to investigate whether or not a person spotted in Mexico is someone who disappeared five years ago. When he was declared dead, CF had to pay out half a million on his life insurance. They want to know if he's still alive and if the wife is part of a long-term scam. Wendell Jaffe ran a Ponzi scheme (Bernie Madoff, two decades earlier, but not quite as rich) and disappeared when it collapsed, leaving his partner holding the bags, and his wife and two sons with lives in ruins. His boat was found after an apparent suicide.

Kinsey goes to Mexico, finds the man who looks somewhat like Jaffe's pictures, allowing for aging and surgery. He's also traveling with a woman, Renata Huff, posing as her husband. Kinsey's investigation involves a little breaking and entering, and Wendell is scared off -- or was it the news that his troubled son has broken out of prison and has been recaptured. Figuring that Wendell would check on his family, Kinsey moves her investigation. Until now, she has no proof that Dean Dewitt Huff is actually Wendell Jaffe.

Family plays another role in Judgment: while canvassing the neighborhood, she meets someone who recognizes her last name and thinks she looks familiar. Before you know it, Kinsey discovers that she's not as alone as she was always led to believe. This will be a thread that will play out over successive novels, similar to the romance that sparked in the last installment between the brother of Henry, the landlord, and Rosie, the local Hungarian restaurateur.

Another fun, quick read. I'm a little biased: I like this series.

This was a library e-book loan, which amusingly ran out while I was reading the last chapter. I had to borrow it a second time.

Next up, installment 11. K.

The Side of Good (Ackley-McPhail, ed)

The Side of Good, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, ed., 2015

First off, this is a bit of a cheat for me, because this is only half of a book. The printed edition of The Side of Good is actually a flip book: if you flip it, you will find The Side of Evil. If you order the ebook, you will get two downloads, each with its own cover (as seen above).

As the names might suggest, this pair of books are anthologies filled with stories of Super Heroes and Super Villains. I get the Heroes precedence and read their tales first.

Editor Danielle Ackley-McPhail has assembled seven stories by Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin, Bryan J. L. Glass, John L. French, Walt Ciechanowski, Kathleen O'Shea David, Robert Greenberger, and James Chambers.

The stories range from the non-powered to the super-powered to the oddly-powered (is it really a superpower?). They not only deal with their heroics but how their actions impact their own lives and the ones around them. And when does it get to be too much?

If I had to pick a favorite, I might go with "Making a Difference", by Robert Greenberger, which reads like an old indie-comic low-powered hero on a motorcycle story, emphasis on old. "Ghost Wolf" by Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin, would come a close second. For fans of Kathleen David, if you're expecting puppets to play a role in her story, you won't be disappointed.

You won't be disappointed with The Side of Good unless you're, say, Lex Luthor. In that case, flip the book over.

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Current reads:

• ebooks: mostly short story anthologies, flipping back and forth, The Side of Evil or The Weird Wild West
• hardcover (for commuting w/o an ereader): Once Upon a Time (she said)
• manga: started getting One-Piece books from the library. Number 11 has been "in transit" for over a week now.
• in the pool: old paperbacks and sci-fi mags that I don't mind if they get a little wet and won't cry over if they fall in. Right now, an old issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1987

Reminder: for anyone stumbling across this site. These entries aren't really meant to be reviews. I mostly write them for myself because I have a tendency to forget about some of the books I've read -- either about the characters or plot of a book, or sometimes even the book itself. But writing summaries is boring, especially for anthologies, and some of my friends actually like reading this blog, so I'm trying to make it more enjoyable to read, which is all I can ask in a book.

Freakonomics (Levitt, Dubner)

Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, 2005

This was the third and last book saved from a pile that was being donated. I don't remember if it was my idea to save this one, or if my wife recommended it to me, being a math book. (By the way, I can count this toward my informal Read At Least One Book About Math Every Summer list.)

There is no unifying theme to this book, and the book will even get into it. Each section is an investigation into some problem and compares data that you might not otherwise think to compare. This is the work of a man who likes to get his hands dirty looking through data for connections and trends. However, no correlations are made until he finds a method to control for other variables -- such as trying to establish the link between money and politics by concentrating on rematches between the same two candidates.

There are some interesting moments, some infuriating and some a little dull. The authors go into detail about the impact of Roe v. Wade on violent crime 15-20 years later, the economics of dealing crack (and why crack dealers still live with their moms), but also look into things like the impact of a person's name on their future employment. (That latter chapter, while interesting, seemed to go on a little too long for me.)

I read the 2006 revised hardcover, which contained additional material. In particular, the original article that spawned the book itself, some other articles published after the book and some blog posts.

Overall, it was an interesting read. I'm not running out to buy another one, nor am I ready to concede the war on crime was won because of abortion, but it was an interesting exercise.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Haddon)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, 2003

This book was suggested to me by my wife when I asked her about Tuesdays with Morrie. She thought it was a good read and that I'd find it interesting. (Or maybe it was, if I enjoyed Tuesdays, I'd enjoy this one.) Whatever the case, I enjoyed this book.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is something new to me as far as reading goes. The narrator, Christopher, is telling the story, part of which involves writing the book about the incidents in his life, and this is the book that we are reading. Additionally, Christopher has some kind of mental disabilities -- I don't think it was stated outright in the text -- but he is high functioning and good at math. In fact, part of the focus of the book is that he wants to take his "A Levels" exam and pass it with an A grade. (Thanks to twitter and the Math-Twitter-Blog-O-Sphere, I've heard of "A Levels Maths" from British teachers. It's what they call High School math, although it's organized a little differently from the way that I teach it.)

Christopher lives alone with his father and has since the day his father told him that his mother had gone into the hospital. And then his father told him that she died. And then he lives without her for a few years. And then one night, the neighbor's dog is killed with a garden fork. And then he gets blamed. And then he pushes a policeman. And he has a rat named Toby...

It isn't all written this way, but some parts are, and it's enough to get the point across.

Christopher likes Sherlock Holmes and decides to be a detective and try to investigate the dog's death. His father tells him not to stick his nose into places it doesn't belong because he doesn't understand and it can stir up trouble.

It stirs up an adventure for Christopher, which is difficult for him because of the constant assault on all his senses and his not wanting to be touched. And looking after Toby. And wanting to take his A Levels math exams.

And a good story gets told through the eyes of someone who takes it all in, but can't totally process what's happening. And the reader will feel some of the frustration.

One more note: The first chapter is Chapter 2. The second is Chapter 3. The third is Chapter 5. Don't think you missed something. As he explains early on, Christopher is good with prime numbers, so he numbered the chapters using only primes. You didn't miss a Foreward or Introduction somewhere.

The book was made into an award-winning Broadway show, which I have not seen.

Bonus: the Appendix works out a sample Pythagorean Theorem proof. That's a bonus if you're a Math geek.

Tuesdays with Morrie (Albom)

Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom, 1997

If not for those New Year lists of Reading Challenges, I don't know if I would have picked up this book and held onto it. The copy belonged to my wife, who read it years ago. It was about to go into a donation box, but I rescued it (along with the next book I'm reading, which she suggested).

Mitch Albom went to Brandeis University where his favorite professor was Morrie Schwartz. Upon graduation, Morrie gave Mitch a present and hoped to see him in the future. Albom then got caught up with life and didn't see Schwartz again until by sheer luck, he flipped TV channels and caught the beginning of Nightline with Ted Koppel who was about to interview Schwartz who was still teaching, despite being diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease.

What follows are the notes from his first meeting with Schwartz to catch up on old times and discuss life, which then turns into his final class, which will meet every Tuesday. They were "Tuesday people". Albom returns weekly over the course of a few months to discuss life and family and to chronicle his professor's decline in health but not in spirit, with some history lessons and anecdotes from college along the way. Morrie's biggest fear seems to be that one day, he won't be able to wipe his own butt in the bathroom. But even then, he realizes that he's become like a baby again, and there isn't anything wrong with that.

If you know anyone who went through a long decline, it can be heartwarming to read, or it could be gut-wrenching. For me it was the former.

The book did not become a bestseller until three years after it was published, when it was made into a TV movie, which is probably why I didn't notice any awards by the book. It slipped under the radar until it was too late for the accolades.

I thought it was an Oprah Winfrey book club selection, but I can't find a listing for it, so I might have been mistaken. However, she did recommend the book and then produce the movie, so that's close enough for me.

Note: I've tagged this as "Biography" even if it isn't a typical biography. I think it fits that classification.

Analog's Lighter Side (Schmidt, ed.)

Analog's Lighter Side, by S. Schmidt, ed, 1982

Anytime I get any kind of notice that some online catalog now has magazines, I check it out. Unfortunately, those magazines are usually either scholarly journal-type publications or popular newstand magazines of the slick and glossy variety. They don't ever have, for example, old science-fiction magazines.

One of the first ones I search for is Analog because I had a subscription from the late-80s to the mid-90s. The problem was I never seemed to have time to catch up with them, so I let the subscription lapse. Anyway, while searching for Analog, I found an anthology, Analog's Lighter Side, a collection of humorous stories, edited by Stanley Schmidt, who was the editor I remember (and could possibly still be editing it today).

The anthology is from 1982, which meant I'd likely never read any of the material before. As you can see from the Table of Contents above, most of the stories date from before I was born (and before Schmidt's reign). How these stories in particular were chosen, I don't know. I read Schmidt's introduction where he acknowledges that humor is subjective and even mentions that one story plays it so straight that you won't see the humor until it's done. Whatever. I tried to enjoy it, but it's a bit dated.

For example, the future tech seems silly, even quaint, in earlier stories, given the advances of the last half century (especially the past couple decades). And at least two stories make like of characters with drinking problems -- being drunk is central to the story. Less enlightened times, sure, but they were back-to-back and I worried the rest of the book might follow suit.

Where it fell apart for me was "The Gentle Earth" from 1957. It was an okay story, but it just seemed to go on and on, pointlessly. It could've been half the length. And it wasn't particularly humorous. More like "Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Invasion" as things are misunderstood and keep going wrong. The final payoff wasn't the effort. I should have skipped the story, but I got so far into it, I wanted to know how it ended ... even if I kept falling asleep. I was on this story when I renewed the book, and I finished the story sitting at a table in the library so I could drop it in the bin.

I then skimmed "A !Tangled Web", which was a little more promising, but I hate when sci-fi and fantasy writers put symbols or punctuation into language and then don't give a clue as to how such things are supposed to be pronounced. Amusingly (hey, it's "lighter"!), given my computer background, I alternated between "not" and "bang" to stand in for the exclamation point.

Final verdict: meh. Maybe I'll borrow it again this summer and read the rest. Or not.

Goals: A good part of the book was written before I was born. It's an anthology. And it was intended as humor. So I covered some bases.

(blog): 100 YA Books to Read in a Lifetime, Part 1

100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime??

This is my first blog posting about books in general. I felt like writing something, and I'm not done with my current book, so I'm writing about reading itself. I may decide to do this ever so often.

I recently saw a link to Amazon's 100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime. (Normally, I shy away from free advertising on my blogs, but I've taken most of my images from Amazon, so I guess I've already established the pattern here.)

It's an interesting list to be sure. In fact, it seems to be two lists. The top part of the page shows 60 book covers under the heading "100 Books ..." etc. The bottom parts shows -- I kid you not -- "1-12 of 113 results for Books : 100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime". It then goes on to list books, only some of which appear in the 60 icons above. I haven't explored beyond those 72 titles yet. There's much to mention here.

For starters, I apparently have No Idea what makes a book Young Adult. Someone once told me that it's a regular book with the violence toned down and the sex removed. That was a tongue-in-cheek definition, but not a bad indicator at the time. Either way, many of the books listed, the ones I'm familiar with at any rate, don't seem to me to be the sorts of books that appeal to young adults. If anything, they are the sort of thing they might get assigned in high school. Forced reading is not fun reading, even if they eventually like the book.

That said, I thought I might give my impressions of the books I have read. (Note: I normally only put reviews/summaries of books I've recently read while the details are still fresh in my mind. I don't usually like to review something I read so long ago that I don't remember the details. One of the reasons for this blog is so that I will remember the details.)

I'm not going to cover all the books, but I'll get to ones I have read, and may have something to say about some of the others.

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess: never read it, but nothing I know about it (yeah, the film, which, believe it or not, I've never seen either) tell me it's a young adult book. Odd that this is listed first. It is a classic, so I can see its inclusion on some list, but this one? I should make a note to put it on a TBR list.

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray: I've actually read it and reviewed it. Yeah, for me! Second book on the list. Fairly recent and a good book, and definitely YA. I'd recommend it if asked.
Reviews of books by Libba Bray.

A Separate Peace, John Knowles: One of the few mandatory reads from high school that I voluntarily reread in college or shorter thereafter. It was still on my bookshelf and I honestly didn't remember too much about it. Plus, I'm sure I didn't "get it" in high school when I likely just read it to be finished. Read it from an older, wiser perspective, I probably thought. I still remember a lot of the crappy parts of it, and don't remember much of the rest. But, hey, it's literature, not fluff or melodrama. It's not like stuff I read today where writers kill characters because they don't know what else to do with them or because they need a plot twist every 20 pages.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain: school book, but I'm glad I read it, even if I might not have been back then. Then again, I'd seen enough TV and movies about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to know the basic story. Again, it's Americana, and you should go back to the original source rather than an "updated" Hollywood retelling. And Tom Sawyer, too. To this day, I still have the copy from high school in a box of books in the basement. I can probably find a free ebook of it (and Tom Sawyer). This one should be on my reread pile.

Dune, Frank Herbert: Another surprise listing. I had trouble getting in this book post-college. In fact, the first two books were my "Secret Santa" present at my first job. I know it's a classic, and I'm a sci-fi fan, but I just didn't get through it. Oddly, by that point, I had already read "National Lampoon's Doon", which made little sense, having not read the original.

Ender's Game: the Ender Quintet, Orson Scott Card. Another classic, and least Ender's Game is. I'm not sure what the "quintet" is. I have read the novel of Ender's Game, and I have read "First Meetings in the Enderverse" although I apparently didn't blog about it. The first meetings book includes the original novella. Changes were made to get from novella to book. The novella was a little less depressing. It's still a good book, and I'd recommend it. I might even read more in the Enderverse.
Reviews of books by Orson Scott Card.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury: Another high school book, mandatory read. I remember having trouble getting through it. I remember not getting it. Was it an alternate history where Ben Franklin started a fire department that started fires? What? I've had people talk to me about it and mention scenes that I have no recollection of. Oddly, those conversations have made me change my thoughts about it. So, yeah, it's something that I should reread. Will I? I don't know. Maybe. Some day.

Go Ask Alice, Anonymous: A high school book that I read on purpose. In fact, I borrowed a copy from someone because I wanted to read it. (The person I got it from was happy to be rid of it -- either he or his sister were assigned to read it. Don't remember which.) I read this book for one reason: I was involved in a one-act play based on the book. It interested me enough that I read it. I felt sorry for the poor girl, whose name was not Alice (even though it was in the play). There's an entry in her diary (the book consists of diary entries) where she makes an "Alice in Wonderland" reference about herself. The only reference to a name in the book is "Carla", and that was likely changed. Interesting read. Not sorry I borrowed it. (In fact, I might still have it.)

Harry Potter box set: J. K. Rowling: Not a cheat listing them all together. I'm glad they did. Obviously Young Adult, and they grew up as their readers did. I wonder how this will affect newer readers. Will the final books be too mature for them if they read them earlier? I don't know. That's what parents are for.
Reviews of Harry Potterbooks.
Reviews of books by J. K. Rowling. (Obviously, there is overlap.)

Hatchet, Gary Paulsen: Never read it, but my daughter has. She couldn't stop taking about not only how much she hated the book, but how stupid she thought it was. I can only think of one other book that she might have liked less. She was older by then, and I wasn't reading books with her, so I can't comment, but I had to pass these comments along.

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman: I have a copy of it. It's unread. It will probably remain so. My brother gave it to me as a gift. I hadn't heard of it, so he explained it to me. Since it was a gift, I didn't ask, "why the hell would you think that this might interest me?" Your mileage may vary. I listed it here so you can form your own opinion when I could have just ignored it.

Lord of the Flies, William Golding, E. L. Epstein. I was never assigned to read this, but there was a copy on my bookcase at home. (I have older siblings who were readers, along with my parents.) Another classic YA book. Read the original. Don't just watch the movies. I enjoyed it as much as any other classic. (I'm pretty sure that I read it after I saw a movie -- one from the 80s, I think.)

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That's it for this time. I'll check this link again soon.