Jeff
I picked this book up at the 2023 Superman Celebration in Metropolis, IL where the author was a guest. He was a delight to meet and graciously autographed my copy of his book.
As someone who considers himself to be a sort of “expert” on the subject of Superman and his history, I say this book is one of the most authoritative and in-depth works on every iteration (comic books, radio, TV, books and movies) of the Man of Steel that exists. And the sources of those authority are the very people who worked on the Last Son of Krypton's creations, character and adventures over the past 85 years.
I highly recommend this detailed (700 plus pages) examination of one of our greatest heroes of all time to anyone who loves Superman and wants to know more about his rich and layered history.
This book was an X-mas gift from my wife.
Marie Severin was one of only two known female comic book artists when I was growing up (the other being Ramona Fradon, who was best known as the artist for Aquaman) and one of my favorite all-around artists.
I loved her work on Hulk, Doctor Strange and others, but was mostly enthralled by her covers for various Marvel characters such as Spider-man, Submariner, and Captain America.
But I also loved her more cartoon-like art for Not Brand Echh where she provided hilarious caricatures of those same superheroes mentioned above and others from the Distinguished Competition (otherwise known as DC comics)
This book reprints so many covers, pages and panels of Severin's vast amount of work, as well as in depth interviews with Marie herself and so many of her co-workers through the years. It really was a lot of fun the be able to “peek behind the curtain” and see the background of her professional life before and shortly after she retired.
This book is an excellent opportunity to learn more about the multi-talented Marie Severin and is highly recommended for those who remember her work and/or want to learn more.
This book starts off well and then goes down in flames pretty quickly. It's like that car accident you can't turn away from. The ending is one of the worst I have ever seen. I've read in interviews with the author that he likes ambiguity, but this is ridiculous. There is no pay off for the reader who has invested their time in this story.
A Focused Slice Biography
The attraction for me of this book is that it covers only the first four months of Harry S. Truman's presidency, a presidency he ascended to as Vice-president due to the death of FDR.
I've never studied history as much as I probably should have. Even so, I was aware of Hitler's suicide, Mussolini's death, the Potsdam meeting, the chartering of the UN, the liberation of Dachau, the end of WWII, the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the surrender of Japan.
What I was NOT aware or cognizant of was that all these events occurred during Truman's first four months of his presidency! An unbelievable number of earth-shattering and world-changing events all during four months of one man's service as president of the U.S.
Certainly Truman's birth, early life, and life before and after his presidency is covered in passing, but it is those first four months this book deals with in detail, relying upon official transcripts, notes from diaries, eyewitness testimony and official records to lay out Truman's first 120 days in office and all the challenges he faced.
And that is the attraction of this book. It is not a lifelong look at a man's life as most biographies are. It is rather a focused observation of a relatively short span of time that is filled with events that touched lives around the world under the administration of one man; Harry S. Truman.
A Delightful Coming of Age Story
It's the summer of 1968 in rural Pennsylvania. Young Jack Elliot's cousin from Philadelphia, who he's never met, comes to visit the Ellitot's after his policeman father is targeted by criminal in riot-torn Philly.
Jack lives with his two older brothers, mother and father in the only home he's ever known and his cousin Frankie has never been outside the city. They are the city mouse and country mouse re-told. Jack has one goal this summer; to figure out a way to keep his soon-to-be draft eligible oldest brother Pete from being drafted and sent to Vietnam. But the summer turns into so much more than what Jack had planned, and Frankie plays a large part.
It's the summer of love, the clashing of political ideologies within a family, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, racial riots and all the changes that took place within our country and within Jack's family.
Author Bill River has a descriptive way with words that makes you feel, hear, see, taste and smell the life of rural Pennsylvania, as well as reminding you of what your own life (if you were a young man in 1968) was like in relation to events around our country.
This is a delightfully told coming of age story of two boys and the last summer they, really, will be boys. After this, things will never be the same and both find themselves growing up in ways they never imagined.
5 stars!
This is a story that seems rather pedestrian at the beginning and almost like a re-imagining of Rear Window when suddenly it turns creepy. Like Stephen King-level creepy, so that's a good thing. In addition, there are so many twists, turns and almost unbelievable shifts that even a jaded reader (like myself) will find themselves surprised at the story changes. And those were pleasant surprises.
Highly recommended!
One of the true babyfaces in wrestling!
This book could have been helped tremendously by an editor or even a proofreader to fix the multitude of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors, but I don't see how you can NOT help but be impressed by the true babyface personality of one of the nicest guys to ever step into the squared circle.
Arriba! To the man we all knew as Tito Santana, thanks for all the years of professional wrestling entertainment.
The “Maestro” Indeed
I have followed and admired George Perez's comic book art since he first entered the industry 48 years ago and I have loved his work ever since. I remember sitting in the room at MegaCon in Orlando in 2001 hearing that he would be drawing the ultimate crossover of Avengers/JLA and so looking forward to that project.
Thank you to my daughter for this awesome Christmas 2021 gift. I took longer than usual to read a book of this length because I kept taking time to enjoy the wonderful examples of Perez's artwork at Marvel.
HarperCollins Publishing sent me a dead-tree Advance Readers Copy of “No Second Chances” by Rio Youers a couple of weeks ago and I'm not quite sure WHY (unless it had something to do with my GoodReads account) and it turned out to be a very good book. I wanted to finish it before we leave next Sunday, so I read the entire book (389 pages) today while relaxing after all the holiday activity of the past few days.
It was a very good read and I'll be reading Youers' other books soon.
Now I'll leave the book in the laundry room so someone can enjoy it.
This is one of those books/series that you want to read the end of, but don't want it to end. However, as the saying goes, all good things must end.
And this WAS good!
As with the previous books, the secret ingredient is the characters and the depth that we get to explore, especially the core group that we've known from the beginning. That is not to shortchange the story/plot at all; it has been both expansive and yet detailed in its telling.
But the characters are THE stars of this story.
To be honest, before I was halfway through this final book, I expected all of them to die. I won't say whether that happened or not, so as not to spoil the end. But I will say that, after nine books and multiple short stories, I was satisfied with the conclusion of The Expanse series.
While most of the broad strokes of what occurred are known to many, Karl provides many behind the scenes looks at details that most of the public did not know. Charting a timeline that begins on February 10, 2020 with the first public acknowledgment of Covid-19, Karl reveals the public and not previously public history of Donald Trump's final year of presidency and the extraordinary actions that were taken during that time, and wraps it up with his in-person interview with Trump four months after he left the White House.
This was a fun read. Spiner can be a funny guy (I did love his character's attempt to connect with comedy when he played Data in ST:TNG) and he brings that humor in this book. A fast, easy to read and amusing story that will leave you chuckling more times than you can count.
I also voted for it in the Goodreads “Best Humor” category of their Choice Awards.
Hometown Murder Mystery
This is an excellent story and I don't want to give away anything so I'll simply say if you enjoy true crime novels, you will find characters and plots aplenty in this very well written book that might keep you guessing as to who the murderer really is.
Kudos to Richard Chizmar for crafting such an intriguing book.
I read this book 5 or 6 years ago when it was first published and felt the need to read it again a couple of weeks ago.
If you're a good friend of mine then you know that I love ANYTHING written by Neil Gaiman and have ever since I first discovered his writing when someone recommended I read “Neverwhere” about 25 years ago.
The View From the Cheap Seats is a collection of forewords, prefaces, or introductions to books he has written; a compendium of introductions of other famous people he has written and verbally presented at Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comic Book conventions; articles he has written about people, books, music, and even the Syrian refugee crisis; as well as a smattering of work he did early on as a journalist before becoming a writer of fiction. (His Lou Reed interview was astonishing in the depth of his knowledge of Reed's music, and the fact that he asked questions in such a way that Reed did not hang up on him, as he had done with so many journalists, but rather stayed on right up until he HAD to go be on stage for a concert he was giving.)
And as much as I have loved his novels, short stories, and other works of fiction (even his “children's” books), The View From the Cheap Seats holds an entirely different level of love from me for his writing for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost; when I read his works of fiction I ‘hear” his characters' voices, inflections, tones, etc. based on either what he has written about them and how they speak or, if I have to imagine the characters voices, it is because he has described the character in ways that I assign a certain voice to them. I think we all do that in our heads, whether we actively think about it or not.
When I read this collection, every little bit is in Neil Gaiman's voice which I love to listen to for some reason. It may be the accent, but I think it is probably more because he is as careful and yet delightfully free with his spoken words as he is with his written ones. Some people can speak so eloquently and yet that eloquence never makes it into their written words, others have the exact opposite problem. Neil Gaiman has mastered both.
Secondly, we learn so much about his personal life; his youth, his likes and dislikes, people he has known, why he likes some things and doesn't like others, how he views people and the world and more importantly, himself. When he writes a movie review, an author dedication or a preface to another writer's book I find myself either comparing my takeaway or making notes of the title or author or writer so I can remember to look into each of those myself to see what I can come away from them feeling after I'm done. Will I feel the same? Or will I have a different view? Will I find what he found, or will I miss it altogether?
If you have not yet read The View From the Cheap Seats, I wholeheartedly recommend you do so, especially if you're a Neil Gaiman fan. And if you've already read it, do what I did and re-read it again. Like the majority of Neil Gaiman's work, it is as good as or better the second time around.
Finished this short book. I can almost see Mr. Gaiman telling his son this delightful story and making it up as he goes along. A very short, yet captivating story by one of my favorite authors and it was just the literary palette cleanser I needed after the last two books I read.
If you haven't read this, get it now and do so.