“Choose Your Own Adventure”, by Multiple Authors

 

Bantam Books

Along with Endless Quest series of books (reviewed on November 11^th, 2021) and The Three Investigators (reviewed on March 13^th, 2024), Choose Your Own Adventure books made up much of my adolescent reading schedule. As with Endless Quest (which it predates by three years), the Choose Your Own Adventure series are books aimed at adolescents in which each story is written from a second-person point of view with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions and the plot’s outcome. The subject matter covered by these works was much broader than Endless Quest, which limited itself to All Things TSR, especially Dungeons & Dragons; thus, time travel, ocean voyages, desert adventures, outer space quests, mysteries, spy thrillers, westerns, medieval tales, road races…innumerable subjects could and were subjected to the CYOA treatment.

 

“The Cave of Time”, by Edward Packard
115 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232288
“Journey Under the Sea”, by R. A. Montgomery
117 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232295
“By Balloon to the Sahara”, by Douglas Terman
117 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553140057
“Space and Beyond”, by R. A. Montgomery
116 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553208917
“The Mystery of Chimney Rock”, by Edward Packard
122 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553209617
“Your Code Name Is Jonah”, by Edward Packard
114 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553209136
“The Third Planet from Altair”, by Edward Packard
117 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553139785
“Deadwood City”, by Edward Packard
113 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553139945
“Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?”, by Edward Packard
122 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553231816
“The Lost Jewels of Nabooti”, by R. A. Montgomery
121 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232318
“Mystery of the Maya”, by R. A. Montgomery
134 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553231861
“Inside UFO 54-40”, by Edward Packard
118 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553201970
“The Abominable Snowman”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553233322
“The Forbidden Castle”, by Edward Packard
118 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232363
“House of Danger”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553225419
“Survival at Sea”, by Edward Packard
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553227680
“The Race Forever”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553259889
“Underground Kingdom”, by Edward Packard
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232929
“Secret of the Pyramids”, by Richard Brightfield
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232950
“Escape”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232943

And, for the most part, they were all cool, too. I mean, everything from my youth is seen through a diaphanous haze of nostalgia in which all that was good is crystal clear while all that was bad is blissfully hidden. But I recall not being able to wait for bedtime when I could crack one of these bad boys open and read by the light of an old office lamp my Dad had attached to my headboard. In the years before I discovered History and the Great Men of the World, these books were what thrilled and, to a certain extent, educated me. And they all ignited that love of reading that I have still to this day (as well as my love of collecting books, a blessing and a curse, if I’m to be honest). Choose Your Own Adventure – AND Endless Quest AND The Three Investigators – are just a few of the treasured jewels from my childhood that I will cherish always and that will remain even after these books have crumbled to dust.

“Apollo: The Mission to Land a Man on the Moon” by Al Cimino

 

192 pages, Chartwell Books, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0785837039

Chartwell Books is one of these publishers that produces big, splashy, colorful and informative books for the general reader that I get for cheap from the Barnes & Noble overstock shelves or from Ollie’s book section or even from 2^nd & Charles when I’m in the mood. Apollo: The Mission to Land a Man on the Moon by Al Cimino came from the Barnes & Noble overstock shelf and is everything you’d expect from a Chartwell production: while less than 200 pages it’s a big book, and each and every one of those pages is packed with pictures, text, graphs, informational boxes and so on. Again, just what you’d expect from Chartwell.

While there are a wide range of subjects and events covered in this book – all of the Apollo missions are discussed, as are the Astronauts, engineers, technical aspects of the missions and so forth – this is not what I would call an in-depth study of Apollo. It is, rather, a splashy overview of the American achievement of putting men on the moon and bringing them back again, if only for a few years. Not uninformative in the least, just more of an introduction to the Apollo program. There are, however, several problems with this book, for I think the editors were asleep at the wheel when it was produced. These include, but are not limited to (*ahem*):

• pg. 6 – Werner Von Braun was not captured by the US Army; he surrendered
• pg. 16 – 8000 meters isn’t 2500 feet and 2500 feet isn’t 1.5 miles
• pg. 21 – the Thor rockets were IRBMs (Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles) not ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles)
• pg. 21 – the Jupiter rockets were single stage rockets, not two; the September 20^th flight referred to as a “Jupiter” was a Jupiter-C which was based on the Redstone rockets
• pg. 21 – the Vanguard rockets were not developed as military rockets, as implied
• pg. 26 – the Vanguard was described by Khrushchev as a “grapefruit”, not Explorer 1
• pg. 45 – while Deke Slayton was one of the original Mercury 7 Astronauts he in fact was medically disqualified to fly, as stated
• pg. 48 – the Mercury-Redstone rockets had solid retro rocket motors not retro-rocket thrusters
• pg. 48 – the Atlas rockets did not use liquid oxygen as a fuel but as an oxidizer
• pg. 57 – Huntsville, Alabama, was home to the Marshall Space Flight Center, not the Manned Space Flight Center
• pg. 60 – the Apollo 1 cabin pressure was only slightly higher than atmospheric pressure, not 1.5 times higher, so that the engineers could check for leaks
• pg. 68 – he Saturn V rocket was assembled next to the launch umbilical tower, not atop it
• pg. 73 – the on the Couch-Restraint System were on the side panels, not on the couch itself
• pg. 78 – Conrad’s full name was in fact Charles “Pete” Conrad, Jr.
• pg. 88 – Cimino states that “Two of the 2nd stage engines gave out during liftoff” on Apollo 4, which is incorrect: the 2^nd stage engines were not burning at liftoff and when they did fire, they worked properly (he is perhaps confusing Apollo 4 with Apollo 6)
• pg. 88 – Apollo 4 did not “keel over”
• pg. 92 – there was no Lunar Module on Apollo 7 as stated
• pg. 92 – Apollo 7 did not fly over terrain that “had never been seen before”
• pg. 108 – the astronauts did not wear “metallic suits” as stated
• pg. 110 – the text has the Rocketdyne J-2 engines firing before the ullage rockets
• pg. 111 – the Lunar orbit insertion burn occurred behind the moon, not on approach
• pg. 111 – no explosives were involved in LM/CSM separation
• pg. 140 – the flotation collar was applied by the recovery team swimmers, not by Collins
• pg. 169 – text states Scott cut the descent “engines” when there was only one

I stopped counting after that. So, what to do? If you get it cheap – like I did – then this is a good buy, but under no circumstances pay full price for this thing. Maybe check it out if your local library has it, and then just look at all of the pictures.

“Tutankhamun: The Untold Story” by Thomas Hoving

 

384 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0671243050

Say, do you miss Borders as much as I do? I’ll bet you do. Between them and Barnes & Noble (2^nd & Charles had yet to make an appearance) I acquired hundreds of books, new and used, for my library – for cheap, too. Like this one, Tutankhamun: The Untold Story by Thomas Hoving, which tells the tale of how the tomb of King Tut was discovered, cataloged, restored and brought to light in 1922. Written in 1978, I got it for a mere $4.55, which all good-hearted people can agree is a bargain, make no mistake. Even though this book is 30+ years old it is still (as far as I know) the definitive account of the events surrounding the rediscovery of this most-famous of Pharaohs.

I found myself exceeding my typical chapter-a-day reading schedule with this one, as the title of the book is true: there are many tales surrounding the discovery and opening of this tomb that were unknown, at least by me (and others, I imagine; everything I have read or watched about King Tut’s tomb failed to mention much of the information I gleamed from this book). For instance, the fact that both Howard Carter and his benefactor Lord Carnarvon illegally entered the tomb before announcing its discovery, or that, contrary to popular belief, while the tomb was mostly intact, it had been broken into and robbed on previous occasions in the past.

But wait! There’s more…Carter and Lord Carnarvon not only practiced “art dealing of a rather cutthroat and questionable variety” – that is, they up and sold ancient artifacts for the cash they needed to support their digs – but also spirited numerous items out of Egypt against Egyptian law (some of which can still be found in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; indeed, Carter’s biggest attempted theft was discovered and then covered up, with help from the Met). Meanwhile, Carter’s unbalanced, combative behavior in dealing with Egyptian/French authorities was largely responsible for the end of friendly conditions for archaeologists in Egypt.

But all this came after such dedication and persistence on the part of the difficult Carter and the patient Carnarvon, for after five years of fruitlessly searching the “played out” Valley of the Kings, just when they were about to give up, their efforts were at last crowned by success; the fact that the tomb was actually the long-lost Tutankhamun’s was just gravy. Add to that the description of the first tour of the interior (whether Carter was cheating by undertaking it) and the account of the gradual peeling away of the layers of the magnificent tomb at the center of which lay the remains of the King…considering all that it is quite possible to forgive most trespasses.

Be warned, however: while the mechanics of discovering, accessing, cataloging, preserving and removing the many treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb are presented, the main thrust of the story involves the politics behind all of that; Carter fighting with the press, with the antiquities department, with other archeologists, with the governments not only of Egypt and Britain but of America and others, and so on (rather too much, if I’m to be honest). All of which distracts from what should be the main thrust of the story: the treasures and their meanings to the Ancient Egyptians. Not that it was without interest…just not THAT much interest.

While many of these stories may be familiar to many of us today, they were not when first collected together into one source by Hoving in this book from 40+ years ago, and for that there is no reason to despise Tutankhamun: The Untold Story.

“Ford Model T Coast to Coast: A Slow Drive across a Fast Country”, by Tom Cotter

 

224 pages, Motorbooks, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0760359464

In Ford Model T Coast to Coast: A Slow Drive across a Fast Country, author Tom Cotter recounts his trip on the historic Lincoln Highway in his Ford Model T and all of the people whom he encounters along the way. This was without question an interesting read in which his iconic Model T served as the ultimate ice-breaker along this timeless road. Incidentally, the Lincoln Highway was the first road designed with automobiles in mind across the United States and runs coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, originally through 13 states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California (but not Michigan?!). His stops along the way are a perfect alternative to the fast-moving superhighways, and the many small-town he visits show that he has an interest in out-of-the-way America and all it has to offer – although a map of his route and the places he stopped at would have been nice.

With all that positivity, there are some negatives, the most glaring of which is his banging on about how we need to build more windmills to save the Earth…as he pollutes the same in a gasoline automobile. In response, I’d just like to inform Mr. Cotter that these windmills he loves are not the unmitigated panacea he thinks they are: they are enormous bird-killers, exist because of government subsidies and cannot prosper without them, the amount of maintenance – especially oil – they require is counterproductive, they cannot be recycled and fill up landfills at an alarming rate and, besides, they are just plain ugly. Would that Cotter had stuck with describing the wonders of our nation between the elitist coasts and the people who populate the same, but, perhaps in penance for polluting the nation in his toxin-spewing Model T, he felt compelled to sing the praises of this dubious alternative energy boondoggle (sure am glad I paid a mere $6.99 from Ollie’s for this, rather than the retail $35 The Henry Ford wanted for it).

Anyway…my advise is to skip the preachy bits and enjoy this latter-day road trip manual as the celebration of America as it should be; I, for one, would dearly love to make my own trip upon the Lincoln Highway one day and discover all that America has to offer those who are willing to look for it, far from the maddening crowds.

“Corum: The Coming of Chaos”, by Michael Moorcock

 

 

397 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041820

 

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. Corum: The Coming of Chaos was the seventh in this series featuring the character Corum Jhaelen Irsei, “The Prince in the Scarlet Robe”, and includes the tales The Knight of the Swords, The Queen of the Swords and The King of the Swords. Corum Jhaelen Irsei is an incarnation of the Eternal Champion and the last survivor of the Vadhagh race (perhaps a stand-in for elves?).

 

The first novel, The Knight of the Swords, finds Corum as his life of leisure is shattered when Glandyth a Krae, chieftain of the Mabden (Men; Humans; y’know, US), slaughters his entire family. Corum is captured, tortured and mutilated when his hand is cut off and his eye is put out; after his escape, utilizing his racial powers, his quest for vengeance against the Mabden and their creator gods, the Sword Rulers, begins. That’s the book in a nutshell, and I won’t spoil it more with any other details. At a mere 200 pages (in this omnibus volume, at least), Moorcock manages to tell a tale tight with action and detail. There’s precious-little character development or in-depth examinations of anyone’s motivations – beyond Corum’s quest for revenge and the Mabden’s desire for the destruction of all things Vadhagh – for Moorcock has a world to describe and things to destroy. It’s all GO GO GO, man, and get out of my way ‘cause I have yet another poetic imagery piece to get down on paper. There’s a lot of build-up to The Prince in the Scarlet Robe’s revenge-quest: Corum is lost; Corum is rescued; Corum falls in love; Corum loses a fight; Corum wins a fight…and so on and so forth. It does make one wonder why Corum was never revisited by Moorcock in a more significant manner; I guess that some characters just make more of a splash than others, with their creator along with the audience. All of the Corum books were published in 1971, so this collection feels rather more natural than some of the other omnibus editions in this collection; furthermore, as Moorcock had by now several works under his belt at this juncture, his writing seems rather more self-assured in these books.

In the second novel, The Queen of the Swords, we find Xiombarg (a Greater God and one of the Lords of Chaos, known as the “Queen of the Swords”…but then you knew that) winning a battle against the humanoid inhabitants in the planes over which she rules. The fight soon enough spills out into Corum’s plane, sending Prince Gaynor the Damned to direct the barbarian armies. Corum, with gal-pal Rhalina and the just-discovered Jhary-a-Conel (an incarnation of Jerry Cornelius who is also another incarnation of the Eternal Champion. Naturally), crosses the planes and find a world claimed by Chaos and looks it, with adventures and fights and blood galore. As with Knight, Queen is fast-paced in which lots of stuff happens with barely a moment to catch one’s breath; also as with Knight, Queen has precious-little character development or complex ideas. Its strength lies in the descriptions of the strange plain on which Xiombarg fights in which the main action occurs, poetical descriptors being Moorcock’s forte – speaking of which, Xiombarg, as a villain, is pretty lame: for a Greater God of Chaos she doesn’t do much but threaten and shout and appear cool but menacing (if the art is anything to go by), but she is dealt with rather easily…all-in-all a rather weak villain. The other fights in the book were much more interesting, especially the weird stuff with the warrior cursed by Balance. And the take on Chaos in this book seemed to differ from other books in Moorcock’s universe, as Chaos is not necessarily Evil and Law is not necessarily Good; they are merely two opposing forces seeking to dominate in their own fashion; here, Chaos is unabashedly equated with Evil and, thus, threw me for a philosophical loop.

Finally, in the third novel, The King of the Swords, we find that Corum’s peace is destroyed by a great spell – The Cloud of Contention – that sets everyone against each other: the inhabitants of the Sky City turn on each other, the forces of Law are broken again and Corum and his companions must travel in a sky boat across the planes to find out what the hell is happening. This is the end of the first trilogy starring The Prince in the Scarlet Robe, everybody’s favorite Vadhagh Prince (the second trilogy is reprinted in the twelfth book in this series, Corum The Prince with the Silver Hand, which will of course be reviewed in due time). This novel is rather weird as Moorcock really delves the complex cosmology of his Multiverse and exploring just what makes Chaos and Law tick, who and what the Eternal Champion is and how it all is interconnected. Deep Stuff, man. All sorts of different-but-connected dimensions are bounced-into and just as quickly bounced-out of (even more than the 15 actually named in this book) and we also are treated to a variety of Guest Appearances of other incarnations of the Eternal Champion (Corum meeting Elric here acts as a kind of counterweight to when Elric met Corum in The Sailors on the Seas of Fate). Yeah, there’s a lot going on in this short book, as should be expected by now.

“The Secret Keeper”, by Kate Morton

 

484 pages, Washington Square Press, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1439152812

The Secret Keeper is the fourth book by Australian author Kate Morton. In a nutshell, in 1960, 16-year-old Laurel Nicolson witnesses her mother, Dorothy, commit a shocking crime, a crime that stays with her all her life. Fifty years after the fact, in 2011, on the occasion of Dorothy’s 90^th birthday, Laurel realizes that this is her last opportunity to learn just why her mother committed her crime and the mystery behind the act. Digging into her mother’s past, she pursues each strand from the modern day, back to 1960 and 1941 – and even as far back as 1929 and Australia – encountering friends from her mother’s life, friends whom Dorothy’s family has never heard of. What is Dorothy’s secret, why did she do what she did and what does it mean for her family?

The Secret Keeper was not made for sprinter reading sessions; rather, one must take it easy and digest each fact and scene as it is presented by the author (a difficult process for me, seeing how impatiently I read everything). While it trapses back and forth through time, I, for one, was never confused or addled by this literary time-travelling; each date and location is clearly spelled out and the progress of the tale is made evident in the chapter (nothing felt like filler to me; every chapter was necessary). And once I realized that this hopping, skipping and jumping was intended to keep The Big Reveal cloaked until the end I was fine with it; I like a mystery as much as the next fella, and telling this tale chronologically would have ruined the story.

The Secret Keeper tells a complex family history with rich characters and interwoven lives. The main character, Laurel, is well-developed and compelling, while her mother – circa 1941 – is the same. But the supporting characters are good, too, despite the fact that they are there mostly for background: her sisters and brother, but also the mysterious Vivien and long-lost Jimmy (ah, Jimmy…) are well-rounded and believable. A rare feat, indeed, making these minor characters seem flesh-and-blood rather than mobile scenery. A good read all around and atypical for my usual fare, The Secret Keeper kept me interested throughout and made me want to leisurely read through to the end rather than rush like I normally do – and I even solved the mystery, too.

“We Don’t Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy”, by Caseen Gaines

 

288 pages, Plume, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0142181539

When you read as much as I do (he said without the slightest hint of humblebragging) you sometimes just have to step out and have a little brain-candy – like We Don’t Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines, for instance. As the title explicitly states, Gaines chronicles the making of three of the 80s (and 90s, I suppose) iconic movies and bastions of my youthful memories. And it was, good, too: informative, chatty and, more often than not, engaging – although I could never shake the notion that it was also rather lightweight. I mean, many of the stories told within I was familiar with already: the Eric Stoltz firing; the issues with Crispin Glover; the stuntwoman injury; the DeLorean. That they were all brought together in one place in less than 300 pages was convenient, I suppose, but I guess I just wanted more detail, more untold tales, more behind-the-scenes secrets exposed by Gaines rather than other authors to be collated by Gaines.

It was also obvious that, while Gaines was able to talk to a great many people about the movies, he wasn’t able to talk to everyone involved. We have substantial discussions with the likes of Harry Waters, Jr. (known to you and me as Marvin Berry) and Mark Campbell (that would be Michael J. Fox’s singing voice) and others, besides – Huey Lewis, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and even Bob Gale (one of the “Two Bobs” and half the creative force behind Back to the Future). But there is no Michael J. Fox, no Steven Spielberg and, according to the Introduction, a mere half-hour with Bob Zemeckis (the other of the “Two Bobs”). Naturally, there was NO WAY Crispin Glover would be involved. While I can’t fault a relatively new author from being unable to get past the bigger star’s gatekeepers, direct input from the major movers and shakers of the series makes the whole book feel incomplete and lacking somehow; Bob Gale was important, but so was Bob Z, and having extensive talks with the former but not the latter just makes We Don’t Need Roads seem rather incomplete.

All told, I liked We Don’t Need Roads as the nostalgic reawakening of a film trilogy near and dear to my heart, as with most 80s kids. But I just wish there was more there there.

“The Three Investigators”, by Multiple Authors

 

Random House

Along with the Endless Quest series of books (reviewed on November 11^th, 2021), I was enamored with The Three Investigators…er, not how you think. Every month my grade school – first Einstein Elementary and then later, when Fraser Public Schools closed it to turn it into a nursing home, Walt Disney Elementary – my class would get a catalog from Scholastic Book Club and we were all given the opportunity to shop for the books we wanted. And I always wanted the latest Three Investigators mystery. I’m sure I ordered other books, too…but I can’t remember what they were. But you better believe I remember my Three Investigators. And just who were The Three Investigators I hear you ask? Cretin:

Jupiter Jones – the leader of the crew and a former child-actor previously known as “Baby Fatso”, a nickname he understandably disdained, who never hesitated to strut his endless intellectual prowess and curiosity

Pete Crenshaw – the closest of the three to resembling a Hardy Boy, with good looks and natural athleticism, he always had the others’ backs, even when the three found themselves over their collective head

Bob Andrews – the smaller-framed academic with a father who was a newspaperman, he often proved to be the source for much-needed background information, earning him the title of “Records and Research”

Each of the books was ostensibly presented by Alfred Hitchcock (although in reality he had nothing to do with the series), introducing and concluding each volume. When he died in 1980, Random House had a dilemma: should they continue The Three Investigators series with Hitchcock, or find a replacement for him? They ultimately decided on the latter, and Hector Sebastian was born while Hitchcock’s profile on the books was replaced with a keyhole logo, beginning with The Three Investigators #31. In 1984, Random House revised the first 30 titles (the ones I collected), replacing Hitchcock with Sebastian in all – except for the very first book, Terror Castle, which features the fictional movie producer, Reginald Clarke.

The Three Investigators were originally published between 1964 and 1987 and through into the mid-90s, ultimately running to nearly sixty titles, although only the first 43 books are considered to be the original series. While each book is a unique mystery, they do share similarities with one another in that Jupiter, Pete and Bob are shown invariably battling nobly against the world while being dismissed by the stupid adults that consistently underestimated them, meaningfully relatable to their target audience of pre-to-pubescent boys. I, for one, was always enraptured by their perils and enthralled by their adventures and couldn’t wait for the Scholastic Book catalogs to come out each month so I could see what lay in store for Jupiter, Pete and Bob.

But make no mistake: The Three Investigators were uncool and not a little geeky. Obviously there was Jupiter, what with his husky physique and standard issue Hawaiian shirt, and Bob as the very definition of a prototypical nerd of the era, being a library rat who never stopped researching this or that; as for Pete, rather than hanging with the jocks he played sports with at school, he would inevitably be found at Three Investigators HQ, an abandoned RV buried under a mountain of junk in Jupiter’s uncle’s junkyard. Three friends with a shared love of adventure and problem-solving who just happen to find themselves at the center of one mystery after another. And they managed to do it over 20+ years and almost 60 books.

“The Secret of Terror Castle (#1)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
192 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864013
“The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot (#2)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
174 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864020
“The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy (#3)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
180 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864037
“The Mystery of the Green Ghost (#4)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
179 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0001601475
“The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure (#5)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
160 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864051
“The Secret of Skeleton Island (#6)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
160 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864068
“The Mystery of the Fiery Eye (#7)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
164 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864075
“The Mystery of the Silver Spider (#8)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
176 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864082
“The Mystery of the Screaming Clock (#9)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
168 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0590303309
“The Mystery of the Moaning Cave (#10)”, by William Arden
176 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394837734
“The Mystery of the Talking Skull (#11)”, by Robert Arthur Jr.
179 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394837741
“The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow (#12)”, by William Arden
157 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864129
“The Secret of the Crooked Cat (#13)”, by William Arden
168 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864136
“The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon (#14)”, by Nick West
166 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864143
“The Mystery of the Flaming Footprints (#15)”, by M.V. Carey
175 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864150
“The Mystery of the Nervous Lion (#16)”, by Nick West
143 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394923086
“The Mystery of the Singing Serpent (#17)”, by M.V. Carey
146 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864174
“The Mystery of the Shrinking House (#18)”, by William Arden
145 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864181
“The Secret of Phantom Lake (#19)”, by William Arden
141 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394842578
“The Mystery of Monster Mountain (#20)”, by M.V. Carey
142 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864204
“The Secret of the Haunted Mirror (#21)”, by M.V. Carey
160 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0001600225
“The Mystery of the Dead Man’s Riddle (#22)”, by William Arden
145 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864228
“The Mystery of the Invisible Dog (#23)”, by M.V. Carey
145 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394844923
“The Mystery of Death Trap Mine (#24)”, by M.V. Carey
145 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864242
“The Mystery of the Dancing Devil (#25)”, by William Arden
134 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864259
“The Mystery of the Headless Horse (#26)”, by William Arden
144 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864266
“The Mystery of Magic Circle (#27)”, by M.V. Carey
143 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864273
“The Mystery of the Deadly Double (#28)”, by William Arden
140 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864280
“The Mystery of Sinister Scarecrow (#29)”, by M.V. Carey
151 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394864297
“The Secret of Shark Reef (#30)”, by William Arden
181 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0394842493

As for me, I never collected all of the books in the series, stopping with The Secret of Shark Reef, the last that the Scholastic Book Club offered, to my recollection; by then I had moved on to Endless Quest, Choose Your Own Adventure and histories and biographies. But I will never forget the thrill I had in following Jupiter, Bob and Pete as they solved crimes, researched mysteries and thwarted adults, book after book after book.

“Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics”, by Charles Krauthammer

 

400 pages, Crown Forum, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1770496538

God, I miss Charles Krauthammer; oft-times, he was the only reason to watch “Special Report” on Fox, and when he died in 2018 a great deal of my interest in that one-time Conservative NewsChannel passed, as well. Which is why I snatched-up his 2013 book Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics (from Clinton-Macomb Public Library for $1.00), a compendium of his articles and pieces from the many publications he wrote for – his voice may have been silenced, but the man’s words live on. And what words, too; few writers have the knack to cut through fancy rhetoric and partisan bullshit and get to the heart of a subject through incisive writing and cutting intellect. Krauthammer could and did, which makes his loss, after finishing this book, even harder to bear.

But his is a book about things that matter, and a great many things mattered to Krauthammer outside of politics, like art, math, music, chess, science and sports, and he used these differing, non-political fields to explain his politics in his usual forthright manner (some of his more pungent observations had me bursting out loud with laughter). While this book cannot be described as Deep Reading – they are, after all, articles designed to be consumed in a few minutes – the prose is addictive and the “chapters” are brief, typically two-and-a-half pages or so (so brief, in fact, that you’ll find yourself saying “okay, just one more and I’ll close the book” – only to read a half-dozen more before you realize it). Any of you bleeding-heart liberal commies wanting an insight into the Conservative Mind could do worse than start with Things That Matter.

“The Civil War: An Illustrated History”, by Geoffrey C. War, with Ric Burns and Ken Burns

 

426 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN-13: 978-0394562858

If you live long enough and buy enough books you end up with a collection that bounces all over the place but also with several books that reflect your core interests and desires – like the American Civil War, for example, my starting-off point for All Things Historical. Which is why this book, The Civil War: An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C. War, with Ric Burns and Ken Burns (yes, the guys responsible for the PBS Civil War documentary to end all documentaries) came into my possession. Because…why not? Can never have too many books, can you?

This work is essentially a companion to piece to that show, and if you’ve seen it multiple times, as I have, then many of the photographs will be familiar to you. Which should be the principle selling point of this book, for while there is a ton of information contained within, it is the pictures – and maps; wicked-awesome maps, likewise taken directly from the show – that is the selling point. Indeed, I found myself rewatching the show with this book on my lap, following along with what was happening on-screen with what was happening on-page.

This is thus not an exhaustive tome on the Civil War, but rather a primer that, hopefully, will whet one’s appetite to learn more, an illustrated history aimed at the general public that was inspired to seek out more by the PBS series. For all that it is an excellent resource on this most awful of conflicts that shows, through its images and maps, just how deadly and inhumane the Civil War actually was. With the political climate as it currently is, one can only hope that reading and watching all we can on the Civil War will convince everyone to step back from the abyss.

“The Roads Between the Worlds”, by Michael Moorcock

 

 

390 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041813

 

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. The Roads Between the Worlds was the sixth in this series featuring the characters Professor Faustaff, Alan Powys and Clovis Becker, and includes the tales The Wrecks of Time, The Winds of Limbo and The Shores of Death. None of these books are related to one another; rather, they are three independent novels written by Moorcock collected in this volume for that reason (I assume). The Wrecks of Time was first published in 1971 and solidified (as if he needed it) Moorcock’s status as a writer of unique breadth and creativity. What is this story about? Best let the man speak for himself:

 

There they lay, outside of space and time, each hanging in its separate limbo, each a planet called Earth. Fifteen globes, fifteen lumps of matter sharing a name. Once they might have looked the same, too, but now they were very different. One was comprised almost solely of desert and ocean with a few forests of gigantic, distorted trees growing in the northern hemisphere; another seemed to be in perpetual twilight, a planet of dark obsidian; yet another was a honeycomb of multicoloured crystal and another had a single continent that was a ring of land around a vast lagoon. The wrecks of Time, abandoned and dying, each with a decreasing number of human inhabitants for the most part unaware of the doom overhanging their worlds. These worlds existed in a kind of subspacial well created in furtherance of a series of drastic experiments…

 

There. But just who has done this? What being has the ability to create Earth after Earth as so many trifling playthings only to discard them in the backwaters of the space-time continuum? Why would any sentient creature maliciously create and then destroy these less-than-perfect worlds and their human inhabitants? To what end? Professor Faustus and the loyal men and women dispersed on these alternate Earths have dedicated their lives to eradicating the demolition teams and the Unstable Matter Situations the D-squads create. As they soon discover, much more is at stake, as they fight a seemingly losing battle with the very pattern of the Universe in the balance. Thought-provoking and full of surprises, The Wrecks of Time weds science, religion, myth and history into a page-turning narrative, a grand concept tale that has proven to be one of Moorcock’s most innovative science fiction works.

Next we have The Winds of Limbo (originally published in 1965 as The Fireclown), based in a future where the majority of the human population live underground. Alan Powys works at the transport department; his grandfather, Simon Powys, is the minister for space transport and is the presumptive nominee for his party to succeed the current president. Alan’s cousin Helen Curtis is leader of the Radical Liberal Movement, the government’s opposition. The arrival of the Fireclown in the lower levels of the underground city and his performances featuring fire captivate those who see it; he is thought by Simon Powys to be a dangerous rebel, his niece thinks conversely that the Fireclown is there to reignite people’s passion for democracy. But when a fire breaks out in the lower levels the Government shuts them off, and the people revolt and the Fireclown flees. Unconvinced by his grandfather’s, and the Government’s, assertion that the Fireclown is a terrorist, Alan sets off to find the Fireclown for an explanation. Helen accompanies him providing a ship and desperate to believe the Fireclown is a great healer. The Winds of Limbo covers many themes common to science fiction, such as Man’s relationship to and reliance on technology, the role of Government in regard to Truth (and the role of the media in distorting that Truth), along with other, various philosophical points, mainly by the Fireclown, regarding humans and their intelligence and whether that intelligence is really a necessity for survival. Again, more atypical and deep stuff by Moorcock that entertains as it provokes. 

Lastly we have The Shores of Death in which powerful aliens, searching for the end of the universe, happen upon the Earth and take from it what they need before moving on – only to cause the Earth to cease rotating on its axis. Oops. The human race now finds itself divided, with some living on the cold night side and some the sweltering day side, with yet others surviving in the thin twilight between the two regions. Living a life of pleasure and decadence in this middle region between light and dark, Valta Becker impregnates his daughter (!) who dies shortly after giving birth to Clovis, last of the Twilight Children. Neglected by his father, Clovis leaves home for the more technologically and philosophically sophisticated daylight region, where lifespans stretch to hundreds of years and the marvels of future science still flourish. He makes a name for himself in politics, rising to almost god-like stature but, when catastrophe strikes, rendering the daylight people sterile due to an after-effect of the aliens’ strange energies used in halting the planet’s rotation, Clovis Becker must find an answer or the human race will perish. Thus begins a taut adventure filled with warring political ideologies, End of the World parties, flower forests and floating carriages, shadowy figures attempting to shape mankind’s destiny for their own ends and a love story for the ages as Clovis and Fastina Cahmin (the last born of the daylight people) seek immortality…but at what cost to humanity?

“Shipwreck! A Comprehensive Directory of over 3,700 Shipwrecks on the Great Lakes”, by David D. Swayze

 

260 pages, Harbor House Publishers, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0937360125

America’s Third Coast (otherwise known as the Great Lakes of North America) refers to HOMES – that would be Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior (any of you who were born and raised in the Great Lakes region knew this already). These interconnected bodies of water are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total area and are second-largest by total volume, containing 21% of the world’s surface fresh water by volume with a total surface of 94,250 square miles and a total volume of 5,439 cubic miles. Because of their sea-like characteristics, such as rolling waves, sustained winds, strong currents, great depths and distant horizons, the five Great Lakes have long been known for their treacherousness, something that is brought home in David D. Swayze’s Shipwreck! A Comprehensive Directory of over 3700 Shipwrecks on the Great Lakes.

Le Griffon was a sailing vessel built by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in 1679 and was the first European ship to sail in the Great Lakes – it was also the first European ship to sink in the Great Lakes, doing so in Lake Michigan sometime that same year. The Edmund Fitzgerald, meanwhile, was the last but largest freighter to sink on November 10^th, 1975, in Lake Superior with the loss of 29 men, while the Lady Elgin accounts for the largest loss of life on the lakes when she sunk in 1860 in Lake Michigan with 400 lives lost. Those are just three examples of the (as the title states) over 3700 ships that have sunk in these, truly, Inland Seas. We here in the Great American Midwest know all about these wonderful waters, but this reference guide is a one-of-a-kind resource for anyone wanting to know about this grand natural resource.

The set-up is as basic as can be: while containing a series of brief essays and historical sketches of the types of boats that have sailed these seas, the book lists each and every vessel alphabetically along with such details as type of ship, length, gross tonnage, when and where it was sunk, the circumstances of its sinking and how many lives were lost; there is even an accompanying silhouette of the boat in question. All pretty basic stuff, but just keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive study of these phantoms of the lakes but merely a record of loss; I, for one, after perusing this book found myself Googling the hell out of these ships, just to see if there was more info to be had (you know Google: sometimes yes, sometimes no). Overall, a fantastic resource for tragedy on the Lakes and an opening to search for more on these wrecks.

“The Beatles: The Days of Their Life”, by Richard Havers

 

320 pages, Chartwell Books, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0785835042

Say, shouldn’t the title of Richard Havers’ The Beatles: The Days of Their Life in fact be “Days of Their Lives”? I certainly think so, being as that is proper English, wot. Not that it matters, for this is a typical Chartwell Book in that it is chock-full of photographs (drawn from Mirropix, the library of “The Daily Mirror”) of everyone’s favorite Lads from Liverpool and a day-by-day account of what the Fab Four were up to from their formation, through their heyday at the height of Beatlemania until their dissolution. This is by no means an in-depth or piercing biography of The Beatles, but it is a visual feast for any fan who lived through their rollicking days or wish they had done. From officially-sanctioned events like record launches or movie premiers to holidays abroad and family events, The Days of Their Life covers the LIVES of the most successful pop band ever and gives a glimpse as to what it must have been like to be a Beatle.

“Archangel”, by Robert Harris

 

373 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0679428886

Archangel is the second Robert Harris novel I have reviewed (the other being Fatherland, reviewed on January 3^rd, 2024), and involves more speculative history, although of a different sort. British historian Christopher “Fluke” Kelso is met by an old man named Papu Rapava while attending a conference in Moscow; the old man claims to have been present at the death of Joseph Stalin and further states that, immediately after Stalin’s death, Lavrenty Beria – chief of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) – supposedly took measures to secure a certain black notebook which is believed to be Stalin’s secret diary. When Rapava wouldn’t divulge the location of the book, he was exiled to the Kolyma region of the USSR, but has steadfastly refused to reveal the book’s location, fearing that shadowy agents are still watching him in case he goes near the MacGuffin. From there it is a chase after the mysterious lost diary and its shrouded contents, and what all of it could mean for the fate of modern Russia and the world.

Overall, Archangel was a serviceable thriller with some interesting information on Stalinist Russia and those would-be Stalinists who still revere the sonovabitch. The prose is serviceable, the structure, plotting and characters were professionally and skillfully wrought and I was interested in the whole from beginning to end. I even learned a couple of Russian words, like taiga (a boreal forest) and verst (a unit of measurement equaling 3500 feet), along with some colloquial sayings, such as “We are born on a clear plain and die in a dark forest” or “Gratitude is a dog’s disease”, attributed to Stalin himself (figures). But perhaps its greatest achievement is to show how differently two of history’s greatest monsters – Hitler and Stalin – are perceived in their home countries: in Germany Hitler is rightly shunned and despised, while in Russia Stalin is inexplicably honored and praised (indeed, seeing how this novel exposes the Russian desire for a Strong Man to bring order and make everything right, Putin’s popularity should come as no surprise).

So while Archangel is technically a work of speculative fiction, in today’s cultural and political climate – especially in Russia – it is all too terrifyingly plausible.

“Elric: Song of the Black Sword” by Michael Moorcock

 

 

504 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041801

 

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. Elric: Song of the Black Sword was the fifth in this series featuring the character Elric of Melniboné, and includes the tales Elric of Melniboné, The Fortress of the Pearl, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, The Dreaming City, While the Gods Laugh and The Singing Citadel. Elric of Melniboné is without question Moorcock’s most famous character. One of the original anti-heroes, his proper name is Elric VIII, 428^th Emperor of Melniboné, a stagnating civilization that at one time ruled the entire world but that, by the time of Elric, finds itself confined to its original island home, while the rest of the world, called collectively “The Young Kingdoms”, has arisen in the wake of this retreat. In addition to being an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, Elric is an albino: his flesh “is the color of a bleached skull…and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the color of bone”. Elric is physically frail and reliant on drugs and sorcery to keep up his strength – and, unlike his predecessors, he has a conscience, which causes him to look upon the Melnibonéan culture and history with a loathing that causes his subjects to loath him in return.

 

Elric of Melniboné is not the first Elric story that Moorcock wrote, but it is the first in the series’ internal chronology; for this reason, perhaps, Moorcock clearly makes an effort to craft this tale as an introductory one for anyone just learning who this albino antihero is. While it may be too much to call these books Pulp Fiction, Moorcock’s prose tends to be…bombastic, perhaps in an attempt to be Dramatic (Over-the-Top). But that’s okay in my book, as the language is lush and the imagery resonant, for the World of Elric really comes alive on the page. Elric of Melniboné is consciously epic in every way, larger than life and proud of it, which shouldn’t came as a surprise when one considers Moorcock’s influences on his most famous antihero: Bertolt Brecht and his Threepenny Novel and The Threepenny Opera (indeed, Elric of Melniboné is dedicated to Brecht; in the same dedication we find that Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions and Fletcher Pratt’s The Well of the Unicorn influenced Moorcock, as well, along with Mervyn Peake’s Steerpike in the Titus Groan trilogy, Poul Anderson’s Scafloc in The Broken Sword, T. H. White’s Lancelot in The Once and Future King, J. R. R. Tolkien’s cursed hero Túrin Turambar and Jane Gaskell’s Zerd in The Serpent (perhaps one day I’ll read all those works to see how Moorcock’s Elric measures up).

 

The Fortress of the Pearl is a novel length tale set between Elric of Melniboné and The Sailor on the Seas of Fate and introduces the concept of the dreamthief to Elric’s world, which he would later revisit in a trilogy beginning with The Dreamthief’s Daughter, which is also set up in the current novel. Fortress is quite different in tone from the earlier Elric novels, as it has a more philosophical bent and shows that Moorcock was capable of moving beyond a straight-forward hack-and-slash epic. While Oone (a dreamthief) and Elric pass through multiple dream realms which Oone explains are differentiated from each other, their adventures in any one realm do not last long enough to be fully explored, although their differences can be seen in Elric’s outlook as they seek the Pearl. These realms and adventures don’t have a dream-like quality for the reader, appearing to be just as real as any of Elric’s other adventures, just as dreams feel real while they are being dreamt. Between writing the main sequence of Elric novels and The Fortress of the Pearl, Moorcock not only underwent a change in writing style, but also a change in outlook, as Oone is Elric’s equal and the Melnibonéan emperor is almost a sidekick to her when she appears in the books.

 

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate is actually made up of three shorter stories; in each, Elric sails to some sort of alternate world and faces a supernatural threat. Others have said that this collection reads like an advertisement for Moorcock’s lesser-known characters, a kind of Elric and his Superfriends collection. I think this was more on par with Moorcock exploring his Eternal Champion concept and showing how interconnected his many characters were in his universe. As should be expected by now, Moorcock’s prose is great and Elric never fails to be interesting a protagonist. The tone is, perhaps, not what many fantasy readers will be used to, what with its dream-like cast, and if one reads it right after Elric of Melniboné they’ll becomes ever-more accustomed to Moorcock’s sometimes (ofttimes) overwrought style. On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that for casual readers who really couldn’t be bothered about the multiverse or what-have-you and expect instead to see some sort of motion in the world Moorcock constructed in the first novel, this sequel may be a baffling disappointment. None of the other Melnibonéans we were introduced to in Elric of Melniboné have anything to do with The Sailor on the Seas of Fate and, indeed, Elric’s meeting with Count Smiorgan is about the only impact Sailor has on the overarching plot of the series.

 

The Dreaming City features Elric’s quest to sack the last standing Melnibonéan city and rescue his lost love from the clutches of his evil cousin Yyrkoon, who has usurped the throne. Moorcock, it would appear, does not believe in Good vs. Evil, as the “heroes” are often as cruel and ruthless as the “villains”, and in City we have no Tolkienesque vision of light vs. dark (M. John Harrison, the English author and literary critic, once described Tolkien’s work as “stability and comfort and safe catharsis” – ouch!). While antiheroes are all the rage anymore, when Elric was introduced in 1961 he must have seemed like a freak; not only is he morally ambiguous, be didn’t follow the prototypes of fantasy heroes – no bulging muscles, brilliant swordplay, taciturn acceptance or virtuous actions. Elric is slight, his swordsmanship comes courtesy of his demon-sword, Stormbringer, he agonizes over everything and always does what’s best for himself. This is dystopian fantasy at its best: dark, bloody and devoid of simplistic moralizing, and I can’t imagine George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones existing without Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné.

 

While the Gods Laugh is set a further year into the future whence Elric has continued to travel the Young Kingdoms, although now as a wandering hermit rather than as an Emperor in search of wisdom. Throughout this rather slight tale (the second written by Moorcock), we find Elric, agent of the Gods of Chaos, seeking a kind of “uberGod” that controlled the warring factions of Law and Chaos (a concept which Moorcock would flesh out more in future stories as the “Cosmic Balance”). Despite our moody albino’s self-declared desire of solitude, his cynicism towards and distrust of Everyone and Everything, he has a tendency to become boon companions with several characters in the course of his adventures – whether Rackhir the Red in Elric of Melniboné, Smiorgan Baldhead in The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, or Moonglum of Elwher in While the Gods Laugh (won’t mention what happens to Shaarilla, though). More adventures, more violence and more morally ambiguous actions on the part of our protagonist awaits the reader within, as the character of Elric can’t help but fascinate and repel in equal measure.

 

The Singing Citadel allows Elric to come face-to-face with some of the consequences of the raid on Imrryr in The Dreaming City; two years have now passed, and Elric and Moonglum are trying to sneak into Dhakos, the capital city of Jharkor whose king, Dharmit, died in the initial attack on Immryr. Although the primary story is about a partnership between Elric and Queen Yishana of Jharkor (sister to Dharmit), in their quest to discover what is behind a strange fortress that has appeared in the hinterlands and is causing damage to cities and Jharkor soldiers to disappear, the real import of the story is that it introduces Yishana’s lover, the Pan Tangian sorcerer Theleb K’aarna, and makes him Elric’s rival, which will have lasting consequences. While it is questionable that the nation’s queen would ride on an expedition as dangerous as the one Yishana, Elric and Theleb K’aarna undertake, at least when Elric leaves Yishana, his reasons are understandable aside from his total disregard for women.