Recent Reads

Get Happy:  The Life of Judy Garland by Gerald Clarke.  Why spend your time writing a biography of someone you don't like?  I have no problem with trashy biographies, but at least be honest with your motives and don't try to make your hatchet job out to be a legitimate book.  Clarke prides himself on using tapes Judy had recorded when she was thinking of writing her autobiography.  Thing is, Judy was a well known teller of tales (why tell the truth when you can make up a better story?).  Clarke states the actors portraying the Munchkins had to have someone assigned to help them use the bathroom after one of them fell in.  That story is ridiculous for at least three different reasons.  He believes Garland's memories then ignores Margaret O'Brien's since Margaret was a child so her memories can't be trusted (no, she was not threatened with a dead dog to make her cry).  The books is fully of smutty details which, when you check the footnotes, are all attributed to anonymous sources tat the author believes are credible.  Garland's marriage to Vincente Minnelli and her relationships with her children are all glossed over to the point of being almost nonexistent in this 400+ page book.  Clarke hates everything Garland did professionally except The Wizard of Oz and some of her concerts.  He insults Betty Hutton for daring to be glad to get the role in Annie Get Your Gun after Judy was fired for being unreliable (was she supposed to turn a great part down?).  Overall the book is somewhat readable trash that tells you nothing in the end.

The Murder Room by Michael Cappuzo.  It should not have been difficult to write a decent book about the Vidocq Society (a group of criminologists who help solve cold cases in their free time).  Talk a little about the members and detail some of the cases they helped solve.  Instead, Cappuzo wrote a disjointed account that jumps all over the place.  Most of the cases discussed are ones that remain still unsolved.  He's overly obsessed with the open marriage of one of the founding members (open marriages are not that common, but they aren't that rare either).  The people are more caricatures than real people.  And there's a strong thread of homophobia through the book that is very out of place in a book written in this century.  A potentially interesting subject that deserved much better than this book.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe.  As a teen in the 1980's I saw the Brat Pack movies, but I was too busy obsessing over British pop stars to obsess over actors.  I grabbed this when Audible had the audio book of this available for free.  Rob does a good job reading his book.  He comes across as honest if a bit self-important (he is an actor, after all).  He doesn't gloss over his screw-ups or try to blame others for his problems.  A decent read.

Ten Plus One and Like Love by Ed McBain.  A couple months ago I got the daily Publisher's Weekly email at work and saw Amazon had reached a partnership to publish McBain's back catalog in ebooks and paperback. I squealed with happiness loud enough to startle one of my coworkers.  The ebooks would be priced at $4.99 each (a decent price point in that it is a couple dollars cheaper than a paperback version should be), and I was hoping the books would show up on Amazon's occasional deals.  Then Amazon put out 35 of the 87th Precinct books for $.99 each as the Kindle Daily Deal last week.  I had not planned to buy books this month.  Fortunately, I only needed 14 of the 35, and I zipped through these two last weekend.  I figured out the killers before the cops did in both (solving the mystery before the solution is presented always leaves me both proud and annoyed for some reason), but that's a minor quibble since McBain is awesome.  This is the kind of situation where ebooks can shine--introducing people at reasonable prices to authors who are not readily available or widely known any more. 

Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein.  A soldier meets up with a beautiful woman and goes on a quest.  This has all of Heinlein's usual elements--self-reliance, the importance of leading a productive life, a strong female lead, flexibility in sexual relationships, love of literature (the sidekick is very Sancho Panza like).  The journey is the important bit with the object of the quest being largely a MacGuffin.  A good adventure yarn.

Nora Corbett's The Letter L

This was a Christmas present for my sister.  I disliked the color scheme of the pattern and changed it to be more suitable for her color scheme.  I planned to list my color substitutions, but my notes are gibberish.  I used DMC's color variations for the bulk of the "L" and for the center sections of the wings.  I added silver blending filament to the dress and iridescent filament to the wings.  I think this one turned out really well.

Recent Reads

Where There's a Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart.  I couldn't find any descriptions of this book when I downloaded it, but figured if Rinehart wrote it, it was probably good.  The narrator works in the spring house of a health spa whose owner dies.  Due to the conditions of the will, the staff ends up engaing in fraud and impersonation.  Overall a nice little comedy.

Yul:  The Man Who Would be King by Rock Brynner.  Too often, when a celebrity's child writes about their parent the book either portrays the celebrity as a demon or trys to gloss over the parents faults until the book is dull.  Rock Brynner avoided both these pitfalls and wrote a very engaging book about his father.  The two had a rather complicated relationship.  Yul starts out as a great dad who spends a good deal of time with his son and treats the kid with a good deal of respect.  Of course, Yul also had no problems with creating his own realities to suit his whims, so their relationship had a lot of ups and downs.  Yul had a lot of potential and probably should have stuck to stage acting.  He was rarely satisfied with his movies and so stopped trying to do his best in them.   You can't help but feel a little sorry for Yul who ended up trapped in endless tours of The King and I in order to pay his bills, but on the other hand, he created his own problems.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin.  I always thought this was a book about gays in San Francisco, but most of the characters are straight (didn't matter either way, but I was a little surprised).  Surprisingly fresh for having been written in the late 1970's.  A young woman looking for change moves into a boardinghouse in San Francisco.  There's a lot of oddball characters who interconnect in various ways.  I'm looking forward to reading more of the series.

Murder at Madingley Grange by Carolyn Graham.  Graham wrote the Inspector Barnaby mysteries which were the basis of Midsomer Murders, one of my favorite shows.  This was not a Barnaby mystery.  Two young adults minding their aunts manor house decide to raise money by hosting a 1930s murder mystery weekend.  This sets the stage for the classic English country party murder.  The book is about 50 pages too long and drags about about halfway through.  The ending is somewhat clever and funny which almost makes up for it's needing a good edit.

The Case of the Fabulous Fake by Erle Stanley Gardner.  Gardner always came up with decent and different plots (amazing considering his huge output), but there is always one common thread.  Why is the client smart enough to hire Perry Mason, the best lawyer around and yet dumb enough to lie to Mason at every turn?  

The Shack by Wm. Paul Young.  A man's daughter is kidnapped and murder.  He then receives an invitation from God to spend a weekend at a deserted shack.  God is portrayed as three different people, separate but equal.  Jesus reminded my very much of painter Bob Ross.  God is all-encompassing love and not religion which might be a problem for some people depending on their level of open mindedness.  Better than I expected it to be if a touch sappy at times.

The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene.  The first Nancy Drew book.  Got this for Christmas, and judging from the cover it's the early 1950s version which still had the original 1930 text (no longer available).  I truly hope the day never comes where ebooks are the only books available.  My copy has the best old book smell (yes, I sniff books--there's worse kinks to have).  The plot holds up pretty well after all these years.

 Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie.  I often argue with family and co-workers over the state of the world.  People insist that the world is constantly getting worse, but I know it is not since I read Agatha Christie.  This came out in 1969 and there's a lot of characters making statements about the world going bad with lunatics roaming free.  Of course, in the end it all comes down to love and greed.  Christie might have disliked Poirot, but he's my favorite of her characters.  I appreciate his sense of superiority in the power of his intellect.

Ben-Hur

William Wyler directed some great films.  And he directed the 1959 version of Ben-Hur which is two hours of one of the most boring films ever made followed by 20 minutes of an awesome chariot race then another hour of one of the most boring films ever made.  Wyler was his best with films about relationships.  Why give him an epic?  So I was somewhat excited to see the 1925 version of Ben-Hur pop up on TCM earlier this month to see if it was any better.

The 1925 version clocks in at around two and a half hours.  Still long but not "oh God will this ever end?" long.  Ramon Novarro is similar to Charlton Heston in being well built and a bit over the top in his acting style. Novarro's more my type and while I'm not usually a leg woman, Novarro had some magnificent legs (shown off in barely there tunics).  Francis X. Bushman plays Messala as a magnificent bastard and easily steals any scenes he's in.  The film's full title is Ben-Hur:  A Tale of Christ and this version has more Jesus than the later version.  I was almost moved to tears when Ben-Hur offered Jesus legions to save his life, and Jesus said no "my kingdom is not of this world".  Several scenes are presented in early Technicolor  which helps add some pop to the religious scenes, and the rest is a mix of black and white and tints ( I rather like the use of tinted scenes in silents and wish it had been used more when the switch was made to sound.  The Moon and Sixpence is the only talkie I've seen that mixed b&w, tints, and technicolor and I found it very effective).  This was pre-code so there's a touch of nudity with some topless girls in a parade and a naked slave strung up in the galley.

The two big scenes are the battle at sea and, of course, the chariot race.  It's amazing what you can do when there's no laws governing film making and you have a director and producers with absolutely no regard for the health and safety of their actors.  So people probably died while filming both those scenes, but the results look fantastic.  Those are real ships in the sea battle, not just models.  The chariot race is, if anything, even better than the 1959 version.  It's faster and more dangerous looking.  That it is not super-widescreen adds to the feel that this is truly a duel to the death between Ben-Hur and Messala.

The 1925 version is available on DVD as part of a box set with the 1959 version.  I'd buy it for the 1925 version and look at the 1959 version as the extra instead of the other way around.   This is a case that color, sound, and widescreen do not necessarily make a better film.

Recent Reads

So Many Steps to Death by Agatha Christie. A political thriller about a despondent woman who is recruited to help track down scientists who have been disappearing.  I normally am not a fan of Christie's political thrillers, but this one was enjoyable and had some clever bits.  It was quite like one of Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax novels.

Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough.  Burrough's set out to explore the rise of the FBI from 1933 to 1935.  It seems like an informative book except for a few points:  Burrough spells Doc Barker's nickname as "Dock" and the people in the photo of the Hamer posse that tracked down Bonnie and Clyde are not identified properly.  A quick Google search shows nowhere else (including the FBI files that were supposedly primary sources for the book) was Barker's name spelled Dock.  If something as simple as the name of a major character is spelled wrong, how can I trust any of the information in the book?  .  So I'd call it a decent overview of the subject, but I wouldn't wholly believe the contents without further research.  It was a tad bit long, too.

Stover at Yale by Owen Johnson.  I downloaded this for free from Gutenberg after watching a film based on another Johnson book.  It's a book that hasn't aged well.  If you want to know about the social structure of Yale in the beginning of the 1900's, you might find it good, but as a story not much happens.

Have Spacesuit--Will Travel by Robert Heinlein.  As a teen I was disappointed with our library's selection of Heinlein novels, and now I wonder if I just hadn't looked in the right spot.  I only looked in adult fiction and never checked the card catalog, so it was only in the past few years that I found out Heinlein wrote juvenile fiction ( a surprising discovery considering Heinlein's obsessions with sex and breasts).  A teenager wins an old spacesuit in a soap wrapper contest and ends up involved with aliens.  Loads of fun with decent action, smart female characters, and insightful social commentary.  I love the boy's father who complains about the American educational system not really teaching students things they should know to succeed (this in 1958).  I love that the boy is smart enough to know he doesn't know anything.  One of Heinlein's best.

Washington Square by Henry James.  For a short novel, this was unbearably long.  We have a homely unloved daughter pursued by a gold digger.  Her father promises he will leave her nothing if she marries the guy (she already has a fortune inherited from her mother).  The girl also has a meddlesome aunt.  The girl is a blithering idiot who apparently expects the boy to wait forever.  The boy is not much of a gold digger since he barely seems to bother pursuing her.  I disliked everyone in the book and did not care in the least what happened to any of them.  Skip the book and watch the infinitely superior movie version, The Heiress.

Google Chrome

I hate Internet Explorer.  I have to use it at work, and I don't think more than two days go by without my curing it for its clunkiness and ugliness.  So I've been using FireFox for several years now and all was well until about a year ago.  Starting with the update that added sync, FireFox started being a bit glitchy.  I liked sync, but hated the pop-up alert when sync wasn't working since the alert doesn't go away on its own and also cannot be turned off.  Then last week my FireFox updated to version 8.something and FireFox stopped working.  Okay my computer is old and apparently FireFox doesn't always play nice with Avast free antivirus (which has also been a bit glitchy lately), but that should not cause browser failure.  Pages wouldn't finish loading, and then FireFox would completely freeze up.  After two hours of trying to find a solution on Mozilla's website (using the dreaded IE), switching to AVG free antivirus, and uninstalling and reinstalling FireFox twice I was quite frustrated.  I'd managed to get my bookmarks loaded into IE (current and a bunch that were probably years old ) and almost walked away from the mess, but then I figured I was already frustrated and should just  go ahead with installing Google Chrome.

Their website required a bit more clicking than I would have liked to see the features, but I clicked install.  Within a few minutes, Chrome was installed, my FireFox bookmarks were loaded, and everything was running great.  I was shocked at the speed and ease of use.  It syncs to your Google account, and when I downloaded Chrome to my laptop a few days later my bookmarks synced within seconds (when setting up a second computer, don't import bookmarks and sync--I ended up having to delete duplicates though that was no big deal).  Instead of separate search and address boxes, there's an omnibox.  Type in a word and you can opt t o search or click on a direct link.  Add-ons are easy.  Opening a new tap shows a pane with your most visited site and a link to the Chrome store where add-ons are obtained.  The option folder opens in a full tab instead of a little pop-up, and only things the normal person uses are there.  You can set up as many tabs as you want to appear on start-up.  Your home page is a single page of your choice.

Things I don't like.  The Ad Block Plus extension does not block as many ads as a similar program I used in FireFox.  The worst thing is that you can only print full pages.  I was paying bills and ended up having to cut and paste the pertinent information I wanted to print into Word (I'm cheap and hate printing more than I have to).  Like FireFox, it tends to be slow with loading when my computer's trying to do other stuff (like stupid morning updates), but if one tab freezes, you can often go into another tab that works fine.  I've gotten a few warnings that a plug-in isn't working but if I leave it running it usually starts working in a few seconds.

Overall, I'm extremely impressed with Chrome so far.  It looks great and is extremely easy t o set-up and use.  I highly recommend giving it a try.

Neti Pot

Neti pots get almost universal praise for helping reduce allergy and sinus symptoms.  Despite the raves, I've been hesitant to try using one.  After all, pouring water through your nose sounds both unpleasant and gross.  On the other hand, I hate taking medicine so a none chemical treatment is something I should try.  I checked prices, and decided that a pot could be obtained at a low enough price that it wouldn't feel like a complete waste if I hated using the thing.

I went with the NeilMed Neti pot despite it having some of the most unattractive packaging ever.  Any time I see that many words on a medical product, I get the feeling it must be snake oil to need so many testimonials to justify purchasing it.  The two main things it had going for it was that it had a lid and came with 50 salt packets for making the solution.  Sure you can mix your own solution, but pre-measured packs are convenient and help make sure you aren't pouring too much or too little salt in your nose (plus they're about $.10 a pack).  The end of the spout is a little big and the lid leaks a little, but it works well.

There is a moment of unpleasantness when you start pouring the water, but it is not as nasty as I feared.  The trick is to tilt your head both to the side and far enough forward to keep the solution from draining down the back of your throat.  Using the pot while I was slightly congested meant water down my throat no matter how far front I turned my head, but it was just a minor inconvenience.  The instruction book (27pages!) says filtered or bottled water is okay, but I use water from the teapot that was boiled earlier in the day.  I heat it for 27 seconds in the microwave to get it close to body temperature.  The pot is microwavable, but I use a measuring cup since I don;t like microwaving plastic.  Room temperature water is probably fine as well.  You're supposed to pour half the solution through one side, blow your nose, then pour the rest through the other.  I find counting to 20 at a normal tempo works out to about half the pot.

But does it work?  It's nit allergy season, so I haven't really ben having major sinus issues.  My nose does seem a bit clearer than normal (one girl at work said I sounded clearer, but that was after I told her I'd tried the pot, so I'm not sure her opinion counts).  I don't wake myself up snoring when I fall asleep on the couch with my head at a bad angle, which I guess is something.  It certainly does no harm, so I'm going to keep up regular use in hopes that it will help when the bad allergy season starts.  It is definitely a maintenance product and not a miracle cure, but anything that helps without leaving me doped is a good thing.