I suspect someone at AMAZON goofed up because this 4-CD set is priced at $16.97. Other classical music sites are selling the same box set in the $40 range. I’ve been a fan of Claudio Arrau for decades. He’s a fine pianist with plenty of fire. But he can also play demanding pieces like Chopin’s “Impromptu No. 4 in G flat major Op. 51” and make it look easy. If you love piano music, don’t pass up this deal. You’re getting four CDs of great music for the price of one!

Unfortunately, there isn’t going to be a Season Three for Pushing Daisies because the show has been canceled. It was a whimsical program and today’s audiences want something else. My wife and Bill Crider and many other fans of Pushing Daisies are bitterly disappointed that one of the most innovative shows on TV was snuffed out. These DVD sets capture the magic that was all too brief. Buy them soon before they’re gone, too.

In They Do It With Mirrors (aka, Murder With Mirrors) Miss Marple investigates a philanthropic enterprise dedicated to rehabilitating young criminals run by Miss Marple’s old, wealthy friend Carrie Louise and her sister Ruth (played by Joan Collins), and Carrie Louise’s husband. The rambling estate is home to 200 juvenile delinquents and a staff of social workers and psychologists. There’s a murder and then an attempted murder of Carrie Louise. This is the third Agatha Christie mystery I’ve read in a short time so maybe I’ve become acclimated to her tricks because I was able to figure out who the murderer was and how they committed the crime. GRADE: B

Christopher R. Beha, out of a job and recovering from cancer, decides to read the Harvard Classics. Charles Eliot, the former president of Harvard University, assembled 51 volumes of “classics” that sold briskly a hundred years ago. The implication was that if you read all 51 volumes, you’d have the equivalent of a Harvard education. From Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography to Beowulf and The Song of Roland and everything in between, the Harvard Classics established itself as the literary canon of its day. In The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else we see the Harvard Classics through the prism of Beha’s life of family and health crises. It takes Beha a year to read all 51 volumes and much happens to him in that year. I find books like this irresistible. GRADE: B+

Subterranean Press has just published this wonderful collection of stories by Jack Vance. If you haven’t read Jack Vance’s work, this is the perfect place to start because the stories in this book display his range from humorous to philosophical to whimsical. “Assault on a City,” “Green Magic,” “The World-Thinker,” “The Augmented Agent,” “Coup De Grace,” “Chateau d’If,” “The Potters of Firsk,” “The Seventeen Virgins,” “Ulward’s Retreat,” “Seven Exits from Bocz,” “Wild Thyme and Violets,” and “Rumfuddle” cover the arc of Vance’s interests. Vance’s wife, Norma, provides two biographical essays. Don’t miss these classic stories!

This hour-long documentary from 2007 shows what J. K. Rowling was up to during the run-up to the release of the last book of her series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. ABC is broadcasting this to take advantage of the opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It’s starts at 8 P.M. here, but check your local listings. I find J. K. Rowling’s rise from a welfare mother to a successful author richer than the Queen of England astonishing.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE follows J. K. Rowling’s 600+ page novel fairly closely. As you might expect, there’s some compression in the plot and a few portions of the book have been dropped. For example, in the book there were three Quidditch matches, in the movie there’s just one. The movie is two hours and thirty-five minutes. It sags in a few places. Maybe my curmudgeonly attitudes are out of tune with the times, but I found all the “snogging” a bit tedious. There’s no doubt that this is a dark movie compared to the the sunny, playful early Harry Potter films. There’s not a lot of humor. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ll be seeing this move soon. If you’re not, nothing I’ve said about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is going to matter much. GRADE: B

Away We Go is one of the stranger road movies I’ve ever seen. A couple in their 30s with a baby on the way decide to visit family and friends across the country to decide where they should make their home and how they should raise their child. They visit mentally disturbed friends in Phoenix, a sister in Tucson, a cousin who’s into New Age living in Madison, and a frustrated couple of friends in Montreal. They end up in Miami dealing with domestic turmoil. At no time was I completely engaged by this movie. I felt distanced almost the whole time. The scenes felt staged. The dialog was mannered, almost studied. There is a funny scene that involves a baby carriage, but too many times the comedy seemed forced. Wait for the DVD. GRADE: B-

Taylor Swift (cute as a button) performing with the aging British heavy metal band, Def Leppard, has to be the most unlikely musical pairing since k. d. lang and Tony Bennett. From the opening power chords of “Photograph” (one of the great heavy metal anthems of all time) to the acoustic “Two Steps Behind” I found plenty to like on this DVD. Some people find Taylor Swift too overbearing, but I like her. She’s got Talent. I’ve always been a fan of Def Leppard. But it is a bit disconcerting to see 18-year-old Taylor Swift singing “Pour Some Sugar On Me” with guys in their 50s. If you’re interested in acquiring this DVD, be warned: it’s only being sold at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. GRADE: B+

Murder is Easy (aka, Easy to Kill) is another Christie novel the producers of the video version have “retrofitted” into a Miss Marple mystery. In the original novel (published in 1939), the action centers around Luke Fitzwilliam, a retired policeman. He notices that an unusual number of people are dying in Wychwood. He investigates and finds murder and romance. Clearly, a serial killer is at work. It will be interesting to see how this plot works with Miss Marple in it for tonight’s PBS MASTERPIECE MYSTERY series. The suspects include a strange Doctor, a curio-shop artist with a taste for Black Masses, a series of suspicious town’s people, a woman who looks like a beautiful witch, and Lord Easterfield, whose enemies all seem to die. GRADE: B+