Season Five of Mad Men has been one of my favorites. So much happened this season: Roger took LSD, there was an entertaining fist fight between Lane Pryce and Pete Campbell, a surprising suicide, an equally surprising decision by one of the advertising firm’s creative stars to leave for another agency, and a decision by a female employee to eventually give in to what amounted to prostitution (to win the coveted Jaguar account) after haggling over the price (a partnership in the firm). Tonight will probably provide another cliff-hanger so I’ll be counting the days until Mad Men returns. This may be the best cable series ever.

Wodehouse’s The Heart of a Goof is the second collection of Wodehouse’s humorous golf stories (the first collection is The Clicking of Cuthbert, also very funny). You don’t need to know much about golf to appreciate Wodehouse’s witty tales of golfers and their plights. I was amazed that this volume, first published in 1926, is still entertaining. Wodehouse is timeless.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
THE HEART OF A GOOF
HIGH STAKES
KEEPING IN WITH VOSPER
CHESTER FORGETS HIMSELF
THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS
THE AWAKENING OF ROLLO PODMARSH
RODNEY FAILS TO QUALIFY
JANE GETS OFF THE FAIRWAY
THE PURIFICATION OF RODNEY SPELVIN

Charlize Theron is one of my favorite actresses and she’s terrific as obsessive Queen Ravenna in Snow White and the Huntsman. Kristen Stewart is a credible Snow White and Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor in The Avengers, shows he can win hearts as The Huntsman, too. You know the story: the evil Queen wants to be “the fairest of them all” but her magic mirror tells her that Snow White surpasses her. The Queen sends a Huntsman to kill Snow White and bring back her heart (which the Queen plans to consume). Things don’t work out and Snow White and the Huntsman encounter some dwarfs. Snow White is poisoned… Well, you know the rest. Telling such a familiar story demands a strong cast to carry out the action and produce some surprises. Snow White and the Huntsman is surprisingly good. GRADE: A-

Dwight Macdonald, as Louis Menand assures us in his entertaining Introduction, could be a pain in the butt. Macdonald was a rebel writer, constantly challenging societal norms. In his heyday, in the Fifties and the Sixties, Macdonald wrote for The New Yorker, The Partisan Review, Commentary, and other intellectual journals. In his most famous essay, “Masscult and Midcult,” Macdonald correctly identifies the movement that resulted in the dumbing down of culture that we’re experiencing today. This New York Review of Books volume brings together Macdonald’s best essays. My favorite is Macdonald stunning attack on the then brash youngster, Tom Wolfe. I found Macdonald’s essay on James Agee both insightful and poignant. Macdonald’s essay on Hemingway, judged as too harsh by many, is followed by a defense of Hemingway by George Plimpton. All in all, this book brings the forgotten Dwight Macdonald back to life. GRADE: B+
Table of Contents:
Masscult and Midcult
James Agee
Ernest Hemingway
Book of the Millennium Club
Updating the Bible
The String Untuned
The Triumph of the Fact
Parajournalism, or, Tom Wolfe and His Magic Writing Machine.

If you’re a fan of Emily Blunt, Bill Nighy, Rupert Grint and Rupert Everett then Wild Target (2010) will delight you. Emily Blunt plays a thief who Bill Nighy, an assassin, is supposed to kill. But Nighy spares Emily and that sets off a chain of hilarious plot twists. Yes, Wild Target is fluff, but it’s fun fluff.

Every year, I look forward to the American Association of University Women’s Book Sale. They house it in a building the size of a Wal-Mart. There are a hundred tables of books. This year, they had a whole table (about 200 books) devoted to Mary Higgins Clark. Another table of just Stephen King. Another table of the works of James Patterson. You get the idea. There are thousands and thousands of books. And, they are semi-organized. There are tables of mysteries, science fiction, romance novels, etc. Even the tables of hardcover fiction is organized by author’s last name. I’ve found treasures at this book sale in previous years. This time, I found a few goodies.

Tonight A&E debuts its Longmire series based on Craig Johnson’s books about a Wyoming sheriff. I’m eager to see if his feisty deputy, Vic, retains her edginess in this TV version. If you haven’t read any of the Longmire series, it’s basically Tony Hillerman’s brand of mysteries transplanted to Wyoming. My main complaint about the first book in the series, The Cold Dish, is that at 354 pages, it’s too long. A good editor could have cut 100 pages and made it a better book.

When I started my Ph.D. studies at SUNY at Buffalo in 1990, one of the first books assigned to newbies was A Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. The book became a favorite of mine. Now fast-forward to 2012. I heard Susan Gubar interviewed about her battle against ovarian cancer. Gubar writes about her horrific treatments that prolonged her life. But the cost! “Debulked” means surgeons removed all the organs in Gubar’s lower abdomen. Then came the rounds of chemotherapy infusions. Then came more surgery…and more surgery. I’m not sure I’d have the resolution to undergo all the medical procedures Gubar does. This is a grim account, but Gubar is still alive which gladdens me immensely. GRADE: B+

Margaret Millar is fiendishly clever in this social mystery. The plot centers around Charlie Gowen, a young man in his 30s with “issues.” Charlie’s mind works differently from most people’s and Millar depicts Charlie’s twisted thought-process brilliantly. Charlie’s 12-year-old mind is obsessed with 12-year-old girls. Two of the couples in The Fiend are dealing with divorce (or the prospect of divorce). When a child goes missing, the police uncover plenty of secrets. If you haven’t read Margaret Millar before, be prepared for insightful social commentary and a surprising plot. No matter what you expect, Millar will surprise you.