Hope you all don’t eat too much turkey!

Robert E. Howard is best known for his stories of Conan the Barbarian. But Howard was a prolific writer who created several characters. One of Howard’s oddest, but compelling, characters is Solomon Kane, a Puritan adventurer. The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, a Del Rey collection from 1998, brings the stories from 1930s back into print for a new generation of readers.

Most of Solomon Kane’s tales involve occult powers and creepy settings. Whether it’s a battle in the Black Forest or a scary trek through the jungles of Africa, Solomon Kane faces many forms of Evil.

My favorite Solomon Kane story is “The Moon of Skulls” where Kane takes on the beautiful vampire queen of Negari. Another jungle adventure, “Red Shadows,” features battles between Kane and the cunning Frenchman, Le Loup.

Robert E. Howard is one of the greatest writers of fantasy fiction. The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane contains hours of high entertainment. Are you a REH fan? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Much of Western NY was tuned in to The Hallmark Channel over the weekend to watch Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story, a Hallmark movie mostly shot in local settings like Highmark Stadium, Canalside, and Chestnut Ridge Park. Buffalo Bills fans loved to see Bills Head Coach Sean McDermott and Bills players Damar Hamlin, Dion Dawkins, Dawson Knox, Reid Ferguson, DeWayne Carter, Ray Davis, Joshua Palmer showing up on their TV screens.

For those of you who missed Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story you can catch it on Wednesday, November 26 at 8:00 PM. There’s a search for a Secret Santa. Two lifelong Buffalo Bills fans, Morgan Quinn (Holland Roden), a doctor, and Gabe DeLuca (Matthew Daddario), the man in charge of construction for the new Highmark Stadium in Buffalo provide the Love Interest. The two friends have lived next door to each other since childhood and their families are close. Their search takes them all around Western NY…and brings them together romantically.

If you’d like to see what my community looks like and how Bills fans support their team, you might want to give Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story a try! GRADE: A

Stephanie Burt is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. She offered a course on Taylor Swift expecting about a dozen students to sign up. Instead, 200 students did!

Burt was a “Swiftie” before it became a Thing. In 2009, Burt became entranced by Taylor Swift and her music. And, of course, the seeds for this book were planted then. Burt describes how Swift talked her parents into moving from Pennsylvania to Nashville so she could pursue her dream. And they did!

It was a steep climb for a teenage girl to get airplay on Country Western radio stations (who mostly played male singers). It was a challenge to cross over from Country Western music to pop music. Taylor Swift made some mistakes due to her contract ignorance (she lost control of her songs–and had to buy them back years later) and dealing with the recording industry in general.

If you’re looking for a detailed analysis of each of Taylor Swift’s albums, Burt takes a Deep Dive into each one. She notes who Taylor Swift is singing about in her many Break-Up songs. Burt dissects Swift’s feud with Kanye West. But, more than all this tracing of Taylor Swift’s development as an artist, Burt shows how Swift became a billionaire. Are you a Taylor Swift fan? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Ready for it — 1

Debut — 17

Fearless — 39

Speak now — 59

Red — 83

1989 — 109

Reputation — 133

Lover — 161

Folklore — 187

Evermore — 203

Midnights — 221

The tortured poets department (the anthology) — 245

Eras — 271

Acknowledgements — 299

Notes — 303

Index — 327

The Buffalo Bills, still smarting from the 23-19 loss to the Houston Texans on Thursday Night Football, have a week to recover from that critical loss before they travel to Pittsburgh to take on the Steelers. Every game now is a “must-win” if the Bills want to make the Playoffs. The rash of injuries to key players play a role in the recent losses–but all NFL teams have injuries at this point of the season. The Good Teams overcome them.

How will your favorite NFL team perform today?

Wicked For Good (aka, Wicked, Part 2) winds up the story of the two witches, Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande), who involve themselves with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). Most of the best known songs–“Popular” and “Defying Gravity”–are in Part 1 (you can read my review here) so the music in Part 2 is fairly bland. As Justin Chong of The New Yorker puts it: “Defying brevity, they cleaved the movie into two parts—“Wicked: Part I” and the newly arrived “Wicked: For Good”—effectively doubling the running time to five hours…”

So far, Wicked for Good is getting mixed reviews. Justin Chong writes in “Wicked for Good is Very, Very Bad”: “Why is everything in this movie, for all its lavishly gilded, emerald-studded set design, either too dim or too bright—so blindingly backlit that Oz seems to be under perpetual thermonuclear attack, or so murky that you could scarcely tell a monkey from a Munchkin?”

While all of that is true, the audience Diane and I saw Wicked For Good good with, made up of little girls–many dressed up as Glinda or Elphaba–with their mothers, enjoyed the movie. GRADE: B+

I started reading comic books in the mid-1950s. I started with Bat-Man and Superman. After a few years, I was buying The Flash (my favorite), Green Lantern, and Adam Strange. Things changed radically in 1961 when I bough Fantastic Four #1. I still bought DC comics, but I was much more interested in Iron Man (my favorite MARVEL hero), Thor, and The Hulk.

DC had The Justice League group of super-heroes and MARVEL came up with The Avengers. Paul Cornell traces the changes in The Mighty Avengers Vs. The 1970s. Depending on who was running the comic at the time, emphasis shifted among a variety of characters.

As Cornell shows in his year-by-year chronology, The Avengers faced a difficult decade with a multitude of changes with MARVEL and the changing reading tastes of the comic book audience. If you’re a fan of The Avengers, you’ll find out a lot about the inner workings of the comic book industry during this decade. GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

Introduction — 1

1. Roy Thomas (1970—1972) — 6
2. Steve Englehart (1972—1976) — 31
3. A Difficult Year (1976) — 61
4. Jim Shooter (1976—1978) — 66
5. The Greatest Fill—In (1978) — 85
6. David Michelinie, Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant… and Roger Stern (1978—1979) — 91

Acknowledgements — 109

Illustrations — 110

The 7-3 Buffalo Bills, coming off a 44-32 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, face the 5-5 Houston Texans. It took a SIX TOUCHDOWN performance by Bills QB (and MVP) Josh Allen to beat the Buccaneers and it might take a similar performance by Josh in this Thursday Night Football battle. The Bills are favored by 4 1/2 points, but I’m expecting a very close game. Go Bills!

Back in the late 1950s and 1960s, my parents would watch Perry Mason on CBS and I joined them. Half the time I was confused by the plots–I was 10 years old–but I quickly grasped that Perry Mason never lost a case–and he would figure out whodunit. Later, as a teenager, I entertained the notion of becoming a lawyer. But I changed my mind when I took a college class in Constitutional Law–yawn!

Over the years, I’ve read a number of mysteries featuring lawyers. I like John Grisham’s books. I enjoyed Michael Connelly’s early Lincoln Lawyer mysteries. William Bernhardt’s Legal Briefs (1998) presents 11 short stories featuring lawyers.

My favorite story in Legal Briefs is William Bernhardt’s “What We’re Here For.” Bernhardt’s lawyer is in the midst of a trial where he’s losing. His client, a former model, has been in an automobile accident and sustained life-changing injuries to her face. She can’t go back to being a model with her face so messed up. At the same time, the couple in the car that struck his client seem to be hiding something. That Something swings the case in a surprising direction.

I was also moved by John Grisham’s “The Birthday” with its short but moving message.

If you like legal mysteries, here’s an anthology full of courtroom dramatics and clever lawyers. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction / William Bernhardt — vii

The divorce / Grif Stockley — 1

Poetic justice / Steve Martini — 47

Stairwell justice / Jay Brandon — 75

The client / Richard North Patterson — 95

What we’re here for / William Bernhardt — 115

Cook County redemption / Michael A. Kahn — 147

The Jailhouse lawyer / Phillip M. Margolin — 179

Voir dire / Jeremiah Healy — 195

The birthday / John Grisham — 231

Roads / Philip Friedman — 237

Carrying concealed / Lisa Scottoline — 257

About the Authors — 285

Acknowledgements — 291

Diane and I first saw Wicked: The Musical while we attended the 2005 BOUCHERCON in Chicago. We enjoyed the music and spectacle. Wicked: The Musical has toured to Buffalo several times. Diane and I saw it again a few years ago. And, we just saw it this week because Diane wanted a “refresher” before we go to AMC to see Wicked: Part 2 on Friday.

The Wicked: The Musical touring company doesn’t have the Star Power of a Broadway version, but the singing, dancing, and flying monkeys are the same. Have you seen Wicked? GRADE: B+

All songs are written by Stephen Schwartz.