In my Summer of Listening to CDs I’ve owned for years but haven’t listened to until now, The Best of the Spencer Davis Group from 1987 found its way into my listening rotation. The band was formed in 1963, struggled for awhile, but then hit it big with “Gimme Some Lovin'” which still sounds great today. The group had a few more hits like “I’m a Man” and “Keep On Running” before Steve Winwood left in 1967 to form Traffic. Do you remember The Spencer Davis Group? GRADE: B

TRACK LIST:

I watched the documentary about the legendary Muscle Shoals recording studio when it came out in 2013 (you can watch it on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Apple TV and Sling TV), bought the soundtrack…and never listened to it until last week. Part of the reason I choose MUSCLE SHOALS: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK was that the ending of the Broadway musical, Girl From the North Country, concludes with Bob Dylan’s “Pressing On.” “Pressing On,” sung beautifully by Alicia Keyes, concludes this album. The rest of the music on this disc sounds great, too! GRADE: A

TRACK LIST:

Back in the 1960s, I became a fan of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian.  I’ve read some of Howard’s other stories in various genres, but I hadn’t had the pleasure of reading about the humorous adventures of Breckinridge Elkins and Cousin Bearfield Buckner until I found this ACE omnibus from 1983: HEROES OF BEARK CREEK.  Funny, silly, and entertaining.  Other editions are available on-line for affordable prices.  Give these stories a try and you won’t be sorry! GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

A GENT FROM BEAR CREEK: 

Striped Shirts & Busted Hearts;  –3

Mountain Main; — 13

Meet Cap’n Kidd; –27

Guns of the Mountains; — 42

The Feud Buster;  — 75

The Road to Bear Creek; — 89

The Scalp Hunter;– 106 

Cupid from Bear Creek;  –123

The Haunted Mountain;  136

Educate or Bust;  150

War on Bear Creek;  160

When Bear Creek Came to Chawed Ear; –178

THE PRIDE OF BEAR CREEK

 The Riot at Cougar Paw; — 207

Pilgrims to the Pecos;  — 222

High Horse Rampage; —240

The Apache Mountain War; 237

Pistol Politics; 274

The Conquerin’ Hero of the Humbolts;  — 289

A Ringtailed Tornado. 304 

MAYHEM ON BEAR CREEK: 

No Cowherders Wanted; — 321

Mayhem and Taxes; — 338

Evil Deeds at Red Cougar; –346

 Sharp’s Gun  Seranade; — 364

The Peaceful Pilgrim;  — 379

While Smoke Rolled;–  394

 A Elkins Never Surrenders, 409

Hulu’s best show of 2021 (it currently holds a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes) isn’t a true crime documentary, or even a true crime adaptation. Hulu’s biggest hit of 2021 was Only Murders in the Building, a comedic and quirky TV series about three residents in a posh New York apartment building, the Arconia (you can read the story of the real building here), who set out to solve a murder.

Starring Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez, it’s a show with the perfect mix of escapism and intrigue that makes for solid comfort television. In fact, Only Murders in the Building was the most watched comedy ever on the streaming service, according to Vulture.

Having solved the murder that occupied their first adventure, the unlikely trio of Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) turn their attention to the next one of their neighbors to turn up dead. Plus, they have new cameos to spice up the proceedings, like Amy Schumer as Amy Schumer, who immediately pitches the beyond-receptive Oliver on the idea of transforming the podcast into a limited series.

Being quirky can be harder than it looks, but the show nicely delivers on that — employing shifting narrators, finding a new (and humiliating) acting job for Charles and extending odd flourishes like having Jane Lynch play his stunt double, or more work for Tina Fey as a ruthless podcaster and her beleaguered assistant.

Three of the ten episodes of Only Murders in the Building are available now. If you’re looking for a Summer series with fun and frivolity, Only Murders in the Building delivers. GRADE: Incomplete

The first MARVEL COMICS comic book I remember buying was The Fantastic Four #1 in 1961 (check out the cover below to see why a 12-year-old kid might want to part with a dime to buy it!). This issue plays a role in Douglas Wolk’s story of MARVEL COMICS and his quest.

Since 1961, Wolk estimates MARVEL COMICS has published 27,000 different issues of their comic books. And Wolk has read all of them! Yes, all 540,000 pages of those comic books! What an incredible feat!

Douglas Wolk not only gives the reader a detailed history of MARVEL COMICS and the various successful characters–Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, Iron Man, and the Avengers–he also recommends various issues that deserve attention. If you are a comic book fan, you’ll marvel at Douglas Wolk’s quest of reading all the MARVEL COMICS. If you like obsessive-compulsive quests like this one, there’s plenty here to enlighten you! Did you read comic books as a kid? GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

1 The Mountain of Marvels 1

2 Where to Start, Or How to Enjoy Being Confused 16

3 Curse of the Weird (Frequently Asked Questions) 33

4 The Junction to Everywhere 49

5 Interlude: Monsters 69

6 Spinning in Circles 79

7 Interlude: Lee, Kirby, Ditko 106

8 Rising and Advancing 113

9 Interlude: The Vietnam Years 131

10 The Mutant Metaphor 136

11 Interlude: Diamonds Made of Sound 171

12 Thunder and Lies 176

13 Interlude: Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe 199

14 What Kings Do 206

15 Interlude: Presidents 231

16 The Iron Patriot Acts 239

17 Interlude: March 1965 261

18 The Great Destroyer 267

19 Interlude: Linda Carter 293

20 Good is a Thing You Do 298

21 Passing it Along 321

Acknowledgments 329

Appendix: Marvel Comics: A Plot Summary 331

Index 355

I’ve had some of Barbara Pym’s novels on my shelves for decades. My resolution to deal with books that have been patiently waiting for years for me to read them finally brought me to Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women (1952).

One of my favorite poets, Philip Larkin, was a huge fan of Barbara Pym and her novels which caused me to buy Pym’s books…and then not read them until now.

The New Yorker published an article on Barbara Pym that provided some context: “Pym published six novels between 1950 and 1961, before her work fell out of favor. Through the nineteen-sixties and most of the nineteen-seventies, she continued to write but was unanimously rejected by publishers; these were not years receptive to comedies of manners set around a parish or an anthropological society. ‘It seems as if nobody could ever like my kind of writing again,’ she wrote in a letter in 1970.”

“She was wrong. In 1977, the Times Literary Supplement asked a number of figures in the field to name the most underrated writers of the previous seventy-five years. Pym was the only living writer to appear on the list twice, chosen by the biographer Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, the latter praising her ‘unique eye and ear for the small poignancies and comedies of everyday life.’ Almost immediately, Macmillan agreed to publish her next book, Quartet in Autumn. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Sweet Dove Died followed, in 1978; Macmillan reissued all her previous novels. That same year, Dutton began bringing out her books in the United States. Pym died in 1980.”

Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women reminded me of the novels of Anthony Trollope who also could capture the life of characters involved in community and church activities like Pym’s lead character, Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. Mildred is one of those “excellent women,” the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, there’s the complication of Julian Malory, the vicar next door, who Mildred is ambivalent about.

Pym captures the arid life for women in Oxford in the 1950s. Mildred lives her quiet life…but is it much of a life? The reader will have to judge. GRADE: B+

I’ve been a Lionel White fan since I first read his work in Gold Medal paperbacks in the 1960s. Stark House has reprinted much of White’s work and I’ve reviewed them on this blog (check the links below).

Stark House’s latest Lionel White omnibus is Invitation to Violence (1958) and A Party to Murder (1966) collects two of Lionel White’s most innovative crime novels. Invitation to Violence puts an insurance adjuster, Gerald Hanna, in a unique situation. An armed man jumps in Hanna’s car and orders him to drive. The man dies from a gunshot wound and Hanna finds a case filled with jewels from a robbery. Does he turn the jewels in…or does he keep it and change his life forever? GRADE: B+

A Party to Murder involves a Christmas Party where one of the attendees is found dead from a gunshot wound after midnight. Who murdered her? Why? All the participants at the party have secrets that they narrate chapter by chapter, taking turns telling their stories. Detective Goodwin knows that everyone attending the party is hiding something and lying to him. But, little by little, the investigation reveals what really happens. GRADE: A-

If you haven’t read Lionel White’s cunning storytelling, Invitation to Violence/A Party to Murder is the perfect place to start.

STARK HOUSE OMNIBUS VOLUMES OF LIONEL WHITE:

To finish off my binge of listening to live concerts, this Blu-ray from 2010, Pretenders: Live in London, seems a good way to wrap things up. I’ve been a fan of the Pretenders since I heard “Brass in Pocket” back in 1979. Over the years, I bought Pretenders CDs and enjoyed them. This concert in 2010 captures the energy of the band and the vocal artistry of Chrissie Hynde.

The sell-out London audience reveled in the Pretender’s concert. The group performed many of their hits (and my favorite songs) like “Talk of the Town” (1980), “Back on the Chain Gang” (1982), “I’ll Stand By You” (1994), and “Love’s a Mystery” (2008).

Things got pretty heated–literally–during this concert because Chrissie Hynde’s eye shadow started running down her face a la Rudy Giuliani. Are you a Pretenders fan? GRADE: A

TRACK LIST:

I’m usually on top of Stephen King’s output but somehow this story from 2018 slipped past my radar. Elevation looks like a chapbook with B&W drawings by Mark Edward Geyer, who previously illustrated King’s first editions of Rose Madder and The Green Mile. There’s plenty of white space.

This novella concerns an incredible situation. In Castle Rock, Maine, Scott Carey faces a mysterious illness which causes bizarre effects on his body and makes him rapidly lose weight, even if he appears healthy on the outside. Carey goes from about 250 pounds to under 200 in a short time with no clue why this is happening to him.

While Carey battles this strange disease with his trusted doctor, he also tries fixing a dire situation involving a lesbian couple trying to open a restaurant surrounded by a disapproving, conservative public.

I’ve read several of Stephen King’s mammoth novels, but I prefer his shorter work like Elevation. Are you a Stephen King fan? GRADE: B

A Strange Loop is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Michael R. Jackson. It won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2022 Tony for Best Musical.

A Strange Loop follows Usher (Jaquel Spivey) a black, queer writer writing a musical about a black, queer writer writing a musical about a black, queer writer. The title refers to a cognitive science term coined by Douglas Hofstadter, as well as the song by Liz Phair.

Remember the Pixar movie Inside Out where within the mind of a young girl named Riley are the basic emotions (aka, Thoughts) that control her actions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. 

A Strange Loop adds a couple more Thoughts like Self-Contempt and Denial to the mix to show how a young man struggles to establish his identity in a hostile world. I thought Jaquel Spivey was incredible in the role of Usher–who is on-stage 95% of the time. The depiction of making choices (some bad) after debating the Thoughts in his mind makes A Strange Loop a provocative, memorable musical. GRADE: A

Musical numbers:

• “Intermission Song” – Usher, Thoughts
• “Today” – Usher, Thoughts
• “We Wanna Know” – Thoughts
• “Inner White Girl” – Usher, Thoughts
• “Didn’t Want Nothin'” – Thought 5, Thoughts
• “Exile in Gayville” – Usher, Thoughts
• “Second Wave” – Usher
• “Tyler Perry Writes Real Life” – Usher, Thought 3, Thoughts
• “Writing a Gospel Play” – Usher, Thoughts
• “A Sympathetic Ear” – Thought 1
• “Inwood Daddy” – Usher, Thought 6, Thoughts
• “Boundaries” – Usher
• “Periodically” – Thought 4, Usher
• “Didn’t Want Nothin’ Reprise” – Thought 5
• “Precious Little Dream / AIDS Is God’s Punishment” – Usher, Thoughts
• “Memory Song” – Usher, Thoughts 2-6
• “A Strange Loop” – Usher, Thoughts