The Sisters Brothers will divert you with its edgy energy. GRADE: B

I’m not a soccer fan, but I admit I did watch the U.S. Women’s Soccer team come back from the dead and tie Brazil last week. Abby Wambach’s amazing header with 30 seconds left in the game was one of the more unlikely goals I’ve ever seen. Then, in the shoot-out, the U.S. Women’s soccer team’s goalie, Hope Solo (great name!), made a key save that allowed the U.S. to win. I watched the dull game against France where the U.S. women came to sudden life near the end of the game to score a 3-1 win. Now, the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team is one win away from a world title. I’ll be watching again this afternoon to see if this group can overcome the Japanese team. I don’t think soccer will ever be a major sport in the U.S. It’s too tedious. Americans love scoring. Watching any sporting event for 90+ minutes with little or no scoring is not going to gain a large viewership in this country.

As Jeff Meyerson noted, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (Part 2) doesn’t have an intro or a synopsis, it jumps right back into the story that was suspended at the end of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (Part 1). So you need to walk into this movie knowing where you are in the sequence of events. The writer and director also assume you’ve read the Harry Potter books, too, because nothing is explained. But, once you get past those caveats, the action in this film is fast and furious. I found Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (Part 1) a bit draggy in parts. There’s none of that in this sequel. I’ve seen all the Harry Potter movies and I’d have to say this concluding film is the best one of them all. For a movie franchise that’s taken in over $6 billion, that’s saying something. GRADE: A

Hugh Pentecost (aka, Judson Philips) wrote over a 100 crime and mystery novels. In 1973, Pentecost was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Pentecost’s first story, “Room Number 23,” was published in 1925. Pentecost went on to a long, prolific career that ended with his death in 1989. Of all of Pentecost’s various series, I enjoy those about Pierre Chambrun, the manager of a luxury hotel, the best. And, one of the best Chambrun mysteries is Walking Dead Man. Walking Dead Man features an assassination attempt on the second richest man in the world in Pierre Chambrun’s penthouse. Plenty of devious plotting and surprises follow. Although Hugh Pentecost is pretty much forgotten now, his fine mysteries deserve to be read. Here’s a list of the books in Pentecost’s Pierre Chambrun series:

The Cannibal Who Overate (1962)
The Shape of Fear (1964)
The Evil That Men Do (1966)
The Golden Trap (1967)
The Gilded Nightmare (1969)
Girl Watcher’s Funeral (1969)
The Deadly Joke (1971)
Birthday, Deathday (1972)
Walking Dead Man (1973)
Bargain with Death (1974)
Time of Terror (1975)
The 14 Dilemma (1976)
Death After Breakfast (1978)
Random Killer (1979)
Beware Young Lovers (1980)
Murder in Luxury (1981)
With Intent to Kill (1982)
Murder in High Places (1983)
Remember to Kill Me (1984)
Murder Round the Clock (1985)
Nightmare Time (1986)
Murder Goes Round and Round (1988)

Christopher B. Krebs’ A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich starts with an SS raid in Italy in 1943. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, wanted an original manuscript of Tacitus’s Gemania to put to use in the Nazi cause. Fortunately, the rare document had already been spirited away. Krebs tells the story of how Tacitus’s text on Germany was lost, then found, then altered, then collected, and finally became the object of forgery. Along the way, Krebs describes what happened to Germana during the fall of Rome, the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment, and finishes his story with the Third Reich. Along the way, a myriad of political leaders use Tacitus’s text to promote their political agendas. If you’re a fan of bibliographic history filled with twists and turns, you’ll certainly enjoy A Most Dangerous Book as much as I did. GRADE: A

I’ve read all 12 of Paul Theroux’s travel books. But in The Tao of Travel, Theroux doesn’t just provide dazzling excerpts from his own travel books, Theroux manages to assemble a guide to the best travel books ever written. If you love lists, you’re really going to love this book. Theroux is clever enough just to give the reader a nugget from a classic travel book like Evelyn Waugh’s When the Going Was Good and leave it to the reader to want to read more. You can open The Tao of Travel anywhere and find fascinating prose. This book is a browser’s delight! GRADE: A
Table of Contents

Preface: The Importance of Elsewhere ix

1. Travel in Brief 1

2. The Navel of the World 23

3. The Pleasures of Railways 26

Travel Wisdom of Henry Fielding 39

4. Murphy’s Rules of Travel 41

5. Travelers on Their Own Books 47

6. How Long Did the Traveler Spend Traveling? 55

Travel Wisdom of Samuel Johnson 75

7. The Things That They Carried 78

8. Fears, Neuroses, and Other Conditions 85

9. Travelers Who Never Went Alone 93

Travel Wisdom of Sir Francis Galton 105

10. Travel as an Ordeal 108

11. English Travelers on Escaping England 117

12. When You’re Strange 121

Travel Wisdom of Robert Louis Stevenson 127

13. It Is Solved by Walking 130

14. Travel Feats 147

15. Staying Home 158

Travel Wisdom of Freya Stark 167

16. Imaginary Journeys 171

17. Everything Is Edible Somewhere 181

18. Rosenblum’s Rules of Reporting 198

Travel Wisdom of Claude Lévi-Strauss 201

19. Perverse Pleasures of the Inhospitable 203

20. Imaginary People 210

21. Writers and the Places They Never Visited 215

Travel Wisdom of Evelyn Waugh 231

22. Travelers’ Bliss 234

23. Classics of a Sense of Place 238

24. Evocative Name, Disappointing Place 256

Travel Wisdom of Paul Bowles 259

25. Dangerous, Happy, Alluring 262

26. Five Travel Epiphanies 271

27. The Essential Tao of Travel 2

Carey Mulligan plays a precocious teenager named Jenny growing up in middle-class England during the 1960s. She enters a relationship with an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) and before the movie ends, Jenny has undergone more of an education than she bargained for. Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay based on an autobiographical article published in GRANTA by British journalist Lynn Barber. I was fascinated by Carey Mulligan’s performance that goes from school girl to anguished woman in 100 minutes. GRADE: B+

Kyra Sedgwick, who plays the lead character on The Closer, decided she would make this her final season as Brenda Leigh Johnson. “I want to leave when we’re on top,” Sedgwick said. The ensemble cast will go on in 2012 as a spin-off, Major Crimes. But, without Kyra Sedgwick, I’m doubtful about its success. Until then, we’ll have a dozen or so episodes of The Closer to enjoy. I plan to enjoy every moment.

Tonight on Masterpiece Mystery Julia McKenzie returns as Miss Marple. The Pale Horse was not a Miss Marple book. This is another case of the BBC folks taking Christie’s non-Poirot and non-Marple mysteries and adapting them to feature Christie’s famous characters. There’s a murdered priest and the death of a young, rich heiress. The book played up the witchcraft and occult angles to the murders. It will be interesting to see how much this Miss Marple version of The Pale Horse deviates from the book. It’s not one of the stronger Christies. GRADE: B

When I read Garry Wills’ critical review of All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age where Wills dismisses the book as “shallow and inept” I knew I had to read it. Wills is partly right. All Things Shining is not a deep book. It cites familiar texts (The Odyssey, Moby Dick, The Inferno, etc.) and doesn’t add much new. However, if you’re a person who wants a guide to these classic works, All Things Shining will fit the bill. The only goofy part of the book is the authors’ assertion that David Foster Wallace is the “best mind of his generation” (actually A.O. Scott of the NY TIMES said it first). Infinite Jest weighs in at over a 1000 pages and, trust me, it was a grind to finish reading it. That caveat aside, All Things Shining competently explores these works in an unexciting fashion. GRADE: B-