I really, really need to stay away from Sam’s Club. Once again, I found a box set of DVDs at an incredible low price. For just $39.99 Sam’s Club has the complete series of WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. AMAZON wants about that for a single season. How Sam’s Club came up with these box sets is a mystery. They don’t appear on the Sam’s Club web site. All I know is that I’ve spent a small fortune at Sam’s Club in the past couple of months buying bargain box sets of M SQUAD, STAR TREK and now WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. I’m doing my bit to stimulate the economy.

You’re going to hear complaints about Neko Case putting a 32 minute cut of frogs croaking and crickets chirping on her new CD. Ignore such picky criticism. The fourteen songs that precede the nature sounds are well worth listening to. Neko Case has a clear, bright voice and she’s willing to take risks in her quirky songs. Usually classed with “Alternative” music, Case is an artist who is a true original. There are music boxes, organs, pianos, and strange sound effects in her music. If you’re looking for something unique and wonderful, give Middle Cyclone a listen. GRADE: B+

Subterranean Press has taken on a project no mainstream publisher would touch: a 590 page short story collection. The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt consists of 38 short stories. Of course, I’m a fan of “Henry James, This One’s for You.” McDevitt is best known for his Nebula winning novel, Seeker. Most of McDevitt’s best work revolves around anthropological and archeological puzzles on other planets. I consider McDevitt a better novelist than a short story writer, but all the stories in Cryptic are competently written and well worth reading. McDevitt is an Old School SF writer; his short stories have a beginning, middle, and end featuring realistic characters. Cryptic will be another a strong contender for SF awards for Jack McDevitt. GRADE: B+

Take five hot chicks and have them sing Irish songs. That’s the marketing concept behind Celtic Woman. I’ve seen this group on PBS and attended their sold-out concert in Buffalo. Their material runs the gamut from traditional songs like “Danny Boy” and “The Isle of Inisfree” to pop songs like Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” and Enya’s “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away).” In addition to the concert footage on this DVD, there’s an hour documentary about the origin of the Celtic Woman group with one-on-one interviews with each of the women. My favorite, Hayley Westernra, has the best voice, but all the women can sing this material. Either you love this kind of slick commercialism or you don’t. In this case, I do.

In March 1932, a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post asked John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, if he had seen anything like the Great Depression. Keynes replied, “Yes. It was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years.” Liaquat Ahamed’s brilliant Lords of Finance shows how the disastrous decisions by Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve of New York, Emile Morceau of the Banque de France, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, and Hjalmer Schacht of the Reichsbank of Germany led to the Great Depression and World War II. Their stupid decision to adhere to the gold standard plunged the world economy into a death spiral. Winston Churchill is shown as an ambitious bozo. John Maynard Keynes steals every scene he appears in. Lords of Finance has plenty of application to our current economic meltdown. It’s a great piece of analysis and history. GRADE: A

I liked Knowing until the last 10 minutes. The setup is intriguing: a 10 year old girl writes a series of hundreds of numbers to be placed in time capsule as part of a school celebration in 1959. Now, in 2009, the time capsule is opened and Caleb, son of a MIT astrophysicist, takes the sheet of paper with the numbers home. His father (played by Nicolas Cage) sees the numbers and obsessively tries to figure out what they mean. And he does figure it out: each series of the numbers is the date and location of a disaster. There are 50 years of disasters described on that sheet of numbers, disasters that hadn’t happened yet when the little girl wrote them. Then, there are the Whisperers. No, not the soul group. These Whisperers are creepy, silent people who only Caleb can hear in his mind. All of this convoluted plot leads to a disappointing, mawkish ending. Knowing got my hopes up, but couldn’t deliver the goods at the end. GRADE: B-

“I slipped into a pair of panties and a bra, then encircled my right thigh with a garter holster and inserted my pearl-handled .22 before getting into a blue cashmere sweater and skirt.” If that doesn’t make your pulse race you probably should be reading something other than Kiss for a Killer by G. G. Fickling, another Honey West classic. This Overlook Press trade paperback is still in-print with the original Bob Maguire cover that was on the 1960 Pyramid paperback. This book has everything: a nudist colony run by Evangelical Christians, the murder of a Los Angeles Rams QB crushed by a steamroller, and sexy Italian Hollywood actress murdered in a romantic mountain glade. Honey West has to contend with an attack of tarantulas, drugged drinks, and a killer who intends to make Honey the next victim. If you like screw-ball mysteries, Kiss for a Killer is one of the best.

My son Patrick, with nine other Carnegie-Mellon University students, visited Qatar over Spring Break. You can read all about their adventures on www.qatarburgh.com. I’ve never been to the Middle East and I would guess the probability I would ever travel there is 100% against. Travel belongs to the young. When I was Patrick’s age, I worked for a consulting company that sent me all over the country. I’ve been in every state except for Hawaii and Mississippi. As Mark Twain once said, “You have to be a masochist to travel.” As I get older, those words become more and more true. However, I encourage my children and my students to travel NOW. It’s the best form of education I can think of (other than reading).

I’m not a big opera fan, but when I read a rave review of this 33 CD collection in the AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE I decided to buy it. This set was released in June 2008. It was reviewed in ARG in the January 2009 issue. By the time I checked the Decca web site, the set was UNAVAILABLE! I also checked AMAZON. It was UNAVAILABLE. The only way I could acquire it was to buy it “used” from one of AMAZON’s “partners.” I managed to find a set selling for $59: that’s 33 CDs with all 10 of Wagner’s operas. The box set arrived today still in its shrink wrap, brand new. If you’re an opera fan, or even have a mild interest in Wagner, this bargain set is a must-buy.