The Box Office for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, after a mere two weeks, is $700 million dollars. That just demonstrates the power of nostalgia and ILLUMINATION’s style of animation.

Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and written by Matthew Fogel, The Super Mario Bros. Movie blends aspects of the Super Mario video games. The ensemble voice cast includes Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, and Fred Armisen. The film begins with an origin story for the brothers Mario and Luigi, Italian-American plumbers who are transported to an alternate world and become entangled in a battle between the Mushroom Kingdom, led by Princess Peach, and the Koopas, led by evil Bowser.

My favorite part of The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the Battle for Brooklyn. And, of course, the music. Are you a Super Mario fan? Are you planning to see this movie? GRADE: B

SOUNDTRACK LIST:

“In support of his job application, he lectured at at the Unisersita del Popolo on Robinson Crusoe. That talk may be the single greatest lecture on an individual novel ever given. Its final lines are as loaded with treasure as anything in his novels: ‘Saint John the Evangelist saw on the island of Patmos the apocalyptic collapse of the universe and raising up the wall of the eternal city splendid with beryl and emerald, onyx and jasper, sapphires and rubies. Crusoe  saw but one marvel in all the fertile creation that surrounded him, a naked footprint in the virgin sand: and who knows if the latter does not matter more than the former?’ He wrote that and it didn’t matter. The invigilators in Padua denied him the diploma beause they didn’t recognize his Irish degree.” (p. 25-26)

The “he”–as you might have guessed–is James Joyce. Joyce struggled to get his work published because few people understood his masterpieces.

From Dostoevsky–who was almost executed in front of a firing squad–to Hemingway and Fitzgerald–who drank themselves into depression–to Nabokov who had Lolita rejected so many times he had to agree to let a French pornography publisher print it, Stephen Marche illustrates his link between failure and writing with all of these sanity-crushing examples of great writing and great writers dealing with disappointment and disinterest.

Legendary rejections (multiple times!) of Harry Potter, Animal Farm, Herman Melville’s work. Jane Austen never saw her name on one of her novels…only identified as “By a Lady.”

I was most moved by Marche’s description of Samuel Johnson’s grueling life of never making enough money to support himself and his wife so he took every writing assignment that came his way–no matter how trivial–in order to pay his bills and stay alive.

On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer proves to me at least that Writing is, and always will be, an act defined by failure and rejection. GRADE: A

I’ve read a couple of Aliette de Bodard’s SF novels set in her Xuya Universe. My favorite was The Tea Master and The Detective (you can read my review here) which was a 2018 Nebula Award winner.

The Red Scholar’s Wake is subtitled “A Xuya Universe Romance” which is clarified by Katee Robert’s blurb on the cover: “Lesbian Space Pirates. Enough said!” And, she’s right. Tech scavenger Xich Si is attacked by space pirates and her ship is destroyed. Sich Si is captured and imprisoned…but then she’s offered an incredible proposition. Rice Fish, the sentient spaceship, needs an expert to investigate the death of her first wife, the Red Scholar. But first, the human and the AI need to be married.

The future is just as greedy and messy as the present as the various pirate bands compete against each other. Assassinations are common. What makes this mashup of Space Opera and detective fiction different is the marriage of Xich Si and Rice Fish.

I suspect some readers will be puzzled by the romance. I know I became impatient with all the political maneuverings with the pirates. A little more action and fewer sighs would have suited me just fine. GRADE: B-

The musical series’ sophomore season picks up with Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) after they found love in Schmigadoon in Season 1 (you can read my review here). In this second part of their story, Josh and Melissa find in Schmicago, the “reimagined world” of ’60s and ’70s musicals.

Returning cast include Cecily Strong, Keegan-Michael Key, Ariana DeBose, Martin Short, Dove Cameron, Jaime Camil, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Ann Harada, Jane Krakowski, and Aaron Tveit. New cast members include actors Tituss Burgess and Patrick Page.

If you’re a fan of Broadway musicals, this series of six episodes features plenty of songs and dancing and fun! GRADE: INCOMPLETE but trending towards an A

Most readers would identify Bill Pronzini as a mystery writer best known for his “Namless Detective” series. But, as Pronzini points out in his PREFACE, he started reading Science Fiction and Fantasy early in his youth and started publishing SF and Fantasy stories early in his writing career. High Concepts, just published by STARK HOUSE, collects 34 of Pronzini’s SF and Fantasy stories, some with his writing collaborator, Barry N. Malzberg.

I enjoyed reading these stories–about 70% were new to me. “The Screwiest Job in the World” centers around an agent who investigates oddities that his employer, a multi-millionaire, collects. Of course many of the oddities turn out to be frauds that the agent exposes. But, in this episode, the investigation concerns a talking bear in the wilderness of Alaska. The agent finds the bear…and something else just as strange.

My favorite stories in High Concepts are the “Tales of Luna Immigration” with Barry N. Malzberg. A customs inspector solves some baffling mysteries involving the galactic aliens who go through Luna Immigration facility on their journey to Earth. In “The Lyran Case” the inspector penetrates a scheme involving alien pornography. In “Wither Thou, Ghost” the inspector deals with an alien ghost that escapes into the Luna Immigration facility. If you enjoy locked room mysteries, you’ll going to love “Vanishing Point” where an alien who committed a murder is locked up in a holding cell…and disappears! “Transfer Point” might be the trickiest story of them all and highlights the brilliance of the customs inspector.

Barry N. Malzberg, in his AFTERWORD, asks: “How can a pair of writers really merge a narrative?” High Concepts provides several excellent examples of Pronzini and Malzberg merging their ideas to product first-rate stories. Working together on 75 stories and four novels, Malzberg concludes: “We were thus able to manage collectively what neither could have done alone and it is that which defines good collaboration.”

Of Bill Pronzini’s 20 collections of short stories, High Concepts ranks with his best! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface — 11

• Shadows — 13
• Toy — 22
• High Concept (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 26
• Thirst — 34
• The Screwiest Job in the World — 39
• Reunions (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 51
• I Wish I May, I Wish I Might — 59
• It’s So Wonderful Here — 62
• Eve of Beyond (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 66
• Purple Cow — 74
• Tales of Luna Immigration (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 77
• The Lyran Case — 77
• Whither Thou, Ghost — 80
• Vanishing Point — 84
• Transfer Point — 92
• He Keeps Coming Back — 100
• Ancient Evil — 103
• And Then We Went to Venus — 112
• A Clone at Last (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 120
• The Hungarian Cinch — 122
• Tom — 140
• Pieces (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 146
• Peekaboo — 154
• Paradise Last (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 159
• The Rec Field — 164
• Dry Spell — 170
• Intensified Transmogrification (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 172
• The Coffin Trimmer — 179
• Stretch’s Quirls (with H. L. Gold) — 186
• Never to Happen Again — 193
• Holes — 198
• In the Mists (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 203
• The Being — 210
• Olaf and the Merchandisers (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 214
• The Evergreen Library (with Jeffrey Wallmann) — 221
• AFTERWORD by Barry N. Malzberg — 229
• BIBLIOGRAPHY — 231

How much you like The Byrds might determine which of these Greatest Hit collections you’d prefer. Surprisingly, The Byrds Greatest Hits came out in 1967–early in their career. The Byrds Turn, Turn, Turn: The Ultimate Collection came out in 2015 and features many of the songs on the first Greatest Hits album…plus many more songs I’d never heard of before I listened to this 48 song 3-CD set.

I like most of the covers The Byrds did of Bob Dylan songs. The Byrds benefited from the Folk-Rock movement in the Sixties. But, once that faded out…so did they. The Byrds formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1964. The band underwent multiple lineup changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn (known as Jim McGuinn until mid-1967) remaining the sole consistent member. In 1973, The Byrds produced their last album, Byrds, and flew away. Are you a fan of The Byrds? Any favorite songs here? GRADE: B+ for both CDs

TRACKLIST:

TRACKLIST:

I’ve read several of Max Allan Collins’s Nathan Heller novels and enjoyed them all. In his Introduction, Max Allan Collins delineates how he came up with the idea of Nathan Heller Private Detective, his character (with a bit of Mike Hammer mixed in), the time period (from the Thirties to the Sixties), and the element of historical facts in every case.

Marilyn Monroe shows up in “Kisses of Death.” Heller finds a way to commit the perfect crime in “The Perfect Crime.” Heller investigates the deaths of homeless people (and others) who had been insured shortly before they died–another real spam from that time period. “Screwball,” set in Miami Beach in 1941, features gangsters, a stand-up comic who tells dirty jokes, and a pair of young women who liked to party.

My favorite story in Kisses of Death is “Strike Zone” where Heller is hired by Bill Veeck to guard the midget Veeck used to bat in a major league baseball game. Mixing historical incidents with Collins’s clever brand of fiction made these stories a delight to read! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION — 9

Kisses of Death — 13

Kaddish for the Kid — 57

The Perfect Crime — 80

Natural Death, Inc. — 102

Screwball — 124

Shoot-Out on Sunset — 145

Strike Zone — 171

AFTERWORD: I OWE THEM ONE — 197

A MAX ALLAN COLLINS CHECKLIST — 199

In Picard’s third and final season, the 10 episodes feature just about every Star Trek character willing to participate in this grand farewell. Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) reappear, and so do virtually all of the Star Trek: The Next Generation ensemble at one point or another, including former Enterprise doctor — and Picard’s old flame — Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), Klingon warrior Worf (Michael Dorn), and the visored engineer Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton). Astonishingly Season Three even finds a way to get Brent Spiner back, even though — as Jean-Luc points out in one episode — we’ve already seen Data die twice: once in Star Trek: Nemesis, once at the end of Picard Season One.

Raffi (Michelle Hurd) returns, as does Jeri Ryan as Star Trek: Voyager Borg survivor Seven of Nine, but the rest of the Picard ensembles from Seasons One and Two are gone. Dr. Crusher is being hunted by parties unknown, for reasons unknown, and her desperate situation results in most of the Enterprise-D bridge crew teaming up to help her.

This is must-watch TV for Star Trek fans who will be sad when this series ends on April 20, 2023. Are you a Star Trek fan? GRADE: Incomplete (but trending towards a B+)

Back in 1967 when I was preparing to take the SAT exam, I found the word “jejune” in the list of possible words I might encounter when I took the test. Jejune was not a word I was familiar with. I hadn’t seen it in the books I read or the people I talked to. Jejune means dull, uninteresting, and juvenile. And, surprise surprise, jejune showed up on the SAT exam when I took it!

I took three years of Latin so I’m pretty good at Latin expressions. But the French and the German words and phrases baffle me.

Ross and Kathryn Petras think smart people should know these 100 words. How many of them do you know? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• ACKNOWLEGEMENTS — vii
• INTRODUCTION — 1
• ad hominem — 5
• anethema — 6
• antediluvian — 8
• appurtenance — 11
• ascetic — 12
• atavistic — 14
• bespoke — 15
• bate noire –17
• betimes — 18
• bildrunsroman — 20
• cacophony — 21
• capricious — 23
• casuistry — 25
• catch-22 — 26
• churlish — 28
• crepuscular — 29
• de facto / de jure — 31
• denouement — 33
• didactic — 34
• disingenuous — 36
• doppelgänger — 37
• egregious — 39
• empirical — 40
• ennui — 42
• epistemology — 43
• ersatz — 45
• evanescent — 46
• exegesis — 48
• existential — 49
• extenuating — 51
• fascist / fascism — 53
• feckless — 54
• fungible — 56
• gnostic — 57
• hagiography — 59
• hermeneutic — 61
• heuristic — 62
• hubris — 64
• iconoclast — 66
• implicit — 67
• inchoate — 69
• insouciant — 70
• internecine — 72
• inveterate — 73
• je ne sais quoi — 75
• jejune — 76
• laconic — 78
• legerdemain — 79
• limpid — 81
• louche — 82
• mea culpa — 84
• metaphor / simile — 85
• mot juste — 87
• neologism — 88
• nihilism — 90
• ontology — 91
• opprobrium — 93
• panegyric — 94
• pedant — 96
• perfunctory — 97
• peripatetic — 99
• polemic — 100
• postmodern — 102
• prima facie — 104
• protean — 105
• putative — 107
• QED — 108
• quantum — 110
• quid pro quo — 112
• quintessential — 113
• quixotic — 115
• quotidian — 117
• realpolitik –118
• recondite — 120
• risible — 121
• sangfroid — 123
• sanguine — 124
• saturnine — 126
• Schroedinger’s cat — 127
• sclerotic — 129
• semiotics — 131
• sententious — 133
• shibboleth — 134
• sine qua non — 136
• solecism / solipsism — 137
• storm und drang — 139
• sub rosa — 140
• sui generis — 142
• sumptuary — 143
• sword of Damocles — 145
• sycophant — 146
• syllogism — 148
• syntax — 150
• teleological — 151
• trope — 153
• ubiquitous — 155
• wabi sabi — 156
• weltschmerz — 158
• zeitgeist — 159
• NOTES — 161
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS — 183