Denis Villeneuve’s eye-popping Dune, Part Two features an action-packed conclusion to the best movie version of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel, Dune (1965). In Dune, Part One (you can read my review here) House Atreides is toppled by a House Harkonnen coup orchestrated by Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) and a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother (Charlotte Rampling).  Surviving the massacre, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalet) and his pregnant mother  Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) flee into the desert and join the Fremen who have adapted to living on Arrakis.

Arrakis is the only planet with the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe: melange (aka, “spice”), a drug that gives the user a longer life span, greater vitality, and heightened awareness. In some humans, the spice can also unlock prescience, a form of precognition based in genetics but made possible by use of the drug in larger dosages. Among other functions, prescience makes safe and accurate interstellar travel possible. However, melange is also highly addictive, and withdrawal is fatal.

Paul Atreides slowly learns the way of the Fremen and becomes their leader. His lover, Chani (Zendaya), fears Paul’s ambitions will destroy him and her people. The most compelling character in Dune, Part Two is Austin Butler, not looking like Elvis anymore, as the sociopathic killer, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. With his head shaved bald, skin as white as porcelain, and a lust for killing, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen takes control of Arrakis from his uncle. But the rise of Paul Atreides and the Fremen bring Paul and Feyd-Rautha to a deadly confrontation.

Greig Fraser, who won the Oscar for cinematography for Dune, Part One, tops his work there with stunning use of color and light in Dune, Part Two. There are rumors that Denis Villeneuve might make one more Dune movie, Dune Messiah. I hope he does after viewing this marvelous film! GRADE: A

In her enlightening Introduction, Sarah Bakewell presents one of the risks of being a Humanist today:

“…Pakistani humanIsts have been killed mostly by vigilante mobs, with the authorities looking away. A notorious case occurred in…2017: the student Mashal Khan, who posted on social media as “The Humanist,” was beaten to death by fellow students.” (p. 6)

Bakewell warns that “anti-humanism” is on the rise and threatens democracy and the planet in general. While Bakewell provides a number of definitions of Humanism in her Introduction, the one I liked best is: “Humanists…prefer to guide their lives by their own moral conscience, or by evidence, or by their social or political responsibilities to others, rather than by dogmas justified solely by reference to authority.” (p. 22)

I’ve enjoyed Sarah Bakewell’s work in the past. You can read my review of her AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFE: FREEDOM, BEING, AND APRICOT COCKTAILS here. Highly recommended!

Most of Humanly Possible explores humanists from Erasmus to Bertrand Russell, from Voltaire to Zora Neal Hurston. With the current rise in opposition to freedom, and diversity, and women’s rights Bakewell’s book arrives at a key moment to provide hope and strength to defend Humanism. Are you a Humanist? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Only connect! An introduction — 1

1. The land of the living — 25

2. Raising ships — 55

3. Provocateurs and pagans — 86

4. Marvelous network — 120

5. Human stuff — 136

6. Perpetual miracles — 163

7. Sphere for all human beings — 195

8. Unfolding humanity — 220

9. Some dream-country — 248

10. Doctor hopeful — 278

11. The human face — 304

12. The place to be happy — 342

Acknowledgments — 369

Appendix: Declaration of modern humanism (Humanists International, 2022) — 371

NOTES — 375

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS — 433

INDEX — 437

Michael Sims’s The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries (2023) is an anthology of 19th Century mystery stories. Some of the authors may be familiar to you: Ellen Glasgow and Charles W. Chesnutt for example. Others will be new to you as they were to me.

My favorite stories are “The Statement of Jared Johnson,” “The Case of the Pool of Blood in the Pastor’s Study,” and “An Intangible Clue.” In “The Statement of Jared Johnson,” Geraldine Bonner presents a mystifying death of a woman with the janitor of the building, Jared Johnson, accused of her murder. The resolution is clever and a bit surprising.

The story with the best title in The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries is “The Case of the Pool of Blood in the Pastor’s Study” by Auguste Groner. Auguste Groner (1850-1929) started her writing career by publishing historical fiction and children’s books. But she moved on to inventing Josef Muller, the hero of the first series of police detective stories in the German language. In “The Case of the Pool of Blood in the Pastor’s Study” Muller investigates a pool of blood…but no body.

You might remember Anna Katharine Green from her novel The Leavenworth Case. Green also wrote stories about Violet Strange, a wealthy and moody New York City socialite who is drawn to cases that puzzle the police. In “An Intangible Clue,” Strange connects two dissimilar events to solve a murder.

Michael Sims provides detailed introductions to each story in The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries providing information on the writers and putting their stories in context. If you’re a fan of 19th Century mystery stories, you’ll love The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction by Michael Sims — vii

A Note on the Text — xvii

The hand and word / by Gerald Griffin — 5

Guilty or not guilty? / by Thomas Waters (pseud.) — 41

Hanged by the neck / by Charles Martel (pseud.) — 61

The dead child’s leg / by James McLevy — 75

The judgement of conscience / by Andrew Forrester, Jr. (pseud.) — 91

The red room / by Mary Fortune — 123

Negative evidence / by Richard Dowling — 153

The sheriff’s children / by Charles W. Chestnut — 169

The murder at Troyte’s hill / by C.L. Pirkis — 193

The statement of Jared Johnson / by Geraldine Bonner — 221

A point in morals / by Elle Glasgow — 239

The case of the pool of blood in the pastor’s study / Auguste Groner — 255

An intangible clue / by Anna Katharine Green — 303

Acknowledgments — 325

I use music as a memory jogger. I’m always surprised (and occasionally delighted!) to hear a song I haven’t heard in over 50 years. With the BEST OF THE BUBBLE GUM YEARS (1988) includes some classics like “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” by Ohio Express and a “Little Bit of Soul” by the Music Explosion. Of course, there’s a lot of dreck on this CD, too. “Green Tambourine” by Lemon Pipers remains annoying after all these years. The same with “The Rapper” by The Jagger Z.

Oldies But Goodies, Volume 5 (1986)is somewhat better. I love The Shirelles’ “Mama Said” and “Tossin’ and Turnin’ by Bobby Lewis. I enjoy Dion’s “The Wanderer” but prefer “Teenager in Love.”

How many of these songs do you remember? Any favorites here? GRADE: C for Best of the Bubble Gum Years; B- for Oldies But Goodies, Volume 5

Track Listings

TRACK LIST:

1 Since I Don’t Have You — James Beaumont / Joseph Rock / The Skyliners 02:36 

2 Angel Baby — Rosie “Rosalie” Hamlin / Rosie & the Originals 03:36 

3 Little Star — Vito Picone / Manuel Ponce / Arthur Venosa / The Elegants 02:42 

4 A Thousand Stars — Kathy Young 03:12  

5 When We Get Married — The Dreamlovers 02:29 

6 Daddy’s Home  — Shep & the Limelites 02:47 

7 Diamonds and Pearls — The Paradons 02:20  

8 Harlem Shuffle — Bob & Earl 02:53 

9 Mr. Big Stuff — Jean Knight 02:45 

10 The Wanderer  — Dion 02:42 

11 Mama Said — The Shirelles 02:11  

12 Who’s Making Love? — Johnnie Taylor 02:49 

13 Tossin’ and Turnin’  — Bobby Lewis 02:21  

14 Rockin’ Robin — Bobby Day 02:36  

15 Sixty Minute Man — The Dominoes 02:31  

16 Alley Oop — The Hollywood Argyles. 02:43

George Mann presents another anthology of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. The gimmick is that each writer has to choose a minor character in the Holmes Canon and have that character narrate a mystery. The biggest (and maybe outlandish) example is “The Noble Burglar” by James Lovegrove where the narrator…is Toby, the dog from The Sign of Four.

While all the stories in The Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes (2017) are fun to read, a couple stand out. I really enjoyed Andrew Lane’s “The Unexpected Death of the Martian Ambassador” by Andrew Lane where the story is narrated by the pompous Lord Holdhurst (who appeared in “The Adventure of the Navel Treaty”). Also excellent is Mark A. Latham’s “The Curious Case of Vanished Youth” where Langdale Pike (from “The Adventure of the Three Gables”) where a character that Watson dislikes is central to the mystery’s solution.

Not a month goes by when a Sherlock Holmes anthology (or a collection of H.P. Lovecraft pastiches) doesn’t show up in my mailbox. The Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes is better than most. If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan you’ll want to check this out. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

The last visitor / Stephen Henry — 7

The docklands murder / Dan Watters — 29

Sherlock Holmes and the beast of Bodmin / Jonathan Green — 53

The case of the blind man’s spectacles / Marcia Wilson — 79

The unfortunate guest / Iain McLaughlin — 103

The unexpected death of the martian ambassador / Andrew Lane — 125

No good deed / David Marcum — 149

The curious case of vanished youth / Mark A. Latham — 179

The curse of the blue diamond / Sam Stone — 219

The pilot fish / Stuart Douglas — 247

The case of the scented lady / Nik Vincent — 277

Harlingdon’s hair / Michelle Ruda — 297

The noble burglar / James Lovegrove — 331

The second mask / Philip Purser-Hallard — 353

I was a big fan of the first season of REACHER on AMAZON Prime Video (you can read my review here). REACHER was based on the first Jack Reacher book by Lee Child, The Killing Floor (1997). For some inexplicable reason, REACHER, Season 2 is based on the 11th book in the Reacher series, Bad Luck and Trouble (2007)–the Third Season of REACHER will be based on Persuader (2003), the 7th book in the series.

Like Reacher, Season 1 the AMAZON PRIME Video version stays fairly close to Lee Child’s novel. For some reason, the team behind Reacher, Season 2 moved to main location for the action from Los Angeles to New York City. The casino scenes were moved from Vegas to Atlantic City. Occasionally, an additional violent scene is added to increase the body count and add to the action.

In a series of flashbacks, we learn that Reacher–then a Major in the Army–was put in charge of a Special Investigation unit. Reach chose seven soldiers with various skill sets to help him investigate. Reacher’s team consists of Frances Neagley,  Calvin Franz,  Tony Swan,  David O’Donnell,  Karla Dixon, Manuel Orozco, and Jorge Sanchez.

In the present, Neagley, now a Private Investigator, figures out a clever way to contract Reacher who has no fixed address. When Reacher meets up with Neagley, she tells him that Franz is dead. Neagley has tried to contact the rest of the team, but no one other than Reacher has responded.

The plot becomes more tangled as Reacher and Neagley learn other members of their Army team are dead–thrown out of a helicopter after being tortured. This engages Reacher who now seeks vengeance.

This eight-episode series was almost as good as Reacher, Season 1. Alan Ritchson is an ideal actor to portray Reacher: big, strong, and powerful. Maria Sten plays Neagley as smart and capable. I also liked Serinda Swan as Karla Dixon, a forensic accountant who can fight, who is Reacher’s love interest this season. If you’re in the mood for an entertaining action series, I recommend Reacher, Season 2. GRADE: B+

“It has been observed that critics who write about Shakespeare reveal more about themselves than about Shakespeare, but perhaps that is the great value drama of the Shakespearean kind, namely, that whatever he may see taking place on stage, its final effect upon each spectator is a self-revelation.” — W. H. Auden (p. 4)

I’ve loved Shakespeare since I took a course on his plays at Marquette University back in 1968. Since then, I’ve read all of Shakespeare’s plays and have seen all of them either live or on DVD. Eliot A. Cohen is the Robert E. Osgood Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cohen was also a counselor of the Department of State. The Hollow Crown is the result of Cohen teaching a graduate class in Shakespeare for policy makers.

“I have closely observed and occasionally worked with presidents, senators, foreign ministers, counselors, spies, and generals at home and abroad, not to mention corporate executives, provosts, and university presidents.” (p. 1) Cohen mixes his observations of Shakespeare plays with examples from the world of politics and business.

For those of you who love Shakespeare’s comedies, you’ll not find much in the way of mirth in these pages. Cohen focuses on characters like Richard III and MacBeth who seek power and when they get power, they use it in brutal ways.

The plays that receive the most attention from Cohen are Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2) and Henry V. The growth of Hal from a young nobleman interested in chasing women and drinking to a monarch show how leaders rise, rule, (and later fall).

If you’re a fan of Shakespeare, you’ll enjoy all the quotes Cohen provides from various plays. Cohen highlights passages from Richard III that I had forgotten about. Exercising power always costs and Shakespeare shows those consequences in his plays. The Hollow Crown is a terrific book with much to ponder. Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction: The arc of power — 1

Why Shakespeare? — 13

Part I: acquiring power:

Inheriting it — 39

Acquiring it — 57

Seizing it — 81

Part II: exercising power:

Inspiration — 109

Manipulation — 133

Murder — 159

Part III: losing power:

Innocence and arrogance — 181

Magic and self-deception — 203

Walking away from it — 225

Shakespeare’s political vision — 247

Acknowledgments — 255

Notes — 259

Index — 269

Holly Maguire’s clever little book is aimed at children, but adults will find Book Nerd plenty of fun, too. Maguire provides the artwork and quotes famous people to praise the wonderfulness of reading.

If you’re looking for a snazzy celebration of bookishness, Book Nerd shines! Are you a book nerd? GRADE: A

I’ve been a huge fan of Martha Wells’s Murderbot series since the first volume appeared in 2018. Since then Wells published seven new Murderbot books. The latest book in the series is System Collapse. It is the weakest book in the series.

I was disappointed while reading System Collapse. The story dragged as SecUnit confronted some of its problems created in Network Effect.

SecUnit and its colleagues try to rescue a colony on a planet about to be controlled by a corporation that will make the colonists slaves. Plus, there’s alien contamination and several other problems to contend with. But the story drags and the long battle scene near the end of the book doesn’t quite rescue the storyline.

Then I read the interview with Martha Wells in the February 2024 issue of LOCUS. “I didn’t have to do the chemo, and only had to do four weeks of radiation. …They found out I have a genetic anomaly that means I have a higher chance of getting pancreatic cancer and melanoma. …It was very stressful–it was a lot!” Later in the interview, Wells refers to her problems writing System Collapse: “Murderbot’s interior voice is very similar to my own. Instead of dancing around a lot of my issues with anxiety and depression, I finally used Murderbot to talk about them.” That explains the very real divergences in System Collapse from the rest of the Murderbot series.

The problems Wells had to overcome to finish this book shows her strength of will and determination. I just hope the next Murderbot book recovers from Martha Wells’s personal system collapse. GRADE: C+

THE MURDERBOT SERIES: (just click on the link for the reviews)

All Systems Red (2018)

Artificial Condition (2018)

Rogue Protocol (2018)

Exit Strategy (2019)

Network Effect (2021)

Fugitive Telemetry (2021)

Iain M. Banks died in 2013 of terminal Gallbladder cancer at the age of 59. Banks engaged in some impressive world-building when he came up with The Culture. The Culture stories center on a galactic society called The Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space civilization of humanoid aliens, and advanced super-intelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. The main themes of The Culture series concern the problems an idealistic, more-advanced civilization faces in dealing with smaller, less-advanced civilizations that do not share its ideals, and whose behaviors it sometimes finds barbaric. Think a clash of cultures who both think they’re right.

The Culture: The Drawings is a collection of Banks’ doodles, lists, sketches, and visualizations of the locales, ships, weapons, and vehicles that appear in his books. You can see how Banks developed his ideas through these drawings that would appear transformed into prose in his books.

“In some of The Culture stories, action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of (or non-members of) the Culture, sometimes acting as agents of Culture (knowing and unknowing) in its plans to civilize the galaxy. Each novel is a self-contained story with new characters, although reference is occasionally made to the events of previous novels.”

“This rich, sweeping panorama of heroism and folly celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Culture, Banks’s far-future semi-utopian society…. The action tumbles along at a dizzying pace, bouncing among a fascinating array of characters and locales. It’s easy to see why Banks’s fertile, cheerfully nihilistic imagination and vivid prose have made The Culture space operas bestsellers and award favorites.”―Publishers Weekly on The Hydrogen Sonata

Iain M. Banks produced ten challenging SF novels that take the reader on trips to bizarre and frightening habitats. While there is plenty of action in these books, they’ll be considered classics because of the richness of their ideas. I’ve included a list of The Culture series below. I’m not exaggerating when I say they’re great books. Are you a fan of The Culture? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION By Adele Banks — 1

Production Note — 5

Locales — 11

Ships — 23

Transport — 69

Weaponry — 75

Drones — 97

World-building — 111

Marain — 135

The Culture series:

1. Consider Phlebas (1987). London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-44138-9
2. The Player of Games (1988). London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-47110-5
3. Use of Weapons (1990). London: Orbit. ISBN 0-356-19160-5
4. The State of the Art (1991). London: Orbit. ISBN 0-356-19669-0 – also included below in short fiction collections, but included here because it is considered part of the Culture series.^[86]
5. Excession (1996). London: Orbit. ISBN 1-85723-394-8
6. Inversions (1998). London: Orbit. ISBN 1-85723-626-2
7. Look to Windward (2000). London: Orbit. ISBN 1-85723-969-5
8. Matter (2008). London: Orbit. ISBN 978-1-84149-417-3
9. Surface Detail (2010). London: Orbit. ISBN 978-1-84149-893-5
10. The Hydrogen Sonata (2012). London: Orbit. ISBN 978-0-356-50150-5