Stephen Speilberg’s Lincoln focuses on the last few months of Lincoln’s life. Specifically, it tells the story of the passing of the 13th Amendment. If you think our country is divided now, it was more divisive in 1865. And, as the story of 13th Amendment unwinds, there’s the Civil War impinging on every scene in the movie. Daniel Day-Lewis IS Lincoln in this movie. But, for my money, the performance of Tommy Lee Jones as Radical Republican Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens is luminous. Tommy Lee Jones steals every scene he’s in. My only quibble about Lincoln centers around all of subplots: Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln’s relationship, Lincoln’s relationship with his sons, Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward (played superbly by David Strathairn), and the comic relief of James Spader as Democratic Party operative William N. Bilboe threaten to overwhelm the already long 150 minutes. I’m guessing Lincoln will be a big winner at Oscar time. GRADE: A-

The Weird weighs in at 1152 pages. This huge volume contains 110 stories–some classics, some new to me–and this wonderful book can be had for less than $20! Talk about bargains! I could quibble about certain stories I would have liked to be included, but I’m not going there. I’m here to praise this great anthology. There’s something here for everyone. It would certainly make a wonderful holiday gift!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Alfred Kubin, “The Other Side” (excerpt), 1908 (translation, Austria)

F. Marion Crawford, “The Screaming Skull,” 1908

Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows,” 1907

Saki, “Sredni Vashtar,” 1910

M.R. James, “Casting the Runes,” 1911

Lord Dunsany, “How Nuth Would Have Practiced his Art,” 1912

Gustav Meyrink, “The Man in the Bottle,” 1912 (translation, Austria)

Georg Heym, “The Dissection,” 1913 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Germany)

Hanns Heinz Ewers, “The Spider,” 1915 (translation, Germany)

Rabindranath Tagore, “The Hungry Stones,” 1916 (India)

Luigi Ugolini, “The Vegetable Man,” 1917 (new translation by Anna and Brendan Connell, Italy; first-ever translation into English)

A. Merritt, “The People of the Pit,” 1918

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “The Hell Screen,” 1918 (new translation, Japan)

Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett), “Unseen—Unfeared,” 1919

Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony,” 1919 (translation, German/Czech)

Stefan Grabinski, “The White Weyrak,” 1921 (translation, Poland)

H.F. Arnold, “The Night Wire,” 1926

H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror,” 1929

Margaret Irwin, “The Book,” 1930

Jean Ray, “The Mainz Psalter,” 1930 (translation, Belgium)

Jean Ray, “The Shadowy Street,” 1931 (translation, Belgium)

Clark Ashton Smith, “Genius Loci,” 1933

Hagiwara Sakutoro, “The Town of Cats,” 1935 (translation, Japan)

Hugh Walpole, “The Tarn,” 1936

Bruno Schulz, “Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass,” 1937 (translation, Poland)

Robert Barbour Johnson, “Far Below,” 1939

Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost,” 1941

Leonora Carrington, “White Rabbits,” 1941

Donald Wollheim, “Mimic,” 1942

Ray Bradbury, “The Crowd,” 1943

William Sansom, “The Long Sheet,” 1944

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph,” 1945 (translation, Argentina)

Olympe Bhely-Quenum, “A Child in the Bush of Ghosts,” 1949 (Benin)

Shirley Jackson, “The Summer People,” 1950

Margaret St. Clair, “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” 1951

Robert Bloch, “The Hungry House,” 1951

Augusto Monterroso, “Mister Taylor,” 1952 (new translation by Larry Nolen, Guatemala)

Amos Tutuola, “The Complete Gentleman,” 1952 (Nigeria)

Jerome Bixby, “It’s a Good Life,” 1953

Julio Cortazar, “Axolotl,” 1956 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Argentina)

William Sansom, “A Woman Seldom Found,” 1956

Charles Beaumont, “The Howling Man,” 1959

Mervyn Peake, “Same Time, Same Place,” 1963

Dino Buzzati, “The Colomber,” 1966 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Italy)

Michel Bernanos, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)

Merce Rodoreda, “The Salamander,” 1967 (translation, Catalan)

Claude Seignolle, “The Ghoulbird,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)

Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be,” 1967

Daphne Du Maurier, “Don’t Look Now,” 1971

Robert Aickman, “The Hospice,” 1975

Dennis Etchison, “It Only Comes Out at Night,” 1976

James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Terrible Things to Rats,” 1976

Eric Basso, “The Beak Doctor,” 1977

Jamaica Kincaid, “Mother,” 1978 (Antigua and Barbuda/US)

George R.R. Martin, “Sandkings,” 1979

Bob Leman, “Window,” 1980

Ramsey Campbell, “The Brood,” 1980

Michael Shea, “The Autopsy,” 1980

William Gibson/John Shirley, “The Belonging Kind,” 1981

M. John Harrison, “Egnaro,” 1981

Joanna Russ, “The Little Dirty Girl,” 1982

M. John Harrison, “The New Rays,” 1982

Premendra Mitra, “The Discovery of Telenapota,” 1984 (translation, India)

F. Paul Wilson, “Soft,” 1984

Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild,” 1984

Clive Barker, “In the Hills, the Cities,” 1984

Leena Krohn, “Tainaron,” 1985 (translation, Finland)

Garry Kilworth, “Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands,” 1987

Lucius Shepard, “Shades,” 1987

Harlan Ellison, “The Function of Dream Sleep,” 1988

Ben Okri, “Worlds That Flourish,” 1988 (Nigeria)

Elizabeth Hand, “The Boy in the Tree,” 1989

Joyce Carol Oates, “Family,” 1989

Poppy Z Brite, “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood,” 1990

Michal Ajvaz, “The End of the Garden,” 1991 (translation, Czech)

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Dark,” 1991

Kathe Koja, “Angels in Love,” 1991

Haruki Murakami, “The Ice Man,” 1991 (translation, Japan)

Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements,” 1992

Marc Laidlaw, “The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio,” 1993

Steven Utley, “The Country Doctor,” 1993

William Browning Spenser, “The Ocean and All Its Devices,” 1994

Jeffrey Ford, “The Delicate,” 1994

Martin Simpson, “Last Rites and Resurrections,” 1994

Stephen King, “The Man in the Black Suit,” 1994

Angela Carter, “The Snow Pavilion,” 1995

Craig Padawer, “The Meat Garden,” 1996

Stepan Chapman, “The Stiff and the Stile,” 1997

Tanith Lee, “Yellow and Red,” 1998

Kelly Link, “The Specialist’s Hat,” 1998

Caitlin R. Kiernan, “A Redress for Andromeda,” 2000

Michael Chabon, “The God of Dark Laughter,” 2001

China Mieville, “Details,” 2002

Michael Cisco, “The Genius of Assassins,” 2002

Neil Gaiman, “Feeders and Eaters,” 2002

Jeff VanderMeer, “The Cage,” 2002

Jeffrey Ford, “The Beautiful Gelreesh,” 2003

Thomas Ligotti, “The Town Manager,” 2003

Brian Evenson, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation,” 2003

Mark Samuels, “The White Hands,” 2003

Daniel Abraham, “Flat Diana,” 2004

Margo Lanagan, “Singing My Sister Down,” 2005 (Australia)

T.M. Wright, “The People on the Island,” 2005

Laird Barron, “The Forest,” 2007

Liz Williams, “The Hide,” 2007

Reza Negarestani, “The Dust Enforcer,” 2008 (Iran)

Micaela Morrissette, “The Familiars,” 2009

Steve Duffy, “In the Lion’s Den,” 2009

Stephen Graham Jones, “Little Lambs,” 2009

K.J. Bishop, “Saving the Gleeful Horse,” 2010 (Australia)

A mixture of turnovers and bad calls by officials in Foxboro gave the Bills their 12th straight loss to the New England Patriots in Massachusetts. Talk about incompetence and futility! You can see why it’s hard to be a Bills fan. Tonight, the Bills play the Dolphins in a rare Thursday night game. The game is a sell-out so those people who enjoy watching surgical shows on cable can watch this likely fiasco. Many Bills fans are already studying potential Draft Picks.

Robin Sloan gives a head-fake to The Maltese Falcon early on in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, but the book has more in common with an Agatha Christie mystery. Clay Jannon, an out-of-work web site designer, desperate to pay his bills, takes a job as a clerk at the strange Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. Clay discovers that the front of the store with regular books is just a cover for the bizarre books located high on the shelves. Those books are borrowed by a cult of readers who seek…well, that would be telling. Secret cults, codes, a cute GOOGLE genius girl, a friend who builds sets for Industrial Light & Magic, and another friend who owns a software company that specializes in graphical depictions of one specific body part are just some of the strange elements in this remarkable book. If you put Agatha Christie and Philip K. Dick in a blender, you’d get Robin Sloan. Check out Robin Sloan reading Chapter One below. GRADE: B+

I finally used my free ticket to TAKEN 2. For those of you not familiar with Liam Neeson’s retired CIA agent, Bryan Mills, he’s a dedicated agent who finds himself divorced from his beautiful wife (Famke Janssen) and estranged from his teenage daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). In TAKEN, Kim is kidnapped in Paris and Neeson uses his spy skills to track down her kidnappers. TAKEN 2 follows the same template. Neeson, his ex-wife, and Kim take a family vacation in Istanbul (yikes!). And, sure enough, the father of one of the Bad Guys Neeson killed in TAKEN, wants revenge so he and his gang kidnap Neeson and his ex-wife (Kim manages to avoid capture). Yes, Neeson escapes (shocking!) and goes on a killing spree. I imagine that TAKEN 3 will center around Kim and her husband getting kidnapped after their wedding. Mildly entertaining. GRADE: C+

Isaac Asimov wrote a science fiction short story called “Franchise.” (Amazingly, it was published in the August 1955 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction). In “Franchise,” Asimov has a computer making Election decisions. It interviewed one representative voter, analyzed all the relevant information, and generated the same results that a real Election would have produced. Until that happens, we have Nate Silver to guide us through the election process. But for political junkies (like me), I highly recommend History of American Presidental Elections, 1789-2008 (I’m sure a new revised edition is being written right now). You don’t have to shell out the $219 to buy this set; your local public library should have it or should be able to acquire it for you through library inter-loan. I know of no other history of elections with this kind of scope and accessibility. In the wake of the 2012 Election, it was fun to go back and get an overview of our country’s entire Presidential Election history. GRADE: A

Skyfall is the 23rd James Bond movie making it one of the most successful franchises in cinema history. The McGuffin in Skyfall is a hard drive with a list of names of operatives who have infiltrated terrorist organizations. At the same time, M (Judi Dench) is being attacked by politicians and pressured to retire while Bond (David Craig) deals with his own mid-life crisis. Javier Bardem provides a menacing Bad Guy. Skyfall resembles a roller-coaster ride: scenes build up suspense and then we have a wild chase scene. My only minor quibble about this film is that it’s a tad too long at 143 minutes. I’m already looking forward to the next Bond movie. GRADE: A-

Storm Front and Fool Moon are the first two books in Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series. Like the other younger Harry, this Harry is a wizard. He works out of Chicago. Like a private eye, he hires out his talents. His main source of income is working with the Chicago police on various crimes that involve magic. In Storm Front, Dresden investigates a disappearance that leads to supernatural attempts on his life. A gang selling a magical drug called ThirdEye also figures into the plot. Fool Moon concerns werewolves. Who knew there were many types of werewolves. Dresden takes on all the very different forms and flirts with death with each encounter. These early books aren’t great (the series gets better), but are entertaining, breezy reads. If you’re looking for some light reading, these books are fun.

Diane and I left Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical at the Intermission. The story, based on the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel of a noble doctor who frees his Id, is a dark one. Once every decade or so, a dark play can survive and become commercial: The Phantom of the Opera and Sweeny Todd come to mind. But Jekyll & Hyde is nowhere in that class. The music was forgettable, the lyrics banal. Constantine Maroulis (from American Idol) sings his heart out as Dr. Jekyll and the creepy Mr. Hyde. Deborah Cox belts out her numbers, too. But none of the songs captured our interest. The local newspaper article on Jekyll & Hyde noted the producers were “tweaking” the play as they went along. They need to blow it up. GRADE: F