Patti Abbott asked for recommendations for Christmas music and I chipped in with Joy to the World by John Williams and The Boston Pops Orchesta. It’s been a favorite for years and is still available on CD (so many other favorite CDs aren’t). The sound is great and the mix of songs should please just about everyone. You can’t go wrong with this one! GRADE: A
TRACK LISTING:
1. Christmas Festival [Medley]
2. Visit from Saint Nicholas (T’Was the Night Before Christmas)
3. White Christmas
4. March of the Toys
5. Somewhere in My Memory
6. Holiday Flight
7. Christmas Bouquet [Medley]
8. Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
9. Star of Bethlehem
10. Christmas Night [Medley]
11. We Wish You a Merry Christmas
12. Sleigh Ride
13. Merry Little Sing-Along [Medley]

Baen Books has just published their third omnibus volume of A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes series, Galactic Courier. This volume collects four Grimes novels: Star Courier, To Keep the Ship, Matilda’s Stepchildren, and Star Loot. Grimes has become a privateer and travels the Rim Worlds to find business. And most of what he finds is unusual and dangerous. If you’re a fan of adventure, you might consider reading these entertaining SF novels. They have plenty of Sense of Wonder and fun!

Michael Dirda’s slim little book praises A. Conan Doyle and explores Doyle’s works: the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Professor Challenger adventures, the supernatural and terror tales, medieval swashbucklers like The White Company, social novels, and Doyle’s considerable memoirs, personal essays, and polemical journalism. Dirda read Doyle’s works for decades and knows the both the fiction and non-fiction better than most critics. Dirda is also a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. On Conan Doyle delights and informs. GRADE: A

Those of you who saw THE ADDAMS FAMILY in Chicago or on Broadway saw a different version of the musical than this new touring company presentation. The central conflict is new, there’s added choreography, retooled orchestrations, and three brand-new songs. Diane and I loved the TV version starring Carolyn Jones and John Astin back in the Sixties. And, of course, we loved the Charles Addams’ cartoons in The New Yorker. We’ll see if this musical can bring Morticia and Gomez to life on the stage tonight.

Bill Crider recommended A Perfect World and you can read his review about it here. Music plays a key role in this movie so you can see (and hear) why Bill ran out and bought the soundtrack to A Perfect World. Kevin Costner breaks out of a maximum security prison and while on the run, takes a young boy hostage. Then, A Perfect World turns into a road movie as Costner and the kid drive around Texas having fun. Clint Eastwood and a band of police are following Costner in a high-tech (for the time) trailer. Laura Dern should have been given more to do. But, all in all, A Perfect World shows Eastwood in an early movie in his director oeuvre…warts and all. GRADE: B+

Margaret Atwood writes about story-telling and how the books she read in her youth led her to become a writer. Atwood grew up a voracious reader. She loved Sherlock and Oz and science fiction. Atwood read H. G. Wells, Verne, and more contemporary SF writers like John Wyndham. Her analysis of the differences between Wells and Verne are enlightening. Atwood tells how she came to write dystopian books like The Handmaiden’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, and Year of the Flood. I found Atwood’s insights clever and thought-provoking. GRADE: A

George Clooney plays a real estate lawyer in Hawaii who is dealing with two crises. Clooney’s wife is in a coma from a boating accident. Clooney, an absentee father, has to deal with his two precocious daughters: one 17, the other 10. The second problem involves a family trust that’s worth $500 million in virgin land. Clooney is the Executor and his family is pressuring him to sell. The Descendants turns into a bit of a road movie as Clooney takes his daughters on a journey to discover some family secrets. The couple we viewed the movie with were disappointed that The Descendants wasn’t funnier. Yes, there are moments of humor, but Clooney’s character finds himself grappling with the past and the future. Those kinds of serious struggles rarely produce giggles. GRADE: B+

The Consummata continues the adventures of Morgan the Raider. Morgan is on the run from the Feds after the events chronicled in The Delta Factor. The Consummata is set in the late 1960s so the slang and culture are consistent with the previous book. Morgan takes on a mission by the Cuban community in Miami to track down a vicious traitor who has stolen $75,000 from them. The traitor has a weakness for S&M so Morgan uses that fetish to lead him to a rendezvous with a super-secret dominatrix, The Consummata, at her secluded mansion. The action is unrelenting and there’s a twist at the end. My hat goes off to Max Allen Collins for channeling Spillane’s style so completely. GRADE: B

Back in 1967, Mickey Spillane’s The Delta Factor appeared with a new hero: Morgan the Raider. Morgan, being held on Federal charges of heisting $40 million in cash, is offered a deal by the U.S. Government. If Morgan agrees to break into a Latin American prison and free a political V.I.P. the Government will reduce Morgan’s jail-time. Of course, Spillane has to complicate things. Morgan finds himself assigned a minder: a beautiful C.I.A. agent. And the never-named Latin American country has a hurricane about to come ashore. Plenty of action and gunplay add up to an exciting conclusion. I’ll be reviewing the sequel to The Delta Factor, The Consummata, tomorrow.

Art and Marion Fowler travel to Niagara Falls for one last weekend before they divorce. Art has lost his job, their house is about to be fore-closed, and bankruptcy looms. But Art and Marion decide to take the last of their money and spend it on a second honeymoon in Canada. Can this desperate vacation save their marriage? Stewart O’Nan cannily gives the odds of events at the beginning of each chapter. If you’ve read O’Nan’s previous work, you know he’s a clever writer. And The Odds is one of his cleverest books. GRADE: B+