Nina Sankovitch decides to read a book a day for a year. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair tells Nina’s story of how 365 books helped her deal with a personal tragedy. When I first picked up this book, I thought it was a little thin to be an account of 365 books, but Nina weaves the books into her personal and family narrative. I liked Nina’s thoughts on reading John D. MacDonald while her parents preferred Ross Macdonald. If you want to see the entire list of the 365 books Nina read, you can go to her website at: www.readallday.org. GRADE: B

Cars 2 surprised me. I was expecting another adventure with Lightning McQueen and his car buddies similar to Cars 1. But those clever guys at Pixar decided to make a James Bond movie without James Bond and featuring animated cars. Yes, Cars 2 has as much action and thrills as a Bond movie. Its convoluted plot will lose most 6-year-olds, but adults will follow the tangled clues just fine. This is one of those rare occasions where the sequel is better than the initial movie. Don’t miss this one! GRADE: A

Captain America follows in the groove set by Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk. This isn’t much of a spoiler, but all of these movies have been prequels to The Avengers movie that should open May 2012 where all of these super-heroes will battle some sinister villain (or villains). I liked Tommy Lee Jones in Captain America. There are few surprises, but plenty of shooting. Rather than the grand, slick CGI effects of a movie like GREEN LANTERN, Captain America has a more gritty feel to it. Another perfect Summer Movie! If you’re interested in the Buffalo connection to CAPTAIN AMERICA, just click here. GRADE: A-

If you’re a fan of the ACE DOUBLE series of mystery novels published from 1952 to 1963, you’ll want a copy of Sheldon Jaffery’s Double Trouble. Although we’re only talking about 130 books published over 11 years, the ACE DOUBLE series featured some excellent writers like Harry Whittington and Robert Bloch. The D-Series ran from 1952 until 1961, the F-series ran from 1961 to 1963, and the short-lived G-series started and ended in 1963. Jaffery provides an annotated list of all the books in the series and provides bibliographic information about each title. My only quibble is that Double Trouble doesn’t reproduce any of the covers from those wonderful ACE DOUBLES. Perhaps there were copyright issues. But, even without any cover reproductions, Double Trouble documents a series of paperbacks that still have the power to charm mystery readers.

A. C. Grayling’s Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life is a practical set of short essays on a multitude of topics. Grayling tackles questions like “Are human rights political?” and “Is it acceptable to do bad things to bad people?” Most of these essays are only a page or two long, but Grayling has a knack of reducing some of these philosophical questions to their basic components for thoughtful analysis. This book is another browser’s delight. You can dip into it anywhere and find some lively controversy and Grayling’s engaging writing. GRADE: B+
MORE SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
If beauty existed only in the eye of the beholder, would that make it an unimportant quality?
Can ethics be derived from evolution by natural selection?
If both sides in a conflict can passionately believe that theirs is the just cause, does this mean that the idea of justice is empty?
Does being happy make us good? And does being good make us happy?
Are human beings especially prone to self-deception?

SUNY at Buffalo (home of the Kelley Collection) has issued a list of “48 Good Books.” The idea is that an undergraduate student would have this list to inspire them to read a book per month for their 4-year stay. The details on the selection process and the complete annotated list can be found here.  Here’s just the stripped-down list:

1. Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times by Paul Rogat Loeb
2. Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863 by Shelby Foote
3. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. He, She and It by Marge Piercy
6. The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era by Michael Mandelbaum
7. Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future by Ian Morris
8. Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher
9. Bread Givers: A Novel: A Struggle Between a Father of the Old World and a Daughter of the New by Anzia Yezierska
10. Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie by O. E. Rolvaag
11. Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
12. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
13. The Dark Child by Laye Camara
14. The Physician by Noah Gordon
15. The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
16. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
17. Confessions by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
18. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
19. Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee
20. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
21. Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
22. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
23. The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne
24. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
25. The Tempest by William Shakespeare
26. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
27. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
28. The Aeneid by Virgil
29. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
30. Farm hands: Hard Work and Hard Lessons from Western New York Fields by Tom Rivers
31. Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston by Ernest Callenbach
32. Ain’t No makin’ it: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood by Jay MacLeod
33. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
34. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
35. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
36. Darkness Spoken: Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann by Ingeborg Bachmann
37. A Dog’s Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron
38. Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-1995 by Margaret Atwood
39. Madame Curie, A Biography by Eve Curie
40. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
41. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
42. The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
43. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
44. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
45. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Phillips Feynman
46. The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
47. Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald
48. The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan D. Spence

BORDERS sent me a 40% off coupon for any single DVD so I picked up this diverting bit of fluff. David Tennant plays the 10th Doctor. He meets up with a jewel thief, Michelle Ryan, and the London double-decker bus they’re on goes through a worm-hole to a desert planet a galaxy away. Yes, this is typical Doctor Who nonsense, but the production values are top-notch. The desert scenes were shot in Dubai. Along with the episode, there’s a 60-minute “Doctor Who Confidential” where the stars, the producers, the director, the writers all talk about how the shooting of the episode both proved challenging and frustrating. If you’re recovering from knee surgery, something as light and frothy as DOCTOR WHO: Planet of the Death is just what the doctor ordered. GRADE: B+

The Sisters Brothers will divert you with its edgy energy. GRADE: B

I’m not a soccer fan, but I admit I did watch the U.S. Women’s Soccer team come back from the dead and tie Brazil last week. Abby Wambach’s amazing header with 30 seconds left in the game was one of the more unlikely goals I’ve ever seen. Then, in the shoot-out, the U.S. Women’s soccer team’s goalie, Hope Solo (great name!), made a key save that allowed the U.S. to win. I watched the dull game against France where the U.S. women came to sudden life near the end of the game to score a 3-1 win. Now, the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team is one win away from a world title. I’ll be watching again this afternoon to see if this group can overcome the Japanese team. I don’t think soccer will ever be a major sport in the U.S. It’s too tedious. Americans love scoring. Watching any sporting event for 90+ minutes with little or no scoring is not going to gain a large viewership in this country.

As Jeff Meyerson noted, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (Part 2) doesn’t have an intro or a synopsis, it jumps right back into the story that was suspended at the end of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (Part 1). So you need to walk into this movie knowing where you are in the sequence of events. The writer and director also assume you’ve read the Harry Potter books, too, because nothing is explained. But, once you get past those caveats, the action in this film is fast and furious. I found Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (Part 1) a bit draggy in parts. There’s none of that in this sequel. I’ve seen all the Harry Potter movies and I’d have to say this concluding film is the best one of them all. For a movie franchise that’s taken in over $6 billion, that’s saying something. GRADE: A