Christopher R. Beha, out of a job and recovering from cancer, decides to read the Harvard Classics. Charles Eliot, the former president of Harvard University, assembled 51 volumes of “classics” that sold briskly a hundred years ago. The implication was that if you read all 51 volumes, you’d have the equivalent of a Harvard education. From Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography to Beowulf and The Song of Roland and everything in between, the Harvard Classics established itself as the literary canon of its day. In The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else we see the Harvard Classics through the prism of Beha’s life of family and health crises. It takes Beha a year to read all 51 volumes and much happens to him in that year. I find books like this irresistible. GRADE: B+

Subterranean Press has just published this wonderful collection of stories by Jack Vance. If you haven’t read Jack Vance’s work, this is the perfect place to start because the stories in this book display his range from humorous to philosophical to whimsical. “Assault on a City,” “Green Magic,” “The World-Thinker,” “The Augmented Agent,” “Coup De Grace,” “Chateau d’If,” “The Potters of Firsk,” “The Seventeen Virgins,” “Ulward’s Retreat,” “Seven Exits from Bocz,” “Wild Thyme and Violets,” and “Rumfuddle” cover the arc of Vance’s interests. Vance’s wife, Norma, provides two biographical essays. Don’t miss these classic stories!

This hour-long documentary from 2007 shows what J. K. Rowling was up to during the run-up to the release of the last book of her series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. ABC is broadcasting this to take advantage of the opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It’s starts at 8 P.M. here, but check your local listings. I find J. K. Rowling’s rise from a welfare mother to a successful author richer than the Queen of England astonishing.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE follows J. K. Rowling’s 600+ page novel fairly closely. As you might expect, there’s some compression in the plot and a few portions of the book have been dropped. For example, in the book there were three Quidditch matches, in the movie there’s just one. The movie is two hours and thirty-five minutes. It sags in a few places. Maybe my curmudgeonly attitudes are out of tune with the times, but I found all the “snogging” a bit tedious. There’s no doubt that this is a dark movie compared to the the sunny, playful early Harry Potter films. There’s not a lot of humor. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ll be seeing this move soon. If you’re not, nothing I’ve said about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is going to matter much. GRADE: B

Away We Go is one of the stranger road movies I’ve ever seen. A couple in their 30s with a baby on the way decide to visit family and friends across the country to decide where they should make their home and how they should raise their child. They visit mentally disturbed friends in Phoenix, a sister in Tucson, a cousin who’s into New Age living in Madison, and a frustrated couple of friends in Montreal. They end up in Miami dealing with domestic turmoil. At no time was I completely engaged by this movie. I felt distanced almost the whole time. The scenes felt staged. The dialog was mannered, almost studied. There is a funny scene that involves a baby carriage, but too many times the comedy seemed forced. Wait for the DVD. GRADE: B-

Taylor Swift (cute as a button) performing with the aging British heavy metal band, Def Leppard, has to be the most unlikely musical pairing since k. d. lang and Tony Bennett. From the opening power chords of “Photograph” (one of the great heavy metal anthems of all time) to the acoustic “Two Steps Behind” I found plenty to like on this DVD. Some people find Taylor Swift too overbearing, but I like her. She’s got Talent. I’ve always been a fan of Def Leppard. But it is a bit disconcerting to see 18-year-old Taylor Swift singing “Pour Some Sugar On Me” with guys in their 50s. If you’re interested in acquiring this DVD, be warned: it’s only being sold at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. GRADE: B+

Murder is Easy (aka, Easy to Kill) is another Christie novel the producers of the video version have “retrofitted” into a Miss Marple mystery. In the original novel (published in 1939), the action centers around Luke Fitzwilliam, a retired policeman. He notices that an unusual number of people are dying in Wychwood. He investigates and finds murder and romance. Clearly, a serial killer is at work. It will be interesting to see how this plot works with Miss Marple in it for tonight’s PBS MASTERPIECE MYSTERY series. The suspects include a strange Doctor, a curio-shop artist with a taste for Black Masses, a series of suspicious town’s people, a woman who looks like a beautiful witch, and Lord Easterfield, whose enemies all seem to die. GRADE: B+

If you’re in the mood for something very bizarre, I urge you to click on http://www.m2film.dk/fleggaard/trailer2.swf and be prepared to be amazed.  Danish e-commerce website Fleggaard has recently made a “not-safe-for-work” commercial that depicts a group of topless skydivers who, during their descend, come together in mid-air to spell out an advertisement for a washing machine.

Watch out Maytag, Kenmore, and GE!  You’re going to step up your advertising game after this. Thanks to the ever vigilant Art Scott for the link.

Henry Kuttner’s wacky scientist, Galloway Gallegher, is an average technician when sober. But once he’s drunk, his subconscious genius takes over and creates incredible inventions. Yes, this is not a politically correct approach today, but Kuttner wrote these stories over 60 years ago so you have to cut him some slack. The formula of these stories is that Gallegher wakes up and finds a strange device in his lab. He hasn’t a clue about its purpose or operation. Clients show up demanding results for the money they’ve paid Gallegher to solve their problems. The rest of the story follows a mystery story format where Gallegher investigates both his half-remembered clients and the strange machines he’s created. The word that best captures the sense of these stories is whimsical. If you like P. G. Wodehouse, you’ll like Henry Kuttner’s Gallegher stories. Planet Stories is to be commended on returning these classic stories back to print.

SUNY at Buffalo has digitized more paperback and pulp fiction covers from the collection I donated to them. To see them go to: http://www.oclc.org/contentdm/
Then click on “Featured Collections, July” on the right side of the page.  Click on the “See more customer collections”   and click on “Pulp Fiction Cover Art.”  Then click on “Browse this collection” to see the wonderful covers.  These librarians have done a super job promoting this collection.  I give them my heart-felt thanks.