News review: Sunday Advance (BB Guns)

Reader #521 wrote: A 20 year old may face a couple of years in jail because the officer that stopped him for speeding for speeding found a BB gun in his car. I understand why the cops would be upset about seeing what he thought was a real gun. A fine would do, but putting the guy in jail for a BB gun is a little too much, we have much bigger problems to contend with.

Book review: Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach

Reader #521 wrote: I felt my finances were out of control and I didn't know where to start fixing it. My budgets never work, and I was always going over, but this book game me hope. It helps you look at the big picture. David Bach helped me understand what the difference is between an IRA and a Roth IRA. I recommend this book to a couple trying to figure out how to save for the future, or a mom trying to get it together. Grade: A.

Book review: Marvel Zombies

Reader #521 wrote: I had to read this because I am trying to get me son to read more. I read it with him, it was very gruesome. It was about characters we love, Spiderman, Superman, The Hulk and zombies. If you have a child that thinks eating brains is cool, they will love this book. Grade: C.

Book review: Four Wives by Wendy Walker

Reader #519 wrote: This was an entertaining read although I didn't have much sympathy for any of the characters. This book was a little like a soap opera. I found myself turning the pages to see what came next. This is definitely a great book for the beach or sitting by the pool. Grade: B.

Book review: The Divorce Party by Laura Dave

Reader # 519 wrote: I found this book to be very light reading and it didn't have me turning the pages in excitement like other books. The author does a pretty good job on her character development, but I just didn't find them all that interesting. There were some poignant moments in the book though, written with great sensitivity. Grade: C.

Book review: Duma Key by Stephen King

Reader #519 wrote: Very entertaining read and shows Stephen King at his best. I enjoyed seeing the protagonist's awakening as an artist, and the events that follow his new found talent. King always spins a great yarn and this is no exception. Read it with the lights on. If you see a tattered looking ship on the horizon at sunset - run! Grade: A.

Book review: Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche

Reader #82 wrote: SHINING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA by Stephen Marche is arguably science fiction, though I know of no one who reviewed it as such. (The cataloguing data calls it "experimental fiction". It purports to be an anthology of Sanjanian fiction and other writings, with a preface that provides the historical, sociological, and literary background necessary to understand them. Sanjania is an island nation in the North Atlantic, and was formerly part of the British Empire. It is a very literary culture: "Sanjanians are perhaps the most literary people on earth. Bookstalls are as common as fruit stands, the theatres around Saint Magdalene's Square dwarf the City Hall, and on Sanjair flights the stewards push small carts of books down the aisle after the beverages and pretzels."

Later, it says of Saint Magdalene's Square, "Seemingly endless bookstalls fill the square's edge and spill into the side streets in every direction. Bargain hunters and literature lovers cram
every nook and cranny from sunrise (more or less) to sundown (more or less)." (Sounds like Hay-on-Wye.) The only real drawback to this literary Shangri-La is that it does not exist. Oh, well, you can't have everything.

The earliest pieces--in terms of the internal chronology--are the most interesting, since Mache constructs a separate dialect for that era: "In his eighteenth year, Marlyebone oxchopped and mangled the other wolfheads, Goodfriday Martins, Samuel Baker Deloney, Abraham Crisp and Lover Gromes, and claimed the overward. In his nineteenth year, the Crown pursued him. Crownagent Keagan Poulter took a bulletsmash in the face and could not be regaliated. Agent Will Champion's moniker fibbed everafter his failure. Robert Strunk sunk. In Marlyebone's
twentieth year, his Scourge Sally Parkman, a Woman Crownagent, grabbed his pirate fleet, and yawled it against the waves of Portuguese Cove, ane Marlyebone scuppered overhill byland toward his homecove Restitution, flittering."

This dialect is characterized by many compound words, and I suppose Marche got tired of creating them, because after the first few pieces, they go away, alas.

Book review: Halting State by Charles Stross

From Reader #82: I had started HALTING STATE by Charles Stross earlier this year and gave it up as too difficult (the introduction of too many characters in rapid succession, too much jargon, etc.). But I read a review that said that after a somewhat confusing beginning, the book settled into a more understandable form. So I tried again, and read about a third before I concluded than it wasn't true for me. Stross has written a book with three point-of-view characters, and written it in the second person. Yes,that's right--in every chapter, the point-of-view character is "you", but you are a different person each time. One result is that you lose many of the reminders of who the point-of-view character is that you would have in a normal third-person narrative. (Even a first-person version might be easier.) And on top of that, the characters write in a combination of Scottish dialect, police jargon, and computer jargon. It is even worse than BRASYL (another Hugo nominee) in terms of the dialects, because there is no glossary at the back. (I checked this time.) It may be good for Scottish computer types, but not for me. Grade: C

Movie Review: Atonement

Reader #83 wrote:

Joe Wright adapts Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel ATONEMENT. What a thirteen-year-old sees happen at an English
country house is not really what happened. Her testimony when a crime is committed brings tragedy to two people. The film moves us from a posh country home to the war-ravaged shores of Dunkirk. The film tricks the viewer, but can only do that by blatantly cheating. The film is graced but not really enhanced by an impressively intricate tracking shot.

There is a literary sort of film we see coming from England. It is the Merchant-Ivory-Masterpiece-Theater sort of thing with the English upper crust and all their social graces. Another sort of film more frequently seems to come more from the United States. These are puzzle films that are more than just mysteries. They play with the medium itself. For example, MEMENTO tells its story backward in time and the viewer has to guess how the story began. These two story types have been combined in prose, as in Saki's short story "The Open Window," but one rarely sees them combined in film. They sit uneasily together in ATONEMENT. This is a film all about misunderstanding what one sees. Just as young Briony Tallis (played at age thirteen by Saoirse Ronan) gets the wrong ideas about something she sees at her country house, the viewer also sees things that are not really as they seem. But director Joe Wright does not actually play fairly with the viewer. In one case, for example, one character recognizes another in a crowd only to get up close and find it was not really that person. The mistake is understandable since Wright quite noticeably used one actor at a distance and another one close up. Scenes shown from two different people's perspectives have large differences. Perhaps Wright is going for a RASHOMON effect. Still other places, the viewer quite intentionally is shown one thing happening and then is later told that is not what happened at all. There is more deception than meets the eye.

Later in the film we see the British on the beach at Dunkirk waiting to be evacuated. We move among them in a tracking shot just a little short of five minutes in length. The staging of this scene is a tour de force in logistics and coordination requiring great effort to make sure the
hundreds of actors are in place just as the camera reaches them. It goes beyond impressive all the way to being jaw-dropping. But there is a difference between a jaw-dropping achievement and a jaw-dropping stunt. If it really makes the film more effective it is an achievement. Here I did not see what it really added. Perhaps it may add some immediacy, but more likely it will be just a distraction.

Briony Tallis is fascinated by the relationship between her sister Cecilia (played by Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy). Robbie is the son of a servant who has become almost one of the family. When Briony sees her sister act in a provocative way in front of Robbie and later sees them making love, she jumps to a wrong conclusion. This combines with her
testimony about a genuine crime to create long-lasting problems for the three. Later we see what they are each doing near the time of the Dunkirk evacuation. They have come by different routes. We see how their relationship has been forever altered by what Briony did years before. The plot is a little contrived with Robbie making a mistake necessary to make the plot work but otherwise very unlikely. His error is a mix-up almost worthy of a Shakespeare comedy. And for me there were unfortunate associations with the character of Ada Doom from Stella Gibbon's COLD COMFORT FARM. Ada Doom destroyed her whole life because as a little girl
she "saw something nasty in the woodshed." Briony too saw something nasty with bad repercussions.

Undeniably there is an interesting story here of guilt without redemption, something that we rarely see in films and have not seen since HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG. But there is a lot that is contrived and does not work. I will probably be in a minority, but the little things wrong with the film add up to too much. Note: this film has one of the longest tracking shots
in an English-language film, but it is dwarfed by the tracking shot in RUSSIAN ARK. That is a 99-minute film which except for the titles and credits is one long tracking shot filmed inside the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. There is really does enhance the surrealism of the film. But I am not sure the long shot did much for ATONEMENT. Grade: B

Book Review: Janet Evanovich's Plum Lovin'

Reader # 444 wrote: I have to admit that these books are my guilty pleasure. When I want a lighter read, I love to listen to or read her books. This is the 2nd of an in between series of her numbered one. In this book it takes place right before Valentine's Day and Stephanie Plum the bounty hunter has to play Cupid to make the holiday special for strangers and her sister. The characters in all Janet Evanovich's books are larger than life but I relate living in the Garden State . This is the perfect beach book but I suggest reading Visions of Sugar Plums first. You will not be disappointed. Grade: A.

Book review: Pigeon Wants A Puppy! by Mo Willems

Reader #68 wrote: If you are not familiar with the Pigeon stories, you need to get acquainted. ( Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Pigeon Finds A Hotdog, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, just to name a few) The Pigeon Wants a Puppy is the newest one out. In the story Pigeon is talking to you, the reader, about his dream to have a puppy. My daughter is 5 and just loves the Pigeon, and why not... he speaks just like they do when they want something. The author, Mo Willems, has put together another book showing the art of persuasion that most children just seem to have built into their young minds. Any parent that has had to say no to a child will love these books because it has all the pleas in there. My daughter made me read it twice in one sitting. She read it to her grandmother the next day using the same emphasis on the words that the book demands with the larger print and exclamation points. Mo Willems has created a character that makes not only our children laugh, but we end up laughing, too.

Book review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Reader # 62 wrote: There's been a lot of talk about this book lately, and it's well deserved. Diaz's story of a geeky, overweight Dominican-American is tragic and compelling. The language, though often coarse, is poetic, and his pen paints a vivid picture of this doomed young man through a telling of his family history. The fact that a large chunk of the book takes place in New Brunswick makes the book all the more intriguing for this New Jerseyan. Well worth the read. Grade: A+