A Bit of Levity

The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories by P.G. Wodehouse
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm on jury duty. A particularly nasty case. I needed something light, humorous and non-taxing to take my mind off of it this weekend. Enter P.G. Wodehouse!

Wodehouse is my old fallback when I need a pick-me-up. His comical characters, daffy slapstick and witty turns of phrase threaten to induce knee slaps and a general feeling of being tickled in the best possible way.

The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories is a very precise title. There's the titular (tee-hee..."tit") short story, which wraps up this collection, along with quite a few other shorts. Perhaps my favorite, and definitely the most inventive stories herein, are the ones from the point of view of a dog. Those were not only humorous, but well-crafted as well.

Other stories revolve around relationship misunderstandings (a Wodehouse template), the inability to dance and forlorn love. I was surprised and a bit let down by the number of non-humorous, purely dramatic (often melodramatic) pieces here. I know that sort of will-(s)he-won't-(s)he love story was en vogue around the time this was published, but I didn't realize until this book that Wodehouse wrote such straightforward romances. They weren't bad, but meh and unexpected. But hey, at least there weren't any golf stories in this collection. I'm not a big fan of Wodehouse's foray on to the links in prose form.

My favorite of his books are the ones that include the Wooster and Jeeves characters, which appear in here once. The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories as a whole is an early work and the Wooster/Jeeves story happens to be the very first appearance of that dynamic duo. They and some of the other characters in the story, who also appear in later Wooster/Jeeves stories, are not quite fully incubated yet. I don't entirely recognize them. I actually found that interesting, to see where and who these beloved characters had once been.

Though it was not the best Wodehouse I've ever read, and I doubt I'll ever reread this, I'm not disappointed overall. It was good enough to clear the docket and get my trial temporarily dismissed.

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Briar Patch Boogie

Briar Patch Boogie: A Hap and Leonard Novelette by Joe R. Lansdale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hap and Leonard go fishing and encounter a dying woman with an arrow sticking out of her side.

Briar Patch Boogie is a short Hap and Leonard story featuring some crazies who hunt people for sport. It takes place after Honky Tonk Samurai. In fact, it answers some questions left after that book and may be considered somewhat spoilerish.

Anyway, our boys crack wise and try to do the right thing while not becoming human pincushions. Like I said, it's a short tale and I've pretty much said all I can. It's a quick and enjoyable read. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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The Heavenly Table

The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When their father dies, the Jewett brothers are left without guidance until they decide to emulate their hero, a dime-novel hero called Bloody Bill Bucket. Their bloody trail crosses the paths of a farmer named Ellsworth Fiddler and a hobo named Sugar. Will the brothers make it to Canada alive to live out their days in peace?

I got this from Netgalley.

The Heavenly Table is the tale of the three Jewett brothers and the people they encounter after striking out on their own after their father Pearl dies. Dirt poor and ignorant of the ways of the world, Cane, Cob, and Chimney take up robbing banks in the manner of their dime-novel hero, Bloody Bill Bucket.

The tale Donald Ray Pollock crafts here is full of violence and dark humor. There's drinking, killing, whoring, and even a trained chimpanzee. The five plot threads repeatedly intersect until almost everyone is dead. Pollard the bartender, Sugar the bum, Jasper the sanitation inspector, Ellsworth Fiddler, the farmer with terrible luck, and Bovard, the secretly gay army officer, all flitter around the edges of the Jewetts' tale, periodically intersecting with them. Jasper, the outhouse inspector with a wang like the size of a baguette, was my favorite of the supporting players.

The Jewett brothers were an interesting mix. Cane, the oldest and smartest, was the leader. Cob, the simpleton, stayed with the others out of loyalty, and Chimney, the hothead, was lucky he survived childhood. Much like Knockemstiff, the setting was a vivid part of the story. The town of Meade felt so real I could almost smell it at times.

When things finally came together at the end, it was one bloody encounter after the next. I was glad the people who lived through it lived through it. The dark humor was unquestionably my favorite part of the story. I repeatedly interrupted my lady friend's Harry Potter reading with talk of going to the Whore Barn and other questionable things.

With the Heavenly Table, Donald Ray Pollock serves up another heaping helping of country noir. Four out of five stars.

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New Avengers: AIM Everything is New

New Avengers: A.I.M. Vol. 1: Everything is New by Al Ewing
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Roberto da Costa aka Sunspot bought A.I.M. altering their moniker to Avengers Idea Mechanics. From Avengers Island the new A.I.M. sends out the New Avengers to help defend the world.


Everything is New was an OK introductory story. I missed Sunspot buying A.I.M. and that transition so perhaps I'll have to swing back around to read that, but otherwise it's an introduction to the New Avengers. New Avengers is a fitting name because they compiled quite the new team with a single experienced Avenger in Hawkeye. I've heard of all the members of the team except for Songbird. These are C level at best heroes who I imagine a casual reader doesn't know exist.

The storyline was pretty straightforward except for one surprise, a certain character who appeared to die during Secret Wars is still alive. I won't spoil it, but it's quite the surprise which I envision will lead to some pleasant story complications in the future.

Everything is New was just fine, but now I wonder if it can be more than that. Time will tell.

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THIS CENSUS-TAKER BY CHINA MIEVILLE

This Census-Taker by China Miéville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”I knew that, by whatever means he’d killed it, it was not to eat. I wanted to cry; I stood still.

He had it by the neck. Its brown body was bigger than a baby’s. Its shovel head lolled and its nasty hook beak twitched open and closed to snap faintly with each of my father’s steps. The bird’s broad feet dangled on the ground and bounced on stones as if it were trying to claw itself incompetently to a stop.”

There have been wars. Civilization has fallen backwards and stalled in place. People are getting by, but others have lost everything and are on the verge of losing what little life they have remaining. ”A haggard man used one of the huts as a home. He lay on a sagging mattress, his head on his pack, surrounded by rubbish--paper, porcelain shards, food remains, and unidentifiable debris. His hand was over his eyes. He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing.” There are also orphaned kids living together in town who band together for mutual survival.

The boy’s father is a key maker. He makes keys to fit old machines. He makes keys to change the weather. He makes keys that turn the locks on hearts. There is a mysticism about what he does. Superstition has become almost a religion, but like Voodoo, it only works if you believe.

The boy lives on the hill. He is an uphiller. He has seen things. He knows things about his father that others need proof to believe.

There is the hole in the cave, a deep hole. A hole that might go to the center of the earth. When his mother disappears, the boy has nightmares. ”I thought of my mother’s hands hauling her up. Of her climbing all grave-mottled and with her face scabbed with old blood, her arms and legs moving like sticks or the legs of insects, or as stiff as toys, as if maybe when you die and come back you forget what your body is.”

But his father insists his mother is still alive.

When the man who counts people arrives, he might be the only chance the boy has to find out the real truth about his father.

This is a very strange novella, with many of the Kafkaesque aspects of being trapped into circumstances that seem inescapable. I was frequently confused for the first third of the book, but after reading numerous China Mieville novels, I knew I just needed to hang in there, and eventually this world he was creating would become more substantial, and the clouds would part enough for me to see the ground. By the end of the book, I wanted more. I wanted to fold the book out like an accordion and find the rest of the story. I wanted the lost notebook with the feverous scribbles of the where, what, and when. I can see it in my mind’s eye, written in faded red and blue ink whose words map out the future.

There are Gothic elements to the book, the shapes in the shadows, the menacing unknowable, which also helps ratchet up the ever heightening sense of terror. I felt my own tension increase as I, too, tried to find a way that the boy could escape a fate too unmentionable to put into words. This is not the place to start when reading Mieville, but it is a fascinating new wrinkle in an already outstandingly creative career. This book shows Mieville’s ability to stretch his already prodigious talents into worlds beyond where he has already been before.

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The Last Days of New Paris By: China Mieville

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am a huge fan of Mieville, the man writes some of the most insane and beautiful things on paper. Although I am still warming up to the shorter story, China weaves a mad, tripped out tale of an alternate history WWII and Paris. Honestly, that is the most normal part of the whole book.


To me, his work is taken as a whole, everything is part of everything else if that makes sense. Beautiful swirls of chaos and surreal imagery, read this under the influence of something. (I didn't say that outloud)



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The Cost of Courage

The Cost of Courage by Charles Kaiser
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Well that was a big ol' disappointment. I was hoping for an engaging narrative of life as a French Resistance fighter during WWII and this fell far from the mark.

I wanted to hear about the hardships and underground tactics, the struggle of the people and their sacrifice. I got a little of that, but mostly I got a whole lot about a rich French family and how they didn't really want to talk about the war. Certainly this family suffered tragedy at the hands of the Nazi. Torture, incarceration and death was indeed the cost of their courage. But sadness and loss alone do not make much of a book. There's a reason obituaries are short.

Description of the family's struggle are minimal or occasionally inconsequential. Details of the war in general are used as lengthy filler. It feels like this book was stretching out what little story it possessed. One of the principle participants wrote a "dry" memoir of 45 pages on the topic of her and her family's involvement in the resistance. Charles Kaiser didn't think that was enough, but I think she got it right.

I listened to The Cost of Courage via audiobook and that was a bad choice. For some reason, the author decided to read this himself and he is a terrible reader, one of the worst I've encountered on a professional production.

Much of the book is written in present tense. I guess that was Kaiser's attempt to make the history more exciting, to make it feel more immediate, in hopes of turning passive prose into something actively impactful. It didn't. Honestly, listening to him it sounded more like he was reading the scenes and actions from a movie script:

"Jack and Jill go up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack falls down and breaks his crown. Jill comes tumbling after."

What made it worse was Kaiser's habit of trailing off at the end of each sentence. Imagine reading the Three Little Pigs like this:

"AND THEN THE BIG BAD WOLF HUFFED!!! AND PUFFED!!! and blew the house down."

*whooosh!* goes the wind right out of the damn sails.


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Rumble Tumble

Rumble Tumble by Joe R. Lansdale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When someone brings Brett news of her daughter wanting out of the prostitution business, Hap & Leonard, with Brett in tow, go to Hootie Hoot Oklahoma to find her. But does Tillie want to be found?

My Hap and Leonard re-read continues with the fifth volume, Rumble Tumble. The Hap and Leonard tradition of kicking ass and cracking wise continues, this time featuring pistol-whipping, steroided up bodyguards, hookers, bikers, drug dealers, and one red haired little person.

Rumble Tumble isn't my favorite Hap and Leonard novel. After reading two others in relatively rapid succession, some of the luster has worn off. It also represents a slight dip in quality, along with the next book, Captains Outrageous, before Joe brings the gang back in style in the seventh book, Vanilla Ride.

However, an average quality Hap and Leonard book is still a lot of fun. There is still great humor and a brutal conclusion that is probably the most violent one in the series at this point. Not only that, there are some great character moments with Hap, Leonard, and Brett. Hap and Leonard never pass through the fire unscathed and Hap feels pretty worn out by the end of this book.

While it's not my favorite, Rumble Tumble is still packed with mojo and a fun read. 3.5 out of five stars.



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The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today's

Heather Mac Donald et al.
Ivan R. Dee Publisher
2 out of 5 stars
Reviewed by Nancy

Summary

Undoubtedly the United States needs a liberal and welcoming immigration policy, geared to the needs and interests of the nation. In this urgent new book, three astute observers argue that we have lost control of our southern border, so that the vast majority of our immigrants are now illegal Mexicans. Poor, uneducated, and unskilled, these newcomers add much less to the national wealth than they cost the taxpayers for their health care, the education of their children, and (too often) their incarceration. The Immigration Solution proposes a policy that admits skilled and educated people on the basis of what they can do for the country, not what the country can do for them.

My Review

“A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”
― Ronald Reagan


This collection of essays by Heather Mac Donald, Victor Davis Hanson, and Steven Malanga explores the economic and social consequences of illegal immigration and proposes sensible solutions for controlling and securing our borders.

While these essays were very readable and thought-provoking, I couldn’t help but notice what was missing. When I’m reading books like this, I like to know what works the authors have cited so I can do my own fact checking. Some of those works were mentioned throughout the text, but it would be so much easier for this information to be presented in one place.

On the plus side, this is a short book that covers a wide variety of issues in just enough detail to make this reader want to explore further.

I am liberal on a lot of issues, but my views on immigration tend to lean towards the right. I advocate the world’s nations have a right to maintain sovereignty and a strong cultural identity. I dislike the idea of open borders, so many of the ideas presented by the authors make sense to me. I also dislike the idea of building walls and increasing military presence at borders, because these solutions can be prohibitively expensive and I question their effectiveness in stemming the flow of humanity.

As an American of Puerto Rican descent, I took offense to Heather Mac Donald’s essay on Hispanic family values. While some of the facts presented may have been accurate, her use of anecdotal evidence and hostile tone left a bad taste in my mouth.

For instance:

“The fathers of these illegitimate children are often problematic in even more troubling ways. Social workers report that the impregnators of young Hispanic women are with some regularity their uncles, not necessarily seen as a bad thing by the mother’s family. Alternatively, the father may be the boyfriend of the girl’s mother, who then continues to stay with the grandmother. Older men seek out young girls in the belief that a virgin cannot get pregnant during her first intercourse, and to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.”

I know there are problems and challenges faced by Hispanic communities. I believe many of them can be addressed by learning the language of the host nation and assimilating into its culture. We are not doing immigrants a favor by offering bilingual education. It obviously hasn’t solved the high Hispanic dropout rate.

In her essay, “Mexico’s Undiplomatic Diplomats”, Mac Donald explores how Mexico provokes illegal immigration by its own corruption and interference in US internal affairs, especially pertaining to immigrants. (Why does the US need 47 Mexican consulates?) It can be read here.

The final essay by Steven Malanga offers a common-sense approach to immigration that serves US national interests.

- Preferences given to immigrants based on work skills and education. Countries such as Australia, Ireland and Canada have different methods of handling this. Stop admitting unskilled workers who provide little benefit for the economy.
- Restrict social welfare programs that attract immigration from poor countries and eliminate government benefits to those in the US illegally.
- Ensure businesses verify workers’ legal status before employing them.
- Fully enforce immigration laws that are already in the book.
- Increase efforts to secure borders.

If you stop feeding them, they will go away.



It is important to know who lives within our borders. Our national security depends on it.

All-New Inhumans: Global Outreach

All-New Inhumans, Vol. 1: Global Outreach by Charles Soule
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Queen Medusa has decided to send a diplomatic team to assist the world with the effects of the terrigen mist cloud. The team will travel the world in the Royal Inhuman Vessel, R.I.V. for short, following the terrigen cloud and helping the new Inhumans in the process.

In most countries the R.I.V. will likely be received with no incidents, but unfortunately the terrigen cloud is headed for the dictator state, Sin-Cong.


I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting from All-New Inhumans, but this volume wasn't it. This volume is a blending of the Inhumans of old with their unique status as a self governing body and the new Inhumans who are popping up around the world because of the terrigen cloud. They are lead by Crystal, the sister of Medusa.

Crystal has significant diplomatic skills mixed in with the fact that she's one of the strongest Inhumans thanks to her elemental powers. Rounding out the team is Gorgon, Flint, Naja, Grid, and Swain. Swain makes her first appearance in All-New Inhumans as the captain of the R.I.V. and she posses some unknown gifts thanks to terrigenesis.

The All-New Inhuman team is a self sustained humanitarian group sent to assist new Inhumans along with the countries who aren't sure what to do with them. The difference being they have superpowers that won't allow anyone to easily push them around.

They also have the approval of the United Nations along with some unexplained backing of SHIELD and it's liaison Daisy Johnson.


All-New Inhumans currently appear to be a title designed solely for those intensely interested in the Inhumans and their new place in the world thanks to Black Bolt's actions in Infinity. I'm very interested in the Inhumans so Global Outreach was an enjoyable volume for me.

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