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Shatner!

Revisado: 11-11-24

Shatner tells great stories of his time on the now classic Star Trek TV series. I wish it were longer.

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Sting reflects on life, opportunities and music

Revisado: 03-26-21

For some reason as I was listening to Sting reflect on his life, I kept thinking of the word "gentle." This is a gentle reflection on life from a man who--I can't believe it--will be 70 this year.

Sting has had a lot of time to look back on his story and to tease out the meaning and to find those moments that forever changed the course of his life--like writing "Roxanne" in a dingy Paris hotel after a walk through the red light district. (He makes sure to point out he returned to his hotel alone.)

That one song changed everything for his fledgling band The Police. That was the song that earned them a manager and a modest hit that got airplay on college radio stations as they were making their first rickety, by-the-seat-of-their-pants tour of the US. How many deserving bands, businesses and great ideas have died for lack of that one break?

In a modest hour and a half, Sting manages somehow to tell his life's story. He begins at the beginning as a boy growing up in the shadow of the Newcastle shipbuilding yards, yearning to escape, fearing he might not. And then charts the coming together of The Police, their success, and his drive to always find the surprise in a song and in life that led him, at the peak of The Police's fame, to ditch it all and embark on a solo career.

A lot of these stories will be familiar to anyone who's followed Sting's career or read his memoir, Broken Music (which I wish were on Audible). I kept finding myself going, yep, heard that one. Yet, Sting doesn't let the dust settle on the well-worn path. He's grown as a human being, and those hours of reflection add touches of fresh insight.

There are no deep dives here. The story's too short for that. But the selection of anecdotes threaded together with his songs--All This Time, Walking on the Moon, Message in a Bottle, I Hung My Head, Roxanne, etc--weave a colorful tapestry. And Sting is a natural storyteller. He's not scripted. I'm guessing he was recorded talking to someone--an interviewer who was edited out. But that other person was only there to get that conversational feel.

As for the gentle tone, I think that comes from the mood of reflection. It's like Sting's song "Fields of Gold," a man gazing across a field of barley with his love at his side, contemplating the wild mystery of life.

* A side note here. Sting does bring up this past year's COVID pandemic and lockdown, and how some of his songs have taken on new resonance in light of that. I had to laugh at this because when my state first shut down, I went to the local UPS store to mail a package...and was confronted by a wall of boxes with a narrow entry. (Their way of enforcing social distance between customers and staff.)

The box wall was confusing enough but then I noticed photos of Sting pasted at intervals along the wall. What's this all about? Then I read the text below the photos: "Don't Stand So Close to Me."

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At long last! A great book on Poe

Revisado: 11-04-20

I've been looking for a good Edgar Allan Poe biography on Audible. I found one that was about three hours long--and that was okay. But this one is much much better.

The lecturer, Mark Canada, clearly loves America's dark genius and that enthusiasm keeps the lectures lively and fast-moving.

The first series of lectures give an overview of Poe's truly tragic life. An absentee dad, a dead mother and a prickly, disapproving "adopted" dad. His doomed and very young wife. And his die-hard enemy, Rufus Griswold, who took the occasion of Poe's early demise to begin a hatchet job on the author's reputation.

So Canada, like other recent biographers, also questions whether Poe was the inveterate drunkard history has led us to believe. Many theories have been aired that could explain Poe's troubled personal life, his relationship to the bottle and his particularly dark genius.

A good chunk of the book is devoted to Poe's creative works. Not all or even most of them--that would be a monumental task, even given Poe's short life--but familiar ones, like "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." And the lecturer nicely puts Poe and his work in a historical context, which reveals just how truly unique and influential his work was.

If you're looking for another gripping Great Courses series in literature, I'd recommend Michael Shelden's "George Orwell: A Sage for All Seasons." That one really blew me away.

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Brilliantly addictive

Revisado: 10-26-20

I'm one of those biography and memoir junkies. And this new biography of Cary Grant is like candy to me. Yum. I didn't want it to end. I was pulled in from the very beginning with Grant's hardscrabble youth in Bristol, England, in the company of a distant dad and a mother who, without warning or explanation, suddenly disappears.

I've read other reviews that bash this biography for being "exhaustive" with detail and dull as a phone book. Maybe you'll agree. But I never felt the narrative bogged down. To me it clipped along, from English music halls and American vaudeville to Hollywood--all in the company of Archie Leach, aka, Cary Grant. The author jumps between personal and professional life without missing a beat. So Grant's marriages and significant relationships/friendships get a going over as well as his important films.

My one qualm was I wished, occasionally, the author would spend more time on a certain film, like "Bringing Up Baby" or "North by Northwest." Or Grant's working relationship with Alfred Hitchcock. And they do get discussed. I just wanted more. But the author was wise to pare down the stories. Otherwise, the book really would've bogged down.

Other reviewers have also complained that the author keeps returning to that old question, "Was he or wasn't he gay?" Yeah, it comes up and this author, like others, can't seem to pin Grant down. Grant was and is a mystery on so many levels. Yet this biography still succeeds in making you feel like you're in the room with this intriguing, complex character--even if you never get close enough to smell his cologne.

Narrator Angelo Di Loreto does an excellent job. He has a smooth delivery and keeps the story lively.

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Neil, the Universe and Douglas Adams

Revisado: 08-17-20

And can you believe Simon Jones is narrating? I almost wrote a Vogon sonnet while knocking back a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. The original Arthur Dent is narrating. I can't imagine anyone narrating this lovely, funny gem of a book but Simon Jones or perhaps Stephen Fry (who narrated the first novel) or Peter Jones (but, alas, RIP).

If you love Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in any of its permutations, you'll want to have this book in your library. Neil Gaiman published his history of Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's franchise in 1988. So before the third to sixth installments in the radio series came out and before Adams' death in 2001. But Gaiman did provide a preface in 2003 and there have been other updates.

Gaiman opens his history very much in the style of the Hitchhiker's radio series. He perfectly mimics Adams' writing style when he wants to, and it's a great treat for fans. This short history covers a lot of ground: from Adams' own hitchhiking trip to Europe (which gave him the idea for a guide to the galaxy), his Cambridge years and his collaboration with Monty Python's Graham Chapman to the groundbreaking radio series, the novels and the stories for Doctor Who.

There's hardly a wasted word. Gaiman keeps the tone upbeat and light, with no angsty forays into Adams' psychological makeup or personal life, and keeps the focus on Douglas Adams and his journey to creating one of the best-loved series of the 20th century.

All in all, I'd rate this a 42.

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A Genius of Nature Writing

Revisado: 06-13-20

Believe it or not, I've never read a book by Jean Craighead George. Not even My Side of the Mountain.

This short story about the life cycle of a monarch butterfly, The Moon of the Monarch Butterflies, was my introduction to George who must be counted as one of the best nature writers for kids--or adults for that matter.

This monarch is one of those born just before the chill winds of fall. The butterflies born then have an extraordinarily long lifespan, some six months, which they devote to flight. Flying from their birthplace in Canada south to Mexico, then back again in May. I never really thought about it. but our butterfly on her return journey looks a little shabbier, her wings having lost scales (and thus iridescence) and perhaps picked up some tears.

The storyline jumps around a bit. But the hopscotching is worth it because George zooms in on various other species--rabbits, chipmunks, foxes--and their preoccupations at that time of year. Her writing is lively and expressive so that flowers and grasses come alive under her pen and the private lives of animals inhabit your imagination.

After reading this book, I immediately downloaded an audiobook by David Attenborough, who also turns a poet-scientist's eye to nature, and was wracking my brain for other authors who might fit the bill. Edward Abbey? Rachel Carson? Charles Darwin? (If you write a review, can you list some suggestions?)

I love the narrator Barbara Caruso. Although I remember reading another reviewer who complained she had the voice of a smoker. Don't know about that. But it adds a pleasing warmth to this title.

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When They Was Fab

Revisado: 04-28-20

Okay, the narration. It's emotionless. And the narrator is American. Anyway, just crank up the speed--I listened to it at 1.5-1.7x--and pretty soon you'll be swept away by one of the most amazing stories in music history. That of the Beatles.

Hunter Davies' book The Beatles was the first authorized biography, begun in 1967 and published in 1968. Yeah, so this is an old Beatles bio, scooped up by fans when the Beatles were still a living, breathing entity. The reason it's still in print, even if it's incomplete, has to do with Davies' incredible access to the Beatles, their significant others and their parents. Not to mention the book is a well-told tale that since its publication has become the model other Beatles biographers have sourced or refuted or at least had to deal with in telling their own versions.

What I liked about Davies' The Beatles was its immediacy. The author is more reporter than historian. He's writing down the story as it happens, especially in the later chapters.

He's in the room when Paul and John are composing. He's in the studio when the group's laying down tracks for Sgt Pepper's. He chats with John's Aunt Mimi, who's every bit as salty as we've heard. The wives (Pattie Boyd, Cynthia Lennon, Maureen Cox) and girlfriend (Jane Asher) talk about life with a Beatle. And the author--a man of his era--makes sure to comment on their domestic skills.

John's friends talk about how "happy" he is. John talks about his very close bond to the other Beatles and how he needs to be around them and how he desires their physical presence.

This is where the reader, who knows the rest of the story, goes whoa, just you wait. The very year this book came out the Beatles were recording the White Album and, depending on the day, could barely stand to be in the same room. John had chucked Cynthia for Yoko and would eventually chuck the band for Yoko.

Later John would deride Hunter Davies' book as a whitewash. Because, of course, it was. The Beatles, their parents and their dead manager's mother all had to sign off on the book before Davies could send it to the publisher. (He talks about this in the preface.) So what you get is a rosy picture of the Beatles at their height. You get the myth of the Four Lads from Liverpool who made the world forget their troubles with witty banter and infectious songs and a message of love.

The reason people still read Hunter Davies' book is because it preserves the myth before John, Paul, George and Ringo grew sick of it and before the myth was dismantled by a more complicated reality and decades of self-reflection and revision.

Thanks to George Harrison for inspiring the title of this review. In 1987, he released his eleventh studio album, Cloud Nine, after a five-year hiatus from recording. Of all the Beatles, he seemed the most eager to distance himself from his past. Yet he still wrote the masterfully nostalgic (and ironic) "When We Was Fab" for Cloud Nine. He channels the Beatles sound. The lyrics and video are both chockfull of Beatles references--and Ringo has a cameo in the video. It's great. Give it a listen/view.

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The Beatles' Epic Divorce Story

Revisado: 04-25-20

What happened to the Beatles? What in the end made them break up--and so acrimoniously?

Peter Doggett tries to address those questions in his book You Never Give Me Your Money. It's a fitting title because not only is it taken from a song on Abbey Road, the Beatles' last album (if you don't count Let It Be, which was recorded before Abbey Road but released after), but also because John, Paul, George and Ringo's tight friendship, already teetering under the pressure of celebrity and diverging interests, ultimately fell apart over bad business decisions and money.

Suddenly being in the Beatles wasn't about music but about contract disputes and lawsuits.

The book begins with John Lennon's death in 1980 and then circles back to 1966, '67 and '68 when the Beatles were at the height of their powers, and when Brian Epstein died (leaving them without a manager), and when John met Yoko.

The pace slows down in 1969 as a lot the problems that had been bubbling under the surface burst into the open. The childhood friends divided over who'd manage the group--with John, George and Ringo on one side and Paul by his lonesome on the other. No wonder groups say being in a band is like being married. The Beatles' split is an epic divorce. And it goes on for-ev-er.

Here's how this book differs from many Beatles books: More than half of it is devoted to the Fabs' lives after the 1970 split. John's political activism and his Lost Weekend with May Pang. Paul's solo albums and forays with Wings. George's massive All Things Must Pass and the Concert for Bangladesh. Ringo's Sentimental Journey and Beaucoups of Blues.

And in between there are all those missed opportunities and could-have-beens.

One of the most poignant story threads is that of Paul and John's friendship. Paul looked up to John and always sought his approval. They danced around each other for a decade after the breakup but John was so mercurial in those years that it was hard to tell if he was saying come close or stay away. Had Paul just imagined their intense, intimate bond? John's murder meant he'd never know. Then a couple days after the tragedy, Yoko called, as if she knew the question was hanging in the air.

Interesting stuff.

I don't know that Doggett has identified THE reason the Beatles broke up. There were many reasons, and there were four individuals who hated to see this chapter of their lives end almost as much as they couldn't wait to put it behind them. Nothing lasts forever.

The narrator Shaun Grindell delivers a fine nonfiction performance. He doesn't go for dramatics or try to mimic the Beatles' voices. He's there to get the story across and he does it well.

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A Master Storyteller

Revisado: 04-18-20

Professor Patrick Allitt is a master storyteller. I've listened to two of his other lecture series with Great Courses, one on the American West, another on Queen Victoria's life and times, and this new addition on Prince Albert is yet again a compelling listen.

Unlike the other two, the Prince Albert series is short--clocking in at just over four hours. So this is a whirlwind bus tour of the man and his era. But Prof Allitt is more than up to the challenge. He has a pleasing speaking voice (not all Great Courses lecturers do). And he has the storyteller's gift of threading his narrative with juicy tidbits and side notes on persons and technology and whatnot that even if you've heard this story before you'll learn something new.

I would say, however, that if you know a heck of a lot about Queen Victoria, you might find this too basic. I'm no expert. So for me this series was really good at jogging my memory on Albert and Victoria's courtship, Victoria's dislike and fear of child birth, her ecstatic diary entries on the pleasures of the marital bed (no "Victorian" prudishness there), Albert's impatience with his role as royal consort and his maneuvers to gain more influence, his obsession with technology, his stiff manners and Germanic delight with orderliness.

Prince Albert was an asset to Victoria, even if on a personal level they fought like cats and dogs--and then I'm sure made up for those blowouts with romps in the marital bed (Victoria scribbling notes in her diary afterwards???). Prof Allitt spends a good deal of time on Albert's involvement in the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the building of the Crystal Palace, as well as the prince's role as Chancellor of Cambridge University and the events surrounding the Crimean War. The last lecture touches on Albert's death and Victoria's never-ending grief. Charles Dickens, for one, grew impatient with her prolonged mourning.

I picked up this title because I like Prof Allitt's work but also because the lecture series is a collaboration between Audible and Great Courses. I don't know how that collaboration came about but it's a no-brainer. What I like about the Audible-produced Great Courses series is they tend to be short, bite-sized courses that zero in on a niche subject--like Romantic Comedy movies or Prince Albert--that might otherwise be too niche or off-the-beaten-path for a standard course.

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You'll Be Cheering

Revisado: 03-21-20

Diana Nyad's one-woman, actually two-women, play is thrilling, inspiring and heartfelt.

Most of us are at least slightly aware of Diana Nyad's 2013 long-distance swim from Cuba to Florida. She was sixty-four. She'd already failed another attempt. And no one else had ever completed this tempestuous, trouble-laden 111-mile slog from Havana to Key West without the aid of a shark cage. (An Australian, Susie Maroney, completed it with a shark cage in 1997 and she was 22.)

This is the story behind that record-making swim. A very personal story that digs back into her past but spends a lot of its time in the water with Diana as she deals with jellyfish, sharks and bodily fatigue and keeps time by playing Roy Orbison tunes in her head. All the while, her trainer Bonnie Stoll rides in a nearby boat, shouting encouragement and course corrections and interjecting a dose of humor.

There's a lot of humor in this story. Some tragic moments, But the overall tone is uplift. It's amazing what one person can accomplish when she decides the impossible is possible. And Diana was 64. Which makes this story even more mind-altering because it runs contrary to the notion that you have to accomplish the big dream of your life before forty or forget it.

As far as I know Diana Nyad and Bonnie Stoll have no acting experience. And, yeah, they're playing themselves on stage--but that's really hard to do without coming off wooden or overly dramatic. They hit all the right emotional keys with their performance so you can just jump in the water and swim along with the story.

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