Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, by Ian Fleming

Like most kids of my generation, I have seen the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang many times.  I recently took my family to see a stage production of it at a local church (it was fabulous!) and got to thinking that I have never read Ian Fleming's novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car on which the movie was based.  Actually, as I learned upon reading the book, the movie is very loosely based on the novel.

Caractacus Pott and his lovely children, Jeremy and Jemimah, are clearly the same characters we know from the movie.  However, Fleming, who I wouldn't have thought would be a big family man, includes Mrs. Pott, rather than the lovely Truly Scrumptious.  (First of all, I was a little disappointed that Truly Scrumptious was not a Fleming creation.  That is a perfect name for a Bond girl.  Second, in the novel, it's "Skrumshus," but in the movie it's "Scrumptious."   I wonder why.)  Together they use the proceeds from selling the whistle candy to Lord Skrumshus to buy the broken down racing car that comes to be known as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  On their first outing, on the way to the sea shore, the Pott family gets stuck in traffic.  Mr. Pott notices a blinking light on the control panel, follows the directions, and off they go, flying over the city, out to a sandbar in the English channel to enjoy a picnic.

When the tide comes in, another flashing light directs Pott to a different lever, which transforms the car into a hovercraft.  So far, the story seems much like the movie, but after this point, the divergence is almost complete.  Rather than Vulgaria, the spies, the hidden children, and the child catcher, the Potts find a cave where a criminal gang has stored their arsenal.  After the Potts blow it up, the criminals kidnap the Potts children to use them as bait in a heist.  Chitty knows what's going on, though, and saves the day.

I hesitate to compare the book and the movie.  The stories are so drastically different that you really have to view them as two separate works.  The book has merits of its own, though.  It's a perfect bedtime story, with cliffhangers that will leave young listeners eager to resume the story the next day.  It's a lovable car and a delightful story that deserves to be a classic all on its own, classic movie or not.

Valerian: The Complete Collection, Volume 1, by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières

Because I loved The Fifth Element, I had to check out Luc Besson's latest movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.  And because I thought Valerian was awesome, I had to check out the comics on which it was based.  The comics, which date back to the 1960s and 1970s, have been collected in book form.  Valerian: The Complete Collection, Volume 1 contains the first four Valerian comics: Bad Dreams (1967), a two-part story The City of Shifting Waters and Earth in Flames (1970), and The Empire of a Thousand Planets (1971).

First of all, if you're not familiar with Valerian and you're a fan of sci-fi, you will want to get to know these comics.  Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières were groundbreaking in their day, and very influential in the world of sci-fi.  Even a casual reading of these comics will reveal influences on the Star Wars movies.

Given the historic significance of these stories, they are well worth preserving and reading.  The visuals are rich, the stories are complex and entertaining (more so than many sci-fi movies and TV shows today), and the broad range of characters, species, and technologies reveal imaginations that were well ahead of their time.

The genre has its limitations.  These are comics, after all.  The action is static, and sometimes there are too many words in a frame.  But, as is pointed out in the introductory material, comics have the advantage of allowing the reading to dwell on a particular frame, revisit a page, and absorb the story at his own pace.  If you're a fan of comics at all, especially sci-fi comics, you definitely will want to check this out.

(By the way, a word about the movie.  The movie was fabulous.  I loved it.  But don't read this comic expecting to see anything like the story in the movie.  Other than the main characters the world(s) in which they live, the movie contained very little content from these stories.)

Life Support, by Robert Whitlow

Robert Whitlow has become a go-to author for me with his reliably entertaining legal fiction.  Life Support did not disappoint with the elements that make Whitlow's books page turners: likable but complex characters, dramatic legal cases, detailed legal proceedings that drive the story without bogging it down, and a strong faith element.

In Life Support a young couple goes on a hike in a remote area.  The wife, Rena, who struggles with issues from her childhood, pushes her husband over a cliff.  Thinking he was dead, Rena calls the police to report his "accidental" fall.  To her horror, he survives, but is in a coma.  She finds a confidant and defender in Alexia Lindale, a lawyer for her husband's family.  Alexia is forced to choose between the firm and Rena.  She sides with Rena in a battle over maintaining her husband's life support, and becomes entangled in the whole family business.

Rena proves to be a difficult client who, Alex learns, tends to lie--a lot.  Whitlow sets Alex up as a smart, effective lawyer.  Her specialty is divorce, particularly uncovering husbands' lies as they try to cover up their activities and assets.  So she's predisposed to believe Rena, who pulls the wool over Alex's eyes, showing Alex not to be as smart as we may have thought.

As with his other novels, Whitlow allows the characters' Christian faith to be an element in the story without cheapening either the story or the gospel.  Alex meets a local music minister and, through his influence, finds faith.  Together they experience the healing power of prayer.  Not to give any spoilers, but before you read Life Support you should recognize that it's part 1 of 2.  It ends with a major cliffhanger. I enjoyed it and, of course, immediately picked up part 2, Life Everlasting.

Artemis, by Andy Weir

Andy Weir struck publishing gold with The Martian, which he published himself online before it became a best-seller and a motion picture.  So can he do it again, with Artemis?  Yes and no.  Artemis followed a more traditional publishing track, and tells a more conventional sci-fi story.  Yet it retains much of the character and attention to science details that made The Martian such a hit.

Artemis is the moon's city, now populated by a couple thousand people, supporting fledgling industries, and hosting tourists from Earth.  It's very much a frontier town, and Jazz Bashara is one of the first generation of people to grow up on the moon.  She works as a porter but supplements her income with some smuggling.  When a local billionaire recruits her for a bit of sabotage, she gets gets pulled into a scheme that has far-reaching effects on the future of Artemis.

Weir has a great talent for providing enough scientific and technical detail for the not-so-distant future story to be believable, but in a way that doesn't detract from the story.  In Artemis, the story is pretty wild, with Jazz nearly shutting down a major lunar industry and nearly killing every human on the moon.  It's a fast-paced tale told by an emerging master story teller.

Will Artemis surpass the success of The Martian?  Perhaps not.  But it's certainly an enjoyable follow up.  Readers who like their sci-fi full of hard science, believable story lines, and absent made-up magic or alien tech will love Artemis and should have Andy Weir near the top of any list of best current sci-fi authors.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The Best Kind of People, by Zoe Whittal

Zoe Whittal tackles a timely and controversial subject in The Best Kind of People.  When prep school teacher George Woodbury is arrested, accused of sexual misconduct with some of his students, the community, not to mention George's family, is shocked.  On many levels, he is a pillar of the community.  His ancestors built the town.  Despite his inherited wealth, he has poured his life into teaching at the local school.  He is repeatedly chosen as teacher of the year.  A decade before, he personally confronted a shooter at the school, saving countless lives.  Everything about him showed him to be a model citizen, a model teacher, a model husband, and a model father.

The Best Kind of People focuses on George's family, primarily his daughter, who is a senior at George's school.  She and her mother, a nurse at the local hospital, suffer the indignity of being in the family of the accused.  While George is in jail awaiting trial, they are harassed and shunned by just about everyone.  A small group sides with them, the "men's rights" folks, whom the Woodburys regard as right-wing nuts. 

Whittal's focus is the impact the accusations have on the Woodburys.  We hear next to nothing about the accusations.  George, of course, denies any wrongdoing, stating that he's being framed.  Why would someone frame him?  To what end?  Who knows.  This is actually a frustrating part of the book.  At some point, I would like to have heard more about the accusations, what prompted the students to bring the accusations to light, and the basis for George's protestations. 

Whittal addresses this objection, in a way.  George's daughter moves in with her boyfriend, whose mother's live-in boyfriend is a novelist.  He decides to write a "based-on-a-true-story" novel about the Woodbury case.  His editor presses him to include more details:

We can't have a book where the monster is actually a sweet old guy everyone defends.  There needs to be more conflict. . . . He's too empathetic so far, and it's too confusing.  This is a novel, but we need some black-and-white facts here.

At the risk of seeming shallow, I felt the same way.  Whittal leaves the question of veracity open, never giving details about what actually happened on the school trip.  In fact, in the end she leaves open the possibility that the victims were pressured to retract their testimony.  Granted, Whittal's focus is on the family and the impact of the accusations.  But the lack of focus on the case itself frustrated me.

The Best Kind of People is an uncomfortable book.  Whittal's depictions of teen sex (between George's daughter and her boyfriend), a homosexual relationship between a teacher and a teen, a relationship between a dad and a teenage babysitter, and other problematic scenarios add to the cringe factor.  Whittal nails some of the realities of the turmoil these accusations cause, but overall the development and resolution of the story left me unsatisfied.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

101 Movies to Watch Before You Die, by Ricardo Cavolo

There are plenty of books and lists of great movies out there, but Ricardo Cavolo's 101 Movies to Watch Before You Die is unique and particularly enjoyable.  Cavolo is not a professional movie critic or film maker.  He's a guy who loves movies.  101 Movies is a sort of diary of movies he loves.  "The only thing you'll find here is me genuinely loving every single one of these movies.  This is a love story told in 101 installments."

And love these movies he does.  Each review consists of one page of text and one page of his movie poster style cartoonish illustration of the movie.  The illustrations are rather odd.  He uses bright, stark coloration, reminiscent of Mexican folk art.  And, strangely, all the people have multiple pairs of eyes.  This is apparently characteristic of all of Cavolo's work, but it's weird and not explained. 

Cavolo writes less about the particular merits of the film itself than about how the film affected him.  Sometimes it seems like hyperbole, e.g.: “Watching Pulp Fiction in the cinema has to be one of the greatest moments of my life. . . . Without a doubt it’s one of the most important movies of my life.”  But mostly he just talks about how much he loves the movie or how he saw it at just the right moment of his life.

Some of the films are consensus greatest movies that show up on list after list of greatest movies.  Some are more obscure.  Many are mainstream, very popular movies.  The author was born in the second half of the 20th century, so the titles lean heavily toward the late 20th century to the present.  I must be close in age and personality to Cavolo; his tastes ring true with my own.  He does like mafia movies much more than I do, and he loves a few movies that I hated. 

And that's what's fun about this book.  Above all else, it's fun to read about another movie lover's love of movies.  I was reminded of movies I love, and reminded why I love them.  Cavolo also inspired me to revisit some movies I've seen before and to check out some movies I've never seen.

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Random Illustrated Facts, by Mike Lowery

Mike Lowery has spent the last couple of decades collecting random facts and illustrating them.  Now you can see his random illustrated facts in his book Random Illustrated Facts: A Collection of Curious, Weird, and Totally Not Boring Things to Know.  His illustrations are fun and engaging, and, if you're like me, his facts will have you going to Google and Wikipedia to find out if they're really facts.  (I didn't check all of them, but the ones I did were spot on!)

Some of these facts may be downright disturbing to you, like the fact that "cell phones have up to 18 times more germs than public toilet handles."  Or "the shiny coating on jelly beans is made from stick goo secreted by bugs."

Lowery also covers lots of world records, obscure words, and facts from the worlds of science, the animal kingdom, and history.  The book lives up to the randomness of the title.  Open it to any page and you'll learn something new.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!