Reading has always been difficult for me, which is strange for a writer to say. When I was young I really had to force myself to concentrate, as my mind was always straying, usually to thoughts of sex. These days reading has become more enjoyable, although I would not say it has gotten a whole lot easier. I've always seemed to learn by osmosis, sponging in information subconsciously, my mind elsewhere. Happily, I happened upon a fun read amongst a recent donation of approximately 400 books, three-quarters of them in Russian.
The War of the Worlds Murder by Max Allan Collins, published in 2006, is lively entertainment. The author in part specializes in fashioning a mystery around a historical event. Since I'm not a big fan of the genre, I didn't care that the mystery at the novel's center was just a small part of the narrative. What I liked were the depictions of the cast of characters, most of them celebrities, and the exchanges between them. The action begins a day or two before the famous October 30th 1938 broadcast, one of radio's seminal events. The main character is Walter Gibson, who did not create
The Shadow but was responsible for his fleshing out. He wrote nearly 300 books about the hero who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men. But here he takes a back seat to the larger than life Orson Welles, whom Gibson recommended for the part of
The Shadow. I'm not an expert on Welles, but from what I've read, heard and seen about him Collins captures him perfectly. Also on hand is a young John Houseman. His character is harder to grasp because it is hard to imagine him as anything but the old curmudgeon audiences came to love. Consummate supporting actor Paul Stewart is also on board. Although he did not act in the rendition of the H. G. Wells classic, he served as co-director and sounding board for ideas on the project. Composer Bernard Herrmann, responsible for so many memorable screen scores, is largely in the background, as are Judy Holliday, who was just breaking in and served as a sort of gofer, and Howard Koch, who did the adaptation and who would go on to make great contributions to the screenplay of
Casablanca (1942). Collins paints a vivid picture of the era, and takes the reader inside the rehearsals and the airing of the show and into the outside world's reaction to it, using a blend of fact and fiction. I suspect fans of mysteries would be disappointed, but those of the characters would be as pleased as I. 49 users at Amazon have rated
The War of the Worlds Murder, forging to a consensus of four on a scale of five. The prose and dialogue are first rate, and there is a lot of subtle wit along the way. I read a 360-page large print version, which read like 200 pages.
In his op-ed piece in today's
NY Post, retired Army Colonel Ralph Peters laments what may be the abandoning of a staunch ally. In the mess that is the Middle East, only Israel has been a better friend to the U.S. than the Kurds, who helped win the Iraq War and the fight against ISIS. Now they have come under attack from Turkey, which Peters no longer considers an ally under Erdogan, who has been taking his country back to Islamic rule. I agree. Although the Turks supply an airbase vital to our forces in the region, they should be put in their place. And the Kurds deserve a country of their own.
Due to rain, the floating book shop opened almost four hours later than usual. I was tempted to stay home, but I couldn't pass up a 60-degree January day. Unfortunately, business was terrible. My thanks to Mr. Conspiracy, who bought
Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time by Heinz R. Pagels.
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