I got a little bit of my reading mojo back in May, thankfully, with seven (count ‘em—7!) books read.
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
I first encountered Brooklyn in movie form, in 2015, starring the absolutely wonderful Saoirse Ronan, in a funky movie theater on 23rd Street or so, on a very cold day during a visit to NYC. I fell in love with the character of Eilis Lacy, a young Irish woman who comes to Brooklyn after World War II as part of a plan to … well, import, I guess … Irish women to hopefully find good, Catholic men to marry and thus bolster the church’s reach. Eilis is her own woman, though, strong-willed and independent, yet shy and introverted. She doesn’t want to go off on this epic adventure on her own, leaving behind her Mammy and older sister, Rose, the latter of which probably instigated the whole thing with the help of Father Flood from Brooklyn, but off she goes. Eilis gets a job at a Brooklyn department store, and lives at a boarding house under the way-too-watchful eye of Mrs. Kehoe. And then tragedy happens and she goes back to Ireland. The end I thought …
Recently I found out that author Colm Toibin has written a sequel, Long Island, which furthers the story of Eilis, so I pulled out my paperback copy of the book (the one with the movie poster cover with Ronan under the Brooklyn Bridge, posed against a brick wall, looking more stunningly Irish than anyone ever before her) and read it. Or rather, read it again, as I realized when I got to around page 200 (of 262). Whatever … I still loved it (again). It has the perfect balance of an enigmatic and extremely likable lead character with just the right dash of melancholy. I plan to read Long Island. I want to know what happens to Eilis next and I dearly hope Ronan will star in a movie adaptation of it.
Long Island by Colm Toibin
Boy, I loved this book, even if it ended up frustrating me. Revisiting Eilis Lacey some 20 years later, after she and her husband, Tony, escaped Brooklyn for Long Island, is a real treat. But somewhere in the mid-1970s, Eilis is trapped: she and Tony, along with his brothers’ families and their parents, all live on the same block on Long Island (which was mentioned in Brooklyn; the brothers had bought a lot that they were going to build on). But Tony has brought home—or wants to bring home—a major problem that Eilis wants nothing to do with. So Eilis goes back to Ireland for her Mammy’s 80th birthday, along with her two children, Rosella and Larry, where she once again encounters Jim Farrell, the man she left behind two decades ago. And that’s all I’ll say, other than I sure hope Colm Toibin has another book—maybe called Manhattan … ?—up his sleeve. Eilis’s story is definitely far from over.
From the Moment They Met It Was Murder: Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir by Alain Silver and James Ursini
Any new TCM (Turner Classic Movies) book by Running Press is always a treat, but I really struggled with this one, partly because the authors—Alain Silver and James Ursini, no strangers to the world of film noir analysis and book writing—seemed to sometimes be writing a hard-boiled detective novel and other times a really off-in-the-weeds doctorate dissertation. The book spends too much time on the real-life true crime case that probably inspired James Cain’s original novel, the Snyder-Gray murder case, which resulted in the shocking front page newspaper photo of Ruth Snyder being put to death in the electric chair. Also, these guys have this writing tic, where they say REPEATEDLY, “What he did not, could not, know …” They do this constantly, to the point of absolute annoyance. When the book is about Double Indemnity, the movie, and Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler (who collaborated on the screenplay), it’s fascinating. But at times it just seems to be all over the place and it would have been better with an editor who helped organize the structure better and said, “Hey, guys … can it with the ‘did not, could not,’ please.”
EC Covers: Artisan Edition
While most people prefer Scott Dunbier and IDW’s Artist Editions—sumptuous, large-format books scanned from the original art and printed full-size—I much prefer the smaller Artisan Editions. The latest is a reprinting of the EC Covers book, now in a much more manageable size and price point ($39.95). This book contains over 140 covers from the classic 1950s publisher, including art by Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, George Evans, Al Feldstein, “Ghastly” Graham Ingels, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Williamson, and the amazing Wallace Wood. Even at this smaller size, you can see every brush stroke, every pen line, every white-out, crystal-clear. The browning of the pages with age—which were kept and stored by publisher Bill Gaines in a vault in Manhattan for over 40 years—only adds to the beauty of the art. The only drawback in this smaller size: Thommy Burns’s introduction is set in all caps in a font that approximates EC’s Leroy lettering, and is at about 8-point type, making it very difficult to read for an old fart like me. But otherwise this book is perfect for the casual EC fan (also like me); while I respect and enjoy the art, I find a lot of these stories almost impossible to read, sad to say.
Batman: The Long Halloween Deluxe Edition—Catwoman: When in Rome by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
The fourth and final part of Loeb and Sales Batman saga (okay, there was a one-issue Long Halloween sequel published just before Tim Sale’s untimely death) is given the deluxe format treatment to complete the set, but to be honest, the $49.99 price point is steep, especially seeing that this was only a six-issue mini-series. I was lucky to pick it up at a 50% off sale. As for the story (with Catwoman searching to confirm the identity of her mother in Italy), this is definitely the weakest of the lot, but I still love Sale’s art in this era and especially his slinky, sexy Catwoman. There are some special features, too—sketches and the like—but not enough to make this any more than a thin hardcover in a very nice format at a very high price. Find it on sale, and it’s worth it, although I believe it’s out of print now.
Batman: Failsafe by Chip Zdarsky and Jorge Jiménez
I loved this first Chip Zdarsky Batman story arc when I read it in the monthly Batman comics, and it really holds up as a graphic novel. Zdarsky is one of those rare writers who also draws his own stuff, but he’s smart enough to leave something like Batman to an artist like Jiménez (he absolutely kills in this story which places him in the pantheon of the great modern era Bat-artists). Zdarsky is also smart enough to know when to shut up and let the art tell the story. This one is about a Terminator-like robot/android/AI that Batman built to take himself down if he ever crossed the line … in other words, killed someone. Tomeu Morey’s coloring is perfect, and this story really clips along, with the whole Bat-family involved. One major bonus: the inclusion of Zdarsky’s back-up stories, especially the one with art by Leonardo Romero, but to be honest, this whole Zur En Arch thing is getting tedious in the current comics, and this collection—the first in the Zdarsky run—sadly ends on a cliffhanger, and the follow-up story isn’t as good. Oh, well … for one brief, shining moment, it’s one of the best Batman stories of the modern era and I much prefer his take on the Bat to Scott Snyder’s or Tom King’s.
Mighty Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil Vol. 3 by Stan Lee and Gene Colan
I was never much of a Daredevil fan as a kid. He was the final hero to debut in the Marvel Age of Comics, and as such, he was kind of the red-headed (literally) stepchild that no one seemed to want, at least artist-wise. He bounced from Bill Everett to Joe Orlando to Wally Wood to John Romita, and finally, to Gene Colan. That last artist stuck and this volume—which reprints issues #23-32—is all Colan, all the time. In the issues that Frank Giacoia inks, he looks great, but once John Tartaglione takes over, not so much. Colan’s superhero stuff—DD, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and Iron Man—is his weak point, I feel, but DD is the strongest one in that quartet. The stories—by Stan Lee—are forgettable at best, and Stan the Man dug himself a big hole by coming up with Matt Murdock’s non-existent twin, Mike, who admits he’s Daredevil, to throw Karen Page, Matt’s secretary and the secret love of his life, off the Matt-is-DD scent. It doesn’t work, and Daredevil remains a book with a bunch of corny villains—kind of the dregs of the Marvel bad guys—and a confusing triangle of leads (Matt, Mike, and DD). Still, I haven’t read these books in probably close to 55 years, and they are—at times—kinda fun,“kinda” and “at times” being the operative words.
Currently reading: The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
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