Captain Blood – Rafael Sabatini, 1922 ★★★

Don't Let the Name Fool You

Pirate fiction should be an easy sell. Adventure is baked into the formula; so is violent death, unbounded freedom, and the raging seas. Whatever your age or gender, cannon shot bouncing across a crowded deck is nourishment for that twisted 12-year-old inside you.

Captain Blood, one of the most successful pirate fiction titles of all time, demonstrates both the promise and the limits of this genre. Over a hundred years since its publication, it retains the power to thrill and enthrall. But how can you really root for pirates?

Country doctor Peter Blood wonders, too. He takes to piracy early in the book when fate gives him no other options. Though he leads a fairly nasty crew who preys on cargo vessels, he longs only for respectability and the love of a decent woman who scorns the life he leads.

Black Mischief – Evelyn Waugh, 1932 ★★★★

Perils of Western Civilization

Nothing prepares one for the spritely acid bath of Evelyn Waugh’s third novel less than reading it after his first two novels. Yes, those are black comedies, too, but there’s something extra-chilling about the whimsical savagery found here, where life is cheap and violence constant.

Off the coast of northeastern Africa, the island nation of Azania stands athwart the march of progress, its people enmeshed in bloody feuds and quick scams. Seth, the new emperor, seeks to change that by looking to to Europe for inspiration. He happens upon a mash-up of Marxism and family planning that blows up sooner than you can say: “THROUGH STERILITY TO CULTURE.”

Counting on the help of an opportunistic Brit, Basil Seal, Seth’s road to nowhere implicates both Africans and Europeans as well as the hope they might have anything to learn from each other.

Saturday Night Live – Edited by Anne Beatts & John Head, 1977 ★★★★

Still Funny After All These Years

The late-night TV show “Saturday Night Live” is officially 50 now, as it debuted on October 11, 1975. Its legend as a comedy-culture dynamo is almost as old, captured for the first time in book form in this collection of sketch scripts from Seasons 1 and 2.

Today, it reads like an old family album, a hodgepodge of stray jokes and scrawled banter by its original cast, writers and other creatives. The website Vulture called it a “samizdat scrapbook.” Amusing it is, cohesive it isn’t. What it captures is the afterglow of brilliance that made the show such a must-see for Boomers and Gen Xers back in the day.

How does it read in retrospect? Depending on your age, either very poignant or rather dated. This was a show that took pride in its ability to be offensive back when the price for such line-stepping was minimal.

Tricks – Ed McBain, 1987 ★★★★½

McBain's Masterful Medley of Mayhem

A riveting showcase of hard-boiled crime-story technique blending suspense and wit, Tricks is a genre novel that dares to be great. From start to end, author Ed McBain keeps pulling surprises that are brutally twisted and wrenching yet also supremely fun.

It’s Halloween and the children of the 87^th Precinct are running wild. This goes beyond the usual shenanigans. Four costumed small fry bounce out of a car into a liquor store yelling “Trick or treat!” Before the owner can shoo them off, they shoot him dead and clean out his register.

The novel’s title has several meanings. A magician disappears after a final magic act, leaving body parts across town. A mysterious caller bothers a lone woman by claiming to have legitimate questions about her bust size. A slasher stakeout turns deadly for a detective disguised as a sex worker.

Company Commander – Charles B. MacDonald, 1947 ★★★½

Bullets and Boredom on the Western Front

The day-to-day experience of leading an American infantry company into the heart of Germany and beyond is given real feeling as well as facts in this first-person World War II memoir. What it lacks in taut adventure it makes up for in authenticity.

Charles B. MacDonald testifies to the grim nature of war in many forms, including a night retreat under bombardment and advancing into enemy flak positions. Boredom and terror were frequent companions; so too was death.

The time we spend with MacDonald and his company are in places that don’t get much attention in histories of the war. But calling it rear-echelon duty isn’t right, either. They had more than enough to do.

Life, The Universe And Everything – Douglas Adams, 1984 ★★★

How Not to End a Trilogy

Concluding a trilogy can’t be easy. A long train of character arcs, plot twists, themes, motifs, and denouements must be accounted for. That is unless you are Douglas Adams, and can surmount this challenge by entirely ignoring it with a barrage of random, winning silliness.

Not every reader can be bought off by cosmic gags or pratfalls without some closure as to what it all means. But take your pleasures in life where you can. You don’t have to love Life, The Universe And Everything to appreciate it for what it is rather than what it isn’t.

One thing it certainly isn’t is the end of the trilogy, third book or not.

A Face In The Crowd – Budd Schulberg, 1957 ★★★

Big Dreams on the Little Screen

When director Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg collaborated on their next film project after the legendary On The Waterfront, it was an anticipated event. Would the new film be as good?

The answer, surprisingly, was yes, only not right away. It took audiences and critics many years to warm to A Face In The Crowd, perhaps because in 1957 its satirical take on television and marketing was too ahead of its time. Today, it seems much more relevant, if a bit quaint.

If nothing else, we are better positioned to appreciate the spectacle of Andy Griffith, not yet known as TV’s kindliest sheriff, driving his image into a ditch before he even got it. His Lonesome Rhodes is a foul-minded, manipulative, corrupt spinner of hokey cornpone wisdom who hoodwinks millions into falling in love with him: