Broadway – Brooks Atkinson, 1970 ★½

A Dreary Look at a Gaudy Street

The Great White Way has played host to countless tragedies and comedies. Only a small minority ever appear on stage. You would think 70 years of showpeople trying to make it there would offer some exciting reading. Think again.

Brooks Atkinson was not only a veteran of many decades when he wrote this thick history about the Manhattan midtown mecca for theatrical entertainment. He was himself a Broadway institution, having given his name to a theater on West 47^th Street. That he knew and loved so many of those he wrote about is part of the problem.

Heat – Ed McBain, 1981 ★★★½

When 'I Do' Becomes 'Oh No'

Marriage and summertime are two things we associate with happiness. Yet both can also be sources of intolerable pressure, especially when used as key elements of a police procedural. In Heat, love makes the world go round, but also leads to murder.

While a typically energetic 87th Precinct page-turner, Heat is unique in the series for how quickly it makes the main criminal activity secondary to a riveting subplot involving one of the detectives.

Bert Kling has a problem. He’s married to a beautiful model, only now he suspects something is going on. A comment by a drunk girl at a party makes him wonder if his wife is having an affair.

Willie Mays: The Life The Legend – James S. Hirsch, 2010 ★★★

Celebrating a Quiet Giant

In baseball, statistics are the ultimate measure of achievement, yet they fail to do justice to one of the game’s greatest legends. Willie Mays holds no major career records which jump to mind. In areas like stolen bases or home runs, his totals, while impressive, did not dominate even in his own time, let alone looking back now.

Yet when considering the totality of the game, and all the players who ever played it, Mays stands apart like a colossus.

In Willie Mays: The Life The Legend, James S. Hirsch asks the question: “Was he better than the Babe?” Even if you sense he would like to say yes, he doesn’t. Babe Ruth changed the game with his home runs, and that after establishing himself as a champion left-handed pitcher. But Hirsch makes a strong case for Mays anyway.

The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe – Douglas Adams, 1980 ★★★★½

Intergalactic Dining at its Finest

Transforming a successful novel into an enduring media franchise requires more than just skill or luck. It requires a magnificent first sequel. Every subsequent entry in the series can run the gamut from brilliant to horrible, but that second book must sing.

The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe does just that, beginning with a clever title whose double meaning becomes a fascinating storyline in its own right. But that is just a small part of its rich pageant. Douglas Adams delivers a book even more conceptual, expansive and hilarious than what came before.

This is the book that turned Adams’s brainchild into a cultural touchstone; it’s also a terrific read.

You Can’t Take It With You – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1936 ★½

Taking it Easy...Too Easy

Screwball comedies of the 1930s are hard to judge. They live within their own unique construct where people spout earnest nonsense all at once. Roles are overturned, conventions twisted, love springs from the oddest of places. Lessons are not learned; rather they are flouted.

A first-rate screwball comedy freezes time as brilliantly as a Grecian urn. Check out Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, and The Lady Eve, all of which spoof familiar romantic tropes, spit dialogue like rappers on Ritalin, and retain the power of laughter nearly a century on.

Then there is You Can’t Take It With You, a rare comedy that won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Even before that happened, it was a Broadway comeback hit for playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Here is a screwball comedy where time has not been so kind.

Jaws – Peter Benchley, 1974 ★★★

Divine Judgement on Long Island Sound

When the people of a Long Island resort town abandon themselves to lives of carnal frolic, suburban complacency, and underworld corruption, only a 20-foot Great White shark can set them on the path to righteousness. So goes one reasonable takeaway from this bestseller.

Another would be that this is nothing like the classic movie it would spawn the following summer, though that isn’t so a bad thing. Jaws the novel is just a different kind of fish.

Martin Brody, sheriff of the economically struggling shoreline town of Amity, has two problems. One is a shark that has begun feeding off its population. The other is his community wants the beaches kept open for the tourist money it brings.

Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh, 1930 ★★★½

Aiming for the Gut

So much of what made Evelyn Waugh great, including the decade he blossomed in and the smart set he dished so ruthlessly about, is on display in this, his second novel, a triumph of form over substance.

No doubt Waugh intended it just so.

In many important ways, Vile Bodies marks a turning point in the author’s career. He already had his signature voice worked out. Here he aims for scope and bite, casting a wide net on the social antics of the jaded aristocratic scions dubbed the “Bright Young Things.” These were people he knew and loved best. And they loved him back, even more after he pilloried them in print with this mordant, often acid book.