Escape To Adventure – Fitzroy Maclean, 1950 ★½

All This and World War II

Woody Allen once said 80 percent of life is just showing up. Fitzroy Maclean validated that maxim if reading his memoir of life as a diplomat, soldier, and other in the 1930s and 1940s is any clue. Whether sitting ringside at a Soviet show trial or joining a commando raid in Benghazi, there’s a bit of Zelig in the old boy.

Long Time No See – Ed McBain, 1977 ★★½

Shaking Up the Old Eight-Seven

Breaking out of an old formula sounds fine in theory, but can result in career death for a successful fiction writer. Ed McBain found himself in the mid-1970s with a need to shake things up, though, and so he gave his 87^th Precinct police procedural series a major retooling.

The Year They Called Off The World Series – Benton Stark, 1991 ★

Everybody Loses

The New York Yankees have amassed more World Series rings than any two other baseball franchises combined, but weren’t always the sport’s overlords. The year 1904 found them in the unique role of outsiders and underdogs chasing after their first championship.

They weren’t even the Yankees then, but the Highlanders. How might a Highlander World Championship team be enshrined at Monument Park? We will never know, because they didn’t win the 1904 Series. Nor did anyone else that crazy season, the titular subject of this book.

Selected Poems And Two Plays – William Butler Yeats, 1962 ★★★★

Perning in the Gyres with W. B.

I have always loved reading. I have never cared for poetry. It is like spinach or broccoli on my reading plate, except I actually love spinach and broccoli. May I add I’m not keen on metaphors, either?

With poetry, it comes down to being a born skimmer. I find myself reading at angles, grasping at words like Tarzan swinging from vines, never working line-by-line and seldom methodically. Scansion might as well be a Swedish engineering firm for all I care. For reader as well as composer, poetry demands fine concentration. Ruined perhaps by decades of television, I find such concentration unpleasant.

The Firm – John Grisham, 1991 ★★½

Reconsidering John Grisham's Big Debut

The archetypical thriller of its day, The Firm offers a fascinating glimpse at an era defined in our rear view by caviar dreams and corded telephony. Though less gripping as a thriller, it still presents a terrific premise and a first hundred pages reminiscent of Frederick Forsyth.

Is there such a thing as being too clever for one’s own good? Meet Mitchell Y. McDeere. A top student at Harvard Law School, Mitch is recruited hard by a Memphis law firm, Bendini, Lambert & Locke.

A Comedy Of Errors – William Shakespeare, c. 1594 ★★★★

It's Raining Twins

Though I doubt many Shakespeare buffs put A Comedy Of Errors on their Bard Top Ten list, I have to ask: Does any comedy of his deliver the same measure of pure silly delight as this early farce? It’s not going to win anyone a Tony, no, but can you imagine an audience of youngsters having more fun watching another Shakespeare play?

Heck, I like it. More than that, I admire it. I said it, and now I’ll try to explain why I think you should, too.

Asterix The Gaul – Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo, 1961 ★★★

A Star is Born

How does a comedy legend take flight? Well, if you are a certain wing-headed warrior of ancient Gaul, you do it by establishing a simple formula, developing a steady flow of bad puns and easy laughs, and saving the big guy for the sequel.

That’s the approach writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo took in 1959 when they launched their international cartoon superstar Asterix, first in the pages of French comic magazine Pilote and then in a series of books two years on, beginning with this.