Senseless Sensibilities

2011, first edition, from Random House
Text by Patrick Baker
Cover and Interior Design by Danielle Deschenes
Senseless Sensibilities: Create Your Own Austen-Tatious Mash-Up!
Bought new for $10.99
Slightly worn paperback
C

This is basically Mad Libs for Austen fans.  The problem is, Baker (in the female guise of Ima Hack) doesn't seem to know much about Jane Austen, as when he thinks Persuasion's Anne has a crush on Mr. Elliot.  Also, the trend of most of these partially blanked out passages is towards the trendy and shallow, which gets old after awhile.  Thirdly, come on, it's Mad Libs!  The readers are doing at least half the work.  

Of course, that means I can't rate this very low, since a clever reader and friends could conceivably indeed create austen-tatious mash-ups.  So dead C sounds right.

It's a Jungle Out There

2007, 2008 Seal Press edition
Amanda Marcotte
It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments
Original price $13.95, purchase price $6.98
Slightly worn paperback
C

I'm going to discuss the controversy surrounding this book, because I think it highlights something I noticed about other aspects of the writing.  Marcotte uses the symbol of the jungle to represent the sexism that feminists must battle.  That in itself is troubling, and related to her preference for urban over rural communities.  (Probably the result of her growing up in rural Texas.)  But wait.  What is the definition of a jungle?  "An area of land overgrown with dense forest and tangled vegetation, typically in the tropics."  So trees, right?  Yet almost none of the illustrations at the beginning of the chapters show trees.

Instead they display a busty, scantily clad blonde fighting the dangers of the African plains.  Suffice to say, none of these dangers look like Jerry Falwell or Bill O'Reilly.  They look like wild animals and menacing black natives.  Marcotte and Seal Press apparently didn't see anything wrong with racist imagery in a book promoting feminism, not even after the original cover, of a blonde being abducted by a gorilla, was criticized and withdrawn.  (This edition, she battles a crocodile.)  It's as if they couldn't see the trees for the jungle.  

I could cut Marcotte some slack, since she was young, but it's not as if she was fresh out of college.  She turned 30 that year, making her not much younger than Mary Wollstonecraft publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman at 33.  And if Ellerbee, Ivins, and Hightower have taught me anything, it's that left-wing rural Texans are definitely aware of issues surrounding race.  Perhaps the pictures from the '50s comic books about Lorna the Jungle Girl were meant in an ironic, campy way, but that doesn't make them non-racist, no matter how many anti-racist blogs Marcotte mentions.

It's three years since The Midnight Disease, where "blog" had to be defined, but this book is almost equally dated in its excitement over blogging.  As I think I've amply proved over the past couple years, any idiot with an Internet connection can have a blog, and blogs have not turned out any more remarkable than print books, except in the case of speed.  And you can turn a blog into a print book pretty darn quickly anyway.  This book seems to have evolved out of Marcotte's blog, and it shows signs of not being well edited, as in the "pubic" for "public" slip.  (It's still miles better than the editing in Forever Summer though.)

The racism and the giddiness contribute to a carelessness that I haven't seen in a feminist since Germaine Greer, almost 40 years earlier.  Marcotte shares with Greer a blindness to the full history of feminism.  (In Marcotte's case, "riot-grrrl" days are quaint, and the '70s are ancient, while no feminism existed before, say, 1965.)  Also like Greer, Marcotte (whatever mentions of lesbians and women of color she makes) is writing for women like her: white, young, straight, and a bit shallow.  Yes, anal bleaching, purity balls, and Girls Gone Wild manage to be both ridiculous and disgusting, but are they the biggest issues facing modern women?  Marcotte puts them almost on a level with reproductive rights and equal pay.

Still, I laughed at the book a few times.  Like Michael Moore, it's hard to tell how serious she is in some of her suggestions, so, as with Moore, I see this more as "funny politics" than humor per se.  I can't recommend it, but if you come across it, you might enjoy it if you just focus on the text and set your standards low.

The Forever Summer

2007, first Avon Books paperback edition
Suzanne MacPherson
The Forever Summer
Bought in 2010 or '11 for $5.95
Slightly worn paperback, with an autograph that came with the book, "Happy Haunting! Suzanne MacPherson, Oct. 2010"
C

Outside of the Twilight series, this is probably the worst edited book I've read that's been published in the last decade.  (See 
http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/ for examples of the former.) MacPherson's unstopped errors and flaws include, but are not restricted to,

• Sentences without enough commas, causing confusion of meaning
• Sometimes laughably misspelled or misused words, like "in tact" for "intact" and "censured" for "censored"
• The paragraph on p. 21 that begins "It was hard to believe..." and is repeated almost intact (or in tact) on p. 43, and not for any kind of Joseph-Heller disorienting intention, but instead muddying up the chronology
• A passage where a character whose perspective we're supposed to be in is on his cell phone "to somebody"
• Inconsistencies of character, including whether and if so how often and how harsh the protagonist swears (she of course says "ass hole" as two words)
• The banishment of the sidekick for a good chunk of the novel (Either don't introduce her, or have her and the protagonist stay in touch more while she's away, if she has to be gone.)

If the book were competently edited, I would definitely give it a C+ or even a B-.  It's a romance/mystery/ghost-story/comedy and MacPherson does a nice job of blending the tones.  I will admit I'm not crazy about the romance cliches, like Lila and Lucas having a perfect First Night together.  (And for all the sneaking around they do, didn't it occur to either of them that she shouldn't scream herself hoarse with pleasure?)  He of course has a Keyesian "huge" penis and, as she points out, she keeps saying she's not going to have sex with him and having it anyway.  But I couldn't really take any of this too seriously, when there's a ghost leaving clues with Cheese Whiz, and the local book club is holding seances.

I bought this book in a now-defunct bookstore in Port Gamble, the town where the story is set.  I assume that MacPherson did an author signing and this was a leftover.  It'll now go to my favorite used bookstore, for someone else's "happy haunting."

Prep: A Novel

2006, "Advanced Reader's Edition," from Random House
Curtis Sittenfeld
Prep: A Novel
No official price, but "January 2005 publication, $24.95"
Slightly worn paperback
C

At the time I got this book (through legitimate channels I assure you), I had no idea it would go on to be so acclaimed, and so hated.*  And I think this was only my second reading, so it was odd to revisit it.  Although I think there are moments when Sittenfeld captures the pain of adolescence, she shows little of the joy.  That would be all right I suppose (if unrelievedly depressing), except that some of the glowing quotes claim the book is funny.  It's not, not even darkly.  (I did wonder if "Jonah Sault," the founder of the school, was supposed to be a pun on Jonas Salk, but if so, it's feeble.)  

Also, there's the problem of racism.  Yes, it's possible that Sittenfeld just means for Lee, the protagonist, to seem racist, but she (yes, Curtis is a girl's name) is the one who made one black character a basketball player from the Bronx, and another a sassy thief.  Also, Lee's Korean ex-roommate is still saying things like "We stop talk about it" in her third year in America.

And, while less of a problem, but still disruptive to the reading experience, the timeline is fuzzy.  In the last chapter, it sounds like Lee went to school in the early '90s, but people are still playing cassettes in her freshman year, and the fashions (including the pink-and-green belt on the cover) seem more late '80s.  (Of course, Preppies were more on the radar in the early '80s.)

I'm not going to use the YA label, even though it's about high school, because Lee is looking back ten or more years later.  (She goes to her reunions, despite her misery at school, something I've never been tempted to do.)  To be honest, I'm not really sure who the audience for this book is, since even some people who identify with Lee in the beginning seem to dislike her by the end.  My advice: proceed at your own risk.


*Ironically or not, considering a plot point towards the end, The New York Times gave it a glowing review.  On the other hand, goodreads.com has it as 67th on their "Disappointing Books" list, 175th of "The Worst Books of All Time."

From Bush to Bush: The Lazlo Toth Letters [Volume 3]

2003, possibly first edition, from Simon & Schuster
Don Novello
From Bush to Bush: The Lazlo Toth Letters [Volume 3]
Bought newish for $10.95
Worn paperback
C

This is another slip in quality for the series, harmed by one, fewer responses; two, mostly bland responses when there are any; and less interesting letters to begin with.  As always, the consumer stuff is more interesting than the political.  (I must note that, despite the title, there isn't really much of George Bush the Elder.)  Novello is now 70, young enough to do a Volume Four in the next few years, but maybe letter-writing being an increasingly anachronistic exercise is working against these.  Perhaps next time he can do Toth's emails, or Facebook updates.

Jump the Shark* *When Good Things Go Bad: TV Edition

2003 update of 2002 original edition, from Plume
Jon Hein
Jump the Shark* *When Good Things Go Bad: TV Edition
Bought new for $10.00
Slightly worn paperback
C

Hein founded jumptheshark.com, which in its glory days provided outrageous often opposing opinions on when TV shows had gone bad, as when Fonzie water-skied over a shark on Happy Days.  He came out with a book that offered either the consensus of the site or his own opinions on such shark-jumping, and not just for television, but movies, music, and even politics.  This is the TV chunk of that book.  And it has little of the raucous fun of the website.  Not only that, but, for someone who thinks he's obsessed with pop culture, Hein gets a lot wrong.  (And it's not like he doesn't have a long list of people in the thank-yous at the end.)  These errors range from calling Velma of Scooby-Doo "Thelma" (after getting it right earlier), to saying Belushi and Aykroyd left SNL at the end of its fifth season (with Bill Murray replacing them), to screwing up the chronology of the seasons on Mork & Mindy (and there are only four), to saying that Cindy on Three's Company was "the first of many Chrissy replacements" (and there are only two).  No doubt there are other errors on the shows I never or seldom watched.  The book might have nostalgia value for some-- including for Alias, which premiered in 2001 and I've never even heard of-- but, well, you'd get a lot more out of the website.

Except that Hein sold it to TV Guide, who killed it.  Yeah, talk about shark-jumping.  Still, "jumping the shark" remains a handy shorthand for a recognizable phenomenon.

Romance Without Tears: '50s Love Comics-- With a Twist!

2003, first edition, from Fantagraphics Books
Dana Dutch
Edited by John Benson
Various illustrators but mostly Matt Baker
Romance Without Tears: '50s Love Comics-- With a Twist!
Bought newish for $22.95
Slightly worn paperback
C

Unlike Martinet's romance comic parody of a couple years earlier, this one isn't even unintentionally funny.  Benson argues that Dutch (a man by the way) presented proto-feminist heroines who seldom cried or got punished for their romantic and other errors.  This despite the fact that in at least four of the roughly twenty stories, the heroines cry.  As for not being punished, in the story "Masquerade Marriage," the two underage girls are tricked into a false wedding ceremony, and at least one of them has an off-panel "wedding night" where the man is "rough...almost brutal."  The men end up jail, but the girls' reputations are ruined.

And some of the actions of girls and women in other stories are questionable, like the one in "They Called Me Boy-Crazy!" who is interested in her friend's brother but dates his best friend to not only create jealousy but to show she can have a steady boyfriend!  And no one seems to mind.  Or what about the woman in "Elopement Hid Our Sins"?  She agrees to an in-name-only-marriage and falls for the guy, seemingly only because he's emotionally withholding.  (Of course he turns out to be secretly in love with her, too.)  And I can't tell what the lesson is in the one-page story, "Allergic to Love," where Ellen walks home rather than kiss her boyfriend, and realizes that she was "such a prude" and should've let him drive her home.

The artwork, primarily by Baker, is bland to the point that I couldn't tell some of the men apart in one story.  I wished Martinet could've weighed in, although admittedly these stories from the 1949 to '55 period seem less kitschy than the mostly later stories she chose.  Read this book only if you're really interested in the genre.

Rachel's Holiday

1997, 2012 Penguin edition
Marian Keyes
Rachel's Holiday
Original price unknown, purchase price $5.00
Surprisingly worn paperback considering its age, and I've only read it once
C

This is definitely the weakest of the "Walsh sisters" series, not only with some of the flaws of Watermelon, but with flaws of its own.  To begin with, this time instead of gratuitous slurs against lesbians and Italians, we've got not-quite-so-gratuitous slurs against lesbians and Latinos.  While Claire just made random insults, Rachel (the middle sister and our "heroine" here) actually seems to be saying that, promiscuous as she is (especially when she's stoned and/or drunk), even she has her limits.  Her roommate Brigit dates Latinos, but Rachel finds them ridiculous and too little.  (And, yes, she's a size queen, in height and penis length, just like Claire, so that when she finally sleeps with her crush Chris, she's disappointed that he's smaller than her ex-boyfriend Luke, of whom more shortly, no pun intended.)

As for the lesbians, Rachel clearly has an unknowledged crush (maybe asexual but still strong) on beautiful, glamourous Nola, but Keyes makes it clear that both Rachel and her mother regard it as more shameful for the neighbour lady to have a lesbian for a daughter than for Mrs. Walsh to have an addict daughter.  Also, there's a New York lesbian, "a beefy, short-haired, moustachioed woman, who answered to the name of Brad" (subtlety is not Keyes's strong point), and who has an acknowledged crush on Rachel.  As Van Leer's Queening of America showed, in his discussion of Heartburn and Breakfast at Tiffany's among other works, sometimes authors will make fun of gays and lesbians to distance their protagonists from their own queerness, a literary sleight-of-hand.

You see, it's not enough that Rachel keep pining for Luke, or at least pining for his attention.  Not only is there much more emphasis on whether or not he loves her than if she loves him, but Keyes makes Luke, a '70s throwback, in the macho, not the sensitive sense: "a Real Man."  While there's a lot about Rachel's lust for him, we also hear about her fear and repulsion.  There's a scene where he "punishes" her for cock-teasing him earlier while high, "men don't like that," by making her strip for him.  She finds this sexy, but it's also clear that she's afraid of him, and it comes across as approaching rape, even if it's "consensual."  (She thinks she should say no, but doesn't.)

Now, some of this may be related to her low self-esteem and addiction.  But he's never held accountable for it, or any of his other mind games, as Brigit is accountable for liking being the saner roomie.  Instead, we keep hearing how "sweet" Luke is, and Nola thinks he's a "dote."  (I hoped at first that was just her mispronouncing "dolt.")  

Even when Rachel is sober, after going through a rehabilitation program that takes up much of the book (with flashbacks throughout), she and her world are as shallow as Suzanne and Hollywood in Fisher's Postcards from the Edge (1987).  Rachel is arguably a more dislikable person, but she does have what Suzanne didn't have, an interesting family.

This is set roughly two years after the events of Watermelon (which came out two years earlier), with Claire now 31, Helen now 20.  Helen is again scene-stealing, although unfortunately we get less of her than before.  We do get our first real glimpses of second-eldest Margaret, "the lickarse," i.e. the dependable sister.  And we see a bit more of Anna, who is a more casual drug-user than Rachel, and apparently the sweetest of the sisters.  (Not that there's much competition.)  The parents aren't as funny as before, even when Dad has a role in Oklahoma, although Mum has a few moments, like when the women are ogling Harrison Ford.

I will say that, Luke aside, the characterisation seems more consistent than in Watermelon.  Admittedly, I didn't really buy it when Rachel, who has a very hard time getting into anyone else's viewpoint, decides she'd like to become a psychologist, but it's less of a leap than Anna's career choice in her book.  But first I'll take a look at Maggie (Margaret) in 2002's Angels....

Possessing the Secret of Joy

1992, 1993 Pocket Books edition
Alice Walker
Possessing the Secret of Joy
Bought newish for $5.99
Worn paperback
C

For what it's worth, I liked this novel better than the other two of hers I've read, particularly the second half where the main character is in prison.  It's another sort-of-sequel to The Color Purple, this time focusing on Celie's children and her daughter-in-law.  Walker addresses female circumcision, and other ways that women's sexuality is controlled, but the book feels less preachy.  I do have to say that, as in her other novels, the time frame is muddied.  And the "confession" from a lab worker who helped spread AIDS in Africa is laughable and out of place in the book, like Walker wanted to cram one more issue in.  Lessing was much more insightful about colonialism and sexuality in Africa in her 1992 book, but then she was writing about real people.

Oh, and the secret of joy is (spoiler) resistance.

Born to Run Things

1992, first edition, from Villard
Tony Hendra
Born to Run Things: An Utterly Unauthorized Biography of George Bush
Original price $10.00, purchase price $3.00
Worn paperback with stains
C

This is not only unauthorized, it would probably be libelous if it were better written.  As with the satirical Look Back books that Hendra co-edited, much of the humor misfires, although this book doesn't seem as aggressively unfunny as the '90s Look Back.  There are times when it's almost funny, especially early on.  But in its less than 100 pages, it wears out its welcome, mostly with sex humor that's not even consistent in its insults.  Hendra presents Bush as effeminate, gay, bi-curious, very straight, and asexual, whatever fits that chapter.  I could've done without Nancy Reagan playing Potiphar's wife with a naive George when Frank Sinatra comes to the rescue.

There's surprisingly little about Dan Quayle here, so the approach of Slansky & Radlauer's Airhead Apparent is more eagerly awaited than ever....

Veronica's Passport, No. 1

1992, first edition, from Archie Comic Publications
Archie Comics (written by Robert Fleming and Kathleen Webb, illustrated by a bunch of people
Veronica's Passport, No. 1)
Bought new for $1.50
Slightly worn paperback
C

As the title suggests, Veronica travels around the world, specifically the increasingly unspecific Hong Kong, Paris, Japan, and Africa.  Although Veronica can be intelligent at times, the emphasis here is on her love of shopping and flirtation.  While she does have adventures, she constantly has to be rescued, including when she's twice used as bait for a kidnapping.  (Little Veronica was more resourceful in the 1977 Little Archie collection.)  I also got tired of the unsubtle way that information about the various locales was parceled out.  Even when she's running for her life, we still have to hear about major industries and such.  

None of the romances work out, although she is with a no-longer-short no-longer-bespectacled geek at the end of the Japan story.  (He's white, as are most of the characters, even in Africa.)  At one point, she claims (to French policemen!) that Archie is unimportant to her and she only wants to "lure him away from Betty Cooper."  Even the fashions aren't that interesting.

Only for the most die-hard Veronica fans, or those curious to see how travel and technology (including the numerous video game ads) were presented to children twenty or so years ago.

Wilderness Tips

1991, 1992 Seal Books edition
Margaret Atwood
Wilderness Tips
Original price $5.99, purchase price $2.99
Worn paperback with splitting spine
C

Disappointing short-story collection (her fourth but the only one I own), with somewhat unpleasant characters doing somewhat unpleasant things.  The theme is nature, not necessarily the outdoors.  I thought "Uncles" was the best of the lot, recalling some of the childhood chapters in Lady Oracle, while "Hairball" is probably the grossest and has the least sympathetic main character.  It's partly that I often find short stories less interesting because, well, they're too short and we don't really get to know the characters (I was disappointed in A.S. Byatt's and don't get me started on The Cat Who shorts), but there were stories here where I didn't want to spend any more time with the people and couldn't wait for them to be gone.  Still, Atwood is talented, even in her weaker works, so I won't go below a C on this.

The "Late Night with David Letterman" Book of Top Ten Lists

1990, undated later edition, from Pocket Books
David Letterman and the Late Night with David Letterman Writers
The "Late Night with David Letterman" Book of Top Ten Lists
Possibly bought newish for $8.95
Worn paperback
C

Although I remember this as a great feature on the show (which I haven't watched regularly in at least 20 years), it feels flat in a book, especially with list after list.  Unlike Leno's headlines book from the previous year, this has neither aged well nor gained much irony over time.  (Although I suppose the constant use of "gorgeous babes" as a number one reason is ironic in light of revelations a few years ago of Letterman's affairs.)  Some of the lists are Dave-centric, like the ones about his stalker and some driving incident he had, but honestly, you'd have to be a fan to still care or remember.  And I have no idea what the running joke about "Mookie" is, or the one about "not gonna pay a lot for this muffler."  Even the Quayle humor gets stale because it's so one-note.  The best of the lot are some of the wordplay lists, like the "Least Popular Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Flavors," including Oprah Mocha, Norieggnog, and Zsa Za Gaboreo.

This completes another 100 reviews since Paradise Postponed, for 700 total so far.  And I must thank all you regular (and irregular) readers, who've boosted my stats in the last few months, even when I'm constantly surprised by what's popular.  (A MAD Look at Old Movies is currently moving up the charts.)  Nearly four months ago, I had

1 F
4 F+s
2 D-s
5 D's
11 D+s
19 C-s
36 C's
126 C+s
208 B-s
137 B's
44 B+s
7 A-s

Since then, I've added another D+, 3 C-s, and 7 C's.  There are 20 new C+s and 38 B-s.  Surprisingly, there are 27 B's, over a quarter of the additions.  And there are 4 additional B+s but no A-s.

The Path of Least Resistance

1989, but revised from 1984 edition, yet with a URL on the back, Random House
Robert Fritz
The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life
Possibly bought newish for very over-priced $12.00
Slightly worn paperback
C

I don't find self-help books helpful.  I'm not even sure when, where, why, or possibly from whom I got this book.  I think I (slowly) read it once before, and remembered the message as finding out what you want and focusing on that goal.  Rereading it now, the premise is both more complex and more confusing than that.  Fritz doesn't address, for instance, what to do when you want two things equally and they seem to be in opposition, other than to pick one and hope that the other will come to you in some form.  While I do appreciate that Fritz is trying to get away from the "problem-solving" personal growth field, he doesn't really explain how to get where you're going.  And while he's right that dwelling too much on the past (whether infancy or this morning) is crippling, you can't really just live in the moment, with no baggage.  If we're to learn from experience, as he recommends, that includes the negatives.

The book is actually most interesting in that it's a product of its time (although he did come out with a 2011 edition, for managers).  Unlike Alexander Cockburn's wariness about the personal computer a couple years earlier, Fritz sees this invention as a tool for creativity, and I think for the most part he's been proven more right than Cockburn.  Also, Fritz has a point about people like Helen Caldicott sometimes scaring people further into passivity, rather than motivating them.  Fritz himself seems to want to be both Yuppie inspirational speaker (much of the book is an ad for his Technologies for Creating), and '60s idealist who thinks that what JFK said counts for more than what he did.

The path of least resistance turns out to be a tough slog.

Democracy for the Few

1988, fifth edition, from St. Martin's Press
Michael Parenti
Democracy for the Few
Original price $18.00, purchase price $8.00
Good condition paperback
C

If Howard Zinn's People's History is not particularly earth-shattering these days, this book is even less so.  Parenti writes about the "plutocracy" that runs the U.S. and like Zinn he does have some "good news" passages, but much less so.  Occasionally, there's mildly interesting information, but not enough.  Also, the illustrations are weak, the original ones especially, like the cover by Eldon C. Doty, although Herblock is unremarkable as well.  In fact, the best of the lot is the well-known "Golden Rule" strip of The Wizard of Id, and that's more for the writing than the art.  Skip this book unless you're really curious about late '80s leftism.

Postcards from the Edge

1987, 1990 Pocket Books movie tie-in edition
Carrie Fisher
Postcards from the Edge
Possibly bought newish for $4.95
Worn paperback
C

This semi-autobiographical novel is sometimes compared to Ephron's Heartburn, although I think the main similarity is that they both got turned into Meryl Streep movies that I still haven't seen.  Well, OK, and they're both full of upper-middle-class people whining.  Like Heartburn, it's sometimes sort of funny, probably funnier actually, but with descriptions of drug abuse and withdrawal, rather than thoughts on food.  And Suzanne's life in Hollywood is very shallow, so even if Fisher is parodying that, it was hard to take with no voices of sanity for contrast.  (Her "sensible" grandmother advises her to marry a boring guy, any boring guy, and learn to love/hate him.  It's like Sheila Levine lived and almost-died in vain.)

I might've liked the book better if Fisher had stuck to one perspective, rather than switching the narrative for awhile to a couple of guys who are interested in Suzanne.  Even when she's focusing on Suzanne, she can't decide between first and third person.  Maybe the book is meant to represent the fragmentation of addiction and/or Hollywood, but that doesn't make it entertaining, or enlightening.  I nonetheless went on to read Delusions of Grandma, which we'll get to in 1994.

The Firebrand

1987, 1988 Pocket Books edition
Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Firebrand
Bought newish for $8.95
Very worn paperback
C

While there were aspects of this book I liked, mostly the visits to Colchis, I found this much weaker than Mists of Avalon.  It's from the perspective of Kassandra, although since she's psychic, we often get modified POVs from other characters, mostly her thoroughly unlikable twin Paris.  I didn't really care about the Trojan War, so that was part of the problem.  (And, yes, I've read The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeniad.  I was an English major after all.)  I actually got much more enjoyment and information total in the few pages Richard Armour wrote on The Iliad in The Classics Reclassified. 

Kassandra was definitely a less interesting character than Morgaine, although I found some of the supporting female characters intriguing, not just the Queen of Colchis, but Helen and Andromache, so that's an improvement over Gwyn-however-she-spelled-it in Mists.  The male characters are less memorable than in Mists, except for the deeply annoying attempted-rapist Khryse.  (It's not just that he's hardly punished for attacking Kassandra, it's also that he keeps stalking her and she ends up deciding she likes him platonically.)  This would've been a C+ if he were banished early on.  Oh, and there are a lot of timeline issues, especially with Troilus's age.

This book has some of the same problems with "fate" as in Mists, although perhaps more justified in the Ancient Greek culture than the Celtic.  I will say, Kassandra, although she does kill a few men in battle, is not the headcase that Morgaine was.  Ironically considering legend, she's pretty sane, although few believe her prophecies even before Apollo curses her.

Meet Peter Rabbit: A Pop-Up Book

1986, first edition, from Derrydale Books
Meet Peter Rabbit: A Pop-Up Book
Retold by Corey Nash from the original stories by Beatrix Potter
Original price $7.95, purchase price unknown
Surprisingly good condition hardcover
C

Nothing remarkable here, other than the odd inscription, "Kathy, You're the bestest Lucy Babe!  Keep countin' those veggies Love ya, Fr. Tony."  There are only three double-spread pop-ups, and they just pop, no tabs, handles, dials, etc.  Nash does an OK job of adapting Potter, although the ending feels rushed.

MAD, Volume 2

1986, first edition, from Russ Cochran, Publisher
MAD, Volume 2
Bought newish for unknown
Worn hardcover
C

Well, this is better than the first volume.  There are still the pointless text-only stories (this time a series with "BVDs" as a parody of the "KGB"), and Kurtzman's drawn-as-well-as-written Hey, Look! comic strip (and the man is even less of an artist than a writer), but the artists, Bill Elder in particular, are hitting their stride.  Also the ads for MAD and its sister publication PANIC (by Kurtzman's successor as MAD's editor) have a nice satiric edge that's often missing from the movie and comic-book parodies.  By the time we get to #12, with not only the classic "Starchie" but a "high-class intellectual" cover, MAD is sometimes actually funny.  True, the parodies of "Mark Trail" and "From Here to Eternity" are pretty forgettable, but the 3-D piece has some good concepts.

If I haven't said anything about the constant sexism (and occasional racism of the "cannibal" sort) in both volumes, it's because when the writing is this mediocre, I don't really expect any sort of nuance or sensitivity.

Best of "The Realist"

1984, Running Press edition
Edited by Paul Krassner
Best of The Realist
Bought newish for $8.95
Very worn hardcover
C

The aunt who bought me so many books got me this one as a belated 17th birthday gift.  As a hippie, she didn't worry about Harry Reasoner's claim that Krassner "not only attacked establishment vaulues; he attacked decency in general."  I'm almost the age my aunt was then, and I definitely can't see giving this book to a 17-year-old girl.  Yes, it captures its time-- 1958 to '74, although most of the book seems to be from the JFK era-- but so did Caricature capture the first decade of the 1900s.  And, although Krassner and some of his contributors sometimes voice sympathy with women and/or feminism, this book is easily as sexist as that collection from 1909.  Also, some of the writing and much of the art here are gratuitously grotesque.  I don't feel like we're being shocked to make a point, to become enlightened.  The people who would be offended were not, for instance, LBJ (who from all accounts was an incredibly crude man himself) or Nixon (whose profanity on the White House tapes is legendary).  Besides that, there's not really anything funny here.  Yes, it's better than Caricature (which I gave a D), more intelligent, more ambiguous, but like so much of the '60s Left, it's over-rated.  The best of the lot is Psychita, a satire of Psycho and Lolita, but even that has a heavy-handed ending. 

When I first read the book, I thought, "Who is this Norman Mailer jerk who thinks that masturbation is worse than rape or murder, who thinks all middle-aged gay men are depressed, who thinks that stabbing his wife is a private matter?"  I hadn't read Sexual Politics yet, but it's funny that I was intuitively more sympathetic with the second-wave feminists than with the male-dominated Left.  Reading the book this time, I was of course less shocked by Mailer but I still think he's a jerk.  Krassner doesn't let Mailer, or even Ken Kesey, completely off the hook, so points for that.  But I can't really recommend this book, and not just to 17-year-old girls.