Henry Winkler on Signed Copies for Indie Booksellers, All the Light We Cannot See Comes to Netflix, The Buccaneers Comes to Apple+, Banned Books and Studs Terkel, The Onion on Banned Books, the Rose Code by Kate Quinn, Starter Villain by John Scalzi, Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris, and Spider and Frost by Jennifer Estep

Autumn greetings, my fellow bibliophiles! Here we are in October already, and I'm trying to stay on top of my TBR while also dealing with caregiver's duties and my husbands cognitive and physical decline. It gets worse everyday, and makes trying to help him more difficult and stressful. Still, here are some tidbits and reviews for you all as fall gives us beautiful colors and cooler temps.

I used to love watching Happy Days, especially when the Fonz was on, because he was so hilarious. I loved this funny video he made for his new book, and I hope to be able to get a copy of his book one day soon.

Henry Winkler on Signed Copies!

In a very amusing video, Henry Winkler, whose memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz... and Beyond, will be published by Celadon Books October 31, talks about having signed 7,000 copies of the book for indie booksellers. His signature comes in a variety of colors, he says: green is his favorite color and only seven of the 7,000 signatures are in orange. Aaaaay, check it out here https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQCOkO8I6ag2dRB-Tg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHXJGnpoMLg-gVdw.

I really enjoyed All The Light We Cannot See, and I'm looking forward to this series on Netflix. I hope it lives up to the book.

TV: All the Light We Cannot See

Netflix has released the official trailer for All the Light We Cannot See https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQCPk-UI6ag1Ix4gHA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHXZKtpoMLg-gVdw, the limited series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, Louis Hoffman, Aria Mia Loberti, Nell Sutton, Lars Eidinger, and Marion Bailey, the four-part series is directed and executive produced by Shawn Levy, written by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), and recently had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It premieres globally November 2 on Netflix.

I loved both the book and the TV/movie adaptation of the Buccaneers that starred a very young Kate Beckinsale. This new version is going to be fantastic, I'm sure.

TV: The Buccaneers

Apple TV+ has released a trailer for The Buccaneers https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQCAl-sI6ag1IhwkHA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHUpajpoMLg-gVdw, an eight-episode drama based on Edith Wharton's final novel, that will make its global debut November 8 with the first three episodes, followed by new episodes every Wednesday through December 13.

The music-driven series blends 1870s English aristocracy with a modern soundtrack produced by Stella Mozgawa (of the band Warpaint), featuring songs from performers like Taylor Swift, Maggie Rogers, Bikini Kill, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Angel Olsen, Brandi Carlile, and more, along with original music from Folick, Lucius, Alison Mosshart, Warpaint, Gracie Abrams, Sharon Van Etten, Bully, Danielle Ponder, and more. The Buccaneers stars Kristine Froseth, Alisha Boe, Josie Totah, Aubri Ibrag, Imogen Waterhouse, Christina Hendricks, Mia Threapleton, Josh Dylan, Guy Remmers, Matthew Broome, and Barney Fishwick.

The Banned Books debate heats up, and even the late, great Studs Terkel was drawn into this by ridiculous parents who somehow think that their children will never hear curse words and should be shielded from something they're likely to see and hear when they're still in elementary school, especially now with the internet providing kids with access to anything and everything. Personally, I loved Working, and the TV show that was adapted from the book.

Robert Gray: 'WARNING! BANNED BOOKS AHEAD! Read at Your Own Risk'

In January of 1982, the same year Banned Books Week https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQCAl-sI6ag1IhwlHA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHUpajpoMLg-gVdw would be launched, author Studs Terkel traveled to Girard, Pa. (pop. 2,500), where a group of parents had protested the use of his bestselling book, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, in a Girard High School English class.

Terkel, who had been invited to the school "by a determined teacher backed by an equally firm school principal, spoke in the afternoon after talking to class after class in the morning about academic freedom and the meaning of his work," the New York Times reported, adding that he later pleaded his case "in the low and warm tones of a suitor, and the 650-member student body twice gave him standing ovations. 'I am deeply moved,' he said."

That night, however, at a meeting with parents, passions ran higher and some tempers flared. ''Mr. Terkel, you are corrupting the morals of our children,'' said one protesting mother. Although Working is based on recorded interviews with working people describing their jobs and lives in their own voices, "it was that profanity that stirred dispute, after the book had been in use in English classes for senior vocational students here for about seven years," the Times noted.

''We strongly object to profanity in the book and fear that students will receive a distorted view of the working world by reading it,'' said parent Linda Burns. Before his arrival, Terkel had observed, referring to the protesters: "The exquisite irony is that they are the heroes and heroines of this book." When he was asked why he had come to Girard, he replied: ''I came to see what makes you tick."

Daily media coverage (including here at Shelf Awareness) shows that the volume knob on book banning has been turned up to 11 in recent years.You already know the reasons why. The atmosphere is at once serious, damaging, sometimes dangerous, and sometimes, well, just absurd.

Ah, the wonderful satirical Onion, always bringing laughter and truth to the day's news.

The Onion happily fed the absurdity flames with a satirical (if maybe just a little too close to reality) piece headlined "Small Group of Parents Explains Why They Are Responsible for 60% of Book Bans https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQCAlsI6ag1IhwlEg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHUpajpoMLg-gVdw."

Among the reasons:

* "I had just moved to a new county without many friends, and joining book bans seemed like a great way to meet people."

* "Once you start censoring a child's education it's hard to stop. The power is quite intoxicating."

* "I think I speak for all Americans when I say that my opinion is just more important."

* "Nothing can defeat the love we have for our kids and the hate we have for yours."

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn was an overwrought historical fiction novel about the code-breaking women who worked at Bletchley Park, known as the Bletchley Circle, and their trials and tribulations during and soon after WWII. Here's the blurb: 

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter--the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger--and their true enemy--closer.

First of all, this book was way too long, and could have used a decent editor to clip about 200-300 pages from the bloated paragraphs and melodramatic chapters. I didn't like any of the female protagonists much, because all of them were either wimps, weirdos, fools or mean and jealous vipers. Though I did feel sorry for Beth, who was confined to an asylum and nearly lobotomized due to an evil man she trusted (most all of the men in the book were evil), but once she escaped, she still held the ridiculous idea that she couldn't say anything to anyone because of the secrets act they'd all signed that prevented treason. She seemed, clearly, to be autistic, and no one wanted to actually help her deal with her mental illness. Mab was just a social climber and Osla was ridiculously naive to think she could marry into royalty, especially Prince Philip, who had been marked for marriage to Queen Elizabeth 2 for a long time. There was so much description and breakdown of code breaking math and other BORING things that the book became a slog about a third of the way through. The prose was a bit breezy for the stiff and melodramatic plot. All in all I'd give this, our October book for my library book group, a C+, and only recommend it to those who want fraught romances between awful people along with a lot of info-dumping about WWII code-breaking.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi is a humorous science fiction novel, that is charming and wonderfully replete with spy cats and unionizing dolphins. Even if you've never read any of Scalzi's previous books, you can read Starter Villain in an afternoon and laugh at the sarcasm and pithy humorous take on secret government organizations. Here's the blurb: Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.

Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.
 

Having read Scalzi's Lock In and Old Man's War series, and a couple of his stand-alone novels, I expected the prose to be clean and brilliant, and the plot to be smart and swift. I was not disappointed. Scalzi's many awards attest to his competency at wordsmithing. What they don't tell you is that his work just gets better and better with each new book. I loved last years Kaiju Preservation Society, yet I wasn't expecting a book this year to just blow me away...but Scalzi delivers, and manages to engross the reader in the story of a schlumpy substitute teacher caught up in international espionage right from the first chapter. I couldn't put Starter Villain down. And I roared with laughter at the salty socialist dolphins and the brilliant business owning cats, who were basically running the CIA. I'd give this delightful story an A, and recommend it to anyone who likes Monty Python, or Mad Magazine, or George Carlin or any other witty TV shows or books from past eras. 

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris is a non fiction humor book that is not at all like the other humor essay collections of his that I've read. While his early work had a funny POV on life, this book was more sarcastic and cruel and sour than his other books. He seemed bent on misanthropy and his mental health seemed porous at best. Here's the blurb:

David Sedaris, the “champion storyteller,” (Los Angeles Times) returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling Calypso

Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.
 
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.
 
As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
 
In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

I don't know if it was lockdown or just his world weary attitude that made Sedaris's jokes fall flat and his POV seem angry and ugly instead of funny and interesting, but I found myself wanting to stop reading about halfway through. I stuck it out, but was disappointed in the authors dour/ugly vision of everyone, from his partner, who comes off as an uptight prig, to his siblings, who seem like lunatics, to his father, who must have been mentally unstable and abusive, but who gets a pass because his adult children all want to laugh at him behind his back and somehow normalize his sexual/physical abuse. Shudder. I'd give this dull and depressing book, which isn't funny at all, a C, and only recommend it to die hard fans of Sedaris and his work. 

Spider and Frost by Jennifer Estep is a fantasy adventure novel that is an Elemental Assassin and Mythos Academy crossover. Since I've read all the elemental assassin novels, I thought I'd give this short crossover a shot. The chapters are traded off between Gin Blanco, the Spider, and Gwen, a student hunting magical objects who attends the Mythos Academy. Having been familiar with Gin, I found her part of the story interesting, while Gwen seemed much too young and simpering to be in charge of dealing with bad guys bent on stealing and selling artifacts. She had no "chill" and her sword seemed to be in charge of sarcastic and annoying commentary, since she was too delicate for such things. Here's the blurb:

This crossover novella, Spider and Frost, mixes magic and mythology in an action-packed adventure. Perfect for fans of Ilona Andrews, Jennifer L. Armentrout, and Rick Riordan.

WHEN AN ASSASSIN . . .
My name is Gin Blanco, and I’m on vacation. Sort of. As the assassin the Spider, it’s hard for me to completely relax, but I’m determined to enjoy a scenic train ride and a nice, quiet lunch before heading back home to Ashland.

My plans change when Gwen Frost boards the train. The girl says she’s heading back to Mythos Academy, the fancy private boarding school, but I can’t shake the feeling that Gwen is hiding something—and is in far more trouble than she realizes.

. . . MEETS A CHAMPION
My name is Gwen Frost. I might have saved the world from Loki, the evil Norse god of chaos, but I’m still chasing down Reaper villains. It’s all part of being the Champion of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

I’ve been assigned to protect some mythological artifacts that are being transported via train to Mythos Academy, but some Reapers are hot on my trail, and they’ll do anything to recover the artifacts—and kill me.

Also on the train is Gin Blanco, who claims to be the owner of the Pork Pit barbecue restaurant. My psychometry magic keeps whispering that there’s more to her than meets the eye, although I can’t tell if Gin is a friend, an enemy, or something else entirely.

Note: Spider and Frost is a 28,000-word crossover novella between the Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series and the Mythos Academy young adult series. It is told from the points of view of Gin Blanco and Gwen Frost.
Spider and Frost takes place after the events of Last Strand, book 19 in the Elemental Assassin series.

Obviously, I enjoyed Gin's POV much more than Gwens, though I liked being able to see how smooth and cool Gin was in action from an outside perspective. At one point Gwen notes that Gin seems so mature and capable and cool, that she wonders if she will ever be like that. I can tell you just from reading some of Gwen's POV on herself and her work as Nike's champion, that Gwen will never reach Gin's level of Spider chill and ruthless efficiency at dispatching the enemy. Estep's prose was serviceable, and her plot only slowed down occaisionally, whenever explanations were needed for Gin or Gwen's powers. Still, the novella was somewhat entertaining, so I'd give it a B-, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys crossover novels from one author.