Books: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend (1982)

"Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. Writing candidly about his parents' marital troubles, the dog, and his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual'."

I’ve known about The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ for a long, long time. But for reasons that I cannot know, I’ve never read it. But for a while, I’ve felt rather melancholy and have turned to more humorous books to turn my sour mood around. Little did I know there was more than one book; so I ended up getting an omnibus edition from Powell’s Books that contained the first two novels.

The story is set in 1981 and 1982, and in the background it refers to some of the historic world events of the time, such as the Falklands War and the wedding of Price Charles and Lady Diana as well as the birth of Prince Williams. Mole is also a fierce critic of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, listing her as one of his worst enemies. Apart from the humorous events described in the diary, a lot of the book's humor originates from the unreliable nature of the narrator, as Adrian, who naïvely, yet confidently, misinterprets events around him.

The book is a hoot and it amazes me how Townsend is able to understand the inner workings of a teenage male –it’s thoroughly and hilariously convincing. Yes, Adrian is bit immature and has angst-ridden personality that could get wearisome as he grows older, but as person who likes snark and witty, but sometimes, uncomfortable humor, this book works wonderfully.

Books: Spell or High Water By Scott Meyer (2014)

"The adventures of an American hacker in Medieval England continue as Martin Banks takes his next step on the journey toward mastering his reality-altering powers and fulfilling his destiny. A month has passed since Martin helped to defeat the evil programmer Jimmy, and things couldn’t be going better. Except for his love life, that is. Feeling distant and lost, Gwen has journeyed to Atlantis, a tolerant and benevolent kingdom governed by the Sorceresses, and a place known to be a safe haven to all female time-travelers. Thankfully, Martin and Philip are invited to a summit in Atlantis for all of the leaders of the time-traveler colonies, and now Martin thinks this will be a chance to try again with Gwen. Of course, this is Martin Banks we’re talking about, so murder, mystery, and high intrigue all get in the way of a guy who just wants one more shot to get the girl."

While the second book in the Magic 2.0 series took a slower path to get going than book one, it’s still a fun, quick read. Sure, the novelty of the premise starts to wear thin as the book progresses, and we see a lot of recycled arguments, but overall, Spell of High Water lives up to the first book.

Are there problems? Yes, one major one is that after we’re Off To Be the Wizard, which had clever and strong women, the author sort of devolves them here, becoming  either cowed by men or enjoy the chase. It also takes the attitude that women can’t be friends with women without things getting petty, or drama filled. Gwen in the first book was so brilliant, yet here she continues to be dismissive of Martin (who clearly cannot take a hint) yet it appears she likes him, and is getting upset that Martin may now have finally caught on. It’s rather disturbing in many ways.

The other issue is with Jimmy, who was exiled in book one. At first I was a bit bothered because it was clear from the start that Meyer was going to get Jimmy back in the main narrative, so satisfaction of his exile is taken away. This trope is overused in science fiction and fantasy, where the bad guy is not dead (or never truly banished); I would’ve been fine with Jimmy never coming back.

But to set up book three, I guess, he needed Jimmy. But a cleverer writer may’ve succeed in bring in what appears to be the Big Bad for next installment without resorting to using Jimmy (who often reminded me of Captain Braxton from the Star Trek: Voyager two-part episode Future's End). Still, that being said, I began to enjoy the banter between him and the two Treasury Agents who are assigned to find out how Martin did what he did in Off To Be The Wizard. Agents Miller and Murphy are comic foils, idiots, yet charming. They could be a part of spin-off if Meyer’s premise gets any more thinner.

Books: Meddling Kids By Edgar Cantero (2017)

"1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she's got Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years. The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting."

The basic premise of Meddling Kids is taken from Scooby-Doo, of course, the classic animated series that featured a plucky group of “teens” and a dog solving mysteries in their Mystery Machine. Of course, much like the Blyton Summer Detective Club (a reference to prolific British children's writer Enid Blyton), their mysteries always ended with a guy in a costume. However here, we get a glimpse of what happens when reality takes over, as it borrows a lot of its atmosphere from more adult work, including Netflix’s Stranger Things and, as always, Stephen King.

But while all the tropes of the genre are here, including many Easter eggs for readers (and the folks who like HP Lovecraft are in store for a fun ride) the book does become less about solving a thirteen year-old mystery and more about growing up.

Here, in Edgar Cantero’s second novel he’s written in English (he started out in his native Spain) we get a spot on satire, that is often a very intelligent story about what happens between our childhoods and when we become adults. While Cantero’s prose style can be jarring (and it took a long time for me to get used to it), he juxtapositions some funny, nostalgic humor with some dark glimpses into the survival mode people go into to reconcile some trauma in their lives.

But the book does become a bit relentless as it progresses, as Cantero throws everything but the kitchen sink in the last quarter of the book -sometime devolving into cartoonish behavior that had me rolling my eyes. But it’s fun book for people who grew up on Scooby Doo, Cthulhu, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and the many books by Enid Blyton. 

Books: Expecting Someone Taller by Tom Holt (1987)

“Malcolm Fisher inherits a magic ring from a dying badger and becomes the much-disputed Ruler of the World. Everyone wants the ring--despite the fearsome curse upon it. And Malcolm is about to learn that some are born to greatness, and some are, well, badgered into it.”

Way back in the 1980s, ACE Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press, released a lot of humorous fantasy novels (along with some serious ones) to counter the many other fantasy novels that Del Ray was putting out. Most were okay, parodies mostly of The Lord of The Rings, or just books that took the genre less seriously. After stumbling upon Tom Holt’s Expecting Someone Taller at Sideshow Books here in West LA, I can’t remember if I saw this book when it was released in 1987. At the time, I was deep into many series fantasy books and would, on occasion, read the more sillier books that came out, like Craig Shaw Gardner’s Ebenezum series (and a few others he wrote), John DeChanice’s Castle Perilous series, and Myth Adventures by Robert Lynn Asprin. Sprinkled within was (at least) the first ten volumes of Piers Anthony’s Xanth books.

Anyways, there was a lot, and there is a good chance either I saw the book and was not interested or missed it completely. So while the book has its charms and a promising premise (taking the characters and themes of Wagner’s Ring Cycle and setting them in a modern day sleepy English village), it never really took off for me. The humor is never laugh-out-loud, but it also never really gels into typical satire the British seem to do so well at. Still, this was Holt’s first novel and has spent the last 30 years writing humorous takes on every myth, fairy tale, and supernatural aspect that you can shake a leg at. He’s been pretty prolific and it surprises me that I’ve never heard of him.

So I might excuse Holt for failing to make the most of his initial premise because it was his first book, but on the other hand, since it falls short –for me anyways- to live up to its premise, I don’t find myself invested enough to move into the many other books he’s written.

Which makes me wonder if I had discovered him back in 1987, would have I continued to read his books like I’ve done with Stephen King? But then again, like many of those fantasy books I read a thousand years ago, I’ve stopped reading a lot of those authors, like Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Stephen R. Donaldson, David Eddings (though dead I never read anything else of his beyond The Belgariad and The Malloreon series), and Raymond E. Feist. Even Robert Asprin continued to write more Myth books in collaboration with author Jodi Lynn Nye until his death in 2008.

I realized that part of me has moved on from the genre, which is highly predictable. But also, part of me realizes that those books were read when I was a lost boy, trying to find my place in the world. They filled the empty hours of my life. Much like the world, I’ve moved on, and only on occasions, do I dip my toes back into this genre. Sometimes I disappointment myself.

Books: The Outsider By Stephen King (2018)

The first half of The Outsider, the latest big novel by Stephen King, seemingly returns to detective thriller trilogy he wrote, Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch. But while it is a crime story –taking a page from every forensic novel and TV series of last few decades- there is more to this story than a horrific murder of a child.

“Ralph Anderson, a detective in Flint City, Okla., orders the arrest of a popular local English teacher and Little League coach, Terry Maitland, at a baseball game packed with cheering families. Anderson has clear evidence that Maitland raped and mutilated a child. The crime is awful but the proximity — the sense of trust that Maitland enjoyed — is what truly horrifies the detective. So the officers arrest the coach in front of everyone, announcing the charges loudly. As he’s led away, Maitland insists, just as loudly, that he’s innocent. Maitland has a foolproof alibi, though, with footage to prove that he was in another city when the crime was committed. But sadly, that doesn't save him. So from a miscalculated arraignment circus, and importantly, the video tape and reliable witnesses who put Terry somewhere else, Ralph Anderson begins to have doubts. Rather reluctantly, and after an associate of Terry’s lawyer Howie Gold contacts Holly Gibney to help clear Maitland’s name, does it become clear that something supernatural is happening in Flint City. But Anderson still has problems with this, but with the guilt eating at him that maybe Terry Maitland was innocent, Ralph begins a dark path towards something that has now taken up residence in a small Texas town.”

Again, King creates a reliable, well paced physiological/horror thriller. The fact that he sets it up in Oklahoma and Texas, and not his beloved state of Maine, is intriguing in many ways. There is a metaphor here, something that King notes in his Authors Note: “Oklahoma is a wonderful state, and I met wonderful people there. Some of those wonderful people will say I got a lot wrong, and I probably did; you have to be in place for years before you get the flavor right.” Everyone, including whatever the thing is that’s killing kids (a shape-shifter that many of the writers Constant Readers will see as a variation on monster in IT. King does not go into any detail about what this monster is, where it comes from, why it exists, but either he didn't feel the need to or we're bound to run into this monster in a novel yet to be written), becomes an outsider during the run of the book; each understanding that while we may all be connected, share similar thoughts and ideas, when we go somewhere, local customs and stories do change. But still, at its core, The Outsider is about understanding the mystery of the universe and how all of try to make it make sense. It takes Anderson a long time to accept the idea that what they’re dealing with is something beyond science. Also the welcome return of Holly from that previous trilogy, who tries to convince the cop that there can be something darker lurking outside Ralph’s black and white perception that is wonderfully handled.

This is what Stephen King has always excelled at, and makes him a wonderful story teller.