Well, turns out editing it by hand was pretty darned easy too. It was just adding: class=”read” to the tds. Though my first pass through, I failed to also put it in for the authors. So the titles were the right color, but the authors weren’t.

The most annoying part was adding two year’s worth of lists. Lots of tedious typing.

But, I’m done! You can look at my list of which books/stories I’ve read of the Tiptree winners right over here somewhere. Still plenty I have not read. A few of the ones there that I haven’t marked, I have tried to read, and failed. Maybe they should get their own color.

Anyway, onward! To my review of two Halloween books that didn’t have “Halloween” in the title, so I couldn’t review them over on Triple Take.

Oh, wow, lie! This does have Halloween in the title. Whoopsy.

Old Witch Rescues Halloween by Wende and Harry Devlin (1972)

I grabbed this because it looked familiar. But after having read it, it didn’t really ring any bells. Maybe I read other books in the series?

Rich white guy declares there won’t be Halloween, and people listen to him, because he’s rich. And a white guy. But Old Witch is having none of that. So he kidnaps her and locks her up. But a crow helps her get a broom. And then she shows up at his rally, or whatever. And he dumps his pitcher of water on her!!

But, fortunately, she doesn’t melt. Fyew.

She turns him into a frog. She rallies the townsfolk to fight for Halloween. Then turns him back. And he’s all ‘yay halloween’. And then they have a party.

And it’s really kind of a weird narrative (ack, I just used the word narrative in a sentence) because there’s this sort of detachment from Old Witch, who seems to be the protagonist. She doesn’t say a whole lot. She sings a little song, she talks to herself and the crow (9 words total there), she chants a spell. Then she’s got 2 lines to psyche up the crowd. And then like 4 words at the end of the book. None of what she says is part of an actual conversation.

It does add to the picture of her as the eccentric old woman who nobody in the town talks to and then hangs as a witch. Except.. she seems to have friends, and the townsfolk aren’t against her.

In the end, a better book than some of the other ones I read.

The Candy Witch by Steven Kroll (1979)

I saw this on the booksale rack at the library and I was all ‘I remember that book!’ I flipped through it briefly and decided ‘I liked this book!’ I didn’t buy it quickly enough before it vanished. (I had had a brief thought that I should save it for some other kid to find and love.)

But then later I saw it in the children’s room, sans dust jacket, but in recognizable orange with the candy witch embossed in a corner of the cover. Hurray for books that don’t require a dust jacket to be recognizable.

Maggie is a witch, in a family of witches (and warlocks). She likes sticking candy in people’s pockets and filling fridges with food, but her family doesn’t notice the good deeds she does. So she gets fed up and sets out to get noticed. She starts playing tricks on people. Lizards out of bathroom faucets, frogs in pockets, milk turning into flowers. Nothing too malicious or dangerous, but not very nice either.

But her family still doesn’t notice! So she waits until all the kids have gone trick or treating and then steals their candy bags. They get sad. She feels remorse. She talks to her family. Then she throws a candy festival to make it all better.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what appealed to me about this as a kid, but I’ll try.

The colors of the book are shades of orange, black, and purple. It’s really inspired, I think. Perfect for a Halloween book. Maggie is drawn so simply I think even I could reproduce her. So definitely accessible and appealling artwork all around.

She sticks candy in people’s pockets! And there’s one scene where she has all the trick or treat bags piled up on a rooftop with her. What’s not to love about that? Candy!!

Unfortunately, with my 2010 old-fogey eyes, I did notice a flaw. There’s two questionable costumes the kids are wearing. One’s dressed as the typical ‘Indian chief’ and another looks to be a gypsy fortune-teller. If this book were to be republished today, I hope they would skillfully modify or excise those two, but leave the rest of the book untouched.

I find it a little odd that the costumes are all generic. That is, there’s no Spiderman or C3PO. But the candy specifically references Hershey’s kisses and M&M’s. Also, who has peppermints and jelly beans on Halloween? Weirdos! And she’s got fountains of lemonade at her party. Lemonade and candy? Gross. Why wasn’t it apple cider?

Anyway, I still love this book. And that’s why I had to review it somewhere. And that’s why I’m kind of sad I didn’t buy it from the booksale after all.

So, for her, and anyone else who’s interested, here’s a link to my Goodreads profile.

Will I add it to my sidebar? Will I get it to feed to my blog? My lj? Stay tuned.

But don’t hold your breath.

Each story has deaf characters in it — the two original stories have Deaf kids as the main characters. And those are the two stories I much preferred. One is about a couple of boys who go fishing in the toilet. Hey, boys have to amuse themselves somehow, right? The other is about two girls who make friendship bracelets out of cursed beads. This one uses the ‘was it all a dream?’ trope, but I’ve found you have to forgive that in kids. Heck, it’s not like I’ve never done it myself!

Since there is signing in the stories, some of the stories have illustrations of some of the key signs afterwards. The fish story has a fish showing us the signs for fishing! Bet you didn’t know fish had hands and fingers, did you?

Yes, the stories are written by kids, and they’re pretty short, but I did like this book for what it was. Two fishy thumbs up.

A hearing girl tells the story of a new girl at school who’s ‘hearing impaired’ and how the two quickly (very quickly!) become best friends.

I was going to be rather harsh on this one, but then I got to the end and the About the Author section. Turns out this was written by a girl in sixth grade. She won a contest to get it turned into a book. Of course she’s in her late 20′s now, but still. Kudos to her for A) Writing a book and B) Winning a contest.

So considering the author and that it was published in 1994, it’s not bad. But as for whether I’d recommend it to someone today? No. Not as a book about a deaf kid. Maybe as a book written by a kid. To point at and say ‘Look, you can do that too!’.

One problem is that the girl is always called ‘hearing impaired’. So I can’t even tell if she’s deaf or hard of hearing. Though she does sign, so I lean towards Deaf, whichever she is. ‘Hearing impaired’ may sound PC, but it’s not a preferred term. If it ever was.

She wears a hearing aid with wires that probably lead to a battery pack. The hearing aid is never mentioned, so that’s only in the artwork. So, just a bit of dated illustration.

The story itself is simplistic and cheesy. Sappy. Bit preachy. If the story had developed over the course of months rather than days to the point where she’s chatting away in sign language and buying a ‘best friends’ necklace, it would seem a little more realistic and a little less corny.

If you’re looking for books to buy or to check out of the library, give this one a pass.

At first I thought this would be a quick read, but when I started reading, I changed my mind about that. It has to be read slowly, to appreciate all the jokes. And to take the humor in small doses.

But then I changed my mind again. The episodes after the first couple didn’t seem as funny. I don’t think it’s really because they were less funny, but more that he’d lost my sense of newness and surprise by that point. Which is a key component of humor. But of course I plowed ahead anyway. It ended up being a very quick read for me.

So my recommendation would be for people to read this one episode at a time. Read one before bed. Keep the book in the bathroom. Read it on your lunch break. Don’t read it on the bus or the subway, as you’ll just want to keep going.

What I love about Wheaton’s jokes is that they’re geeky. You could turn this book into a geek quiz if you wanted to. Earn points every time you catch one of his references. More points for a Voltron reference. Fewer points for a Monty Python one. Though unlike when watching a Joss Whedon show and snickering when you get a geeky joke because it makes you feel smarter and in the know, you actually feel a little less geeky when reading Wheaton when you don’t get a joke. You know it’s there, but you don’t get it. Though I don’t feel so bad if I realize it’s a music joke or a poker joke.

I feel I must mention there are typos that need fixing. Mainly in the area of excess punctuation or extra spaces, but occasionally an extra word or a weird word. It’s the sort of error you expect to see in self-published or small press works. As opposed to missing words, which you expect to see in ‘professionally’ published books. Jeesh, now I’m getting geeky about typos. Anyhow…

I thought this book was great. I could relive the episodes without having to watch them again. And I had forgotten quite a bit. He’d be starting to describe an episode and I’d be.. ‘When did this happen? I don’t remember this.’ Though eventually there will be enough there to finally jog my memory.

It’s interesting to see Wheaton’s take on things from an actor’s point of view. He keeps saying how awesome Patrick Stewart is, and while I know he’s a great actor in theory, I certainly never realized it when I was watching TNG during its first run. Picard was not a favorite character. He was above Pulaski and Troi, granted, but he was far below Tasha, Data, and Wesley. And when people go all ga-ga over episodes that feature him strongly, I’m left thinking ‘eh’. There are FOUR lights! Whatever.

But speaking of Wesley, that’s my major problem with this book. Wheaton keeps making jokes at Wesley’s expense and characterizing all fans as rejoicing when he gets shot by an arrow (which I totally don’t remember) and loving it when Picard tells him to shut up. And yes, there’s a contingent out there that was doing that, but it wasn’t all of us. Heck, I wasn’t even aware of it until I went to hear Wheaton at a con and/or in college when I got onto the Internet.

Don’t paint all fans with the same brush! Some of us were just a year younger than Wesley and loved him. Sure, saving the ship multiple times is silly. But, you know, it’s not unrealistic that a genius kid might do that once in awhile. Starfleet’s all about teamwork and if you don’t recognize that that geeky, dorky kid has some skills you might use, you’re failing at teamwork.

And yes, Wesley said some really lame things. But there were kids like him out there also saying really lame things. And we didn’t have the excuse of writers putting those words in our mouths.

Don’t you see? Wesley showed that you could be geeky and dorky and lame, but still have something to contribute. Could still do really cool stuff like sit on the bridge of the Enterprise.

I just wish Wheaton would realize Wesley did and still does have fans. And I think he knows this. But by not acknowledging it and by going on and on about ‘the fans’ cheering when Wesley gets a smackdown, he’s perpetuating the idea that Wesley fans don’t exist, and never existed.

And I’m tempted to wax all psychological about the group of fans that did hate Wesley with a passion, but that won’t make for a concise, cohesive review.

Especially as I nearly forgot to mention Tracy Torme!

Tracy Torme, who I thought was a woman. Who I was convinced was a woman. Who I preferred because she was a woman. Who I swear I had looked up somewhere to find her relation to Mel Torme (after watching Night Court). Wasn’t she Mel Torme’s daughter or something?

Well, apparently not, because apparently Tracy Torme is a man! What the heck?! When did that happen?

Way to blow my mind, Wheaton.

And D. C. Fontana is a chick. Slightly less surprising, that, though my first guess would not have been that.

Weird.

So, to sum:
Very funny. Best read in short doses rather than all at once. Few too many ‘boo Wesley’ comments. I do look forward to reading more of these, and I hope he has plans to go through at least all the episodes he was in. Though I would love it if he wrote summaries of every single TNG ep. I’d like to hear his take on things.

4 stars out of 5. You dissed Wesley too many times.

So the hardest thing in reading this was I didn’t know where the original left off and the zombies began. It was easy to tell that anything relating to the zombies was new. All references in martial arts, new. Silly little changes like Crypts and Coffins (the original game I can’t immediately name) and Kiss Me Deer (that one I can name, but don’t know how to play), obviously new.

The characters, essentially the same as the original, I’m sure. The general plot, I’m sure the same. When Elizabeth goes from place to place to place, I’m pretty sure she did so in the original. When people get married, again, reasonably sure that was the same.

But other things, when the two ideas seem to intersect, or seem a little unreal, I’m not sure. Are the stupid innuendo jokes about balls in the original? How much puking was Elizabeth’s mom doing? Did Darcy seriously cripple that guy? Wickham, was it? I find it rather unlikely he was traveling around on a bed in the original, but.. how do I know?

And still other things, I know they were new, but I wonder what they were replacing in the original. In specific, Charlotte (was it?) gets stricken with the zombie disease and gets herself quickly married to some guy, Collins? Lots of C names. Very annoying. And then she continues to partake of society while she slowly turns into a zombie. And he doesn’t seem to notice. No one seems to notice except Elizabeth. And then the C guy commits suicide.

So in the original, was she pregnant before she got married? Did she die in childbirth? Did he then kill himself?

Is any of that guessing correct? No idea.

As you can tell, I had a real problem with names. People had first names, and they had surnames, and there were several Miss Bennetts, of course. Which I may not have even just spelled correctly. But then they might also be called ‘the Longbourne ladies’ and it was just very hard for me at first to tell anyone apart or keep anyone straight. So it was especially hard for me to get into it at the beginning, and to keep going. About the halfway mark, it wasn’t as hard to keep going. I guess I finally got into the story. Or.. some story. I don’t even know.

My favorite character? Elizabeth’s father. Until there’s a reference to him boffing a bunch of women. Which I suspect was added. But, again, no real idea if I’m right or not.

Okay, so the zombies themselves. They’re zombies. And you know what, I’m not really into zombies. Or zombie movies. The new vampires they’re not. So in the spirit of zombie movies, there’s gore, there’s unrealistic fight scenes, and there’s attempts at humor.

At the end of the book, there’s a discussion guide. Here’s a question not in the discussion guide:

* Elizabeth and her sisters feel pity for the zombies, embarassment when a friend is turning into one, and even spare the life of a zombie infant. Ninjas, on the other hand, Elizabeth disembowels and kills for no reason at all except to prove her competence as a fighter. Do you think this dichotomy is due to racism, classism, or something else?

The book draws in Japanese and Chinese references, as all the zombie fighters have gone to the Orient to train. One woman in particular, Catherine(?), thinks her Japanese training far superior. Elizabeth is pretty biased towards her own Chinese training.

Why then, does Elizabeth, with her Shaolin training, fight with a katana?

Why does one of the houses have nice Japanese gardens and whatnot, and a ‘coy pond’?

My answer? I think the author (no, not Jane Austen, the other one) has watched too many zombie and martial arts films, and doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about.

One final thought: too much vomit and other bodily fluids. They’re not funny. Not even the first time. Especially not in quantity. Author has also been watching too much SNL.

Long story short, this would’ve made a better short story. Or a direct-to-video movie.

Don’t read it. Seriously. Consider this my holiday gift to you. I have just saved you several hours of time that you can put to better use.

Let’s.. take this in chunks:

The Writing

I had trouble getting into this book at first. As in, I had trouble at a very basic level in comprehension. It was making my brain hurt. Somewhere along the line, it got easier. I’m inclined to say that the writing got better, but it could simply be that I got used to it. I’m not quite sure, but I do have some examples, and the examples are from early on.

Metaphors and other bits of language that make you stop. And yea, they make you think, and yea, they can be a bit humorous. But they also make you stop. It interrupts the flow.

Page 1: “the tourists were [...] seeking refuge in Starbucks over iced drinks ending in vowels.”
Page 3: “Rook had curled his hands to form skin binoculars”
Page 32: “what looked to her like an escalator to the basement painted red” — to describe a graph

Character name switches. She’s Nikki Heat. She’s Heat. She’s Detective Heat. She’s ‘the detective’. Just when you think the author(s) has finalized on Heat and is going to stick with it, out comes another Nikki Heat or just Nikki. And of course it happens with other characters as well. Sometimes trying to give us information by doing it, like ‘her friend’. As if we couldn’t gather that by context.

Number problems. It happened more than once. Here’s one from page 15: “Two thousand six scrape with a bouncer in SoHo; 2008, you pushed a guy [...]” Did some style rulebook tell you not to start a sentence with a number? Because it’s just plain silly to say 2006 and 2008 in two different ways. Plus just silly to give a year that way in the first place.

Maybe an editor should’ve caught that? problems — page 33

“I see,” he said. And then he took the plunge. “Matthew Starr indulged some personal habits that compromised his personal fortune. He did damage.” Noah paused then took the plunge.

At one point, I had trouble following who was speaking, but looking back through, I can’t find where that was.

There were also times where something was mentioned and I had to try to remember what it was referring to. Specifically the ‘perfume ad’. If you weren’t paying attention the first time Heat’s internal monologue came up with that, you were lost. And since I was already overwhelmed with metaphors and odd little references, I did miss that the first time.

The whole feel of it, especially the dialogue, was quite like the show. If you’re not paying attention, you’re going to miss a quip. Even if you are paying attention, you’ll probably miss some quips. Or my geek repetoire is not geeky enough in the right directions (music, old movies, etc) to get everything.

The Characters

So instead of Castle, the bestselling novelist, we have Rook, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. Who is somehow also fabulously rich. And instead of whatever her name is, the detective on the show, we have Nikki Heat. Who you can reasonably read into as Castle’s impression of who the detective on the show is, whatever her name is. And other characters map as well, including 2 detectives or cops or whatever who do the girl detective’s bidding, but competently. Unlike some shows.

And, inexplicably, Castle/Rook’s mother, the diva. She shows up briefly in one scene, and her appearance was utterly pointless.

The characters are so like the television show, that I was brought up short every time we were reminded that Rook is a journalist. I guess he didn’t fit my image of a journalist. Wise-cracking, risk-taking, devil may care journalist? And, again, rich?

A book written by Castle?

Well, I can sort of see it. At first, I was reading it in my head in Nathan Fillion’s Castle voice, though eventually that dropped off. And yea, you can totally see a guy like him writing a hot detective chick parading around her apartment naked and then kicking butt in that state.

But then I think.. well, a real novelist.. well, a) wouldn’t map his life so closely like that, and b) should know his main character better. That is, I never really felt like I was inhabiting Nikki Heat. So I never felt like the author was either. But I guess that isn’t necessarily indicative of ‘not a real author’, but more of ‘not a very good author’.

Whoa, trippy man

The quote from the back of the book: “Rick Castle must have been doing his research because Nikki Heat has the unmistakable ring of truth.” — It actually got me thinking.. how many things on the show do we see Castle learning about that made it into the book? And I don’t know the answer to that, because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the first season of Castle. Are there clever little things like that?

Summary

Interesting to read for what it is, though if it wasn’t what it is, I wouldn’t have read it. And if I had read it, I would’ve put it down. Because I would’ve found it rather dull. Reading all these mysteries is just confirming to me that I’m not particularly fond of them. (Ignoring that I did go through a stage in my youth of reading most of Sherlock Holmes.)

The acknowledgements deserve acknowledgement for being interesting and a bit amusing.

I’m giving the book a rather solid 3 (out of 5). An overall impression of ‘meh’, yet the compulsion to want to buy a copy and mark it up in red ink to figure out why I had such problems with its language.

It’s about the narrator’s father, who’s a deaf printer at a newspaper in the 1940′s. Some of his coworkers are deaf and some are hearing. So when a fire breaks out, he warns the deaf people first (in the loud printing room, even if he did shout something understandable to his hearing coworkers, they’d be unlikely to hear it). “Fire! Fire! Tell the hearing ones!” They make sure everyone gets out and the father in the story is the last one to leave. It’s a huge fire, given all the paper that’s hanging around waiting to be fuel for it. But no one is hurt and the building’s rebuilt and he gets to go back to work on the new machines.

At the end of the book, Uhlberg tells us some facts about his deaf father and how he grew up, and about working on the printing press of The New York Daily News. There’s also a blurb about ASL. And at the very back is directions to make your own printer’s hat out of newspaper.

What I didn’t understand in this and in his memoir is.. if they needed a newspaper hat to protect their hair from the fine mist of paper dust and ink.. what the heck were they inhaling?!

Deaf Character: White man in his 30s, 40s. In this book, it says he can’t speak. Uses ASL.
Relationship to main character: Well, he really is the main character, but the narrator is his hearing son.
Genre of Book: Historical (of course)
Reading Level of Book: Picturebook

Anyhoo, this takes place ‘Long ago in Kampuchea’ and I have no idea where that is. From the pictures, I’m guessing somewhere near India and/or China. Yes, that’s how globally aware I am. The author was born in Vietnam, so it may be Vietnam.

Lotus is born deaf and mute. Seriously. Doesn’t make a noise as a baby. So, that’s rather unusual there. And her mother invents a sign to show her her name is Lotus, like the flower. But in general, they don’t seem to communicate a whole lot. Lotus doesn’t have any friends. Then they go off to visit a big temple and they see the temple dancers and Lotus starts dancing. So they decide that’s a sign. She’s to be a dancer. So she learns to be a dancer and dances and somehow she magically acquires friends this way. The end.

You may have guessed I don’t think much of this book. It’s just sort of all… eh.

Deaf Character: Little girl, Asian (Vietnamese?). Doesn’t lipread, speak, read, write, or sign. In short, no language.
Relationship to Main Character: She is the main character! (I know, shocker, right?)
Genre of Book: Historical
Reading Level of Book: Picturebook