Book Review: Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams

This collection of stories continues the world of Watership Down, a popular and well-written novel from the 1970s about a group of rabbit who set out to establish a new warren for themselves. The stories are divided into three sections.

The first section tells stories from the legends of El-ahrairah, a semi-mythical rabbit who was a trickster and an adventurer. He goes way back, before rabbits had a sense of smell, so the first story tells how he obtained that gift from the gods. He uses his wiles to beat seemingly unbeatable opponents like a giant rabbit called King Fur-Rocious and a pair of foxes. The second section contains tales of El-ahrairah and his companion Rabscuttle, though Rabscuttle appears in some of the earlier stories and the tone of the second section is very similar. I'm not sure it really needed to be a separate section.

The third section gets back to the adventures of the Watership Down warren. Several stories are more like chapters of a longer narrative since the plots lead directly from one to the next. Seeing Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and the others in action is fun. The stories are entertaining though they do not have the epic sweep of the original novel. I still found them very entertaining and a fun visit with some old friends.

Recommended, especially for Watership Down fans (which should be everyone, because how can you not like that book?).

Random Bits of Philly 2021

Here's some stuff that didn't make its own post from out 2021 trip to Philadelphia!

We saw the outside of the Federal Reserve Building, part of the national bank.

Federal Reserve Building

Federal Reserve sign

Chinatown has a fun arch as well as some dragons guarding a parking lot.

The arch

It's safe to leave your car here!

We went to a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown, which was met by different reactions.

Exquisite!

Where are the chicken nuggets?

Near our hotel was a small park with a large globe but not many visitors.

Checking out the world

Pigeons were the only other visitors

We saw William Penn atop City Hall looking out for us!

Penn in the distance

Also near our hotel is one of the largest farmers' markets in the country, the Reading Terminal Market. The market was one end of the Reading Railroad. The inside was busy each time we went in.

Reading Terminal Market

A busy joint

Walking around on a rainy day meant that some of the tall buildings disappear!

Skyscrapers are more like sky-erasers

There are plenty of murals around town, adding a splash of color to the area.

Flowery goodness

City Hall did not disappear in the clouds, though we never got close enough to tour or get very good pictures. 

City Hall

The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is home to lots of museums and sculptures. We saw this sagacious fellow in a park across from the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.

Unidentified sculpture

Further on, we saw this statue of General Uriah Galusha Pennypacker. I'm sure you've heard of him. He joined the Pennsylvania Volunteers at age 16 to fight in the American Civil War. He was promoted quickly, rising to the rank of general before he was twenty-one! 

General Pennypacker

Just outside the Free Library is a memorial to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Memorial

The Free Library of Philadelphia

A memorial to American Civil War soldiers is further up the street.

Civil War Memorial

A large oval in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is home to an equestrian statue of George Washington. He is surrounded by four sets of statues representing the four major rivers in America: the Delaware (right next to the city!), the Mississippi, the Hudson, and the Potomac.

Washington on horseback

A weaver of nets

A catcher of fish

A nearby sign claims that Philadelphia was home to the first Thanksgiving Day parade.

History on a stick!

Just below the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a statue of Rocky, since he dramatically ran up the steps in his eponymous movie. The line to get a picture with the statue was quite long, so we just took some snaps from a distance.

Beloved local Rocky Balboa

Rocky: The Next Generation

We ascended the steps for more posing.

Rainy Rocky Routine

The museum has an impressive exterior and is one of the largest collections of art in America.

East(?) wing of the museum

Center with inoperative fountain

West (?) wing

View from the top of the steps

Near Independence Park is a cool hotel that has the sort of balconies I would hang out on if I could.

Why only three?

Wandering around the streets, we discovered this recreation of the house where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. You can't miss it because of their sign.

A house like in the good old days

The sign

The bas relief of a symbolic figure holding another smaller symbolic figure caught my attention.

Plus the owl on the chairback!

Since it was Memorial Day, some construction equipment had flags on display.

Yay, America!

Book Review: Usagi Yojimbo Book 6 by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo Book 6 by Stan Sakai

More adventures of the ronin rabbit as he heads back to his hometown...

The Bridge--Usagi crosses a bridge during a dark and stormy night. He thinks he sees something on the bridge but maybe it was just the lightening. He stops at the inn on the other side of the bridge. The customers and the innkeeper don't believe he made it across at night. A demon haunts the crossing and kills nighttime travelers. The next morning, one of the customers discovers a severed hand in the middle of the span. Usagi stays to see the problem through. The book has some nods to The Evil Dead, which I found surprising. It's a good, creepy story.

The Duel--Usagi winds up dueling a local swordsman in some random town on Usagi's way to his hometown. A bookmaker made a bundle of money off the fight, though he has his own ronin who will fight Usagi the next day, so the two (the bookie and his swordsman) can make even more money. The other ronin has been working with the bookmaker for a year in order to earn enough money to retire with his wife and infant child. Fighting Usagi turns out to be a bigger challenge.

Yurei--Sleeping by a river, Usagi has an encounter with a ghost or yurei. The ghost is an innkeeper's daughter who married one of the hired hands. When her father died, the hired hand took over the inn, played around on her, and finally killed her and threw her body in the river. In the morning, Usagi assumes it was a dream but does find an expensive hair pin. He goes to the local inn to trade it for a small meal. The innkeeper recognizes his dead wife's pin and thinks Usagi is trying to blackmail him. Through circumstances, justice is satisfied. This is another spooky and satisfying tale.

My Lord's Daughter--Usagi tells a tall tale of his saving the daughter of his lord from an ogre and the ogre's minions. The story is short and fun and not too deep, just some light entertainment.

Circles--The last half of the book is taken up with this story where Usagi finally arrives home. Things are the same and totally different. His old master has new students; his childhood sweetheart has married the chief of the village and has a son; said chief is still a rival to Usagi. Usagi plans to settle down but bandits have been raiding. On their last raid, they kidnapped the child. The head of the bandits is an old foe of Usagi's who wants the ronin dead. The story shifts from action to drama quite deftly and has a fine melodramatic ending.

Recommended, highly for fans of the series--the storytelling is as good as always and the art matches well.

Cute Kid Pix June 2021

More photos that didn't make their own post...

My youngest had a campout with his Cub Scout pack. We had a campfire and slept overnight, then headed home. It was short and a good start to camping out (which he hadn't done before).

Fire!

A skit in action

Not awake yet

The pack also had its bridging ceremony, where the scouts move up to the next level. My tiger turned into a wolf!

The "bridge" in bridging

Getting proof he has finished the Tiger requirements

Yours truly and some of the former Tigers

Two of four scouts can focus on where the camera is

For Father's Day, we went to Old Ellicott City. Manor Hill Brewery has a tavern just off Main Street. The tavern has a beer garden across the street. We went there and I enjoyed some brews. The dog-faced beer was best, I am thinking of buying some more. It's a special brew, so I'll have to buy it directly from the brewery. 

My Old Friend was awesome (even with spooky red eyes)

Amber Ale is a classic from Manor Hill

School ended but, with Covid restrictions, not much happened in person. We are enjoying the summer break so far.

Movie Review: Tenet (2020)

Tenet (2020) written and directed by Christopher Nolan

As if a spy's life wasn't hard enough, a man (John David Washington) doing his information gathering job gets involved in a much larger, earth-threatening conspiracy...that involves time travel. He has a mysterious employer (who isn't identified till the end of the movie, so no spoilers) and teams up with some seemingly random people: Neil (Robert Pattison), Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), and Priya (Dimple Kapadia). Each has an important but different connection to the conspiracy and more or less helps him along the way. He has to go through a lot of philosophical conversations and action sequences before he can solve the mystery and save the day.

This movie involves a different sort of time travel from other films. In it, objects and people can be "inverted" where they start traveling through time backwards. Clocks go backwards, bullets go back into guns, and dialogue would need subtitles if it weren't for film narrative tricks that fix that situation. The concept is really intriguing to me but as the film narrative tricks become more numerous and occasionally very hard to believe, I started losing patience with it. The characters do mention free will and the possibility of changing events but don't get deep enough into either idea to make the film as intellectually engaging as Inception.

Visually, the movie is amazing. Combining characters moving forward in time and backward in time works well for the most part with scenes depicted from both points of view. Reverse filming is hardly anything new in cinema but it's used well, if obviously, here. The action sequences are fun and exciting and frequent. The soundtrack was a little overbearing--my subwoofer was working overtime and occasionally drowning out dialogue, a problem that's come up before in Nolan films. The actors were all good even when the film cared more about advancing the plot than it should have.

Overall, I'm glad I saw this film and enjoyed parts of it. Other parts were harder to enjoy and it reminded me too much of Inception, which follows a similar story arc and also has a highly-imaginative premise. Inception was just so much better.

Mildly recommended.

Book Review: The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales by Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth

The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth, compiled and edited with a forward by Erika Eichenseer, translated with an introduction and commentary by Maria Tatar

Franz Xaver von Schonwerth was a lawyer with a successful career in the Bavarian royal court of the mid-1800s. His interest in local customs and folklore had him doing lots of research and interviews in local towns. He published a book called From the Upper Palatinate: Customs and Legends. The book included a small portion of his research. In 2009, Erika Eichenseer found hundreds of fairy tales that von Schonwerth had collected and had been stored in a municipal archive. Some seventy of the stories are collected in this book.

The stories run the gamut from the familiar (a Bavarian Cinderella and Pied Piper) to the bazaar (the title story has a lad pulling a nail out of a cave wall which transforms an old hag into a beautiful princess). A lot of familiar tropes are present: sets of three (princesses, sons, brothers, magical animals, tasks, etc.), enchanted castles, fairy folk of various kinds (including mermaids!), royalty, commoners (farmers, bakers, and tailors seem very common), good-hearted fools, magical animals, and wicked step-parents. The stories have not been edited to make them more literary like in Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm. There's quite a few shifts in narrative or logic that are unexpected and unpredictable. Even so, the stories are enjoyable and very short (most are two pages). 

The translation manages to have that timeless feel without having archaic language or sentence structure. "Once upon a time" never shows up but there's plenty of "they lived happily ever after" endings, sometimes even literally that. Tatar has produced a lot of other good works on fairy tales, so she has the scholarship and the skill to translate the tales well.

Recommended.

Book Review: Resident Alien: The Suicide Blonde by P. Hogan et al.

Resident Alien: The Suicide Blonde written by Peter Hogan, artwork, colors, and letters by Steve Parkhouse

See my review of the first volume here.

Doctor Harry is back and on another case. Recovering from his leg wound in the last volume, a temporary replacement for the town doctor in Patience is hired by the mayor. This frees Harry up to investigate a seeming suicide. A young blonde woman checked into a hotel and was found dead from poisoning. The room had an open champagne bottle and a suicide note. A quick search for evidence throws doubt on the assumption of suicide and suspicion on the town mayor, who had visited the blonde the night of the death. Harry knows instinctively that the mayor is innocent and investigates on his own, taking him to the dead woman's college in Seattle.

The story is entertaining if more lurid than the last story. The mystery was interesting enough but it's really only appropriate older kids. Some of the side plots from the last story (like his Native American nurse who has figured out he's from outer space) get some attention but not enough to move that part of the story any further. Until the very end of the book.

Mildly recommended.