Category Archives: Lilypad-Library

Books, blurbs, and bullrushes

Sprinting Through No Man’s Land by Adin Dobkin (2021) – BR00217 (2022) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 31 2022

Plot or Premise

The book provides an overview of the first Tour de France after WWI.

What I Liked

I was skeptical when I first chose the book. It showed up as a recommendation in a feed, but was I really going to read about the Tour de France? I am NOT a giant sports fan in general, and certainly not of cycling, nor even of the TdF, although I’ve always been impressed by the idea of it. A gruelling multi-day race, different terrain, and extensive coverage are truly, ahem, impressive. But would I like a book about the first one after WWI? In a word, yes.

For the actual racing part, I loved the story. Bits and pieces were pulled from reports of the day, old interviews with various people involved, etc. A historian’s dream to take something that might have been somewhat dry at times for secondary sources and turn it into a fun read. I could feel the struggle when a tire went flat, or the weather intervened, or they were racing on crappy surfaces. I admired the commitment to even compete given the timeframe, as much about recreating the old life from before the war as about creating a new normal. I enjoyed the contrast of what some of the regions had experienced even a few months previously.

What I Didn’t Like

I was surprised there wasn’t a bit more information about the previous TdF. As I said, I’m not a cycling fanatic, don’t know the whole history, and there was very little concrete detail on what happened before the war. It seems like a strange omission to talk about “what’s new after the war” without saying what was “old before the war”. Heck, even which version of the race it was by year!

However, as much as I enjoyed seeing what happened in various regions during the war, the overviews of the regions were often way too long and disconnected from the story. They were decent summaries but they read like a history textbook. Not exactly riveting and the main reason I’m docking it a star.

The Bottom Line

Good enough for even a non-cycling fan to enjoy

Directed by James Burrows by James Burrows (2022) – BR00216 (2022) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
October 30 2022

Plot or Premise

This is an autobiography of the director of multiple hit TV series over the years, including Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, and Will & Grace.

What I Liked

I have followed the blog of Ken Levine (MASH, Cheers) for a number of years, and he touted the biography of James Burrows in his blog on several occasions and noted that he’s even referenced in the book (minimally as it turns out). But it was enough for me to be interested. When I look at Burrows’ IMDB profile, I see tons of shows I’ve watched and enjoyed over the years: B Positive (3 EPs), Will & Grace (246 EPs), The Big Bang Theory (both pilots), Good Morning, Miami (1 EP), Friends (15 EPs), Caroline in the City (21 EPs), Frasier (32 EPs), Cheers (237 EPs), Night Court (1 EP), Taxi (75 EPs), Laverne & Shirley (8 EPs), and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (4 EPs). So yeah, he’s experienced with a lot of successful shows, and he’s executive produced a number as well. And he has a wealth of stories to share about some of the shows. Some of them are cute and interesting even.

What I Didn’t Like

I think I was perhaps spoiled by the frank style of Ken Levine, and was expecting more of the raw experience behind the scenes. Instead, I got more of a distant view of all of the shows. For some of them, where he was an integral force, I felt like I could have been reading the biography of the guy in charge of craft services. There was very little meat. Once in a while, he dives in for a second, maybe ten times in the book, and about 7 of them are to seemingly take credit for something (like how the Friends’ actors all negotiated as a block for raises or how he comforted Mary Tyler Moore when she was going through a rough patch). In most of the book, the message is he worked with all wonderful fabulous people and it was all relatively smooth sailing all of the time, everyone was one big happy family.

I also found the start of the book really odd. He goes on at great length about how he didn’t want to be on Broadway, he didn’t want to be involved in plays and musicals, he didn’t want to have anything to do with that world because his father was a legend. So he went out of his way, or so he claims, to NOT be in his father’s shadow and do something else. Except perhaps for the first 25-30 years of his life where he did exactly that, being involved in plays and musicals, even in a couple of places getting hired as he was the son of a legend, and even working with his dad on some productions. Which in and of itself would be fine if he said, “I tried so hard and failed” to enter his father’s world, but no, it is written as if he really succeeded in being independent. Then he got his “big break” out West to do TV stuff, and he makes it sound like he was an integral part of work with Mary Tyler Moore. He did four EPs. I don’t know what other role he did on their shows, but they weren’t enough to be credited if he did other EPs as it suggests. Overall, I’d take almost any post of Ken Levine’s over this entire book about his fifty-year career.

The Bottom Line

Apparently, he worked on amazing shows and got to know fabulous people, and there was never any conflict or interesting developments anywhere.

The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton (1992) – BR00215 (2022) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
October 29 2022

Plot or Premise

Agatha Raisin retires from an active public relations life in London and settles down in a small town, expecting a relatively quiet existence.

What I Liked

The general premise is interesting, with a pie she enters in a contest ending up somehow killing someone. There are lots of characters running around, and once things settle down, it has the basis for a good universe to visit.

What I Didn’t Like

I struggled with three aspects of the story. First and foremost, Agatha herself is not particularly likable. She’s spent her career generally being oblivious to others, but now that she has moved to a small town, her intent is to get to know the locals and ingratiate herself. Except as she does, she basically does so rather offensively by trying to fake her way into winning a baking contest and condescendingly considering local efforts to organize anything as obviously underwhelming. Second, the whole murder is rather obvious to the reader, but even within the investigation, some elements are assumed away while ridiculous other parts are painstakingly investigated with no real avenue to pursue. And some of the information that people learn, with a weird out of place point-of-view shift at convenient moments, is held back. Finally, some of the characters are simple clichés, rather than fully formed. Supposedly that makes them “funny”, I just found them annoying.

I do have another complaint, but it doesn’t affect the rating. If it did, zero would be in the cards. The story is quite old at this point, and I was reading the first one from 1992. In the copy I bought, they included a short story as an extra, in honour of the 25-year anniversary of the book’s debut. Except there is no warning whatsoever about the story and what you’re about to read, and how it fits into the timeline other than it is present day. And yet, with no sense of spoiler, there are references to two characters and all that has gone on with them over the last 25 years. It’s not quite as bad as, say, reading the short story and it saying, “Oh, remember the case you had where the butler did it?”, it doesn’t give away murder mystery reveals, but rather it reveals the nature and extent of the relationship Agatha has had with two main characters in the series. I won’t even talk about it here, as they would be major reveals, and I confess I was quite dismayed to learn it from the shortstory. I am intending to read the whole series, but I’d rather not have known in advance.

The Bottom Line

Good start for a series, okay book on its own

The Lost World by Michael Crichton (1995) – BR00214 (2022) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
October 27 2022

Plot or Premise

Six years after Jurassic Park turned into a human slaughter by rampaging dinosaurs during a storm, the chaos theorist Ian Malcolm is back to join a rich academic in visiting Site B, a nearby island that was the production facility for the original Park’s dinosaurs.

What I Liked

The story is a bit of a retread of the original, with a bit of added mystery of what happened at the site that is now long dormant. There is a bit new in the ways that the dinosaurs interact and less about “how” they were created from the first book.

What I Didn’t Like

I have three significant problems with the text. First and foremost, Ian Malcolm supposedly died during the first book, and I can overlook his resurrection for this book, except after having experienced severe trauma from being near dinosaurs, he voluntarily goes back into the dinosaur world with no obvious sense of fear or even foreboding. He’s almost as naïve as the original Hammond from book 1. Secondly, the book reads almost like a documentary on the feeding habits of a group of cows. There is virtually NO menace for the first 60% of the book. Ian knows better, the rest may not, but mostly it is just a bunch of aggressive dinosaurs walking past the humans with nary a sniff. Lastly, there is a giant “mystery” of how certain animals ended up in a specific nest area. They couldn’t have got there on their own and other dinosaurs couldn’t have lured or moved them there. But in the end, the blasé explanation of how the dinosaurs died doesn’t answer how they ended up where they did. Nor any other history of the island. It’s still well-written, but there are some gaping plot holes that make no sense at all.

The Bottom Line

Good writing but about as exciting as watching cows eat grass

Artemis by Andy Weir (2018) – BR00213 (2022) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 26 2022

Plot or Premise

A young woman on a lunar base works to save money and build some capital.

What I Liked

The story seems incredibly realistic by focusing less on the tech details and mostly on the day-to-day life of Jasmine aka Jazz. She has a very basic life, scrambling to make ends meet as a porter / courier around the station and trying every day to find any angle to get ahead just a little bit, regardless of the small corners she has to cut. She doesn’t want to be rich, she just needs to pay off a large debt and have a bit left over to improve her daily life a smidge. When a big opportunity comes along, perhaps her one and only chance to get out from under, she has to make a decision if she’s willing to sacrifice her scruples and become a full criminal. And then after deciding yes, how far her commitment to others remains.

What I Didn’t Like

Jazz is good at rationalizing cutting corners, and she makes the leap incrementally to becoming a full criminal, but some aspects of the switch don’t quite fit. Put simply without spoilers, I was reminded of the adage that if you sleep with dogs, you get up with fleas … once she commits, she gets her hands a bit dirtier in other areas. Realistic that if she was in for a penny, she was in for a pound, but the big reveal near the end of the nature of the debt doesn’t really justify everything she did to get there.

The Bottom Line

Fast-paced story with portrayal of regular lunar life