I don’t pretend to be a professional reviewer, whether I’m reviewing books or movies. I can’t be a professional reviewer, in fact. No one pays me for book or movie reviews. Reviewing books is my way to give back to the community of readers and writers.  Reviewing movies is a service to readers of this blog, especially those who want to see what an average moviegoer thinks about a particular movies. OK, maybe I’m not an average moviegoer, but no one pays me to go to movies and write a review, so what I say never suffers from avoiding biting the hand that feeds me—I can say what I like. Bottom line: All my reviewing work is purely voluntary.

Maybe I have an advantage over other book reviewers because I’m an author, but I don’t dwell on the esoteric elements of storytelling for fiction, for example, or historical or other accuracies when it’s non-fiction. And I’m certainly not or ever want to be a Hollywood insider. (I do believe some of my fiction would make good movies, though. One person said my recent novel Rembrandt’s Angel would make a good movie. I can imagine how Hollywood would destroy that one!) I occasionally sample others’ reviews (not of the book or movie I’m reviewing, of course—just in general), and then I’m often surprised by how bad the reviews are that are posted, that surprise having many reasons.  When some of those are a negative reflection on the skills of the reviewer, I try to ignore the reviews. Why are those reviews even posted?

Let’s start with movies. I’ve come to ignore what professional reviewers say about a movie. First, when the reviewer states it’s a fantastic movie (max number of stars) or a dud (one star or less), I suspect there’s an agenda. That’s a kneejerk reaction dictated by experience.  (Sometimes I’m wrong.)  Most movies have positive and negative qualities.

If the reviewer complains about the plot, I wonder about the screenplay…or the editing (good stuff often gets cut, leaving only the mediocre flash-bang stuff the director thinks will sell the movie). If the reviewer complains about the acting, I wonder about the casting person who chose those actors. For example, I’ve railed about choosing Tom Cruise to play Jack Reacher; I even think he’s a bad choice to play Ethan Hunt. His acting is a problem, but it’s not the major one. The problem is that it’s impossible to think of him as Reacher, no matter how well he acts.  Someone made a major mistake in casting him in that role, so why shouldn’t a movie reviewer say so?

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[Wow! Installment #60 of this regular feature. That means I’ve reviewed 60+ movies (I sometimes review two). I guess Hollywood has made some money off me. I try to give you an alternative to the blathering reviews you find elsewhere—almost anywhere, in fact. Like in my book reviews, I tend to speak my mind, but no really rotten tomatoes thrown either. I don’t give a star-ranking. You’re smart enough to figure that out if you need one. I hope my reviews help you decide what movies are worth your time…and money!]

Beirut. Brad Anderson, dir. So the cops for “political correctness” wanted to boycott this movie because it makes Jews and/or Muslims look bad? FYI: it also makes Americans look bad too. (Among those cops you’ll find ye olde Huffington Post, for example.) I object to all that call for political correctness in this case. First, this movie’s period setting is the chaotic decade when Lebanon in particular and the Middle East in general were bloody battlegrounds with people living in squalid conditions and fearing for their lives among war’s rubble—most of that hasn’t changed much. It’s appropriate that no one comes out of this movie looking squeaky clean!

Second, I’m probably just as progressive, if not more so, as any of the cops pushing political correctness, but I’ll not buy into the ubiquitous blathering of the far left that sweeps so much dirt under the rug. There are good and people there (and everywhere), and good and bad groups too.  Why hide either the bad or the good (yeah, I know, the media thrives on telling us about the bad–they say no one is interested in the good).  I’ve lived abroad and seen a lot of the good and the bad. Faux liberals in the U.S. smugly sit on their back patios drinking their cocktails and preaching political correctness, but too many of them don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world and can’t imagine the horrors. Contrary to the media, they also want to emphasize only the good (mind you, there’s plenty of that).  It often appears that they worry more about pushing their definition of political correctness over solving humanity’s problems.  It’s almost as if political correctness has become their overarching mantra, and damn historical correctness if it doesn’t fit their definition!

OK, now that’s off my chest, what about the movie?  (A few spoiler alerts might be in order for the following.) This movie starts with the almost obscene contrast between a lavish American diplomatic fiesta in a palatial house amidst a Beirut and Lebanon torn by civil war. The house belongs to Mason, a weak something-or-other diplomat who works closely with the CIA, played by Jon Hamm in an admirable performance. He has his party interrupted by terrorists. Just before that, we learn that the thirteen-year-old Arab boy his wife and he want to adopt (admirable on their part–some of the good?) has an older brother who’s a terrorist. During the terrorist attack, Mason’s wife is killed and the nice Arab boy is kidnapped by the older brother.

Fast forward ten years to when Mason is called back to Lebanon. A major CIA operative, Mason’s good friend, has been abducted, and the terrorists have asked Mason to broker an exchange.  The terrorists can sell Mason’s friend to anyone for all the many secrets he has in his head, exposing multiple CIA agents working in the Middle East in various questionable agendas (hmm, isn’t that what Scooter Libby did?), but they want to exchange the abductee for that brother who is missing. The CIA and Mason think the equally nefarious Israelis have the brother, but the Israelis don’t have him but would like to kill him. PLO terrorists and various of their and Lebanese factions, the CIA, and Mossad are not among the good guys—in fact, there are no good guys! Mason comes across as a flawed main character; a female CIA agent, played ably by Rosamund Pike, comes across as a flawed secondary character. Their characters are about as good as they come in this movie. The Arab kid the Masons wanted to adopt becomes a tragic figure as everyone gets caught up in this mess created by competing agendas, power struggles, and a Middle East run amok.

This is an old-style spy thriller, a la John le Carre.  The sepia tints at the movie’s beginning signify the sadness of it all more than backstory. We must show and understand this horrible past in the Middle East if we are going to perform the true politically correct miracle of achieving a true peace in the region. Faux-liberals who don’t like us to do that aren’t true progressives; they’re idiots who wallow in their “politically correct” ideologies and agendas without accomplishing a damn thing. It’s a complex problem. The more people who understand that objectively, the more likely something positive will actually happen. Nothing will be accomplished if we use the excuse of political correctness to bury our heads in the sand.

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[Note from Steve: Due to circumstances beyond my control, there’s been a problem for readers wishing to make comments on articles in this blog. That problem has now been solved, so comment away! I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.]

Great Spring Thaw Sale. Every two weeks, with one week overlap, starting April 1, one of my books will be on sale at Smashwords (the overlap means that there are usually two books on sale). (Yes, it’s been going on…sorry about that, but it was announced on my Home page and elsewhere.) Take advantage of this to download some entertaining spring reading. Each ebook will be on sale for $1.99, regardless of the normal retail price. Access my author page for the entire list of ebooks. (Remember, Smashwords offers ALL ebook formats, including mobi format for Kindles.) Use the coupon code for the ebook on checkout.

In libris libertas!

“The older I get, the more acutely I am aware that the vast majority of what is written remains unread.”—Jhumpa Lahiri, writer and Pulitzer Prize winner for Interpreter of Maladies, a short story collection. This quote is disconcerting to me as both a reader (so much to read, so little time to do it) and as a writer (probably most of what I write remains unread, but I haven’t read Ms. Lahiri either). We can search for causes of the decline in reading and literacy; there are many. In this article, I’ll focus on one most pundits neglect—it might not be the most important one, but it is relevant.

First, let’s back up what Ms. Lahiri says with some statistics: a U.S. government survey just released records the percentage of people who read for pleasure or self-fulfillment on a typical day (funny that they don’t consider the pleasure of reading self-fulfilling, but that’s the government for you), by age groups: ages 15-24, 9.4%; 25-34, 12.0%; 35-44, 13.9%; 45-54, 15.3%; 55-64, 25.5%; and 65+, 38.3%. Does that surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me. Compare the extremes: 9.4% for 15-24-year-olds (so much for the Harry Potter revolution making millennials into readers) v. 38.3% for 65 and over. The trend goes down going from older to younger people. That doesn’t mean that young adults are illiterate; it just means they don’t read. If they go manage to get through school, they have to become literate, right? Especially if we call cellphone acronymese English: “HRU WU M4C” (this translates to “How are you? What’s up? Meet for coffee?”—they usually don’t care about question marks).

What’s causing this negative trend? It’s more complex than the simple age groupings indicate. I submit that expensive book prices contribute to the decline in reading and literacy. People seek out entertainment options that are less expensive in general, and the younger they are, the more entertainment outlets they have to spend their limited cash on. The pundits rarely focus on the fact that prices can drive entertainment choices. Is it the ticket prices driving young people away from Broadway shows? Do young couples prefer to watch pay-for-view because taking the whole family to the movies almost requires a second mortgage? And, if you’re a reader (the stats say most people aren’t), do you prefer reading three to five ebooks from indie authors or small presses than reading and expensive one from a major publisher? And, if you’re not a reader, would you be more likely to become one if ALL books were reasonably priced? (If the general answer is no, we’re in big trouble!)

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Yes, the Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries series is now a trilogy…just as soon as I publish #3, that is (hopefully before 2018 ends). My muses (banshees with Tasers) listened to Mary Jo and the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhances Cybernetic Humans”) and hounded me to resolve everything that readers might consider unresolved at the end of the second book: What’s the future of the MECHs?  Do Mary Jo and Mario ride off into the Silicon Valley sunset?  Do the American and Russian governments leave things be?  This excerpt doesn’t answer any of those questions (no spoilers here, but there are some hints); you’ll have to read the novel to answer them (the answers might not be what you expect). This excerpt just gives you a taste of the action.

Goin’ the Extra Mile

Copyright 2018, Steven M. Moore

Chapter Eleven

I felt like an undercover cop, but was getting more focused; wanted to find out where Mario and the kids were. Maybe I was walking into a trap. Thought the Chinese wanted me for the same reason those Russian and U.S. teams had wanted me—they wanted to know where the M.E.C.H.s were. They thought I knew.

You might wonder why everyone wanted the M.E.C.H.s.  After all, there’s nothing special about fancy prosthetics anymore. But my cyborg friends had enhanced capabilities, namely interchangeable parts and super strength. The special technology also involved many direct connections to the human brain that made everything work so well together.  Put some smart armor on a M.E.C.H. and you have your super soldier.  Of course, M.E.C.H. tech would be good for a lot of other more benign applications too, but superpowers didn’t seem to care about them.

A.C.V.E. East, the East Coast branch of my current employer, and a Pentagon general hadn’t wanted to leave it at that either. They wanted to do a partial frontal lobotomy and install a chip in my M.E.C.H. friends to see if they could eliminate all the M.E.C.H.’s moral scruples and allow them to program their super soldier for each battlefield assignment.  As far as I know, we’d closed down that last U.S. effort too. Guessed the Chinese had heard about it, though.

The triad’s Seattle shakedown game was about the same as you’d expect with old East Coast mafia families. They targeted any small businessperson they could. Cops moved in, they moved out…temporarily. Or they bribed cops, I suppose.  Good old-fashioned thuggish entrepreneurship.

I spent five days riding around with a bunch of clowns whose only job was collecting protection money, about as old-fashioned as you can get. The clowns were a diverse lot, but they were all thugs.  Heard that the insurance Weh Li offered sometimes worked too—when a street gang hit a drugstore for prescription opioids, that gang was erased.  Zap!  Zap!  Food for the fish in the harbor!  The thought made me yearn for steak.  Wondered if my cop friends who had pointed out where to find Weh Li appreciated that.  Probably.  They’d warned me.

Knew I was in way over my head.  Undercover cops often live on borrowed time.  Figured they also had training on how to survive in their assignments and to know when to bail.  They were collecting evidence against criminals.  I didn’t care about putting Weh Li and his triad minions away; I did care about finding my family.  That was my only concern.  If something happened to me, that was O.K., as long as I somehow saved them.

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Recently a house blew up in Hutchinson, Kansas—a tragedy caused when a car hit the house and broke a gas line. There hasn’t been much follow-up since then (news media aren’t good at that), but the tragedy sent me back a few years. I spent the summer I turned twelve with my grandfather learning what farm life was all about (growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley had already given me a good idea, though) and meeting relatives I didn’t know I had (and have sadly forgotten about). During that period, I visited Hutchinson. I don’t remember who the relatives were, but they were nice people who treated me well.

That news item started me thinking about worldlines. MS Word thinks that should be two words (MS Word makes a lot of mistakes, so every author should be on guard), but it’s one word in physics. A worldline is the path an object takes in space and time; the term was invented for relativistic discussions. In quantum gravity, quantum history is preferred, because all worldliness are possible, making up a bundle, but some are more likely than others, in a quantum-probabilistic sense. If your eyes have glazed over by now, you can reopen them. Except for the term worldline, I’ll discuss writing issues here, not physics.

Human interactions often leave human beings’ worldliness an entangled mess, a huge bowl of spaghetti, more so now than ever before because people travel a lot and interact on social media (OK, that’s not spatial, but it’s an interaction in time). The more entangled authors’ worldliness are, the better chance authors can tell interesting stories because a complicated and winding worldline in space and time implies authors have a lot of experiences that can influence their fiction. In brief, they have something to write about. They might be making it all up, but those experiences will have a positive influence on what they write. Even for sci-fi authors, because good sci-fi is about human experiences and relationships for the most part. They’ve experienced human situations and problems, so, even if their fiction has a futuristic setting, their characters’ worldlines will seem all the more human.

The length of an author’s worldline is important. We’ve all heard of child prodigies who write a full novel in their teens (I did that, but I was no prodigy—I don’t think it’s that hard either), but I can’t imagine that novel’s characters are anything but caricatures (my first novel probably suffered from that—I tossed it when I went to college—but I’d been to Kansas the summer before!). After all, children who are authors don’t have long worldlines. They don’t have enough experiences to make their fiction seem real (and I agree with Tom Clancy that fiction must seem real, even if it’s sci-fi or fantasy).

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Chappaquiddick. John Curran, director. Let’s assume for the moment that conservatives are right in their claims that this movie is an honest portrayal of the young Senator Ted Kennedy. So what? His legacy resides in what comes after the accident during his long career in the Senate.

Of course, the movie is NOT an honest portrayal. First, no one was there when Mary Jo and Ted went off that bridge and she died, so the portrayal of her drowning and Ted’s actions afterwards that night are unknowns—at best we can call the movie’s portrayal artistic license. Second, Papa Joe’s first word to Ted in the movie, “Alibi,” is even more fictional because the old bootlegger had suffered a stroke and couldn’t speak—we might even call this slanderous, but I guess you can’t slander a dead person, which includes Papa Joe and Ted and almost all the people portrayed in the movie. Third, Ted is made out to appear like a spoiled rich boy and mentally challenged.  While there’s no denying the first, the second is debatable. His many subsequent years in the Senate showed him to be a crafty fox who brokered many bipartisan deals that have bettered the country.

I wasn’t impressed by this movie—far from it! Its free interpretation of history amounts to character assassination. It’s also boring and poorly acted (a lot of that rests with the director, of course), with the actors’ portrayals parodies of the real persons emphasizing a few (mostly negative) character traits as if they were in an SNL skit, except there’s nothing humorous here.

I’m not varnishing this review with my own politics. In fact, I never liked the Kennedys. I don’t like political dynasties of any kind, and that includes the Bushes, Clintons, Gores, and Kennedys. And I don’t like how the American public treats political families like royalty (or the worshipping of the British royal family, for that matter). The Kennedys always were faux liberals (Ted’s NIMBY attitude toward windmills off Hyannis is a case in point) who exhibited a smug sense of entitlement they never deserved (and still do, I suppose). But they sometimes did good things, and Ted had a much longer career in which to do them, so I also can’t stand obvious character assassinations a la Fox News being disguised as real history and honest filmmaking.

So see this movie if you must, but don’t believe any of it beyond the name of the little island.  There are already good and honest biographies about the Kennedy family and Ted Kennedy, and a new one is coming out.  The movie is neither a biography nor a documentary; it’s the filmmakers making a character assassination to further a political agenda. Who financed this piece of trash anyway? I have my suspicions.

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Great Spring Thaw Sale. Every two weeks, with one week overlap, starting April 1, one of my books will be on sale at Smashwords (the overlap means that there are usually two books on sale). (Yes, it’s been going on…sorry about that, but it was announced on my Home page and elsewhere.) Take advantage of this to download some entertaining spring reading. Each ebook will be on sale for $1.99, regardless of the normal retail price. Access my author page for the entire list of ebooks. (Remember, Smashwords offers ALL ebook formats, including mobi format for Kindles.) Use the coupon code for the ebook on checkout.

In libris libertas!

(Elizabeth Bonesteel, Cold Between, Harper Collins, 2016)

Romance? Hard Sci-Fi? Space Opera? Mystery? Thriller? Many genre tags are possible for this novel. It has some of the quirkiness I put into my own sci-fi (but maybe not enough?). Forget the bad title and the romance novel cover (bodice ripper in space?). Chief Mechanic Elena from the Central Corps battleship Galileo meets pirate Trey in a bar…. Yes, that sounds a bit like a bad joke and also a bit trite. The Corps has a Shadow Ops division, and the pirate is a retired captain from another nomad (?) fleet, the Psi.

The story works best when the author focuses on chain-of-command human relationships between the crew of Galileo, whether ship-based or planet bound; it’s awful when she focuses on the romantic ones. In fact, the characters, including the main character Elena, aren’t very believable, and the author could have used better content editors because the plot flow is jumpy. All those possible genre tags imply that readers will be jerked around, which can be disconcerting at times.  But let’s analyze some of those possible categories.

Romance? Actually, there’s not much—thank you for minimizing my pain, Ms. Bonesteel! After that bar scene, there’s a lengthy and steamy orgy, an animalistic bonding between Elena and Trey. That’s the raciest part of the book, but there are sappy parts sprinkled throughout, and especially at the end (the author doesn’t seem to know how to end her novel after blathering on and on for 500+ equivalent pages).

Elena’s relationships, especially the one with Trey, diminishes this main character. She acts all too often like a pubescent rock star fan instead of a mature crewmember. The author should have built up the relationship with Trey slowly in the plot—the novel is long enough to do that.

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Amazon. I have many problems with Amazon, but package delivery isn’t one of them. Like most online retailers, they use many delivery services—the USPS is just one of them. These delivery services generally do a good job (I just wish more of them would at least ring the doorbell). They also make money from retailers, whether you get free delivery or not (it’s rarely free for the retailer). That keeps the USPS in business so the few of us who still send letters, birthday and holiday cards, and yes, packages, can still do so.

Every online retailer has to pay state sales tax for direct deliveries now; I guess the law also applies to affiliated retailers (Amazon has many), but that’s not Amazon’s responsibility—how could it be? Is Amazon putting brick-and-mortar stores out of business? Maybe. Toys-R-Us couldn’t adapt; Walmart and others are adapting. Blaming Amazon for USPS budget woes seems like a stretch, but the times they are a-changin’….

My problems with Amazon? They’re mostly book author-related. Readers are only affected because they’re limited to what they can see on their laptops and smart phones. That’s why libraries and bookstores will never be replaced, thank goodness.

Facebook. Many of you know I have a Facebook author page. It complements my website and includes mini-reviews of books, mostly classics, and some chat about my own books, including sales. I pay nothing for that service. But everyone reading this who uses Facebook should revise their security preferences. And beware of surveys. Your online security is important to me. Every reader is. We all have to help each other.

Old radio shows. They were the precursors of audiobooks, complete with sound effects. They were the precursors of podcasts too. Most of all, they were like fiction books because they sent imaginations into overdrive. Even though families often sat around listening to them, each person’s imagination participated and created her or his own little world.

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There’s a broad spectrum of readers who still prefer a print book—from young children just beginning their reading lives to young adults, and so on. Many readers avoid ebooks as a consequence. The situation is similar in the music industry where stereophiles still like their LPs even though the dynamic range and frequency range of CDs far surpass them—they just prefer analog to digital (or maybe don’t know the “sampling theorem”?). Many people also like to give print books as presents to their family and friends who are readers too.

From the authors’ and publishers’ point of view, this means there’s a market for print books, ebooks, and audiobooks. Many readers “read” in all these formats. That drives up book production costs if an author or publisher wants to cover the entire book market.

The ebook has the lowest cost, but it’s still significant. It only needs a cover, for example, and that’s used more as a display icon that can attract the potential reader. A print book needs front and back covers and a spine. The ebook is a computer file often less than a megabyte in length. A print book’s innards are ink and paper, and cost is often determined by the quality of both along with printing the cover on thicker stock. It’s therefore reasonable that a print book costs more. (What’s not reasonable occurs when a publisher charges almost as much for the ebook version as the print version. The Big Five often do this.)

There are print books where I can’t imagine ever using an ebook version. Take Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci (I recently reviewed it for Bookpleasures). Thick paper was used because of the many reproductions. It’s not a coffee-table book either—the text, nearly 1000 pages of it, far surpasses the space for the reproductions—is essential to the book. Other books requiring print versions are most science and technology textbooks.

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We’re all familiar with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. We can’t by any stretch of the imagination call that historical fiction anymore—he was duped into using research elements that were later proven to be incorrect—but there’s no denying that Da Vinci’s art plays a role. I recently reviewed the authoritative study of Da Vinci, his life, his art, and his science: Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson—you can find the review here.

There’s no denying the role art plays in Mr. Brown’s fiction. Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” is used to justify the theory of the “divine feminine,” although Isaacson obviously doesn’t support Brown’s interpretation of that painting.

Fiction is art, so it makes sense that pieces of art and their artists appear in fiction. From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Red-Headed League” and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, to Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy, a biographical account of Da Vinci’s contemporary, Michelangelo, art and artists have played important roles in fictional storytelling. Stephanie Storey’s Oil and Marble even combines Da Vinci and Michelangelo into one historical novel, for example.

Art heist stories or tales about the recovery of stolen paintings are also popular, and not just in fiction. The Monuments Men (2009) by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter became a major motion picture (2014). This non-fiction book tells the story of how the Nazis stole many pieces of art, more as investments to finance their lives in exile than any appreciation for the art itself. Many of the pieces were recovered. Others were found in an apartment in Munich where the son of a Nazi hoarded many wonderful treasures.

In The Collector (2014), I first conjectured that stolen artwork could be used as collateral to finance other crooked and evil schemes. I don’t think any other fiction author has broached that idea, but, with The Monuments Men, it’s somewhat implied because Nazis considered buying art like a 401(k) plan or pension to finance their retirement—there’s not much to any other explanation—and that’s just as bad  as rich people buying stolen art so only they can see it, not the general public, which seems to be the motivation most of the time.

In Aristocrats and Assassins, you first meet Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden. In The Collector, you first meet Inspector Esther Brookstone of London’s Metropolitan Police AKA Scotland Yard, who works in the Art and Antiques Division. As often happens, these two characters and my muses (really banshees with Tasers) conspired to make me write a novel involving both of them, which I was happy to do in good time. The result was Rembrandt’s Angel, where yet another Machiavellian use of stolen artwork for collateral is presented. (Note: it also portrays the fate of the villain from The Collector if you’re interested, thus connecting up the two stories a wee bit.  Of course, you don’t need to read The Collector to appreciate Rembrandt’s Angel or vice versa—all my novels can be independently read in any order.)

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