Doctor Strange vol 2: Remittance by Mark Waid (Writer), Javier Pina (Penciler, Inker), Andres Quindaldo (Penciler), J.P. Mayer (Inker), Roberto Poggi (Inker), Keith Champagne (Inker), Brian Reber (Colorist), Tim Campbell (Colorist), Andrew Crossley (Colorist), Carlos Lopez (Colorist), Rachelle Rosenberg (Colorist), Kevin Nowlan (Artist), Butch Quice (Artist), Daniel Aeuna (Artist), VC's Cory Petit (Letterer)

In the previous book, Stephen Strange has lost his magic and goes out into the universe to find some more.   He runs into a woman, Hanna, in a prison and they help each other escape and go out looking for magical artifacts as she is an arcanologist and that is what she does.  After saving the Earth from an invader Stephen feels its time to go home.  That he has learned enough magic, and some newfound humility, along the way.

When he arrives he finds someone who looks just like him occupying 177a Bleecker St. House.  This person turns out to be Casey, his apprentice who he finds out from a demon who has his memories sacrificed herself to save some people and lost her soul. Then in an attempt to gain it back, she dies saving Stephen.  He went mad and lost himself looking for her.  Someone came to take over the world and he was needed to take care of that so he put away his memory of Casey in order to concentrate better on the problem at hand.

Now Casey has a body that looks like his and she has his powers and is out and about looking for powerful weapons to take down Stephen Strange.  It turns out that Mordo is behind this but who is behind Mordo?  Who really took away Stephen's powers?  And will they be able to save the Earth again, this time from the Faltine and Dormammu who want to take over the Earth?  Dormammu wants to take over the Faltine too.  He's going to need help, which comes from a familiar place.

This is a fantastic comic that really explores the world of sorcery and how it really works.  Magic has it's price and Stephen is going to learn that the hard way.  The art is wonderful and inventive and includes an homage to past Stephens for the 400th issue of Doctor Strange which is a special issue.  This is a great book and I give it five out of five stars.

Listed On Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Strange-Mark-Waid-Vol/dp/1302912348/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ESUK6UVIFN2Y&keywords=doctor+strange+vol+2&qid=1567171532&s=gateway&sprefix=doctor+strange+vol+%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

Murder By the Book: The Crime That Shocked Dickens' London by Claire Harman

 On the early morning hours of May 6, 1840, Lord William Russell was brutally murdered by having his throat cut to the point that his head was almost decapitated. His coins, rings, money, and some silverware were taken.  In the course of the investigation by the police, they will find that his valet Francois Courvoisier, a native Swiss who had come over to make a living in service, would be the main suspect.  The missing items would be found where only the valet had access to.  And no one came in from the back door and the front door was locked.

But what makes this case so interesting is that people blamed a book that was turned into a hit play for what happened.  The book was called Jack Sheppard and it was written by William Ainsworth who was friends with Charles Dickens who both wrote books in the genre of the Newgate Prison style where it celebrates criminals and the life only to have them pay for their crimes in the end. Dickens book that was written in this style was Oliver Twist.  The middle and lower classes loved these books and with books being cheaper to produce and lending libraries being available more people were reading more books.

But with the death of Lord Russell and the attempt on Queen Victoria's life by Edward Oxford people were seeing these books and the plays they were based on as dangerous and were demanding that they be stopped.  They believed that these things caused people to go astray. And it didn't help that young juveniles claimed that they were wanting to be Jack Sheppard.  Even Courviseier would claim to be influenced by the book in one of his many confessions.

This is what Edgar Allen Poe had to say about the Jack Sheppard book: "His marvels have a nakedness which repels. Nothing he relates seems either probable or possible or of the slightest interest.  His hero impresses us as the merest chimera, with whom we have no earthly concern, and when he makes his final escape and comes to the gallows, we would feel a very sensible relief, but for the impracticality of hanging up Mr. Ainsworth in his stead."

Also the book contained songs and one of the songs "Nix My Dolly, Pals, Fake Away" goes like this: "In a box of the stone jug [Newgate Prison cell] I was born,/ Of a hempen widow [widow of a hanged man] the kid forelorn,/ Fake away! [Carry on thieving!]/ And my noble father, as I've heard say,/ Was a famous merchant of capers gay [Dancing-Master, i.e. hanging on the scaffold],/ Nix my dolly, pals, fake away, [Never mind, pals, carry on thieving]/ Nix my dolly, pals, fake away."  If you go to this address you can hear the tune it was placed to on a music box: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnLyRB10vg.

This was an interesting book that shows how things haven't really changed as today people blame mass shooting on violent video games and violent movies when they are no more to blame then Jack Sheppard was to blame for the death of Lord Russell or the attempt on Queen Victoria's life.  But with the attention, the case gave these Newgate Prison books they soon stopped being published.  Will that happen to the movies and video games?  I somehow doubt it.  We have changed as people and evolved and believe in the first amendment.  This book ushered in the Victorian era, a very prudish era in England where they placed fig leaves over the naked body parts.  I give this book four out of five stars.

Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Book-Shocked-Dickenss-London-ebook/dp/B07F5ZK1WC/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=murder+by+the+book&qid=1566995019&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Crosstalk by Connie Willis

Crosstalk is the "disturbance in a communication device's (radio, telephone, etc.) transmission caused by a second device's transmission, resulting in crossover, intermingling, and confusion".  Briddey Finnegan works at Commspan a cellphone company that is in competition with Apple.  She is dating Trent Worth who wants to have an EED done which is a brain surgery that connects the couple emotionally and allows them to feel what the other person feels.  It's like a step before asking her to marry him which she is anxious to allow happen as he is perfect and they could get an apartment with a doorman that blocks out her family that keeps barging in on her life.

First, there's her great aunt Oona who talks with a fake Irish accent and belongs to the Daughters of Ireland and is hoping to find a "fine Irish lad" for her nieces.  Then there's her sister Kathleen who dates losers and is always asking her opinion on her boyfriends.  Then there's her sister Mary Kate who is overly worried about her nine-year-old daughter Maeve and believes that she is up to something when she is not.  Then there's Maeve who is an expert in electronics and is exasperated by her mother.

Her family is against her getting the EED and so is C.B. Swartz the man at her job who creates the apps for the new phone.  C.B. is an oddball who lives in the basement where there is no cellular service and doesn't own a cell phone.  But Trent manages to get them in to see the top doctor who does EED's early and she tells no one that she is having one done.  Once she has it done she calls out to Trent afterward and in her mind C.B. answers telepathically.  It takes a while for her to believe that he didn't bug her room and that she is actually talking to him telepathically.

C.B. tells her that those with the pure Irish genes have the possibility of being telepathic.  But C.B. is keeping something from her.  And when she begins to hear more than his voice she freaks out because she can't keep the tidal wave of voices from overwhelming her and he rescues her.  Soon Briddey finds herself falling for C.B. but wonders if he feels the same way.  And then when she hears from Trent telepathically things really get complicated.

This is a wonderful book that you want to never end and it is very long so you almost get your wish.  The characters are both loveable and hateable.  And the quotes at the beginning of each chapter is perfect.  This is an amazing book with a creative spin to it and I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

-Jerome K. Jerome (The Liars’ Club)

But seemingly a lad with a kind heart isn’t good enough for her. It’s ‘compatiable’ he’s got to be. Compatible! ‘Kathleen’ I said to her, ‘if there aren’t times when you’re wantin’ to break his head in, then ‘tis not love you’re in, ‘tis only a romantic dream.’  You lasses shouldn’t be wantin’ a man who’s ‘compatible’, but one who’ll be there when you need him.

-Connie Willis (Crosstalk p 140)

Thankfully the rest of the world assumed that the Irish were crazy, a theory that the Irish themselves did nothing to debunk.

-Eoin Colfer (Artemis Foul)

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

-Antoine de Saint Exupery (The Little Prince)

Three o’clock’s when every doubt and regret and guilty thought bubbles up out of your subconscious to plague you. “The dark night of the soul,” F. Scott Fitgerald called it.

-Connie Willis (Crosstalk p 348)

There’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse.

-Irish Proverb

Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.

-Anotony Trollope (The Bertrams)

To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.

-Daniel Parick Moynihan

 Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Crosstalk-Novel-Connie-Willis-ebook/dp/B00WPQ98JG/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1KSGVUGYAEZ5U&keywords=crosstalk&qid=1566822871&s=gateway&sprefix=crosstalk%2Caps%2C175&sr=8-2

Star Wars Vol 8: Mutiny At Mon Cala by Kieron Gillen (Writer), Salvador Larroca (Artist) Guru-eFx (Colorist), VC's Clayton Cowles (Letter)

In the previous comic, the Empire has returned to Jedha in order to mine kyber crystals that might have survived the Death Star's attack of the planet.  But there are partisans who are resisting this and Leia, Luke, and Han are there to help them, but first, they must win over their trust.  Meanwhile, the Empire has the Queen Sho-Turin helping them because Vader threatened her planet with destruction if she didn't.  So she has provided mining machines to help with the mining.  Meanwhile, Leia and Han are trying to stop a new mining machine that is indestructible.  They can't blow it up, though one of them tries to on a near-suicide mission.  With Leia absent, Han is forced to take control of the ground forces, something he is not too comfortable with.  They succeed in destroying the mining machine on Jedha and foiling the Empire's plans with the help of Queen Sho-Turin.

In this comic, the Rebel Alliance really needs the Mon Calla fleet to help them out.  But the Mon Calla fleet is under the Empire's control and they would have to mutiny against the Empire to free themselves first, something Urtya who is now in charge of the Mon Calla people is not willing to risk.  But perhaps the King who is imprisoned by the Empire would be more receptive to their offer if only they could get him out of prison.

Leia appeals to Queen Sho-Turin to get the codes and the location of the high-security prison where the King is being held.  The only catch is that they need the Moff of the Mon Cala planet's biosignature to open a door there which means that they need him to be there with them.  But if they kidnap him the alarm would be raised and the prison alerted.  But chance happens that a shapeshifter is arrested and is willing to work for them once they free him.  He will pretend to be the Moff on Mon Calla after they kidnap him.

But just having the codes doesn't mean that the planet the King is on doesn't have its own defenses you must get around. And Luke jinks the whole thing by saying how easy it was to get in.  This was a great comic as it really explores the Mon Calla race of people and their ways.  And how you can't always trust that a lightsaber will save you or trust the people around you.  I really loved this book and give it five out of five stars. 

Listed On Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Vol-Mutiny-2015-ebook/dp/B07FK83JCN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=star+wars+vol+8&qid=1566561459&s=gateway&sr=8-1

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Set in a world called Discworld this first book in a series takes place on a planet that is atop four elephants that are atop a giant turtle.  The world is flat and it is believed that you can fall off the edges of it into nothingness.  There are gods who play with humans over a game of dice.  In this world there is a wizard named Rincewind who isn't much of a wizard seeing as he didn't finish his training much less go to school because he snuck into a secret room where a dangerous book was held and opened it and one of the dangerous spells leaped out into his mind causing him to be unable to remember any other spells.

Rincewind runs into an oddity, a tourist, from the mythical Counterweight Continent where gold is everywhere.  And this stranger, Twoflowers, is carrying a magic box made of sapient peartree that will follow and protect it's owner to the ends of the earth. Inside this box is lots of gold and he is giving it away to pay for stuff that costs much less than what is owed and is being taken advantage of. Rincewind offers his assistance and speaks a language both men can understand as Twoflower doesn't really speak the local language.  He just has a phrasebook.

Soon everyone in Morpork is interested in stealing the box of gold.  But they're in for a rude surprise when the box bites back.  Twoflower wants to see all the rough stuff.  A bar fight, heroes, dragons, and a whore house.  Rincewind at first obliges but then gets the feeling that he needs to leave because the town is in danger, so he goes to buy a horse and gets brought before the law for stealing a horse that he couldn't buy with the money he gave him.  The law tells him that the Emperor of Morpork wants to keep this man safe and that is Rincewind's job now and if he does the charges will be dropped.

Rincewind's feeling about the town being in danger prove prophetic because the whole town soon burns to the ground.  But he and Twoflowers make it out alright.  The two go on an adventure the likes of which Twoflowers is very happy about, but has Rincewind worried as hell because they keep running into dangerous situations but somehow getting out of them.  And Death is chasing Rincewind who was supposed to die on the day of the fire in another city but didn't.

I had very high expectations for this book as I had heard so much about the series and how wonderful it was.  Perhaps my expectations were too high as I was sorely disappointed.  I can't really explain why I didn't like the book, I just didn't.  Maybe it was my mood when I read it.  That happened when I read the first Harry Potter book for the first time.  I was bored and ended up putting it down to try again at a later date.  Maybe I should have done so with this book.  It ends as a cliffhanger and to find out what further happens to Rincewind and Twoflowers I guess you have to read the next book which is The Light Fantastic.  I don't know if I will read it or not.  Maybe this series deserves another shot after all I've heard about it.  Anyway, I give this book three stars out of five stars.

Quotes

No, what he didn’t like about heroes was that they were usually suicidially gloomy wgen sober and homicidially insane when drunk.

-Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic p 39)

Magic never dies. It merely fades away.

-Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic p 137)

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do.  Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth.  But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

-Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic p 213)

Listed On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Color-Magic-Novel-Discworld-ebook/dp/B000W9399S/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WU4RC7ZKPVGI&keywords=the+color+of+magic+terry+pratchett&qid=1566388900&s=books&sprefix=The+Color+of+ma%2Cdigital-text%2C184&sr=1-1

Gone Too Long by Lori Roy

Told from three different points of view, this book takes place in 2010 and 2018.  It tells the story of one girl and one woman who are connected by family.  Beth is taken from her home in 2010 when someone kills her babysitter who is Peurto Rican in an attempt to get the baby sitter's father to stop teaching at the local college in Georgia.  Since Beth is a witness and a white one at that the man can't kill her too.  So he takes her to a basement and keeps her captive.

Imogene is related to the man who took Beth.  Imogene has had to deal with being the child of her mother and another man who raped her mother.  She is the much younger sister to Jo Lynne and Eddie whose father Ed Coulter was the leader of the local chapter of the KKK.  Imogene's chapters take place in 2018 and she is still dealing with the death of her husband, Russell, and young son, Vaughn which happened five years ago.  She drinks too much and sleeps with a variety of men.

Imogene is asked by her mother to cut the electrical wire to her old dead grandfather's house that was used for Klan business.  Now that her husband Ed is dead she is stopping the Klan from meeting on her property.  When Imogene goes to the house and investigates she finds a young boy in the basement.  He is about five or six years old and believes that his mother will come back soon. That the man who takes her away always brings her back.  He lets slip that Ed is the name of the man who has been keeping him and when shown a picture of her daddy, Ed, he recognizes him as the man who has been keeping them.

Someone burns down the building the same night that Imogene finds the boy.  The third voice in this story is Tillie, Imogene's father-in-law and the owner of a pawnshop that Imogene helps out at by looking for any insurance claims on the items that are being sold.  Tillie left the Klan forty years ago because of something awful that happened one night that haunts him still.  He has a problem because Natalie, Tim Robithan's girlfriend tried to pawn two watches that belong to Tim's dad a big man in the Klan who is probably taking over now that Ed is dead since his son is a pretty useless man.

Interspersed between the voices are segments about the history of the Klan that are very interesting.  This is a powerful book that explores the life of being in the Klan because Imogene's brother and sister are both in the Klan, even though Imogene hates it with a passion just like her mother.  Beth tries her best to make the man who took her happy because she knows that's her only way of staying alive.  Her story is tragic and told with bold strokes that belie her tender years.  This is a great book that demands to be read. I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

 The man’s voice flows out of him like warm gravy. That’s what Mama says about a Southern man’s voice.  Like warm, peppery gravy that’ll leave you craving more and give you heartburn all the same.

          -Lori Roy (Gone Too Long p 17)

She told me to talk like I’m a rose, sweet and flowery, to men like this, but to be a cactus inside.

-Lori Roy (Gone Too Long p 315)

Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Gone-Too-Long-Lori-Roy-ebook/dp/B07K622478/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3S0CJIMZRJD1O&keywords=gone+too+long+by+lori+roy&qid=1566216299&s=books&sprefix=gone+too+%2Cdigital-text%2C185&sr=1-1

The Immortal Hulk Vol 3: Hulk in Hell by Al Ewing (Writer), Joe Bennett (Penciler), Ruy Jose (Inker), Belardino Brabo (Inker), Rafael Fonteriz (Inker), Eric Nguyen (Artist), Kyle Hotz (Artist), Paul Mounts (Colorist), and VC's Cory Petit (Letterer)

In the previous book Banner is walking toward home.  Alpha Flight is out to try to find him with the help of Lankowski.  But they're not the only ones looking for him.  They're just the first to find him.  The Avengers go out to meet him and find him changed from the old Hulk.  Tony feels the need to use the Helios Laser on him which would annihilate the area around him.  All that's left is a skeleton that the government takes.  Alpha Flight goes in search of him as a group of scientists experiment on him.  He breaks free and the government sends Carl Creel, the Absorbing Man after the Hulk to absorb his gamma radiation.  But things go wrong.  Someone opens the green door that the Hulk has been trying to keep closed.  So the Hulk and Jackie MacGee go through the door to hopefully seal it shut again.

In this book, when the Absorbing Man, Carl Creel, absorbed the Hulk what he absorbed was not his gamma radiation but David Banner so the Hulk is the Hulk, or the Devil Hulk all the time now.  He is in a Hellish nightmare dreamscape that is what is behind the green door.  The author uses this time to offer questions about the nature of God and Hell and Satan's role in things.  He also examines the Qabalah and Zurastism and the Bible for clues to the existential questions he asks about God and higher powers that be that the Hulk represents.  Does God have a Hulk?

Meanwhile, beyond the green door, Jackie meets up with her dead father and Hulk finds the bodies of Rick Jones and Betty's dad Thunderbolt Ross as well as his own father.  This book explores David Banner's early years and the abusive father that he had.  It also has Creel and another man looking for the Hulk in order to make things right.  Creel gives the Hulk back Banner and the door is closed.  Banner goes in search of Betty who tells him to come home.  When he does all hell breaks loose because there are those interested in killing him for good.

This book was incredible.  The art was glorious and gorgeous in the pictures it portrayed beyond the green door.  It was magic come to life on the page.  I still love the quotations that the author uses to introduce each issue.  This was a magnificent book and I really loved it. I give it five out of five stars. 

Quotes

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

-William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, “What is Hell?” I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

Love never dies a natural death.

-Anais Nin (The Four Chambered Heart)

You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

-Albert Camus (Intuitions)

Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Hulk-Vol-Hell-2018-ebook/dp/B07PFFKP59/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+immortal+hulk+vol+three&qid=1565956474&s=gateway&sr=8-2

The Lost History of Dreams by Kris Waldherr

This gothic ghost story takes place in England in the 1850s and concerns a daguerreotypist Robert Highstead whose distant cousin has died and left a request in his will that the person, Isabelle Lowell, will inherit Weald House where she is currently residing if she poses for a picture with his coffin inside Ada's Folly the stained glass monument he built for his dead wife.  Robert's brother John warns him that Isabelle might not want to pose for a picture and he is being sent there to convince her to do so.  Robert is haunted by the vision of his dead wife Sida's ghost and feels that his cousin, the famous poet Hugh de Bonne should be laid to rest next to his dead wife whom he loved dearly.

Isabelle is visited by pilgrims who come to view the study where Hugh stayed for two weeks while the chapel was being built and contains some of his things.  She charges for the tour in order to cover the costs of running the house.  No one knows where Hugh is as he disappeared years ago after the death of his wife and baby girl who was born stillborn.  She does not welcome Robert as he is someone who wants something from her like the pilgrims.

But she agrees to pose in front of the chapel if he takes down Ada's story of her life and writes a published copy of the book.  So for five nights, he is to sit with her and write the story of Ada's life.  He quickly becomes enthralled with the story and with Isabelle herself who is Ada's cousin.  But is she really Isabelle? Did Ada and the baby really die?

This is a really good ghost story in the best gothic sense.  You come to care for the characters and hope that Robert can leave his wife and get with Isabelle, though it really seems to be an impossible dream.  Isabelle is a very mysterious character that acts cross with Robert one minute and is tender with him the next.  The story is a tragic one of two loves gone wrong, both Robert and his wife and Hugh and his and two men who blame themselves for their wives' deaths.  I give this book four out of five stars.

Quotes

Hope, Mr. Highstead, is the most unsatisfying of meals. It grants the appearance of substance but melts like ice in the mouth. 

-Kris Waldherr (The Lost History of Dreams p 37)

Books were easy, unlike people.

-Kris Waldherr (The Lost History of Dreams p 40)

Happy are those who courageously defend what they love.

-Ovid

I believe the only thing that haunts us are our regrets.

-Kris Waldherr (The Lost History of Dreams p 93)

“The measure of a man’s life is his work,” John explained. “The measure of a man’s life is in who he loves,” Robert countered.

-Kris Waldherr (The lost History of Dreams p 240)

 Listed On Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Lost-History-Dreams-Novel-ebook/dp/B07GNT9ZPZ/ref=sr_1_3?crid=30ETXI8ZHB7OO&keywords=the+lost+history+of+dreams&qid=1565783074&s=books&sprefix=The+Lost+history+of+dr%2Cdigital-text%2C1288&sr=1-3

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor joins the school year late because she has spent the past year at a friend of her mother's house because her stepdad hates her and kicked her out.  She has younger siblings: a sister and three brothers.  They all live in a small house that belongs to Ritchie, her stepdad. There isn't even a door on the bathroom and all the kids share a bedroom with one set of bunk beds.  Park on the other hand lives in suburbialand with his own room with a waterbed and his own phone (Eleanor's family doesn't have a phone because Ritchie can't afford to pay the bill. He drinks it away.) and has a younger brother and his parents are still together and love each other very much.  Park's life isn't perfect, though, he has a dad who is tough on him and makes him too nervous to get things right when he is teaching him whether it is a new taekwondo move or to drive stick which he insists on him learning before he can get his driving license.

Eleanor arrives on the bus in all her weird glory in 1986 and finds no seat to sit on the bus. Park lets her sit with him, reluctantly.  He's not all that interested in getting picked on for allowing this and he walks on thin ground with the popular kids in the back of the bus as it is for being into punk music, comic books, and is half Korean.  But soon a friendship forms over comic books as she reads along with him on the way to school.  And he makes her a mixtape of the Smiths and Joy Division for her to listen to because she's never heard them before since they aren't played on the local radio station.  He even keeps her in batteries as he makes her more mixed tapes and loans her his comic book collection.

But she knows that the love they are starting to feel for one another can't last because if Ritchie or her mom find out that she really isn't going to her friend Tina's after school but to Park's house they would kick her out of the house again.  But that doesn't stop her from going. Neither does the fact that Park's mom doesn't like her because she dresses and looks weird and she knows who her parents are.  On top of that Eleanor must deal with being bullied by Tina and her crowd during gym.  But she gets some unexpected support from two girls who decide to be her friend.

This book brought back memories of my own time riding on the bus to school during this same time period of the eighties.  I had a big french horn to keep me company on my seat and to encourage others to sit elsewhere.  I didn't have my own romance like Eleanor and Park, but I was always the odd man out at school like Eleanor was. The only difference was I wasn't bullied much because I was in the band which provided me some protection.  This book is so relatable and believable and you root for them to last against the odds.  This book is more than about first love. It's about fitting in where you don't and finding that one person that makes you complete.  This is a great book and I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

That’s a voice that arrives on a chariot drawn by dragons.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 15)

Brains love poetry. It’s sticky stuff.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p22)

Eleanor was right: She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 165)

“Never trust a man, Eleanor!” “Especially if he hates to dance.”

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 205)

The Impala might not look pervy on the outside, not like a fully carpteted custom van or something—but the inside was a different story. The front seat was almost as big as Eleanor’s bed, and the backseat was an Erica Jong novel just waiting to happen.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 273)

Listed On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Eleanor-Park-Rainbow-Rowell/dp/1250012570/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28XUW9C2PBOEJ&keywords=eleanor+and+park&qid=1565609071&s=gateway&sprefix=elea%2Caps%2C175&sr=8-1

Doctor Strange Vol 1: Across the Universe by Mark Waid (Writer), Jesus Saiz (Artist), and VC's Cory Petit (Letterer)

Doctor Strange's magic has left him and he can't even do a simple spell.  He also has no idea what happened to cause him to lose his magic.  So, he goes and talks to Tony Stark who gives him a spaceship to explore the universe in and hopefully meet other sorcerers to ask for their help.  Tony steers him toward the Shi'Ar but his ship crash lands on a hostile planet and he gets thrown in jail.

Soon he meets Hanna, an alien who is an arcanologist.  She uses magic and science to combat problems.  She is hunting across the universe for objects of magical power and her ship works fine so they escape the prison and head out into the universe together.  Stephen begins to relearn magic through the artifacts.  He also becomes the cocky man he could sometimes be which becomes a problem.

Hanna wants to explore a Krull settlement where she knows someone, but Stephen is against this as the Krulls hate humans.  They also run across a made Time Stone that doesn't completely work.  He makes her forget they found it because he promised it to her for her help in getting it.  Then he hides it away.

Waid has written a comic that is intriguing in that you wonder what happened to Steven to cause him to lose his magic in the first place.  The art is amazing and creative.   This is a great book and I give it five out of five stars.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

This book picks up with the death of Dumbledore and Harry, Ron and Hermione receiving an inheritance from him.  Ron receives his deluminator, Hermione his original copy of The Tales of Beetle the Bard in runes, and Harry the golden snitch he caught at his first Quidditch match as well as the sword of Gryffindor.  Dumbledore left Harry with the task of finding the Horcruxes and destroying them.  He has a fake one that is signed R.A.B. with a note that he replaced the real one with this fake one, but who is R.A.B.?  And where are the Horcruxes?

After Fleur and Bill's wedding, the three set off for 12 Grimmauld Place and find out that R.A.B. was Sirius Black's brother Regulus and that he had taken the locket but Mundungus Fletcher stole it along with some other items of value.  When they talk to Mundungus they find out that Dolores Umbridge has taken the locket in exchange for not turning Fletcher in.  So they break into the Ministry of Magic using polyjuice potion to disguise themselves as Ministry workers.  They take the locket from Umbridge by force and barely escape the Ministry without getting caught.

Thus begins what Potter fans call Harry Potter and the Very Long Camping Trip.  Wearing the necklace seems the best way to protect it, but wearing it makes the wearer the most miserable self they can be.  Ron is the most unhappy with everyone and it gets worse when he wears the locket.  They don't know how to destroy the locket but suspect that the sword of Gryffindor will do it. But where is the sword? In a fit of rage, Ron leaves them alone and goes back home they believe.

They decide to go to Godrick's Hollow because that is where Harry's parents are buried and where Dumbledore spent time as a young man.  There is an old woman there whom Rita Skeeter got to talk about Dumbledore's youthful indiscretions in her book about the Dumbledore no one supposedly knew.  While there the woman turns out to be Nagini in disguise and tries to kill Harry.  Hermione casts a spell that backfires across the room and breaks Harry's wand.

Harry is having nightmares about Voldemort doing horrible things to Olivader and then to Gregorivitch, both wandmakers, in order to find a wand that he can use against Harry.  When Harry finds out about the Deathly Hollows being the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility he realizes that he holds the cloak and wants to go after the Deathly Hollows, but Hermione believes they need to go after the Horcruxes.

Which way will Harry Potter go and will Ron find his way back to them?  This book is one of the best of the bunch in the series.  Even the camping trip which can be a little boring doesn's slow it down.  Not everyone makes it out alive in this book as a great battle commences that kills a lot of people off.  But others will die before then and you will mourn them all.  Rowling really throws her all into the last half of this book to make it the ending we all want to see.  I give it five out of five stars.   

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The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman

People in the time of Kings and Queens used to believe that they were going to be poisoned so they had tasters to taste their meals and servants to kiss their seats and napkin and bedchamber sheets as well as their clothes.  This all with not knowing that poison is very difficult to absorb in the skin from cloth or paper, a way in which some poisoners did try to kill with.  All the while they were poisoning themselves with their lead silverware plated in gold and their cosmetics and hair tonics.

They used unicorn horns (narwhal horns found on beaches) to wave over food as well as gemstones, especially emeralds and diamonds to ward off the effects of poison.  Something they did use actually worked. Toadstone (really sharks teeth) mixed in with poisonous wine will neutralize the poison.  They also used bezoars which had no effect whatsoever. The Italian De Medicis had a box of antidotes that they gave out to friends that contained mostly scorpion venom.  The Italians had a reputation for poisoning people.   

They smeared ox dung on their face to get rid of pimples and dog turds on their scalp to stop a receding hairline.  They put arsenic, mercury, and lead in their cosmetics to make themselves look beautiful and it's probably what killed some of them.  King Henri II of France's mistress Diane de Poitiers body was found in 2008 and examined to find high levels of heavy metal poisoning in her hair indicative of use as a cosmetic which she was famous for using.  

King Edward VI of England, who lived from 1537-1553, was thought to have been poisoned by his enemies of which he had many including Bloody Mary and his Lord Protector of the Realm who had ruled in his stead when he was younger, his uncle Edward Seymour.  Edward, though, likely died of tuberculous something he had undiagnosed since he was a child when he got the measles and came back from that rather quickly. However, measles leaves one's immune system vulnerable to tuberculosis.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (from 1572-1610) was one of Italy's elite artists.  At age twenty he left Milan for the illustrious Rome after having apparently killed a man.  Caravaggio's art moved some people who saw his work's gritty realism with saints and holy figures with dirty feet.  But some thought this went against God.  Feeling unsafe from bounty hunters and the relatives of the man he killed he joined the Knights of Malta.  He left the organization after seriously injuring a man there and being put in a deep, dark hole as punishment.  He left for Naples in hopes of receiving a pardon for the death of the man in Rome, in order to come back to Rome.  While there he was seriously defaced after coming out of place that catered to men seeking men.  Caravaggio was a bisexual.  He set out on a boat ride to Palo a Spanish fort not far Rome. Insulting a soldier he wound up in jail being forced to leave behind a precious painting.  Hoping to get it back he rode a horse fifty miles to get back to the boat where his painting was and fell ill with a fever and stomach cramps and died there.  Did he die from heat exhaustion, poison as he thought, or something else? A body believing to be his was found in 1959 and it contained high levels of lead from his painting.  The lead in his body would have led him to act in ways that were wildly mercurial.  It was also believed that he had syphilis which was treated with mercury which also caused crazy behavior.  But whether he died of sunstroke or perhaps malaria that he picked up in prison is anybody's guess.  

Herman also examines Ivan the Terrible and his family who were believed to have died of poison, whether or not Salieri poisoned Mozart or whether he died from uncooked meat, Mademoiselle de Fontanges, the mistress of Louis XIV who was mixed up in the Royal Court's affair of the poisons, and Napoleon Bonaparte.  She also looks at modern poisoning which mostly seems to take place in Russia or by Russians the new Italians of poisoning.  This was an interesting book that delved into the mysteries of poisonings of long ago and today and how some people suspected of being poisoned by others were poisoned by themselves with the daily usage of their cutlery and cosmetics.  It was a bit disappointing to find so many thought to have been poisoned were not.   I give this book four out of five stars. 

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Ultimate Spider-Man vol 10: Hollywood by Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Mark Bagley (Penciler), Art Thibert (Inker), Scott Hanna (Inker), J.S. Smith (Colorist), Chris Elipoulos (Letterer)

In the previous comic, Norman Osbourne forms the Sinister Six with Doctor Octavius, Electro, Sandman, Kraven the Hunter and Spider-Man as its members.  He does this because they are all being held captive in a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. holding facility where Dr. Henry Pym is trying to rehabilitate them enough to stand trial.  Spider-Man isn't being held but once the others get out they convince Spider-Man to work for them or else they'll hurt Aunt Mae.  Spider-Man with the help of S.H.I.E.L.D. take down the Sinister Six and put them back in prison.

In this comic Spider-Man is dismayed to learn that Sam Raimi is making a Spider-Man movie with Tobey Maguire in it.  They even use actual footage of him flying through the air for the movie.  And Spider-Man isn't getting paid one cent for this movie.  Which is money he could use.  Mary Jane is the only one who knows his identity but with Gwen Stacey living in the house it won't be long before she finds out his secret and she blames Spider-Man for her dad's death even though it was an imposter dressed like Spider-Man who killed her father.

Doc Octavius broods in jail but not for long as someone opens the door where his arms are being held and he can still control them even with them not being attached to his body.  It isn't long before he hunts down Spider-Man for revenge for putting him away in jail in the first place.

I love how this comic uses the real-life making of the movie Spider-Man and how that effects Peter Parker.  The art has also come a long way and gotten really good. I think it's because they are no longer using a computer to do the coloring but an actual artist.  This storyline is amazing and I give it five out of five stars.

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