The Lucky Elephant--March, 2010

TITLE:Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
AUTHOR: Roddy Doyle
PUBLISHER: Penguin
LENGTH: Novel
GENRE: Nostalgic mainstream fiction
COST: $15.00

The life of a ten-year-old Irish boy named Paddy Clarke, as seen through his eyes…

To call this Booker Prize-winning novel aimless misses the point of the narrative. It might seem like that. Ten-year-old boys tend to be self-involved, with attention spans that wander before they’ve crossed the street, so choosing one as the eyes and ears of the story’s events might seem counterproductive. It’s not. It’s the whole point. What Doyle has done here is recreate the rhythms of what it’s like to be a child, especially one on the verge of adolescence. He captures that driving need for escape and fun and combines it effortlessly with the vestigial beliefs in innocent hope that are so typically child-like.

TITLE: The Sweethearts' Knitting Club
AUTHOR: Lori Wilde
PUBLISHER: Avon Books
LENGTH: Novel
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $7.99

In the town of Twilight, Texas, people take their romances – and their knitting – very seriously. There’s the Sweetheart Tree, Twilight Bridge, the knitting club comprised of women who married their high school sweethearts…and in the middle of all of it, Flynn MacGregor, the girl next door who’s been dating the boy next door now sheriff for the past ten years. Flynn has turned down Beau’s marriage proposal three times already, always with an excuse that other people need her – her alcoholic father, her dying mother, her wild sister – but deep in her heart, she knows the real reason. The bad boy who stole her heart in high school, Jesse Calloway. The one who went to jail the day of graduation for possessing cocaine. The one who just got released after ten years, determined to come back to Twilight and claim what always belonged to him…

TITLE: Polar Reaction
AUTHOR: Claire Thompson
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 63k)
GENRE: Contemporary gay menage erotic romance
COST: $5.50

When a sudden storm strands three research scientists in their Antarctic compound, suppressed desire and feelings bubble to the surface between them. Tuck has wanted Brendan for a year, Jamie has been attracted to both Tuck and Brendan, and Brendan doesn’t want to admit he just might want another man. The storm is giving them time to explore. But what happens when it stops? What if it never does?

Latter Days is the 2004 film written and directed by C Jay Cox. It's about a young man, Aaron Davis, who is assigned to Los Angeles on his LDS Mission. While there, he meets and falls for Christian, played by Wes Ramsey. Christian is very, very pretty. He's also quite shallow and has a bunch of anonymous and hot sex. He places a bet with his friends that he'll be able to "convert" one of the four missionaries who moved in next door, and he's immediately interested in Elder Davis.

TITLE: Naked Came the Manatee

AUTHOR: Brian Antoni, Dave Barry, Edna Buchanan, Tananarive Due, John Dufresne, James W. Hall, Vicki Hendricks, Carl Hiaasen, Carolina Hospital, Elmore Leonard, Paul Levine, Evelyn Mayorson, Les Standiford

PUBLISHER: Ballantine Books

LENGTH: Novel

GENRE: Humorous mystery

COST: $12.95

Off the coast of Miami, a manatee named Booger collides with a pair of would-be criminals and fouls up their delivery of a severed head that looks alarmingly like Fidel Castro. From there, however, things only get weirder, as twelve other Florida writers construct this mystery round-robin style...

TITLE: A Cotillion Country Christmas

AUTHORS: Carolynn Carey, Amy Corwin, Barbara Miller, Cynthia Moore

PUBLISHER: Cerridwen Press

LENGTH: Anthology (roughly 70k)

GENRE: Historical romance

COST: $7.99

A collection of four romance novellas within the holiday period, set in the Regency English countryside...

I have to admit upfront, historicals are not my genre of choice. I’m not a history buff, and the periods that do intrigue me are very specific. The period of English history as specified in this anthology isn’t of any particular interest to me, but I was a fan of one of the authors and bought this specifically to read her work. It’s hard to admit, then, that the anthology as a whole, including the novella I was highly anticipating, is a rather disappointing presentation.

I've never seen Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer. I'm not sure why. Maybe CBS traditionally scheduled it on Monday nights, and we only watched football on Monday nights in my family. Maybe my parents hated us. It's hard to say. I never felt like I was missing out on anything, though, and I don't really have any desire to rectify the situation. Besides that, we all know the story by now. But I bet you guys didn't know that there's another Rudolph-themed film. One I used to watch quite regularly. It's from 1976, and it's called Rudolph's Shiny New Year, and it's one of Red Skelton's very last performances. Despite the fact that it's a Rankin-Bass film, like the first one, when the movie does a flashback to explain Rudolph's tumultuous past, it does not use clips from the first one. In fact, the story is told with new animation to accompany the famous song. Due to that, there's actually no connection between the first movie and its apparent sequel.

Before I start discussing the movie itself, I want to give you a taste of its, well, insanity. This is a 20 second commercial for ABC's "newest" Holiday classic.

TITLE: Wolfsbane and Mistletoe
AUTHOR: Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthur, Carrie Vaughn, and others
PUBLISHER: Ace
LENGTH: Novel
GENRE: Werewolf anthology
COST: $24.95

A collection of fifteen Christmas stories, all with a werewolf theme…

From the people that brought out Many Bloody Returns comes a combination rarely seen in holiday fiction – werewolves and Christmas. Fifteen different authors provide stories ranging greatly in length and style in this anthology, but don’t expect much in the way of “hair-raising” as the tagline on the cover suggests. Most of these have some sort of a feel-good factor while introducing the reader to a wide variety of authors. It is, after all, a Christmas anthology.

Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is turning eighteen and is deeply disturbed by the fact that her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) will remain seventeen for eternity. While most people can push fears about their mortality off into the distant future, she has a constant reminder of her own aging. After Bella gets a paper cut and sends one of the Cullen clan into a frenzy, Edward fears the danger she's in and finds the first excuse he can to skip town and avoid contact with her. While he's gone, Bella starts to grow closer to her friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). A vengeful vampire is also lurking about, apparently wanting to kill Bella while her protectors the Cullens are gone.

TITLE: A Hearing Heart
AUTHOR: Bonnie Dee
PUBLISHER: Liquid Silver Books
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 94k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $6.10

Catherine Johnson is the new schoolteacher in the small town of Broughton, Nebraska. When she witnesses a man getting hauled from the saloon and tied to a horse to be dragged through the streets, she races forward to stop them, succeeding in slowing them down long enough to get other locals involved. Jim Kinney is deaf-mute, communicating in only the most rudimentary ways. Most of the town thinks he’s stupid, too, but Catherine sees intelligence in him, and takes it upon herself to try and teach him to read and sign after saving him from the attack. Their friendship quickly escalates, their attraction undeniable, but their difference in social status makes Catherine wonder if they could have any kind of future…