Finishing out my quarter-Cannonball with a little Odenkirk. Review dump 4. CBR14 reviews 12-14.

What better way to wrap up my little review party than with Mr Bob Odenkirk? We said goodbye to Saul Goodman this year, and Jesus, we almost said goodbye to Bob himself. Which would have been too much for me to take. So in between the final mini-seasons of Better Call Saul, I went on an Odenkirk binge. And I loved it.

First up, I listened to Bob’s memoir, Comedy Comedy Drama Drama, read by the author himself.

Spanning Bob’s life from his teens, and his obsession with off-beat comedy and his successful stalking of Del Close, to Better Call Saul and becoming an unexpected action star in Nobody (no mention of the heart attack here), CCDD provides and in-depth look at Bob’s successes and failures, his loyal friendships, and those he does not care for.

Bob seems to be aware that at times, he is not the easiest person to deal with. He admits when he has made mistakes, most notably in a chapter about Jack Black and Tenacious D, He knows he was difficult at Saturday Night Live, admits he burned pretty much every bridge possible (see more below in the SNL section of this missive), but made great contacts and met like-minded people.

I loved the stories about making The Ben Stiller Show and Mr Show, and the stories about comedy in the 90s. Of course he dated Janine Garafolo. Nothing could be more 90s than that.

It was really fascinating to learn about all of the projects that never saw the light of day, even after Mr Show, and how hard it was for him to give up control in order to achieve commercial success. He told a great story about how he basically single-handedly ruined the Tenacious D show on HBO, but Jack Black is a better man than he is and forgave him (he also tells an amazing story about Jack Black getting into show business because of Anne Bancroft, wow).

He also talks about how humbling it has been for him to work with amazing actors like Michael McKean (one of his earliest heroes from his time in The Credibility Gap), Rhea Seehorn, Michael Mando, etc.

I hope someday Bob writes a sequel telling us all about his lengthy second act in Hollywood, post heart attack and Albuquerque.

Once I finished CCDD, I picked up the most absurd audio book I could find: Hollywood Said No! This is simply Bob, David Cross, and their Mr Show friends reading scripts that they pitched and were rejected.

When I tell you that this was absurd, please know, I am not kidding.

The bulk of this audiobook was a reading of “Hooray for America!”, which I saw as a touring stage production in the early 2000s. It’s crazy. What if Mr Show’s GLOBO CHEM corporation sponsored and financed an idiot of their choosing to run for president? A generic American idiot, played by David, suddenly finds himself in the national political spotlight, while simultaneous crazy plots about living on the moon and a town filled with holes play out with the regular Mr Show cast of comedians. Everyone plays multiple, ridiculous roles, and the cast is clearly having an amazing time.

This is not literature. But if you like Mr Show, you’ll like this.

Lastly, I listened to the massive, 28 hour, updated version of Live From New York, the story of Saturday Night Live.

There is a lot going on in this book. It made me dislike so many people I used to enjoy, none more than Al Franken. It was like he went out of his way to be the worst. And made me like lots of people I never cared much for, like Chevy Chase, who didn’t excuse his asshole behavior, but tried to explain it.

I hated Jimmy Fallon and his fame obsession more than everyone else in the book. And I loved Jane Curtain and her indifference to it all.

It made me truly dislike and be amazed by Lorne Michaels. It also made me respect Dick Ebersol, and how hard he had to work to keep the ship afloat when Lorne was gone.

The book was told like an oral history, which was great, we got everyone’s input during every era of the show. And I mean everyone. Cast, crew, hosts, musicians, friends, family, everyone. But I hated the narrators. HATED them. I hated that they tried to sound like the people they were representing. That was rough.

Some great Odenkirk stuff in here. He took the writing job at the request of his friend Robert Smigel. He and Robert and Conan hit it off and wrote stuff that they liked, even if nobody else did. Bob was truly critical of the show and Lorne and how everything always has to be one way, and if you don’t fit into that way, you can’t succeed. Like Larry David, Bob left SNL badly, burning bridges and making enemies. But I think he made a lot of valid points.

The last few hours of the book were definitely difficult to get through. I don’t really watch the show anymore, I don’t find it as fresh as it once was. I know I’m older than the audience Lorne is looking for these days, but for a long time, I loved it, and the bulk of the book was really fascinating to listen to.

“And if one is never lost in life, then clearly one has never traveled anywhere interesting.” Review Dump 3. CBR 14 reviews 9-11.

Thanks to this group, 2022 was the year in which I discovered Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim, otherwise known as the Thursday Murder Club. The Club has a few other members. Donna and Chris, sometimes Bogdan, and even Alan. And I cannot read about their adventures quickly enough. Why aren’t there 90 books about these people?

For the very few who do not know, the Thursday Murder Club is a group of seniors who live in a retirement community and review unsolved murder cases in their spare time. They have Chris and Donna — a few local police officers who begrudgingly (and really, they are kidding themselves if they don’t say they enjoy it) — and Bogdan, who gets things done in ways that are in a legally grey area.

Thanks to Elizabeth’s previous (and current?) life in MI5 or MI6 (I can’t keep track), Ibrahim’s previous work as a psychologist, Ron’s former life as a union activist, and Joyce’s understanding of people and baking, the “club” always seems to accomplish what it sets out to do. While they have made many friends along the way, they have made enemies, too, like a local drug dealer and a police captain who thinks maybe he could be a famous author.

They eat cake, drink tea, and share lots and lots of wine. They go on train rides. They dress up and try to hide their identities. They go swimming in skyscrapers. They play chess and hang out with Russian spies. They play matchmaker and hang out with grandchildren. They are a god damned delight.

But not everything is wonderful. Joyce misses her late husband a lot. Elizabeth’s dear husband, Stephen, has dementia and is falling slowly away. Ibrahim has suffered a terrible attack and beating that left him both physically and mentally weakened. And they lose people around them almost every day. They realize that each new day is a blessing at their age, and are truly grabbing life by the proverbial horns.

And lets talk about Chris and Donna and Bogdan for a minute.

I have loved seeing Chris fall in love and slowly but surely change his ways to become a better man. No more candy bars for dinner, he’s trying to figure out what quinoa is.

I always enjoy the little interludes where Bogdan, a man who has done some questionable things but mostly for good reasons, plays chess and spends time with his friend Stephen.

And Donna is the best. She gets exasperated by her friends at the Thursday Murder Club, but still loves them. She’s always questioning some of the decisions she has made in her life that have led her to where she is, but see seems to be doing great, and I want the best for her.

SIDEBAR: have you read any of the Angelique De Xavier books by Christopher Brookmyre? Donna makes me think of Angelique. Those three books (A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away, The Sacred Art of Stealing, A Snowball in Hell) might be my favorite detective books in the world. END SIDEBAR.

This series is like comfort on a page. Richard Osman knows what the people want, and is happily giving it. I have read that Steven Spielberg’s production company bought the rites to this series…I’m not sure if its for a movie or a series, but I have high hopes for it.

Review Dump 2: My Favorites of the Year. CBR14 Reviews 5-8.

In case I don’t get around to finishing all the reviews I was hoping to before the deadline…I wanted to make sure to share my thoughts on my four favorite books of the year: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; This Time Tomorrow; The Candy House; and Sea of Tranquility. 2022 was an amazing year for books.

I preordered Sea of Tranquility and received in on release day. I finished it on release day too.

I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t love it quite as much as Station Eleven (because, quite frankly, I had been disappointed by The Glass Hotel and also by the HBO miniseries. Don’t @ me, I said what I said.). But I think it works as a beautiful companion piece to Station Eleven, and it makes The Glass Hotel better (as it clearly takes place in the same universe).

Told in chunks of time and place: going from early 19th century British Columbia, to two hundred years from now on the moon, back to the present, and forward again to 2400, and yet…all of the stories are related and revolve around a common moment in time.

Like Station Eleven, this one also includes a deadly pandemic, and the way St John Mandel described its onset felt like she was in my head:

“We knew it was coming and we were breezy about it…We knew it was coming but we behaved inconsistently. We stocked up on supplies—just in case—but sent our children to school, because how do you get any work done with the kids at home?”

The masterful and heartbreaking way that she ties all of these timelines and stories together was fascinating, and I honestly can not wait to see what she comes up with next.

On the same day I got Sea of Tranquility, I also received The Candy House (along with one more book, Anthem, which is in my bottom three books of the year). Another book told with a non-traditional narrative sense, I liked this a lot more than my previous Egan books. And like Sea of Tranquility, there were many callbacks to her previous work in this, mostly to characters and themes from A Visit From the Good Squad.

A cautionary tale about social media and technology, but also about the wonders of memory and thought. When it becomes possible to upload your entire memory and consciousness to a server and make your thoughts and experiences available to anyone that is also sharing, nothing is secret anymore. We follow the inventors and users of this amazing new tool as well as those who refuse to use it and protest against it.

Like Good Squad before it, it is nearly impossible to describe. Each chapter is told in a new voice, with a new style…some way more successful than others, but all original and interesting. We see the wonders of technology on one page, and the horrors and inherent loneliness that can be caused by using the same technology (and current social media) on the next.

If you liked Good Squad, you’ll love this.

My second favorite book this year was This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub, which I read right after her dad (the great Peter Straub) passed away. What if time travel was real, and instead of being able to go back and change history or experience a famous event, you simply went back and talked to your dad a few more times before you couldn’t?

Alice is turning 40. She likes her job. She likes her Brooklyn apartment. She has the same best friend from high school. She just turned down a marriage proposal because she likes her life as it is. And her dad is dying.

On the night she turns 40, she goes out to a bar in New York City that she hasn’t been to since high school. She gets so drunk that she decides to go back to her dad’s apartment on the Upper West Side (HOW HAD I NOT KNOWN ABOUT POMANDER WALK BEFORE?) instead of Brooklyn, and she passes out in his gardening shed. When she wakes up, it is the morning of her 16th birthday, and her dad is healthy and young.

What would you do differently if you could do something to help your dying father? To be able to spend just a little more time with him. Would those changes make you happier? Would they make your future life better?

I loved the slice of 1990’s New York City that was laid out on the page, and loved that Alice, while literally an adult, was also an idiotic teenager and she made some very very bad choices and decisions. I thought this was beautiful and funny and I loved it.

Another book with Tomorrow in the title, my favorite of the year: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. A story about two friends who make video games and what happens in their relationship — both personal and professional — over the course of 30 years or so.

I mentioned previously that it was like the Jake Johnson episode of Mythic Quest in book form, but it was more than that. It was a beautiful story about what it means to be a friend, to really be there for someone no matter what. How to work together, be friends, love each other, how to connect, and often, how to make mistakes so that the connection is broken.

There was a point in this book where I finished an especially moving chapter, put the book down, and simply wept for 10 minutes. And then I had to pick it back up and keep reading, I had to know what would happen next, even if I knew it might not be a happy ending. I didn’t expect a book about making video games to have that effect on me. The story of Sam and Sadie and Marx was one that I didn’t think I would become so invested in, and one that I had difficulty saying goodbye to,

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.” 

Mainlining Scotland to Make Me Feel Better. CBR 14 reviews 2-4.

First. I have been the worst reviewer this year. I kept meaning to sit down and write, because I have read more books than ever this year, but life just kept getting in my way. As it does.

And yet, here I am, in week two of a positive Covid test, and I’ve finished binging all the shows (SIDE NOTE: how had I slept on For All Mankind for so long?). No time like the present to get started.

A few weeks ago, I saw Ian Rankin tweet about a list of the best books of the year, compiled by some British someone who had curated a fine list of reading, but had omitted any and all romance and comfort reading. The list had been “improved” by fellow Scot Jenny Colgan, who listed some amazing books that she had read in 2022, and I fell down a rabbit hole of her twitter page and decided to read whatever my library had available by her.

48 hours and three books later, I came up for air, obsessed with Jenny Colgan and her cozy Scottish stories. I read The Bookshop on the Shore, The Christmas Bookshop, and 500 Miles From You. And my online library has a few more (but not a complete collection by any means), so I imagine I’ll finish a few more while I wait out my negative test result,

The books follow a familiar pattern: we have a main character who is not living their best life. They then for various reasons (no money, bad boyfriend, trauma) relocate to a very lovely Scottish location, and VOILA, 300 pages later, BEST LIFE.

The Bookshop on the Shore:

Zoe is a single mom living in near-poverty in London with a son who is almost four and how still doesn’t speak. Her son’s father is never around, never contributes, and is always off DJing and chasing Instagram likes. When his sister finds out that he has a secret son that he’s never told his family about, she gets involved, helping Zoe get a temporary position as a nanny and part-time bookseller (in a delightful book bus, which I guess is a plot of a completely separate book that I did not read in the correct order) way up north near Loch Ness.

The family that Zoe is meant to help out with is a mess, and the talk of the small town. The three kids are more or less wild — the mother is mysteriously missing, and the father is so busy working that he doesn’t have the time or the temperament to take care of them — so they do what they like, when they like.

Zoe finds herself a very unwelcome fish out of water. But she puts her head down and tries her best. And slowly but surely, both the town and the family find that she is exactly where she is supposed to be.

There are some dark parts — abandonment, self harm, mental health –here that I did not expect, but they were handled with care.

I literally waited 11 seconds after finishing that one to download the next one my library had.

The Christmas Bookshop:

Carmen has just lost her job working in her hometown department store. There doesn’t seem to be much for her at home, so her VERY SUCCESSFUL sister in Edinburgh sends for her, offering her a place to stay and a temporary job for Christmas, which Carmen begrudgingly accepts.

Carmen finds herself in her very pregnant sister’s beautiful home, surrounded by her nieces and nephew that she doesn’t really know (along with one horrible au pair), and a new job working in what she was told was a bookshop, but is more a room that has boxes of dusty books in it.

Again, no surprises here, but Carmen works hard at fixing both her relationship with her family and her new boss. Can she save the lovely bookshop? And what about the mysterious and handsome professor with the man bun?

This one had me googling flights to Edinburgh for next Christmas. How have I not been there at the holidays? I think that has been a grievous mistake.

500 Miles From You:

This one was a little different, but no less enjoyable. Lissa is a nurse barely getting by in London. She lives in government provided housing and hangs out with her best friend, the delightful Kim-Ange. One day, while out on a routine call, she witnesses the murder of a young boy that she knows, and after she is unable to save him, she quickly falls into the trappings of PTSD. The NHS decides to send her away on a job-share program, up to the very same town that Zoe lives in (from the first book mentioned above).

And who is Lissa job-sharing with? Cormac, a former army medic, now a nurse in the rural Scottish Highlands. He moves down to London and into Lissa’s flat.

Neither of them are comfortable at first with their new surroundings, and email and text each other (although they have never met) to better understand what the other’s life is like.

I could have done without the ridiculous last 10 pages, but other than that, I enjoyed the alternating narration and points of view. And was surprised by nothing, which is just what I wanted.

These books are like pure, 100% comfort, wrapped in wool and tweed, drinking hot tea, and wearing Wellies. Characters from previous books pop up and seeing them doing well was so soothing. I’m so glad Ian Rankin sent me in this direction. This was just what I needed.