I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: JAMES BROWN-“Soulful Christmas” (1968).

I enjoy the funk.  And I enjoy funking up The Christmas.  So this seemed like a song or album I should have been familiar with already.  And yet I wasn’t.  I fear I know too much of Brown’s less than stellar 80s work rather than his awesome 60s and 70s work.

So NPR played this song in the 2010 Holiday Show, and I was immediately grabbed by the funky bass of the song.  The song is all about how much Brown loves us and wants to wish us a Happy Christmas and New Year.

The song doesn’t really deviate from the funky bass line (and indeed why should it?) and it turns more or less into an improv.

The song gets a little weird around 2 and a half minutes when he starts telling us how much he loves his fans, well, because they buy his records and come to see his shows (that’s why he loves us so).  It’s a weirdly worded sentiment, but I’m sure it’s heartfelt.  Next year there may have to be more funk at Chritsmastime.

[READ: December 5, 2013] Sherlock Holmes and a Scandal in Bohemia

I’m always looking for interesting graphic novels for the kids, so I was pretty excited to see this Sherlock Holmes collection (although maybe more for myself than them).  In fact, C. didn’t seem that interested in them.  I was a little surprised as he enjoys detective stuff but when I read this first one I felt the language was a little stilted (for a comic book).  These are indeed the actual Arthur Conan Doyle stories just severely edited and truncated.  In other words, a lot of the story is cut out and yet the original language is still in place (at least I hope it is, I hope contemporary writers didn’t write the dialogue), so for young kids I think the wording is a little confusing.

The drawings are a little too simple for my liking as well.  They do effectively convey the story, but I didn’t like the very basicness of them.  I feel they make the stories seems a little more childlike than they actually are.

Having said all that however, I found the graphic novels to be a compelling introduction to Sherlock Holmes’ shorter stories (although not for my 8-year-old apparently).

This story introduces us to the infamous (in Holmes’ circle) Irene Adler, the woman who was able to best Holmes. It seems like a really odd place to start this series of books if you are new to Holmes, because Holmes more or less admits that Adler has outsmarted him, which seems to undermine his skills somewhat.  This story was the first short story to feature Holmes, but he had already appeared in two novels.  So readers were familiar with his skills, whereas contemporary readers might wonder what the fuss is about., which you don;t get to read here.

The story (in this condensed version) is fairly simple, the King of Bohemia is meant to be married.  But Irene Adler has a photo that he doesn’t want getting around because it could impact this upcoming marriage (I found this a little vague, and I wonder what young readers imagine here–sexting?).  He has tried all manner of ways of getting it from her (both legal and apparently not) but nothing has worked.

Will Holmes help?  Of course.  Holmes figures out the situation and creates a diversion.  It’s quite elaborate (and since he takes no money I often wondered where his funds for this kind of thing come from).  He realizes where the picture is hidden, but Adler has already figured out his plan.

This version seems to simplify he story a bit too much.  But what I did like was that at the end of the book there were questions for kids to ask and answer about how Holmes did it.  But again, with the story so simple, they’re not really necessary (unless, again, you are completely new to Holmes and detectives or, if you just like getting the answer spelled out for you).

I’m being a little unfairly harsh on the stories, after all, I did enjoy enjoyed them.  I think I’d rather just read the whole story instead.