Whenever I buy an old book, I debate whether or not I should read actually read it or not. I’m talking about yellowing books with frail spines and delicate aging newsprint paper that feels like it can disintegrate on your fingertips. A part of me wants to preserve these out-of-print books. The other part of me wants to read them. After all, what’s the point of a book if you don’r read it?
I felt confident that I could read the above copy of The Moneyman by Thomas B. Costain. The spine felt a little insecure, but I have a light touch when I turn the pages. I thought it was worth the risk. I generally like Thomas B. Costain books (though they sometimes focus on the part of the story I’m least interested in). I took the chance and halfway through the book…. Aaaarrrgh!
I knew there was a strong possibility/probability that the book could fall apart while I was reading it, but I have a history of handling old books. I collect them and old comics as well. I take pride in keeping my hands clean and turning pages with care. My mistake, however, was that I became too interested in The Moneyman. The print in those old books can get close to the left margins, and sometimes you have to spread the binding just a little and then… Aaaarrrgh!
The book didn’t have any monetary value, even before it fell apart, so it’s not like I flushed my family’s financial future away on a lame horse. I think I spent $2 on that crusty paperback from 1947. I guess I’m the only guy who still wants to read The Moneyman in 2025.
Ideally, I would have read the book AND kept it intact, but I guess this time I had to make the choice. Even though a book is meant to be read, and I actually enjoyed the experience, I kind of feel guilty. It’s like I destroyed an antique. Yeah, 1947 isn’t that long ago in terms of antiquity, but once I realized that The Moneyman was a good book, I probably could have found a newer copy.
I also have this old beat up copy of Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini, but I don’t think I’ll read it. I’ve learned my lesson.
BONUS BOOK REVIEW:
The Moneyman by Thomas B. Costain was a good book. I finished it (even after it fell apart in my hands).
If you can get yourself a newer copy of The Moneyman, I recommend it, especially if you like historical novels about the Renaissance. The book has a little bit of everything, from romance, to adventure to war to mystery to political intrigue. It even has a legal thriller aspect towards the end of the novel (but I think that’s the weakest part).
Just please find a copy that’s not in danger of falling apart.
*****
What do you think? Should I read this? Or should I leave it alone?
Despite the title, I’m not sure that Shmitty Cat should be classified as one of Dummo Mouse’s friends.
For more Sunday comics with Dummo Mouse and his friends, please see the following:
Dummo Mouse and Friends: Misleading Episodes
Comic Sunday: Dummo Mouse’s Not-Yet Wild Adventures
I know, I know! Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry isn’t meant for me. I’m not the book’s target demographic. I’m a guy, a dude who reads books about barbarians who conquer ancient worlds and perform deeds of toxic mascul… you get the idea.
But I still read books. The thing is, I start reading lots of books and don’t finish very many. Sometimes I write what I call a Literary Glance, where I begin reading a book but don’t even have the intention of finishing it. That’s not an insult to the book. There are a lot of books out there, and I like to see what different writers in different genres are doing, and reading online samples is a great way to get a feel for what’s going on in the book world.
I hadn’t read a romantic comedy in a long time (like, maybe, never), so I picked one that showed up on several BESTSELLER LISTS, a book called Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. I know nothing about it, except that it seems to a selection of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club (I’m not in her book club) and the author has written other bestsellers (because the cover says so). I like a cover that tells me something about a book without ruining it.
I started reading Great Big Beautiful Life on my phone’s Kindle, and I’ve gotten through the first chapter. The book is okay. It’s not my thing. The narrator is a female journalist Alice Scott who starts off the book meeting a reclusive former famous person named Margaret Ives. On her way out, she runs into a handsome (of course) Pulitzer-Prize winning (of course) writer and (what I assume will be) her future love interest, but that wasn’t the focus of the chapter, and I’m more interested in the writing than the story anyway.
As Alice waits to meet Margaret, Alice makes these observations about Margaret’s home (and I take some notes in parentheses):
*****
I take the opportunity to make a slow lap around the room, still buzzing and smiling big enough that my jaw has started to ache (misplaced modifier-makes it sound like the room is buzzing and smiling). I set my things (what things?) down on the low rattan coffee table and cross my arms to keep myself from touching anything as I wander. Art crowds (what kind of art?) every inch of the walls, and plants hang in clusters in front of the windows, still more in clay pots on the floor. A thatched fan (what kind of art?) twirls lazily overhead, and books-most of them about gardening and horticulture (that’s great, but what kind of art?)-sit in messy stacks and face down with cracked spines, covering every antique-wooden surface available.
It’s beautiful (what’s beautiful? the thatched fan? the room? the house? it’s definitely not the art!). I’m already mentally drafting how I’d describe it. The only problem is, I’m not convinced I’ll have a reason to describe it.
*****
In case you can’t tell, I wonder about the art. How can a journalist mention art crowding a wall without any details about what kind of art it is? I’m not even an art expert. The author could have made up a bunch of fake names for fake artists, and I wouldn’t have known (or cared). Instead, she mentions nothing, and I’m taken out of the story.
Maybe it’s just me. I’m a guy, and I don’t even ask for many details in my writing. When I write about shoes, I just call them shoes. I don’t name the brand or the type of shoe. It’s just a shoe. Maybe calling a shoe a shoe takes some readers out of my stories, and I don’t know it. How can I trust, a reader might think, a narrator who doesn’t identify the type or brand of a shoe?
Most people who mock romantic comedies (people also mock the genres I read) make fun of the formula, where an average-type female protagonist falls for an overly handsome, rich, high-status male. There might be some variation of the average-ness of the female protagonists and the wealth, success, status, and attractiveness of the male (or male substitute) love interest, but the formula is the same. Romantic comedies are like female fantasy novels.
My own novel The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy flips the formula and approaches the ‘romance’ from a male’s perspective. In The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy, the protagonist male is an average guy (average in almost every way) who falls for a hot chick and doesn’t care about her wealth or status or success. He just likes the way she looks and talks. Unfortunately, he doesn’t pay attention to her red flags, and he ends up paying a steep price for succumbing to his infatuation. That’s what happens when male fantasy meets reality.
Anyway, back to Great Big Beautiful Life.
Maybe the narrator mentions more details about the art when/if she writes her article… if she gets the job. I might not find out. This is just a literary glance. I haven’t read the entire book.
Like last weekend’s episode, today’s comic strip seems like a standard cat vs. mouse cartoon. But I’m telling you, things are going to change!
*****
For more Dummo Mouse, read Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Intro or Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Second Intro.
Or for a full-run of my older brother’s 1979 comic strip, start with The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for more Dummo Mouse and Friends!
When I was growing up in the 1970s, it was considered okay to beat your kids in public. I’m not sure it was ‘okay.’ It might have been frowned upon, but bystanders rarely intervened. To me, it looked like it was okay because nobody ever did anything about parents who beat their children in front of a bunch of people. Everybody would just stand and watch.
When kids get smacked around in public now, it gets recorded and police seem to get involved (I have no statistics to back this up). In fact, I haven’t seen a good child beating in years. By ‘good,’ I don’t actually mean that it’s good. I guess I should choose my words more carefully.
In the mid to late 1970s, I saw a bunch of public child beatings that made an impression on me.
I saw a young mom beat the tar out of her son in a movie theater lobby. This was probably 1978 (I wasn’t keeping a diary of this stuff). After a minute or two of slapping, screaming, and punching, she dragged the kid out to the parking lot and beat him some more. My best friend was more entertained by the beating than he would be by the movie later on. He just munched on his popcorn, kept his eyes glued to the spectacle with a grin, and wondered out loud what the kid had done. After the movie, the beating was all he could talk about. He was almost proud of having been a witness.
I saw a kid get beat down by his dad in a restaurant parking lot. The dad finished his beating by slamming the kid’s head against his car passenger window four or five times. At least, I think it was his dad. And I think it was his dad’s car. Maybe it was a random guy abusing a random kid and a random car. I don’t know. Nobody intervened. We just watched. I was just a kid and couldn’t have done anything, but my parents and a bunch of other adults just watched too. And then we went into the restaurant and ate. And nobody talked about it.
I saw parents beat their kids when I was a visitor in their homes. Thankfully, that didn’t happen often. That was always awkward, watching your friend get pelted by a mom or dad’s belt/strap while you’re trying to read a comic book or play a board game. What are you supposed to say to a friend after that?
“Wow! Your mom packs a mean swing!”
“I guess you just f***ed around and found out.”
“Your mom messed up the board. You want to start over?”
“You’d better put some ice on that.”
My own parents could get carried away with impulsive punishments, but I always knew I was safe when we had visitors. In fact, sometimes I invited friends over just to keep my parents on good behavior. At least my parents knew that some of their occasional impulse punishments were wrong. Public shame is an effective deterrent to some people. But a couple of my friends weren’t so fortunate.
A lot of what I saw would be considered child abuse today. Some of the stuff that happened to me would be considered child abuse today, but I don’t talk about it because I don’t want people looking at me like that. If you start talking about it, people look at you funny. I made that mistake once, so it’s better when you mention that you witnessed stuff rather than experiencing it. What I witnessed was worse anyway.
Nowadays, people seem more willing to talk about trauma than they were a few decades ago. Of course, when I was a kid, I couldn’t have cried in the car and then posted it on Tik-Tok. Social media didn’t exist. And if my dad had caught me crying in the car, he would have told me to stop or he’d give me a reason to cry. In fact, whenever I see a video of an adult crying about something in a car, my first impulse is to think, ‘What a lose….’ Aw, never mind. That’s just my upbringing. Maybe I should be more tolerant. Maybe I’m just jealous.
I’m glad people are more open about trauma than we were when I was growing up. A lot of adults stood around and watched (that still happens, but at least they record it, and the public/police reacts later), and people kept it to themselves (not so much anymore). I’m glad some aspects of abuse seem to be changing because a lot of the stuff that I witnessed when I was growing up is really tough to explain to people who weren’t there.
*****
And for more Old Things That Are Tough To Explain, see…
At first, it looked like my older brother’s Dummo Mouse comic strip from 1982 would be a typical cat vs. mouse comic strip, this time set in a junkyard. A few early comic strips like today’s might make it seem that way, but this one can be misleading. As we’ll see over the next few weeks, a cartoonist has to set things up before going all-out.
For more Dummo Mouse, read Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Intro or Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Second Intro.
Or for a full-run of my older brother’s 1979 comic strip, start with The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for more Dummo Mouse and Friends!
Even though I self-published my novel The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy over a year ago, I’ve never done an official book signing. By ‘official,’ I mean going to a book store, arranging a table of my books (with the store’s permission), and sitting there for a set amount of time as customers walked by. I’ve kind of wanted to do one just to see what it’s like, but I’ve seen too many lonely, awkward book signings. I didn’t want to take the time and effort to set everything up only to have a lonely, awkward book signing.
I mean, I really wanted to avoid the lonely, awkward book signing.
There are two major problems with the lonely, awkward book signing. First, hardly anybody shows up (that’s the lonely part). Also, a lot of indie authors are kind of an awkward people (that’s the awkward part). I’m not insulting writers or indie authors; I’m just speaking for myself and some indie-authors that I’ve seen in the lonely, awkward situation. Even if the author isn’t awkward, the situation itself might seem awkward.
My college student daughter has been supportive of my book, even if she hasn’t finished reading it (that’s a separate issue). She’s known that I have wanted to do a book signing but also don’t want to have a lonely, awkward book signing. Even though my daughter has a lot of my personality, she’s not awkward, and she’s a very good organizer. Together, we came up with a way to do a ‘fake’ book signing that wouldn’t be lonely.
Awkward? I can’t do much about that.
I’m not sure who thought of what in this process. I think my daughter suggested that I try a book signing at one of her university events, especially one that a lot of fathers attend. I wanted fathers to be there because my book seems to appeal to that age group more than it does for college-aged women (who normally read romantic comedy novels).
Several of these family weekend events have fundraisers, so one of us thought of using the book as a way to donate to the event’s charity. In that way, people wouldn’t just be buying a book; they’d be donating to the charity (we’ll do anything for the children). And we made it clear that all the proceeds go to the charity.
Last weekend, we implemented our plan. We set up the book signing table (with permission) slightly out of the way in a high-traffic area within a weekend university event. My older brother, the cartoonist of the comic strips on this blog, was also there to fill in the gaps if my brain suddenly shut down during a conversation (it happens). He’s the talker in the family, the guy who won’t shut up. He’s even more capable of making normal situations awkward than I am, but it’s usually harmless and funny. He’s never gotten punched out for being awkward, so I consider that ‘harmless.’ He might have been threatened a couple times in his life for talking too much, though.
Anyway, he was at the table as well. He’s read the book twice (even I haven’t done that!), so he’s more of an expert than I am.
In 90 minutes, we sold 16 copies of the book and raised a decent/respectable amount of money for the charity that the event was fundraising for. We gave away 2 books, and 1 was stolen. I was actually proud that somebody stole my book. To be fair, it was just sitting on a random table, and somebody might have just taken it out of curiosity. The last copy was a backwards misprint, so I kept that one out of circulation. Those flawed first print variants can be worth a lot in 50 years.
At one point, a line actually formed. Most of the ‘customers’ asked questions about the book and the process. I tried to write more than just my name. I’ve been to a couple ‘official’ book signings, and the author just signed his/her name. It was a little impersonal. I understand that, though, because there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of people in line for the ‘real’ authors, so writing anything personal would have been nearly impossible.
After one hour, I was already tired of signing books and talking to people. It makes sense. If I can barely handle a five-minute birthday party, then a one-hour book signing is a stretch for me. I probably won’t do a real book signing. Even though I like my book, there probably won’t be a demand for a book signing, and I’m not going to force the issue.
I know how to handle future lonely awkward book signings that I run into at local book stores. In the past, I’ve avoided other authors’ lonely, awkward book signings (I’m not proud of that). Now I know to ask questions and have an actual conversation with the author. Normal people (if they exist) already know how to ask questions during a book signing without having experienced one before, but I guess that’s part of what makes me awkward.
From now on when I see an indie-author book signing, I’ll talk to the author and ask questions about the book, how the author gets his/her ideas, what the author plans to do next. I won’t talk about my own book (unless the topic of how to avoid lonely, awkward book signings comes up). The book signing is for the author. And even if I don’t purchase the book, the author will probably appreciate having had the conversation.
I’m not sure if our book signing last weekend was real or fake. It was real because I signed the books and put effort into it. It was ‘fake’ because it wasn’t at a book store and all the money went to charity (people weren’t really buying the book to buy the book). I’m not insulting the book signing. I think the ‘fake’ book signing was much more successful than any real book signing that I could have done. At the very least, we avoided the lonely, awkward book signing. We might have also accidentally discovered a book signing template that other indie authors (without a network) can use.
And hopefully the money that was raised will do some good!
Thank you, daughter! Thank you, brother! And thank you to everybody at the university who came out and supported the event!
HOW TO AVOID A LONELY, AWKWARD BOOK SIGNING: SHORT VERSION (maybe this should have been at the top of my post)
If you’re an indie-author, here’s how to avoid a lonely, awkward book signing:
* Choose a busy event or busy location.
* Sell the book cheap.
* Have a talker who attracts people and/or keeps conversations going.
* Donate the proceeds to charity.
And here’s how to get a signed copy from the trunk of my car.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. Free delivery in the United States!
$10.00
For more about The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy, see…
Aaarrrgh! I Found Mistakes in My Recently Published Book!
The Main Character Of My Novel Is Not A Simp!
The Evolution of a Book Cover- The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
I’m not sure if the Star Trek humor in this Dummo Mouse comic strip that my older brother drew in the 1980s still holds up. Back in 1982, there was only the original Star Trek series with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy from the 1960s, and maybe one Star Trek movie. The other series like The Next Generation were years (or decades) away. Still, almost everybody back then understood Star Trek references.
Nowadays? I’m not so sure.
If you like your 1980s comic strips to NOT have Star Trek references, try Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Intro or Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Second Intro.
Or if you like a comic strip that’s somewhat like Star trek, start with The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for more Dummo Mouse and Friends!
The Classics Illustrated comic book version of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas was probably my gateway comic book to the classic novels. I read this (above) comic book when I was about 6 or 7 years old. Somewhere around that time, the 1970s move adaptation of The Three Musketeers came out, and the combination of the comic book and the movie (with its sequel The Four Musketeers) made me almost obsessed with the story. This was pre-internet and pre-cable television, so there wasn’t much for resources except the local library or local bookstores (if you had them).
My family was loud and somewhat violent and had weird stuff going on (that I didn’t know was weird until I was an adult), but we always had a bunch of stuff to read around the house. My family had a subscription to the daily newspaper delivered to out front porch every morning. We had old hardback novels on book shelves. We had several magazine subscriptions. My older brother and I were both allowed to collect comic books. And my dad had even kept his small collection of Classics Illustrated comic books stored in a small cabinet in my parent’s bedroom.
There was also that… ‘secret’… magazine collection. But I didn’t find that until I was older.
Anyway, back to Classics Illustrated!
Even though I preferred Marvel Comics (or even the occasional DC), every once in a while I’d pull out those old crusty Classics Illustrated comic books and read a few at a time, especially during the summers. These comics were old, even by 1970s standards. It looks like the copies my dad kept were from a series that had started in 1947, so back then they were already around 30 years old. Keep in mind, the earliest Marvel Comics were from 1961, so any comic from the 1950s or even earlier was considered ancient by comic book standards (at least they were from the perspective of an elementary school kid).
When I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I somehow found a copy of an abridged adaptation of The Three Musketeers with some detailed illustrations. Since I’d seen the movie and read the comic book, I didn’t need the visual help of the pictures for my imagination, but they were still cool. I think I lent my original copy to somebody else and never got it back, and then I found a beat up copy years later as an adult at a used book store. Maybe it was a frivolous buy. I already knew how the novel ended.
When I was in 8th grade, I found an old paperback copy of The Three Musketeers at the local thrift store in my hometown. The thrift store had a pretty decent used book collection for a dumpy store (now that I think about it, all used books stores back then were dumpy too), and I took up the challenge of reading an unabridged version with tiny print. The book itself actually wasn’t much of a challenge. The small print, however, might have ruined my eyesight. A few months later, I failed a vision test at school and had to get glasses. I blame books with small print like this copy of The Three Musketeers.
Marvel Comics started putting out their own version of classic comics in the 1970s, but I didn’t think they were as good. The art might technically have been better. The individual illustrations looked more realistic and more detailed than some of the crude (and maybe rushed) drawings in the old Classics Illustrated, but the stories in the old comics were clearer and had more details. If you read a Marvel Comics classic comic after reading an old Classics Illustrated, you knew that the Marvel version left out a lot of details.
The idea of comic books based on classic novels is kind of cool, but not every classic comic book is appealing enough to get young interested. Some classic novels have stories that aren’t visually appealing in comic book (or graphic novel) form, and very few artists can draw period pieces and then tell a story at the same time. Drawing a good classic comic book is probably more difficult than drawing a good superhero comic book. And it probably doesn’t pay as much.
I tended to read the adventure novels, and I’m still like that today. When I read, I don’t like anything too deep or too heavy, not in literary fiction and not in classics. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy? Too many characters with confusing Russian names. Anything by Charles Dickens? Headache inducing! Moby Dick by Hermann Melville? Haha! Moby Dick!
I can read that stuff if I want to, but I don’t want to. And I don’t have to anymore. I’m not saying that I’d never have read classic literature on my own without these Classics Illustrated comic books, but I’m pretty sure I never would have read classic literature on my own without these Classics Illustrated comic books.
*****
Maybe in 50 years, there’ll be a classic comic book adaptation of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy!
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be
Let’s get straight to the comic strip this week.
If you absolutely must have some exposition with your comic strip, try Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Intro or Dummo Mouse and Friends: The Second Intro.
Or you can read my older brother’s published comic strips, starting with The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for more Dummo Mouse and Friends!
Dysfunctional Literacy 