miko2

Well, I don't have power at home but I made it into work today, not an easy feat when you live on a hill and the weather's bad.

You can stand outside my apartments today and hear trees cracking and breaking. Occasionally branches come down, or whole trees. We've had two trees fall over onto parked cars that I know of, I saw one as it happened. I don't imagine I'll have power for a while.

My ex-roommate Tom got me into this series back in Oct-Nov by lending me the first two seasons. I was surprised that none of my friends actually watch it, though most had heard of it (I realized after watching it that I'd seen clips from it on Youtube and the like before too).

I put this on my Christmas list, but later realized that my parents wouldn't likely be able to find it, so I'd only delayed my own purchase of the series. Which was okay, I don't need to spend money on myself around Christmas anyway. And my sister actually bought me a Venture Bros. shirt that is pretty cool, so that worked out, in a way.

Last week I ordered seasons 2 and 3 from Amazon, but they didn't arrive until yesterday. In the meantime I got together with Tom on New Year's Eve (we saw The Three Musketeers in the theaters -- which was... well, a very Hollywood version, in a Pirates of the Carribean/Sherlock Holmes sort of way. Lots of explosions, flying ships, martial arts sword battles, lack of any intelligent plot. Throw in some Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and DaVinci Code and you've got... well, kind of a silly, entertaining, but mindless mess.)

Tom lent me seasons 3 and 4 of Venture Bros. I'm already halfway through season 4. This series is just about the funniest, most brilliant thing I've seen in years and years. It's been around since 2002, so it's not new, I'm not sure how I missed it for so long. What makes it so brilliant? Well, let's start with the series creator, Christopher McCulloch, who previously was one of the main writers for the animated series The Tick. Ben Edlund, creator of the Tick, has written or cowritten severa Venture Bros episodes. Patrick Warburton, who played the Tick in the live action TV version, voices Brock Sampson, one of the main characters in the Venture Bros.

What you have in The Venture Bros. is a modern-day Johnny Quest with the ridiculousness of The Tick and the harsh, biting humor of Futurama or South Park. I'm pretty much convinced it's better than any of them, though. It manages to be as weird and unhinged as any of these shows but at the same time, remains more tightly plotted than any of them. It's definitely one series that you need to watch starting with episode 1, or you may wind up lost.

I still need to pick up seasons 1 and 4, and then watch the whole thing again from the beginning. Then I need to force my friends to watch it. ^_^

Last week I listened to Christmas music on my iPod at work. One of the songs I have is 'Zat you Santa Claus? by Louis Armstrong. I really like that song. ^_^ And it suddenly made me want to put together a list of "big band" and classic pop songs from the 30's/40's/50's.

I jotted down a few of my favorite songs from the era; Anything Goes, It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), I Wanna Be Like You, What A Wonderful World, Gloomy Sunday, Love With A Capital You, Bei Mir Bist Du Schön, Bye Bye Blackbird. I wanted to include some of the modern singers that kind of fit that genre such as The Pupinni Sisters and Portland's Pink Martini. In fact, most of the artists that I already have from that era are female singers, but I titled my new playlist "crooners" because it was that era I was shooting for.

Then I took my list home and tossed it onto the counter and promptly forgot about it. I do that a lot actually. I like to come up with playlists around a given theme, but I don't usually follow through by actually making the playlist in iTunes.

One week later I'm listening to NPR on my iPod and they do an interview with Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. You may not have heard of him -- I hadn't. He was the 2011 winner of America's Got Talent, and his initial audition is nearly as surprising as that of Susan Boyle for Britain's Got Talent a few years ago. You should watch it, it's impressive. ^_^ And when you think of all the white singers who've been mining soul and Motown for their careers recently (Adele, Duffy, Amy Winehouse), why not a black singer mining Sinatra and the Rat Pack?

So I had to dig up my "Crooner" list and finish it, so I can listen to it tomorrow. ^_^

For the last month I've been in a classical mood in general and a Bruckner mood in particular. Anton Bruckner wrote very long symphonies, usually clocking in at over an hour each. I've always liked listening to them, but in the last month they've seemed particularly suited to listening to on one of my walks -- if I can listen to most of a symphony then I know I've walked at least 50 minutes to an hour. ^_^

With Bruckner you're normally talking about his symphonies, and usually numbers 3 through 9. The most popular ones are number 4, number 7, number 9 and number 8. The largest and most breathtaking are probably number 5, number 8, and number 9, which is only 3 movements but if it had been completed would undoubtably be the largest and most grand of all of them.

I have a lot of versions of various Bruckner symphonies, and especially a lot of good versions of the 4th, 8th, and 9th. Good versions of those three are easy to come by. Generally my favorite conductor has been Eugen Jochum, but I have versions by other acclaimed Bruckner conductors, including Furtwangler, some Karajan, Otto Klemperer, George Tinter, and Bruno Walter. But, in going back through my collection, I found that I didn't have really good versions of the 3rd, 5th, the 6th, or the 7th. (I have the full cycle by Jochum, but unfortunately not the DGC cycle. He did two, and the DGC is the really good one. I have copies of the 4th, 8th, and 9th from that cycle, but not the whole cycle of symphonies.)

Bruckner is one of those composers whose music only sounds really good with a really, really good conductor. It's easy to make Bruckner sound like crap, hard to make it sound like it's supposed to sound -- sublime, transcendent. I really liked the 5th, so I wanted to find a good version of that -- and I used to have one, conducted by Jascha Horenstein. This is one of the cds that was stolen from my car many many years ago. So I went to Amazon and ordered a new copy, and it was as good as I remembered.

I also ordered a copy of the 6th symphony conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch. This was reputed to be one of the best versions of that symphony, and it really is. I'm learning to like this symphony quite a lot now. I'm not sure why it's usually considered one of the "lesser" Bruckner symphonies.

I still don't have a copy of the 7th that I really like. I have Klemperer's version, but it just doesn't grab me much. I've yet to figure out why the 7th is considered such a popular Bruckner symphony.

I've also picked up digital versions of two other conductors that I'd heard about before but knew little about. Takashi Asahina was a Japanese conductor who'd met Wilhelm Furtwangler and was a big fan of the Bruckner symphonies -- he recorded the complete cycle four times, more than anyone else. But all of his recordings are only sold in Japan, so he's not well known in the West. I find him a very good Bruckner conductor -- maybe not the best, but well worth listening to. And through the miracle of the internet, I finally can!

The other is Sergiu Celibidache. All I knew about him was that he conducted very slowly, and there wasn't a lot of information about him. I assumed this was because he wasn't considered a great conductor. In fact, it's because he was adamantly opposed to the recording process, and it wasn't until his death in 1996 that cds of his concerts began to be sold. Celibidache was a zen Buddist who believed a concert should be a transcendent experience (which a recording couldn't provide, in his opinion), and with Bruckner's music -- already designed to be transcendent -- he did things that no other conductor has done. His Brucker is often slowed down to a great degree, but you can hear every instrument and every note clearly.

Critic Jim Svedja wrote that "If you've never heard Furtwangler conduct Bruckner, then you've never experienced Bruckner at all." (He wrote that back while Celibidache was still alive). I'd add that if you haven't heard Celibidache conduct Bruckner, it's likely you still haven't experienced Bruckner. It's a completely different experience, and not to everyone's liking, but absolutely astounding for those who get it.

(And, quite frankly, Furtwangler could be a bit sloppy -- he botches the finale of the 8th in one recording of that symphony. It sounds like he's late for an appointment and just wants to get it all over with and get out of the concert hall.)

Anyway it's pretty cool that I was able to download an Asahina 8th and a Celibidache 5th and listen to them immediately. Technology is a wonderful thing. ^_^

It's blackberry season. They grow wild everywhere. I like to pick them, they're free food after all, but I failed to pick any last year, and maybe not the year before that. I kept thinking I should do it, but I was too busy I guess.

Tuesday I went for a walk during my break along the tracks that run behind our company, and there's tons of blackberries there and it inspired me, so I went back on my lunch and afternoon breaks with containers to pick blackberries. I downloaded a couple of recipes and went home and attempted to make pie. The recipe was simple -- whole wheat flour, butter, salt and water for the crust, sugar (splenda) and arrowroot powder (or flour) for the berries. I bought some arrowroot powder and a very nice ceramic pie mold at Top Foods and went home to cook.

The recipe called for mixing the dough with a pastry mixer. I wasn't actually sure what that was (and I didn't have one) so I mixed the dough by hand. This turns out to be the wrong thing to do. I also didn't refrigerate the dough for very long since I was in a hurry, so the dough was very crumbly and didn't hold together well. Also the recipe I'd picked did not call for a top to the pie and didn't include enough dough to make one, and in any case with the dough falling apart I would have had a hard time making a top.

I also didn't have as many berries as I probably would have liked.

Anyway the results tasted fine but weren't going to win any awards in the looks department. I wanted to try again.

Yesterday I brought five plastic containers to work. I picked blackberries on each of my breaks. After work I went for an hour's walk, and when I got back I filled the last two containers and then I also washed out the container that I'd had a salad in for lunch and filled that -- so I had six containers of blackberries, more than enough for two pies (I hoped).

I used a different recipe for the dough this time, that called for 1 cup whole wheat and 1/2 cup white flour, and used milk instead of water. But basically the same idea, flour, butter, some salt, and sugar (I used splenda again). This time however I bought a pastry mixer (I recognized what it was when I saw one, my mom had one of course but I'd never known what it was called or used for). I also made sure to let the dough sit in the fridge for an hour and let the berries sit for about the same time.

Anyway I managed to make two pies. I was much more successful! One came out looking great, while the second had too many berries and not quite enough dough, so thata the top was thin and not anchored well around the edges and it leaked juice. I'll need to clean the oven out tonight. :p I used the last bit of dough and leftover berries (there were far too many berries) to make a lopsided smooshed-up sort of tart, which nevertheless tasted fine. ^_^

So... I've been rereading Elfquest recently.

As all of my friends know, I used to be a huge fan. Elfquest got me into comics, Elfquest got me into fandom, Elfquest is how I met many of my long-time friends and how I started attending conventions and how I became a fan ficiton writer.

The first four volumes are still as good as I remember them. The storytelling is excellent, the images are in many place purely cinematic, almost iconic. You can really tell that they worked hard on the original story over multiple years, and got it just right. I have the original Donning Starblaze editions, which are lovingly colored and very beautiful (more on that in a moment).

Like any good story, it leaves you wanting more.

And then, of course, they gave us more... the next two collected volumes are books 5 and 6, Siege at Blue Mountain and the Secret of Two-Edge. I like these stories quite a lot, but I've always felt there was something about them that was off -- parts of the story, anyway. To me it seemed obvious that they hadn't spent nearly as much time working out this second story.

In particular, I think it bothered me that they killed off all of the denizens of Blue Mountain except those few who they'd actually bothered to flesh out. And this is something about EQ that always kind of bothered me a bit. Every member of the Wolfriders was fleshed out and distinct, and you knew that from the artwork even before you'd learned their names and personalities. Then we came to the Sun Villagers, and most of them were background characters with no personality or distinguishing features. They kind of hand-waved this away with the notion that the Wolfriders lived life on the edge, were much more alive, and therefore stood out compared to many of the Sun Villagers. But really, they had such a large cast already that they never bothered to give most of the Sun Villagers names or distinct faces, and you could tell.

This continued with the Blue Mountain elves, and the the Go-Backs. The elves of the Blue Mountain were bored and jaded and not very interesting, the Go-Backs had been breeding for years without recognition "and it shows" as Rayek said, but all of this was pretty much an excuse for not giving names or faces to all of these extra elves. And I want to dwell on this just a bit, because, to point to a creative team that never takes this approach, Matt Groenig's series The Simpsons and Futurama always seem to have names and personalities attached to every character that appears on screen for more than two seconds, and often you learn more about these characters in subsequent episodes, and they never forget what's already been established about those characters. I'm pretty sure they've got a giant Bible of characters for each show that explains everything known about each character.

Why is that important? Because it brings the world to life. It's what made those early EQ stories so compelling, because every Wolfrider had a name and history that you could sense the first time you encountered them. Conversely, you never got that sense with the majority of the other elf tribes. And as I said, they were already juggling a very large cast of characters and didn't have time to includes even more people int their stories... but you never had the sense that the authors themselves had any clue who all of these background Go-Backs and Blue Mountain elves and Sun Villagers even were. There were about a dozen Sun Villagers at most that you knew anything about, and the rest were background wallpaper.

Anyway, to get back to my point -- that's one of the things that really bothered me about books 5 and 6. We return to Blue Mountain, but the story feels rushed, and then we kill off virtually every Blue Mountain elf that doesn't already have a name. Apparently, because it was too much bother to keep them around or develop them into characters with personality. At least, that's how it felt to me.

The good part was learning more about some of the Sun Villagers and Go-Backs that hadn't really been developed before, and seeing the growth of all the characters overall.

Next comes book 7 and 8, The Cry From Beyond and Kings of the Broken Wheel. These two volumes feel a lot like 5 and 6 to me -- mostly they're clearly Elfquest stories, continuing the adventures of the characters we've grown to love, written and drawn by Richard and Wendy Pini. But overall it again feels rushed and slightly off, compared to the original story. You have Rayek teleporting the castle about and then jumping into the future before you can even catch your breath. There's no time for the kind of character-driven interaction that was one of the hallmarks of the first four books.

And here's where my interest in the entire series wanes. I actually have two more collected volumes -- The Hidden Years, and Rogue's Challenge. I don't remember a single thing about them. By this point, Wendy was no longer drawing EQ. They had a collection of guest authors and artists writing various series. Everything becomes watered down -- the stories are less interesting, the artwork less dynamic (or in many cases, just not all that great at all), and the characters are less recognizable, less in-character. I lost interest in the entire series, and I don't even know which stories actually continue the tale of the characters I knew from before, and which actually contain any significant plot details about them. It's not that all of the new series were bad per se, but they had little to nothing to do with the original series I loved.

Eventually they stopped writing these stories too, but I don't even remember when or where. The series just kind of faded into a jumbled mess.

And it's no wonder that it's a confusing mess. For one thing, it's hard to even find a listing of "Elfquest stories by Wendy and Richard Pini only". All of the other stuff gets listed with the original stuff as official Elfquest stories, both the stuff by the original authors and the stuff that came after. And they've reprinted things so many times, in different formats and with different names, that it's very hard to know what you might be missing.

For example: There's Elfquest volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4, published by Donning / Starblaze. These are the volumes I have. But then WaRP Graphics/Fathertree Press reprinted these with new titles: "Fire and Flight", "The Forbidden Grove", "Captives of Blue Mountain" and "Quest's End". Worse, they had to recolor them for the new printing, and the colorization is not nearly as good as the originals. But then, later, they did black and white "Reader's Collections" published by Wolfrider Books, this time with the same names but with the "Reader's Collection" tag added at the beginning. Here's where you'll find the bulk of the other stuff they did -- the color Fathertree Press editions only got 4 volumes beyond the original 8, publishing Hidden Year's, Rogue's Challenge, New Blood, and Bedtime Stories. But the Reader's Choice versions of these change names or fail to reprint these stories entirely -- it's very confusing; they apparently skip from Kings of the Broken Wheel to "Dreamtime" which is something different than Hidden Years or Rogue's Challenge. If that weren't enough, the recolored the first four volumes again and had them published by DC in 2003 through 2007, and then republished most of the series through DC in black and white manga format with a brand new naming scheme, where the first twelve manga volumes comprise the original 8 graphic novels, now rechristened "The Grand Quest" volumes 1 through 12. There's also a volume 13 (which seems to match RC volume 8a, "Dreamtime") and a volume 14 containing "Rites of Passage" and "Rogue's Challenge".

And the manga volumes end there. But basically... it's impossible to assemble a complete collection of Elfquest stories all in one format. And let's not even get into the fact that the original series of Wave Dancers was never collected, but instead after a dispute they rewrote the series with a different writer/artist team, and that is what you can buy in the black and white Reader's Choice series.

And then Wendy finally returned to do an EQ story -- Elfquest: Discovery, where the Wolfriders meet the Wavedancers. This came out in 2006 in color from DC comics. From what I've read, not a lot happens in it.

Bleah. No wonder I stopped collecting it... it not only stopped being interesting, but became too complicated to collect.

By the way, you can read virtually all of this online at their website which is pretty cool except that I prefer reading the books. Also, they don't have the Starblaze colors but one of the recolored versions of the original stories, and the old Wavedancer stories aren't displayed here either.

Something else I ran across: Phil Foglio's series Buck Godot, Zap Gun For Hire is is also on the web for you to read. It was also published by Donning / Starblaze at one point, and is one of my favorite things Foglio did, before he and he wife began Girl Genius anyway. ^_^ Well worth checking out.

I downloaded the song Samson by Regina Spektor a few weeks ago. I've been addicted to it since. It reminds me a lot of the kind of stuff Tori Amos did on Little Earthquakes.

The song plays with the Biblical story of Samson and Delila, but actually doesn't seem to be about them at all, just about a woman in love with a man named Samson (an apparently balding man).

I was lucky to pick up the cd at Half Price Books this weekend. ^_^

I'm not a big Lady Gaga fan -- in fact I barely know any of her songs, I've mostly heard about her than heard her sing -- but I listened to some stuff Friday and decided I like this song:



It's just an electronic pop song, nothing fancy, but it plays with Biblical and Catholic imagery (the video especially). It's not really about Judas of the Bible, it's about being in love with a bad boy, who may or may not be named Judas. But it has, of course, made a lot of Catholics angry.

But it struck me that it shares some things in common with Regina Spektor's Samson in that respect. ^_^ Although Sampson is a beautiful, well-written song, and not exactly blasphemous per se... and Gaga's song is, you know, basically Madanna done 30 years later, and done to shock and make money.

I decided they should be on some sort of playlist together. Maybe with the following songs:

Madonna: Like A Prayer

Depeche Mode: Your Own Personal Jesus

After those songs I'm less certain what else I'd want to add. But possibly:

Sisters of Mercy: This Corrosion

Shriekback: Nemesis

Lords of the New Church: Dance With Me

Although none of those songs are as directly blasphemous or as directly linked to Christian imagery, so I dunno...

I took Tuesday off so that I could stay in Longview Monday night and see the fireworks. The weather, for once, has been really nice for the 4th, and the fireworks were fun.

I brought two books down with me: Paradox in Oz and The Living House of Oz, both by Edward Einhorn. Frequently when I'm on vacation i bring one or several books and dont take the time to read anything. This time, I finished both books off and wish I'd brought something else along to read.

I liked The Living House of Oz. It's not, in my opinion, quite as good as Paradox in Oz, but both are excellent Oz books. (And to be honest, many of Baum's Oz books are less than stellar -- some lack any villain or what you might call a plot). Anyway, it occurred to me that Einhorn has pulled off a pretty neat trick: he does Maguire without doing Maguire. By which I mean he presents the Wicked Witch of the West in a sympathetic light, while writing a "cannon" Oz story rather than a revisionist Oz story. How does he do this? It's an alternate dimension Wicked Witch, of course, from a version of Oz where many of the good people are evil, and many of the evil people are good. He set that world up in Paradox, but he has a lot of fun with the idea of a wicked witch who isn't in The Living House.

I like Einhorn's two Oz books, and I hope he's writing another. The first came out in 1999 and the second in 2005, so he's not fast, but now would be about the right time for a third to appear if he's got one planned. I really like modern Oz books that borrow from Baum's Oz while trying to write a more coherent and exciting story than some of what Baum wrote.

This is what Jack Snow started, and many writers after him have taken his lead. Ruth Plumly Thompson was the second Oz Historian, and she ignored many of Baum's characters and rules and wrote Oz her own way. Artist John R. Neill followed her and he very much wrote yet another kind of Oz, one where everything talked, even houses, and logic kind of flew out the window. When Jack Snow got his turn to write Oz books, he ignored pretty much everything Thompson and Neill did. He went back to the Baum books and worked from there. Writers after him followed suit. This was greatly encouraged by Thompson, who was protective of her own work and did not want other writers messing with it.

Since then, of course, all of Baum's books have entered public domain, as well as Jack Snow's two books, but only some of Thompson's books and none of Neill's. So the "ignore most of what Thompson and Neill wrote" is enforced not only by author's choice but also by copyright constraints. Which is just fine with me. ^_^

"A paradox? What's that?"

"Not a paradox, a Parrot-Ox. Born in Oz of a parrot and an ox, and capable of doing nothing at all, unless it is impossible."

"But how could one of his parents be a parrot? There are no parrots in Oz, and there never have been."

"Exactly," said Glinda. "Now you're beginning to understand the nature of a Parrot-Ox"

---

"Where did that giant thing come from?" the Sawhorse asked in dismay.

"That's an interesting question," replied the Parrot-Ox in its big, squawking voice. "I first arrived in Oz a thousand years from now, and I left just one second later. But I've been making good use of that one second. Or was it one second before?"

"You arrived in Oz?" asked Ozma. "I thought you were born in Oz."

"That's funny," said the Parrot-Ox, "that's just what my parents said to me when I arrived. I think we'll call him Polly, the said, which is how I got my name."

"Polly?"

"No, Tempus."

"Well, it's good to meet you, Mr. Tempus. I am Ozma of Oz."

"Good to meet you again."

"Again?"

"I'm speaking in anticipation of our next meeting, which, if I heard Glinda right, will be earlier in time. So we doubtlessly met years ago. I must say, it was rude of you not to have recognized me."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it. You look just as I remember you."

"Do you remember me?"

"Not one bit. But don't take it amiss. I will remember you at some point, I'm sure."

The Sawhorse had been regarding Tempus with a critical eye during this conversation.

"Didn't you say that he could do nothing unless it was impossible?" the Sawhorse asked Glinda.

"I did," Glinda told him.

"Well, he seems to be doing quite a lot of talking. As I don't see anything particularly impossible about talking, I think he should stop doing it."

"Very clever friend Sawhorse," said Tempus. "You are quite right. It is quite possible for any creature to speak in Oz, and it is impossible for me to do anything that's possible. Fortunately, that makes it impossible for me to speak, which allows me to do so."

---

"Why don't ou just have Tempus go forward in time and ask Ozma what happened?" asked the Sawhorse. "That way, you would learn what the enchantment was without having to go through this whole adventure."

"Could you do that?" Ozma asked him.

"Certainly, but you'd still have to have the adventure anyway, in order to learn what the enchantment was."

"But I would know what the enchantment was."

"Which would make the whole thing a lot less enjoyable, in my opinion," said Tempus.

"But..." Ozma stopped, at a loss. "I suppose there's no way around it," she decided.

"As far as you know," agreed Tempus.

-- Paradox in Oz, Edward Einhorn

(Reposting here from my LJ post of 2 days ago.)

I've been on kind of an Oz kick this week.

Actually, I've been on a bit of a children's story kick all around the last few months. This started with me rereading all of Bone, and then Rod Espinoza's The Courageous Princess, and the Eric Shanower Oz comic books. For the Bone books I have mostly paperback collections but a couple of them are hardcover... for the Courageous Princess, I have the deluxe hardcover edition that is now rare and expensive to buy. I did some research and found the Rod Espinoza still intends to finish this story -- someday. For the Oz comics by Shanower, I have the original paperback editions published by First Comics. More recently he recollected these into a couple of volumes, and also into one large volume, and there was a deluxe hardcover edition of that, but I didn't realize it until I looked it up last month, and like my Courageous Princess volume it is also rare and expensive these days. Sigh. I probably should pick up the newer paperback collection though, it'd be nicer than what I have.

(I also reread all of my Adam Warren Dirty Pair books, and bought the one volume that I didn't have, which is out of print and cost a bit of money for a fairly dog-eared and starting to fall apart edition. Bleah. And I'm currently re-reading my Elfquest comics, and I discovered that the color editions are no longer in print and also somewhat valuable. They don't have any current plans to print in color again. although black and white versions are easily purchased.)

Anyway -- back to Oz. I went through my Oz books and organized them and decided I should fill in the last missing pieces. In particular, Of the 40 "cannon" books (those published by the original publisher Reilly & Britton) I have all 14 of the Baum books and all 19 of the Ruth Plumly Thompson books, plus The Wonder City of Oz by John R Neill and The Shaggy Man of Oz by Jack Snow. The ones I'm missing are the two other Neill books (probably not worth getting), the first of Jack Snow's two novels The Magical Mimics of Oz (well worth getting), The Hidden Valley of Oz by Rachel Cosgrove (probably worth getting), and The Merry Go Round of Oz by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren Lynn McGraw. (very much worth getting).

There are six other books written by the above "Royal Historian" authors that might be worth picking up: Yankee in Oz and The Enchanted Island of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson (but I probably wont' get hers), Who's Who In Oz by Jack Snow (own it already), The Wicked Witch of Oz by Rachel Cosgrove (own it already), The Rundlestone of Oz by Eloise Jarvis McGraw (own it already), The Forbidden Fountain of Oz by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren Lynn McGraw, and The Runaway in Oz by John R. Neill. The last was going to be Neill's fourth book, but it was unillustrated when he died and so Reilly & Britton never published it. The version published a few years ago was edited and illustrated by Eric Shanower, and by all accounts is the best of the four Neill books so I've just ordered a copy.

I'm also collecting other Oz books (Apocryphal books), especially those that adhere closely to the originals. Some -- well, a lot -- of these "apocryphal" books veer widely from the original stories, and I'm not even talking about Philip Jose Farmer or Gregory MacGuire and their reinterpretations. I have a few of these "wide of the mark" Oz books -- The Mysterious Chronicles of Oz by Onyx Madden, The Glass Cat of Oz by David Hulan, Queen Ann in Oz by Karyl Carlsong & Eric Gjovaag, Masquerade in Oz by Bill Campbell and Irwin Terry, Visitors from Oz by Martin Gardner, and Dorothy of Oz by Roger S. Baum (just because you're related to L. Frank Baum does not give you a free pass on misrepresenting the land and characters of Oz).

I also have some apocryphal Oz books that are frankly much closer to Baum's original work than many of the so-called cannon books. Ruth Plumly Thompson did not exactly follow the rules that Baum set down, however haphazardly, and Neill was a much better illustrator of Oz books than he was an author. So in this camp I'd probably place: The Giant Garden of Oz and The Salt Sorcerer of Oz by Eric Shanower (who for my money understands Oz better than anyone living, and perhaps better than anyone save Baum or Jack Snow), Paradox in Oz by Edward Einhorn (and I just ordered the sequel, The Living House of Oz), The Seven Blue Mountains of Oz trilogy by Melody Grandy (I need to track down the third book) and, I'm not sure, but I recently picked up The Emerald Wand of Oz by Sherwood Smith, which has the advantage of being officially liscensed by the L Frank Baum Family Trust. That may or may not have any bearing on how well it's written and how true it holds to the original works -- in any case I got it at Half Price Books on Tuesday. Smith wrote a sequel, Trouble Under Oz, but apparently it ends on something of a cliffhanger, and he never got to write the third book of his expected trilogy. Eh.

So Tuesday I picked up an Oz book at Half Price Books, and also one of the Bone collections that contains the entire series, and also a biography of L. Frank Baum, which I spent much of that evening reading.

In the last 24 hours I enjoyed myself immensely while reading all of the Mari Ness's reviews of all 40 Oz books, plus a few of the others. Her reviews are funny and quite enlightening. In particular, I learned how little Ruth Plumly Thompson understood or appreciated the core of what Baum's Oz books were about. First and foremost, the Oz books were about people being accepted for who they were, and about girls who were adventurous and spoke their mind and were generally great role models. Baum also infused Oz with an almost Communistic society, free of money, free of greed, and where everyone was welcome and nobody had to work too hard. He included several working-class characters, starting first and foremost with Dorothy and her Aunt and Uncle. In contrast, Thompson's books almost always have a prince and a princess who are destined to get married; the books are invariably about royalty and working-class characters like Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, the Shaggy Man, and Captain Bill never appear in any of her stories. But beyond that, she introduces money, hunger, poverty, slavery, racism, cruelty, veiled arguments against Roosevelt's politics (she was a staunch conservative), war, and expansion by conquest. She was a noted writer of children's books before becoming the Oz historian, and many of her books are well written, but she remakes Oz into the place she'd prefer it to be rather than the place that Baum had originally designed it to be.

(And really, the racism in her books -- mostly in two later books that I haven't read yet, but Mari Hess's reviews are pretty in-depth -- is just ugly, ugly, ugly. It makes me sad that she wrote Oz books for so long and failed to understand the messages inherent in Baum's works.)

Based on what Mari Ness wrote, Jack Snow understood the heart of Oz. He was not as prolific or accomplished an author as Thompson, but he knew Oz inside and out. Likewise, Eloise Jarvis McGraw was a highly accomplished children's author (perhaps even moreso than Thompson -- she was awarded the Newberry Honor three different times, in different decades, and won other awards as well), and also clearly understood Baum's work more fully than Thompson. The Magical Mimics of Oz and Merry-Go-Round in Oz are apparently the two most Baum-like of the canon books written after his death.

Another thing I came across was LibriVox, a place that has audio versions of public domain books, which all of the original Baum Oz books are (and even many of the Thompson books). I'm working on downloading as many of them as I can. ^_^