The Faces & Places of Oz

 

This book is a collection of locations in the movie Wicked. It starts with Munchkinland. Elphaba's father is the governor of Munckinland. The next location is Shiz University. Elphaba and her sister attend magic school there. So does Glinda. The final location is the Emerald City. This is a luxurious place that is the home to the wizard of Oz.

Savage Art

This book started out with a discussion of magazine covers during the early 1900s. Apparently authors and artists did not make much, if they even got paid. Publishers got rich. This discussion was kind of boring. They went over many authors, what they drew, and who they drew for.

The rest of the book are full page images from covers. This book has an 8x14 inch form factor. So, the images are big. A lot of times there are scantily clad women. Often they are tied up. There also seems to be dudes that look like detectives with guns. And there are also bad guys with guns.

This was a coffee table style book I purchased. The cover price was a reasonable $15. I think I got the book for $5 or $7 from a bargain books store online. Good times all around.

First Witches Club

Three women who knew each other in high school run into each other. Another woman they knew was in the hospital in a coma. The three women were not necessarily good friends. All of them are currently in relationships where their man is cheating on them. They walk into a store, an apothecary. There they meet a witch who teaches them.

Initially, the three cast spells to punish their cheating men. However, it gets dangerous, burning down a house that one woman's kids were in. They decide to change their goals from punishing their men to uplifting women.

The first order of business seems to have been helping each of the three women find new and better men. It works out fine for all three. Then they start working on the community of women. A new hire starts at the apothecary, where all of them work now. This new girl is related to the original woman in the hospital.

The coven turns the female community to help cure the woman. The woman in the hospital comes out of her coma. Her husband had been cheating on her. He tried to kill her. The original owner of the apothecary disappears, She leaves the apothecary to the three new witches who have taken over.

Fabulous Fishing Funnies

This is a book of black and white comics. They revolve around all things fishing. There is just about a pun on every page. Three are a total of 150+ comics. The book was published in 2014. But the content and humor seem more old fashioned.

Charlie Brown and Charles Schultz

Charles Schultz had closed doors at every turn. He initially could not get any newspapers to run his comic. Eventually somebody too a chance. And the comics caught on like wildfire. You would think that would have established him. However he also had a hard time getting anybody to pick up a 30 minute show.

Eventually, again, somebody took a chance. The Charlie Brown TV special broke all kinds of records and immediately won awards. TV was conquered and follow on shows went on to dominate for years. The final frontier was the stage. Again, there was a hard time getting a musical of Peanuts on stage. They started small. And the New York Times praised it.

Schultz works alone in drawing his comics. He does have a secretary to handle non-drawing tasks. He did farm out work for animation in his TV specials. All his work turns to gold. Even an album related to Peanuts was solid gold.

Get Rich Carefully

This book is written by Jim Cramer from the Mad Money TV show. That show is quite entertaining. This book, however, was boring. Jim does present a lot of information about what he thinks moves stocks. But to form an opinion on what to invest in, you got to take the whole book worth of information.

A lot of the information also seems dated. This book is over 12 years old. The companies he talks about might still exist. But a lot has happened over the last decade. There were some good insights on how stock trading can severely affect stock price.

I did get to the end of the book. I ended up skimming much of the boring stuff. I only focused on the broad themes. Not a book I think anybody should be ready, unless they need something to help put them to sleep.

Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

This book covers Bill Gates in his later years. Seems like he had been cheating on his wife Melinda. She divorced him. They previously had created a massive organization to oversee the funds they marked for charity. Eventually, his wife quit and formed her own org when they divorced.

There was coverage of a suspicious relationship between Bill and Jeffrey Epstein. It seems the people at his companies charged with keeping his image clean had slept on the job. The PR campaign to absolve Gates was him stating that bad choices were made. Deny anything without proof. And back pedal when they present the proof.

Warren Buffet used to be a close friend of Bill. Buffer promised the most of his wealth to Bill's charity organization. It seems the relationship has cooled quite a bit. This book felt like a scholarly academic paper. Lots of quotes from other people and other works. Not a fun book to read, especially compared to Bill's autobiography Source Code.