Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

I’ve been a Bridget Jones’s Diary fan for a number of years now.  It was one of my few airplane books.

 

You know, one of those books you buy at the last minute at the airport because you need something, nay, anything to do on plane?  One of those.

 

I was standing in the airport and I was hating the book I had.  A friend had loaned me Hunter S. Thompson’s Better Than Sex, and I was quickly and painfully learning that I was not a Thompson fan.

 

(I eventually tried Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and also found it an absolute slog.  Sorry folks.)

 

I’m not sure why I picked up the first Jones book.  I do recall I was standing at a kiosk with extremely limited literature choices, and it’s possible it was the only thing that looked even remotely interesting.  I flipped it open and started to read, and while the humor was simple (oh look, a man in a bad sweater!) it looked like it wasn’t going to punish me for reading it, unlike certain other books I could name.

 

So I bought it and boarded the plane, and here’s the thing – I had a good flight.  I sat and I read and while I didn’t feel compelled to keep turning pages (Jones is, for the most part, a romantic comedy, and they really only end one way) I also never felt compelled to stop, sigh, and regret my choice.  I even had a nice conversation with the flight attendant, who told me she thought the book was very funny.

 

I smiled.  I was maybe halfway through it then, and while I was enjoying myself, I didn’t find it riotous. I didn’t feel compelled to laugh out loud.

 

I was almost done with it by the time I got home, and the next morning I woke up and finished it off.  And while I couldn’t put it amongst the works of great literature, or even among my favorite books, I kind of loved it.

 

When people (mostly women, I’ll admit) asked me what I was reading lately, I more often than not found myself loaning the book to them, and they had much the reaction I did.  They’d read it in a day or two, and return it with a smile on their face.

 

Ultimately, it was a perfect little gem that did everything it was supposed to exactly right.

 

The problem, of course is that it came to a pretty solid happy ending.  There wasn’t really any reason to write another.

 

And yet, as I often say to friends who ask why there are so many movie sequels, the reason is always simple: Money.

 

In a kind of a cool twist, a friend I had originally loaned my copy of the book went to the UK around the time the second book was published.  She brought it home and loaned it to me, and I was able to read Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason months before it came out in the States.

 

And… it was really mediocre.

 

Having already solved most of the complications in the first novel, this one was forced to create new ones.  And while the first book contained a lot of moments that could easily be described as, “Well, that’s a little zany, but I could see it happening to someone I know,” the second book…

 

Well, frankly, it tried to up the stakes, and it just didn’t work.  The original volume had been a fun, low stakes book, and this one tried to up everything, and it wasn’t silly or fun, just kind of annoying and trying-too-hard.

 

Whereas I had dragged my wife to see the first movie in the theater, and enjoyed it thoroughly, I caught up with the second movie on video, when I could get it from the library and not have to pay anything for it.

 

There were a couple of fun moments, I’ll admit.  But whereas the first movie had taken the best bits of the book and added little ideas that were fun, the second movie seemed to keep only the stuff that was just flat-out the opposite of good.

 

I figured it was over then.  Years later I read that Jones had returned, in column format, in some British newspaper or another.  I figured that eventually that would get turned into a book as well, but it didn’t happen.  I figured this was because the moment had kinda passed.

 

And then… and then there was word of a new book.

 

The thing of it was, I hadn’t care for the second book, and so the third couldn’t really hurt me, I figured.  If it was bad, I’d skip it, or perhaps skim it and see if any of the old magic was back. 

 

And if it was good?  Well, it would be nice to see Jones redeemed.

 

Much was made of the fact that Jones’s love interest (and husband!) died before the events of the third book.  The author said the Jones books only work when she’s single, and maybe that’s the case.  But truthfully, I think a good book could have been crafted out of her marriage and child-rearing.

 

(I’ve worked and reworked the below paragraph, and honestly, it might reveal too much about the book.  Feel free to skip that one, if you want to read the book.)

 

Instead, Jones became a cougar on the prowl after years of being a lonely single mother.  She spends the book getting into and out of a relationship with a man several years her junior, and then the book ramps a periphery character and Jones, because she has to, heads towards another happily ever after with one of her two choices.

 

It is, in some ways, the first book all over again, only with more baggage.

 

But mostly, it’s less of a fun book.  In fact, mostly, it’s a melancholy one.

 

The fact of the matter is, a dead spouse is a very serious subject matter, and while the book skirts around the edges of this idea for a while, it remains the elephant in the room until the book decides to address it.

 

The thing of it is, if you liked the character at all, those passages are genuinely devastating.  If the first book was a light romp, this book can’t, by its very nature ever get nearly as romp-y.

 

If the first book was a perfectly crafted thing, this one is messy, and I don’t know if that was the intention or not.  A dead spouse was, ultimately, going to mean that pathos was baked into the tale, and when I sat around reading reviews, it’s apparent that people just couldn’t stomach the idea of a tale with happy in its sad and sad in its happy.

 

But I was good with it.

 

A good book is a delicate animal, I think, and the problem with imperfect ones is that often there’s no real way to fix it.  The book spends a lot of time clearing its throat and trying to get rolling, and I spent maybe 100 pages trying to get used to reading Bridget’s missives again.

 

I can imagine an editor, and possibly the author, spent a long time trying to get the book to launch in just the right way, and truthfully, I think they blew it.

 

But as I moved through the book, I found more and more to like.  Bridget spends much of a book trying to write a screenplay and get it turned into a movie, and since that’s mostly unrelated to her love life it allows for more laughs.

 

And while the cougar relationship sometimes trends towards the awkward, it eventually develops a charm of its own.   I suspect that’s because it becomes more honest as it goes along, starting as a “young man finds a woman 20 years older than him to be the hottest thing ever” and eventually dives into the real issues that would present themselves.

 

And perhaps that’s the issue, really.  So much time has passed, so many important events have occurred, and the book is forced to skip over some and gloss over others in an effort to get into the story.

 

But the thing of it is, there was a story there, it probably just didn’t feel very Bridget Jones-like, what with all the death and the sadness.

 

In the end, this is a melancholy book, and much of that hinges on a dead husband and the prospect of single motherhood.  Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy knows this and tries to be honest with it. 

 

And while I don’t think it will eventually be judged a classic, I suspect that over time this will be the book fans turn to when they think about sequels to the original.  It will always be found slightly lacking (anything compared to the first book probably will be) but it has a charm and an honesty all its own.

 

If the first book is all about happily ever after, this one is about finding the happiness in the sadness. 

What I'm Watching: Sweeps Begins

I’ve been trying to get back to writing for National Novel Writing Month, and so far that’s been an utter failure.

 

I did reread what I wrote on my last vampire novel, and I was happy to find that it’s really good, and know where I want to go.

 

But I’ve been drained.

 

So I’m just gonna do this blog post, just to try and get in a writing mode, and we’ll hope for the best.

 

The Walking Dead:

 

This is new – I’m actually all caught up for the first time in pretty much forever.  I even watched the most recent episode the day it aired, and…

 

It’s all right.

 

I want to like it more, but I feel like I’ve been getting ahead of this show for a while, not because it sticks to the comics any more, but because it’s trying to get away from it and mostly succeeding.

 

There has been much talk about the surprises coming this year, and I think that’s what inevitably leads to letdown for me on this show.  They’re trying to surprise me, but they don’t really have anywhere else to go, shock-wise.

 

As much as I might like various characters on the show, I also am well-aware that killing them off or otherwise injuring them is really the only trick this show has.  Oh, they’re setting up plotlines, like the illness, but if you think abuot it the illness is just the zombies all over again.  It’s taking out redshirts until we get further in the season, when they’ll finally kill off an actual face we like and/or care about.

 

The comic went all-out (don’t read if you don’t want to know) and ended the prison stay with the death of Rick’s baby.  That’s a pretty brutal place to go, but at this point it wouldn’t really be a shock.  For the majority of the audience of the show, it’s been done already.

 

They could kill Rick, but why would they?  He’s not all that well-liked.

 

And of course, they don’t have the guts to take out fan favorite Daryl.

 

What does that leave us?  Probably with the death of Glen and/or Maggie at some point this season.  There’s enough of a shock there for it to work, and it doesn’t have the problem of wiping out someone we don’t have enough information about to care about all that much.  I mean, I guess they could off Maggie’s sister, but that’s a minor shock at best.

 

I’ll say Glen.

 

Oh, and also that little girl is feeding rats to the walkers.  Duh.  Try harder, show.

 

Supernatural:

 

The storylines are a bit spread out now, and bringing to show around to its main point (closing Hell, dealing with the angels) is taking a lot more time than I expected.  That said, I’m laughing hard, I’m enjoying the moral dilemmas of secret keeping enough to let them go from week to week (because there is at least a point to the kept secrets) and moments like Dean getting ready to shoot a pigeon are pure gold.

 

Easily my favorite show.

 

Agents of SHIELD:

 

Man, this show gets a lot of abuse from critics.  I’ve read probably a half-dozen “here’s how to fix this show” articles these last few weeks, and you know what?

 

Man, let it go.

 

I realize I try to fix shows all the time, but this show has only just gotten started.  Yes, the characters are generic, yes, it’s still very monster/case of the week, but I feel like because this is a Whedon show everyone’s gotta shove its nose in the carpet and tell it that it’s a bad dog.

 

You know what?  I’m liking it.  It’s a little X Files, it’s a little Marvel, and the show is having fun.  I laugh more at this show than I do at most sitcoms.  The action scenes are well-shot.  We’re getting little bits of personality from the characters, and yeah, it’s taking some time to shake out, but guys, it’s a new show.

 

Give it time.  It’s getting there.

 

The Originals:

 

This is the one show I’m still way behind on, and I’m not quite sure how the little threads are really going to weave into a full season.  In fact, that’s probably my biggest issue – it’s a big setup that Vampire Diaries would probably burn through in four or five episodes, but it appears they’re on track to drag it out.

 

So I’m reserving judgment on this one, for now.

 

South Park:

 

Um… what to say?  They took a longer break before bringing us these ‘sodes, and I think it pushed them out of the groove a little bit. 

 

There are laughs, yes, but we’re zipping along through these episodes and usually, by now, they’ve had at least one very good episode, and instead they’re all just passable.

 

I don’t know if they’re just having an off season, or if, perhaps, it’s time to hang it up after more than 200 episodes.

 

Modern Family:

 

I’m not sure why I keep talking about this show, because I don’t have a lot to say about it.  Ultimately, it’s a sitcom, and it makes me laugh.

 

And… I’m out of revelations.

 

Revolution:

 

When we last saw Revolution, it was a big fat mess with a bunch of people I didn’t care about.

 

This season it’s… less of a mess.  They’ve spun the characters out and they’re trying to sustain this good guy/bad guy dynamic, but…

 

But things got fuzzy, a little too fast.  Some folks got bombed, which should up the stakes but mostly just made people sad.

 

The US Government is now back on American soil and trying to take over and “restore order,” but since they don’t seem to have a real plot aside from “eventually be the government again,” I have a hard time rooting against them.  I suppose the argument is, they’re bad and they nuked a bunch of people, but given the harshness of conditions and the fact that pretty much every “hero” on the show has killed dozens, if not hundreds, of people, it’s hard to give them the moral high ground.

 

The show is fun sometimes, but it could be more fun.  (Also, my wife is starting to hate these people, so… they need to do something, and do it quick.)

 

The Vampire Diaries:

 

The season started off with a bang, and it seems to be clipping along nicely.  Bonnies death has, I must admit, been hard to watch, as I’ve lost two friends to cancer this last year and watching these characters mourn has really set me off emotionally a few times.

 

Ultimately, of course the show can never quite maintain the crazy.  And that’s fine.  I’m happy with it, and as a bonus no one is being stupid and the random “witches can do anything unless they can’t” thing hasn’t intruded too much.

 

A good time for all.

 

Glee:

 

So they finally got through the Finn thing, and now… now it’s pretty much Glee, with the random emotions and some nice musical numbers.  You can tell the budget’s been cut based on the fact that they don’t have A and B list actors, they’ve got two people who are about a year away from Celebrity Apprentice, but, eh.

 

I did not spend this week’s episode banging my head against the wall.  Winner!

 

The Big Bang Theory:

 

You know what I forget sometimes?  This show can be really charming.  Especially when they do something like the Bernadette song.

 

Musical episode people.  I think it’s time.

More Thoughts On A Funeral for Finn

A death on TV is a tricky thing.

 

The issue is, of course, that people die on TV constantly.  If I were to turn on my television now and start flipping, I could probably find someone in the act of dying, or recently dead, within a few minutes.

 

It reminds me of the commentary made by Tom Hanks in the movie Splash.  The mermaid is crying because someone has died on TV and she doesn’t realize it’s not real.  So he explains that it’s just a story and that same actor who just pretended to die will probably die again on some other show next week.

 

Subsequently, it’s hard to made death on TV really count.

 

It’s been done before.  Probably one of the most famous is when the actor who played Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street passed away.  Rather than just pretend that it hadn’t happened, a special episode was produced wherein Mr. Hooper had died, and everyone had to explain it to Big Bird.

 

I don’t recall seeing it.  I was probably a little too old to be watching Sesame Street at the time, since I was in the first grade by then.  But it’s one of those cultural events that reverberates.  People remember seeing it, both kids and adults, and I expect that it still sticks with some people.

 

Back in 1998, I remember very well hearing that Phil Hartman had been shot and killed, leaving behind not one character, but three or four, if you count all the people he played on The Simpsons. 

 

Of the shows Phil was on, the only memorial I really recall was on Newsradio, where they tried very hard to send his character off in a fitting manner.  Obviously, I never knew Phil personally, but it was clear that everyone on the screen cared about him, missed him, and getting through that episode was tough for them.

 

Which brings me around to Finn.

 

I felt, at first, that I wouldn’t have much to say about Finn’s death, but it came at such a strange time for me that I felt I needed to say more.  I’m not sure what, but more.

 

The Finn episode came just one day after a good friend passed away.  He wasn’t Finn young, but he was too young, and many of my fondest memories of my friend were (and are) of him singing.  So I was a little afraid to queue up the DVR.  I even offered my wife an out.  But she was good with it, so we proceeded.

 

And…

 

And ultimately, it was Glee.

 

Glee trucks in big emotions, but all too often it feels like it’s being created by magicians who don’t understand how their tricks work and can only get them to function half the time. 

 

So when they took a page from Rent and opened with a song, I thought maybe they could nail this one.

 

And as it turns out… they couldn’t.

 

Ultimately, I think the best thing they could have done was locked everyone in a room for 45 minutes and just let them talk.  Put whatever they were feeling into dialogue and pick songs to match.  I think that could have been perfect.

 

Instead, they set up a mystery with Finn’s jacket.  And Tina whined about dressing Goth again.  And other moments fell with a painful, crushing, unimpressive thud, sometimes because of the painfully on-the-nose dialogue, and sometimes because the actors just didn’t have the range to make their grief feel real.

 

Which is strange, because it was.

 

Truthfully, I put that on the writing, and not on the actors, as the episode tried to be all things to all people, and show every possible reaction you can have to a death.

 

Though sometimes they nailed it. 

 

Finn’s parents?  Perfect.  Even though their dialogue sometimes slid towards the clumsy, they sold those feelings completely.  If they don’t get Emmys just handed to them next year, it’ll be a crying shame.  (Literally, now that I think about it.)

 

But much of the rest of the episode only worked in half-measures and it took me a little while to figure out what flawed the episode so completely.

 

It was two things.

 

First, the show flat-out refused to say why Finn was dead, claiming it doesn’t matter.

 

And you know what?  That’s a bald-faced lie, because it does matter.  I’ve had friends die from cancer.  I’ve had acquaintances die from suicide.  I had one friend die from pneumonia, which is absolutely something that should never happen and part of the reason I support the affordable care act so strongly, even with its flaws

 

I had one family member die in a motorcycle accident that was wholly preventable.  A poor choice was made and family member’s hearts were broken because of that choice.  That person could be alive today.

 

It matters.

 

And the thing of it is, they tried to show every reaction a person could have to a death, and they attempted to render the death generic that way.

 

But you know what?  That felt false as well.  At least one person being interviewed (a cast member) stated that it was hard to act in spots, because they had to pretend they were in denial about the death, and NONE of them were in denial about the death.

 

And I realize that “acting” is part of TV, but they weren’t just memorializing a fake person, they were also memorializing a real person, and that requires much more honesty.

 

And, in some ways even more painfully, they took time out to point out that the cast was on a show that could be phenomenally stupid.  By talking about Finn singing to the sonogram of a baby that wasn’t his.

 

I mean… really?

 

Perhaps it was flat-out desperation to pick that song, as Finn didn’t have a ton of solos.  At least, nothing that felt even slightly appropriate.  But then, why not sing a Journey song?  I mean, I know they’ve done Don’t Stop Believing a LOT on this show, but why not ballad it up?  Do something really bold with it?

 

Does it matter now?  Perhaps not.  But I spent that hour feeling awkward, feeling the characters being forced into dialogue that didn’t really work, and I rarely felt moved by anything that wasn’t singing or otherwise wordless. 

 

Because that’s where the real grief lay, I felt.

 

I felt compelled to complete this essay by, of all things, The Vampire Diaries.  A character had died (which happens… a LOT on this show) and it was a shock to everyone, and even though the character who was dead appeared in the scene (because she is not actually deceased)?  It moved me.  Because it showed genuine loss.  Because it showed those moments where you kind of hear your lost friend in your head, and hope that they’re happy where they are, and hope that how you are can or does bring them joy.

 

There’s talk that Finn’s death will continue to reverberate throughout the year, and maybe that’s the case.  But I’ve seen Glee abandon story after story over the years, and I suspect that the impact will end up being minor.  Rachel will move on emotionally and start a new relationship, and they’ll state that it’s hard for her twice… and then she’ll just move on, because Glee does.

 

Or perhaps I’m just too cynical.

 

To want more from Glee at this time is, surely, too much to ask.  I get that.  It’s a show that has to make it 41 more episodes and then shutter, and it sounds like the showrunners are already tired and unsteady on their feet.

 

The truth is, if they really want Finn to be remembered fondly, now is the time to double down and make sure the show actually works, not just 50% of the time, but 90 or 100% of the time. 

 

Because if they don’t, the show won’t go into that endless loop of syndication that keep shows like Cheers and MASH alive.  And Finn’s legacy will vanish that much faster.

 

I must say, I don’t envy them.

The Brendan Halpin Reading List

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent the better part of the last year not-writing, mostly because of lack of time and a variety of other issues in my life.

 

I’ve been working on this post, off and on, for most of the year, and in this year alone, Brendan has published two books, which tells me that if I’m ever going to write this, it needs to be now.

 

I’ve created and recreated this introduction a dozen times, always getting bogged down in minute details that don’t really get to the meat of the piece.

 

And mostly related to John Green.

 

Here’s the deal, in very, very short.  You’ve heard of John Green.  You’ve heard of his massive bestseller, The Fault In Our Stars.  I’m sure of this because you can’t wander past any place that sells books right now and NOT see four dozen copies of it in three different editions.

 

And this part, right here, is where I’d got off on a four-paragraph rant how if you’ve read and enjoyed John Green, you really, really need to be reading Brendan Halpin.

 

I call it a rant because it wandered off on long tangents based mainly on my disappointment that Green is a total juggernaut of sales, while Halpin had to get his last book release funded by Kickstarter.

 

Here, by the way, is there I confess that I wanted to mention John Green (John Green, John Green) for the purely selfish reason that I hope people click on this link after looking him up on Google and subsequently discover one of my favorite authors.

 

Okay: Link-baiting John Green/Brendan Halpin discussion over.

 

(John Green.)

 

What makes writing about Brendan Halpin difficult is…

 

Well, a few things.

 

First, he’s a Facebook friend.  And what’s more, he blurbed my first novel.  (I asked him to, because I love his work and getting his stamp of approval is one of the highlights of my writing career.)

 

Second, I know he Googles himself (all authors do), so I’m sure he’ll read this at some point.  Probably a few days after I post it.  (Hey Brendan!)

 

Third, breaking his work up into discreet sections is an absolute bear, because the man (unlike John Green, who writes rom-com indie movies in book form, mostly with sad endings) keeps shifting his genres just enough to avoid easy classification.

 

And what makes it worse is, I think some of his books are absolutely essential, and they fall into a few different groupings (YA, adult and memoir).

 

So I’ve developed some of my own groupings, outside of genre trappings, and, well, hopefully, this list will take you somewhere you want to be.  (Like a John Green novel.  Except at the end, where someone dies or the romantic entanglement falls apart.)

 

Start Here:

 

For lack of a better way of saying it, these are the best of the best.  Most of these are not just Halpin’s best books, they are among my favorite books, period, and I’ve read all of them at least twice.

 

Forever Changes – If you only read one Brendan Halpin novel, it should be this one.  (Especially if you’re into John Green.)  I suspect the only reason it didn’t sell better (and eventually went out of print, Brendan has re-released it as an ebook) is because it’s a sad and scary subject matter.  It follows a girl who has cystic fibrosis.  She knows she’s only going to live another year, or two, or three.  So does she apply to college?  Does she fall in love?  What’s the point?  And how does she deal with her forthcoming death in the meantime?

 

I cannot state too emphatically that I think everyone should read this novel.  I made my book club read it, and of the ten or so people who came, more than half of them said it was the best book we ever read as a group.

 

And as for me, personally, I’ve never been able to think about death and dying in the same way.

 

It’s a sad novel, yes, but it’s also a hopeful one. You should read it.  (Especially if you enjoyed The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green.)

 

It Takes a Worried Man – This is Brendan’s memoir of his wife’s breast cancer.  It was his first book (it was started as a journal, and reads that way) and it details much of the fight.  The book originally ended in a place of uncertainty (they didn’t really know whether they were winning or losing) but his newly released version (the book went out of print and he re-released it himself) features a wrap-up that talks about the fate of everyone involved.

 

Long Way Back – A man’s wife dies, and he joins a gay punk band in an effort to help himself cope.  Once again, this has a certain John Green-y quality to it, but it’s about adults instead of kids.  Even though it’s fiction, it serves as a strange kind of semi-sequel to It Takes a Worried Man.  It’s about what comes next when you lose someone you love.

 

Losing My Faculties – This was Brendan’s second memoir, this time covering his life as a teacher.  As a teacher myself (and a child of a teacher, and a friend to teachers) I’m going to tell you this: You need to read it.  You need to read it today, and you need to realize what teachers are up against (kids, the school itself, and other teachers) and why education is more than a bit of a mess.

 

I honestly believe it should be part of every teaching curriculum in every university.

 

Then Go Here (Mostly YA):

 

Whereas the first group of books were the greats, these are the merely very goods.  I liked them, I would share them with people, and I would almost certainly read them again if I had unlimited time to do so. 

 

Donorboy – In which a girl’s two moms die, and she goes to live with the man who contributed half her DNA.  This one picked up an award for being good for young adults even though it was written for adults, and it put it on this second plateau mostly because it hits some of the same themes as his other books, but it also has a strange little sense of humor (the moms are crushed by turduckens, for example) that I suspect might sit not sit well with some readers.

 

It also introduces a couple of Halpin pet themes that appear in a lot of his fiction.  Being a vegetarian and gay acceptance.

 

A Really Awesome Mess – Over the last few years, Halpin has written a handful of books with female cowriters.  They each take one character, his male and hers female, and they alternate chapters.  Most of them are good.  This is the best of them.

 

In this one, the boy and girl end up in a mental health facility in order to deal with problems ranging from anger to depression to adoption to eating disorders, and those are the ones you learn about right away.  It’s the best book I’ve read this year (2013) and it contains the single best description of depression I’ve ever read in a novel.

 

The ending bends a little too far towards the fairytale, but overall, it’s so good I’m willing to let it slide.

 

Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom – A guy realizes he’s in love with his best female friend, only it turns out that she’s gay, and, yes, her name is Tessa and her town doesn’t want her to go to prom with a girl.

 

I think that, in life, we encounter a lot of people who we think of as an “other.”  This book is, I feel, about discovering someone you really care about is an other, and about how that changes you.  Again, it’s a co-write, and again, it’s got a fairy-tale ending. 

 

The Half-Life of Planets – I think the tag line was something like: A boy with Asperger’s meets a girl with a reputation, and that sums it up pretty well.  Mostly it’s about two people trying to navigate each other, and it’s a sweet little story that has issues sitting in the background, but which aren’t really the story.  Another co-write.

 

Notes from a Blender: Once again, a co-write, in which a boy who likes a girl suddenly learns that she’s about to be his step-sibling.

 

This one has the pet themes out in force, and adds blended families and a few other items that will be familiar to anyone who knows anything about Halpin’s life. 

 

Genre Stuff:

 

I realize as I’m creating these categories that I’m leaving out a certain subset of Halpin’s work – namely his genre stuff.  Halpin wrote two books as Seamus Cooper, both of them HP Lovecraft comic horror novels.

 

I think they’re all worth a read, but they’re so off the beaten path of Halpin’s usual work that I have a hard time sticking them in a particular “spot.”  So I’m putting them here, pretty much in the middle, which is where I put them on my “favorites” scale.

 

Mall of Cthulhu (as Seamus Cooper) – In which our hero learns that Lovecraft’s monsters are real, and tries to fight them.

 

Brendan is a fan of Lovecraft, and he takes a few hundred pages to snap him on the tail end with a towel.  But, you know, in a loving way.  Mostly, if you read the reviews, he didn’t really please anyone all that much.  Hardcore Lovecraft people seemed to want something else, and people looking for a comic novel didn’t quite get into it either.

 

As a person who is sorta “eh” about Lovecraft, I thought this worked pretty well.

 

Terror at the Short (Seamus Cooper) – Here, Halpin takes a few short stories, and links them together into a novel.  This one tries to tip more towards the horror and less towards the funny, and I enjoyed it.  This was also Brendan’s first attempt to DIY publish a “new” novel, in this case another Lovecraft novel that takes place on the Jersey Shore (and has nothing to do with MTV and that show at all).

 

I suspect this one would work better for Lovecraft junkies, as it leans a little harder on the scary.

 

Enter the Bluebird – This was Halpin first solo novel in years (outside of Terror) and he chose to Kickstarter it in order to get a better cover and a copyeditor.

 

In it, we meet a girl with superpowers whose mom, a non-powered superhero, has gone missing.  She makes friends, starts a war with the local crime syndicate, and meets a cute boy.  And…

 

Really, I owe this one a longer review, but I’ve only sat with it for a day and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.  (Sorry Brendan.)

 

Mostly I feel like I want to take my time with it because it has a lot of things in it that are new for Halpin as a writer.  It’s a superhero story, but it’s told in noir fashion.  It’s also a YA book, more or less.  He’s talked about writing a second one, and I’m curious to see what comes of that, as a lot of this book felt like the pilot for a TV series – it sets up a main character, yes, but it also builds up a “team” that, by the end, would certainly make for an interesting ongoing series.

 

For what it’s worth, I’d put my money down a second time just to see where it goes.

 

The Good:

 

For lack of a better way to put it, these are some of the lighter Halpin books.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them, and I think if they found just the right audience, they could have been huge hits (though I don’t think any of them were).

 

However, the key issue here is: Right Audience. So I’ll talk about that as I go along.

 

Shutout –  Shutout is a story about teen girls who play soccer.  There’s boy stuff, and friendship drama.  And I think it’s the kind of thing that would make for a cute TV movie starring a few upcoming tween girls.

 

But it’s a light book, and deliberately so, and I don’t know that I was the “right” audience for this one.  But if you know a girl who plays soccer, you should give it to her.  Like, yesterday.

 

Jenna and Jonah’s Fauxmance – This is another co-write, about two TV costars who pretend to love each other, but actually loathe each other.  You can probably guess how it ends.

 

Honestly, I remain SHOCKED that this one wasn’t picked up by Disney and converted into their next High School Musical franchise.  Truly.  It’s light and fluffy and fun, and I think it would be a huge hit.

 

How Ya Like Me Now? – This was Brendan’s first crack at YA, and for a while I tried to get it turned into a movie.  (I had a few connections at the time, all of which failed me.)  I remember liking it quite a bit, but I suspect it fell into a strange gap where it wasn’t dark enough to find a grim audience and wasn’t light enough to find a non-grim one. 

 

Thinking back on it now, it feels like a more racially diverse episode of Degrassi.  And I like Degrassi.  And if you like that kind of thing, this book will almost certainly work for you.

 

The Few, The Proud, The Ones I Won’t Reread:

 

Brendan Halpin sits in my top three authors list – the other two are Stephen King and Neil Gaiman.

 

Here’s what I’ll say for Brendan.  He’s never written a book I just flat-out hated, and/or couldn’t read.  King has written a few.  Gaiman has written a couple.

 

But I should note, these books aren’t bad, they just didn’t appeal to me all that much, and my interest in rereading them is pretty much nil.

 

However, I need to add that they might work for YOU.  I just wouldn’t start here:

 

I Can See Clearly Now – This was Brendan’s last book for adults, and I remember reading it and knowing that there was no way it could be a hit.  The premise isn’t bad, really, but… Okay, here’s the premise:

 

A bunch of people come together to create the songs for a show that might as well be called Schoolhouse Rock, but isn’t because it would probably cost money to do so.

 

As novels go, it’s basically a light soap opera.  It’s an easy, breezy read.  But it’s not something that would ever, in a million years, become a New York Times bestseller.  As it is, I think the “Schoolhouse” angle was probably the idea that sold it.

 

It’s not a hard read.  It’s not a bad read.  It’s just an interesting premise that I don’t think could ever be “great” in execution.

 

Dear Catastrophe Waitress – This book, also, suffers from an interesting idea that doesn’t really work.  I think it’s possible it might have come together if it were a short story, but in this case…

 

Here’s the gist: Two people, one male and one female, have their lives ruined when their ex-significant other writes a big hit songs about them.

 

This notoriety causes them no end of grief.

 

Again, it’s not a bad book.  But it felt long, as these two people go through something like a decade of life before they meet and commiserate over what was done to them.  It marks the first and only time a Halpin book felt “long” to me.

 

Odd and Ends:

 

Halpin has written a handful of screenplays in an effort to try something different.  Here’s a quick rundown of the results.

 

Don’t You Forget About Me – Halpin wrote a sequel to The Breakfast Club.  As far as I know, it never went anywhere or did anything, and since you can get it on his web site I’m guessing he never got sued over it.

 

I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Breakfast Club (I think I was too old when I saw it, and perhaps too cynical) so my opinion doesn’t count for much.  But I felt like people who loved the first movie probably would have loved this, wherein all the gang gets back together and we catch up with them.

 

Baby, I Love Your Way – In this, a guy loses everything, and becomes a busker who only sings the title song, over and over.  There are fairies, but they play a VERY small role in the story.  And it shouldn’t really work, but it sort of does.  For what it’s worth, I liked it more than the books listed in “The Few.”

 

Notes from a Blender: The Sitcom – In which Brendan tried to make Notes into a sitcom.  I remember I had comments for him at the time, though I can’t for the life of me remember what they were.  If I remember right, I think I was under the impression that it would have worked better as a comedy/drama, not unlike Gilmore Girls.

 

There’s fun stuff to be had in the script, though.

 

Donorboy: The TV Show – This one, on the other hand, didn’t really work for me.  I think when it comes to TV, that both of these books could have been good TV, but I think they needed someone with an expert hand to co-write them.

 

And there it is – 3,000 words just to tell you to read Brendan Halpin.  Because you should.  Start today!