THE LITTLE BOOK of WREXHAM AFC edited by Mark Pearson

Published by OH in 2023.

I am a fan of the Hulu/Disney+ documentary show Welcome to Wrexham. If you are not familiar with the show, Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought a professional soccer team in Wales. 

In the U.K. there are multiple levels of pro soccer, kind of like professional baseball in the U.S. But, there is a difference - in the U.S. if your team loses or wins, they stay at their league. In the U.K., teams at the bottom of the rankings drop down a level and teams at the top of the rankings move up.

Reynolds and McElhenney bought a team that had dropped pretty low in the rankings with the determination to make the investments to push the team up as high as it would go. Meanwhile, they would document the whole thing for Americans to watch. 

This is not a review of the documentary which just concluded its fifth season, though. Instead, this a review of this little book of more than 170 quotes and facts based on the show, the team, and the town of Wrexham. The book was published after the second season, so it seems a bit dated.

It's an easy read, but not an amazing one. I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LITTLE BOOK of WREXHAM AFC edited by Mark Pearson.

SUPERMAN: SPACE AGE by by Mark Russell (Author), Michael Allred (Illustrator)

Published in 2023 by DC Comics.

2023 Eisner Nominee - Best Limited Series

2023 Eisner Nominee - Best Writer, Mark Russell

Synopsis

Superman: Space Age tells a slightly different Superman story. We join a late teen Superman helping his father on the farm in Smallville, Kansas in November of 1963. His father opens up about his rough experiences in World War II and talks to Clark about what a hero is. 

That same day, Kennedy is assassinated and Soviet-U.S. tensions climb so high that there is real fear that a nuclear war may start. Clark Kent takes to the air and flies to the Arctic in his overalls and work shirt to try to prevent World War III. But, his enthusiasm and inexperience nearly cause the war he is trying to prevent. Luckily, he is shot down by a pilot named Hal Jordan.

Clark Kent awakens to find the Fortress of Solitude.

This book tracks Superman from 1963 to 1985. As time goes on we add Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League. We get a lot of Lois Lane as she demonstrates heroism in a non-superhero way. 

News events that we are all familiar with come into the story, such as the Civil Rights movement. But, that all changes when Lex Luthor gets a couple of nuclear weapons and actually uses them...

Nice advice from Mr. Kent

My Review

There are a lot of clever things done in this graphic novel. The Batman/Bruce Wayne setup is very well done, with Bruce Wayne and Batman actually seemingly being on different wavelengths throughout the book (for example, Bruce Wayne funds the Hall of Justice but Batman stomps out of the group for a while.)

The solution to the major crisis of the book (surprisingly, it is not Lex Luthor's foray into nuclear weapons) is quite clever and I did not see it coming until the very end. It was a very different way for Superman to be a hero and save the world.

Nitpicking note: The book starts with Clark Kent and his father baling hay in Kansas in NOVEMBER. As a person who has put up hay (much like they were doing in the graphic novel) in Indiana, I can guarantee you that no one is baling hay in the midewest in November. It's always done in the summer and always seems to happen on the hottest day you can imagine. The heat has nothing to do with it, it's just the bad luck of everyone that is putting up hay. The only time I ever had heat stroke-tyoe if event was when I was putting up hay on what had to be the hottest day of the year when I was in high school. It wasn't full blown heat stroke, but I was well on my way.

I rate this graphic novel 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Superman: Space Age

Nice quotes from the book: 

"As Americans we talk about being American as if we all agree on what that means. But the truth is that some judge truth and justice by how well they support the American Way while others judge the American Way by how well it stands up for truth and justice."

"The people who do the most good in this world are not the strongest, the smartest, the most prepared, but simply those who show up."

WAMPETERS, FOMA and GRANFALLONS (OPINION) by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally Published in 1974.

Wampeters, Foma and Granfallons is a collection of interviews, speeches, nonfiction pieces and one sci-fi play published from 1965-1974. The title comes from terms in Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle. In Vonnegut's own words from the preface:

"A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings."

So, it's his way of saying that these are harmless little thoughts that people who are interested in what he has to say will gravitate to. 

The memorable pieces include the only piece of fiction in the group. This was a play about a woman being kept by extreme artificial means with a theme of loneliness - a common theme from Vonnegut. In another entry, Vonnegut travelled to the short-lived country of Biafra, a breakaway piece of what is now Nigeria as they were losing their short (failed) war of independence. I can't think of a better author to tell of the last days of a dying country.

The last 51 pages of the book is a Playboy interview. Playboy used to be famous for two things - the pictures of the girls and fantastic interviews. This interview was merely adequate. I think the interviewer was fumbling around most of the time, almost like Playboy didn't know what Vonnegut was like as an interview subject.

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Wampeters, Foma and Granfallons (Opinion) by Kurt Vonnegut.

STAR WARS: LEGACY of VADER - THE REIGN of KYLO REN, VOLUME 1 by Charles Soule (Author), Luke Ross (Illustrator), Stefano Raffaele (Illustrator), Derrick Chew (Cover Art)

Published in 2025 by Marvel Universe.

Synopsis

Legacy of Vader is set between Episode VIII and Episode IX. Kylo Ren was embarrassed by Luke Skywalker at the end of Episode VIII, but he has still consolidated control of The First Order.

This collection consists of six installments, each describing the consolidation of his power or his investigation into the pre-Vader life of Anakin Skywalker. He is looking into his grandfather's life because he wants to really know what made Vader so powerful.

So, Ren travels to Mustafar, Tatooine, and Naboo with Vader's former bodyservant leading the way.

My Review

Kylo Ren's style as he takes over The First Order is ridicuously flamboyment. For example, he demands that Hux (his main rival for control of The First Order) build him a proper throne, But then, he heads off to study Darth Vader and leaves everything behind for weeks and weeks. Hux hates him with a passion and Kylo Ren should have been aware that being gone for all of that time is just asking for trouble.

Oddly, Hux just uses that time to do nothing to secure his own alternate power sources in The First Order. Instead, he just builds Kylo Ren's throne. Hux is nothing in this story but a toady, not the conniving monster shown in the movies.

The fifth installment in this series is simply bizarre. It makes no sense - just some sort of ego stroking on the part of Kylo Ren. It's completely bizarre behavior.

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5 (barely.) It can be found on Amazon.com here: Star Wars: Legacy of Vader - The Reign of Kylo Ren, Volume 1. 

SCANDALOUS WITNESS: A LITTLE POLITICAL MANIFESTO for CHRISTIANS (audiobook) by Lee C. Camp

Published in 2020 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Read by Trevor Thompson.
Duration: 6 hours, 7 minutes.
Unabridged.

I heard Lipscomb University professor Lee C. Camp on Voxology, a Christian religious podcast with a more progressive bent. One of the hosts made multiple references to this book and how he had read it multiple times and referred to it often. The interview was good, the discussion was lively and I immediately burned my monthly Audible credit on this book.

Scandalous Witness consists of 15 propositions about Christianity, politics, and American history. I had no problem with Camp's propositions or his conclusions, but I did realize one very important fact - the hosts of the Voxology podcast are very, very good at creating interesting conversation.

There is nothing wrong with this book and its conclusions - I heartily endorse almost everything he says. The problem is that I found it to be a tedious read and I only finished it out sheer stubborness precisely because I had used my monthly Audible credit and I didn't want to waste it.

Maybe it's because I have read a lot of serious books along this vein like Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes du Mez, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta, and The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess that cover these topics. Even a more political book like John Fugelsang's Separation of Church and Hate covers a lot of this same material in confrontational manner.

There is nothing wrong with this book - I just found my mind wandering way too often. A good place to start if you haven't thought much about these topics.

His fifteen propositions are:

Proposition 1: History Is Not One Damn Thing after Another

Proposition 2: The End of History Has Already Begun

Proposition 3: American Hope Is A Bastard

Proposition 4: Christianity Is Neither A Prostitute Nor A Chaplain

Proposition 5: The United States Is Not the Hope of the World

Proposition 6: The United States Was Not, Is Not, and Will Not Be a Christian Nation

Proposition 7: How Christian Values, and the Bible, Corrupt Christianity

Proposition 8: Every Empire Falls

Proposition 9: Christian Partisanship is Like a Fist-Fight on the Titanic

Proposition 10: Hostile Forces Have a Role in the Unfolding of History

Proposition 11. Christianity Is Not a Religion; Christianity Is a Politic

Proposition 12: Liberal Political Puissance Is Not the Goal

Proposition 13: Exemplary Political Witness Is the Goal

Proposition 14: Christianity Is Not Counter-Cultural

Propositions 15: Christian Engagement Must Always Be Ad Hoc

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. 

LUCAS WARS: THE TRUE STORY of GEORGE LUCAS and the CREATION of STAR WARS (graphic novel) by Renaud Roche (Author), Laurent Hopman (Author), Jeremy Melloul (Translator)

Published in 2025 by 23rd Street.

Lucas Wars is the story of how the first Star Wars movie came to be made. I've read and seen videos on this story before, but I found this graphic novel to be particularly entertaining and informative. I also really enjoyed the illustrations - they are a simple style but capture the look of the real people involved in the story and the scenes from the movie(s).

It starts with George Lucas in high school and ends with the negotiations for The Empire Strikes Back. The story includes the horrible car accident that made him get serious, his film school education, the making of THX 1138 and American Graffiti, his marriage, and the many, many revisions of what would become Star Wars.

I mention the revisions because he had so many of them. His first scripts would have been so long and so complicated that if they had been made into movies they would have been trilogies. Lucas's friends and his wife encouraged him to keep trimming down the story and focusing it. 

20th Century Fox kept getting updated scripts that were radically different and they started to doubt - and they kept doubting until the movie started to fill theaters and became the phenomenon that older Star Wars fans remember. 

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended for any Star Wars fan.

This graphic novel can be found here: Lucas Wars: The True Story of George Lucas and the Creation of Star Wars.

WHERE BUZZARDS FLY (A Chick Bowdrie story) (audiobook) by Louis L'Amour

Originally published in a pulp magazine in 1948.
Originally published in book form in 1983.
Originally published on audio cassette in 1986 by Random House Audio.
Re-published by Random House Audio in digital format in 2008.
Performed by multiple actors / multicast performance.
Duration: 50 minutes.
Unabridged.

Legendary Western writer Louis L'Amour's work has been packaged and repackaged in so many ways over the years. There is so much of his writing to work with - short stories, novels, series of novels, and more. 

At some point, someone decided to break up his short story collection into small audiobooks that would fit onto a single cassette (about an hour.) In the 1980s and 1990s it was pretty common to edit what would have been 10 hour audiobooks down to fit onto a cassette or two or three.

If you look at some of my early reviews, you can find a few of these abridged audiobooks and I am constantly complaining about poor edits and lost content that makes the story confusing. I think the publishing industry thought that people wouldn't listen to long audiobooks - a thought that we now know is completely wrong.

You can see why Random House took advantage of the multitide of Louis L'Amour short stories during those days to create one cassette audiobooks - you could tell the whole story without making confusing edits and you could make some money on the individual short story. They used to sell these cassettes at truck stops.

This story was performed by multiple actors, like an old-fashioned radio play. L'Amour insisted that the stories be done this way so that they would offer more value for the listener and at one point there was a syndicated radio show featuring these stories.

Synopsis:

In Where Buzzards Fly, Texas Ranger Chick Bowdrie is on the case near the border looking for the men who killed and robbed a group of Mexican bandidos who had earlier robbed a church in Mexico. Their bodies were left where they were killed. Bowdrie heads to a nearby ranch where he knows the rancher and has always been welcome to stay the night and eat a meal or two.

The rancher and the ranch hands suggest he go to the nearest town to ask around and what he finds puts his life and the life of a beautiful young woman at risk.

 My Review:

Most people think of the Sacketts when they read a Louis L'Amour series, but my first L'Amour novels were all about Chick Bowdrie and his hammerhead roan horse. 

As far as mysteries go, this one is pretty basic. Bowdrie keeps his eyes open, follows some people around and stumbles upon the truth. That makes sense to me - he's a rough and tough brawler with a heightened sense of justice and decent tracking skills, not Sherlock Holmes. 

The radio drama format was well done.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Where Buzzards Fly (A Chick Bowdrie story) by Louis L'Amour.