Sometimes it’s a book title that draws me in, and that was definitely the case for today’s book: Dear Luke, We Need To Talk, Darth – and Other Pop Culture Correspondences by John Moe. It’s rather a long title, but it does pretty much encapsulate the book–a series of letters, interview transcripts and journals, putting a new slant on familiar movies, TV shows and songs.
Like anything based on pop culture, these only really work if you know the originals–but Moe seems to have chosen things that are very widely known, if I can judge from my own experience. I had at least heard of everything that was spoofed, and had some idea of where the jokes were originating. The book satirizes a broad range, from Jaws (the therapy journal of the shark), to Elvis (a letter from his severely depressed hound dog), to Harry Potter (the diary of an obscure student) to the Grinch (a disgruntled letter from Max). Continue reading “Book Review: Dear Luke, We Need To Talk”
I wish I knew why some books from childhood stayed in my memory, helpfully with titles intact, while others faded out. It well may be a question of how long they stayed in my library’s collection, considering I went to the same library from (roughly) birth to age eighteen. I can only assume that While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away by Mary Nash stayed in the collection for a long time, since it stayed in my memory.
The first three books of the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones seem for all the world like they have nothing much to do with each other—until we finally get to Book Four, The Crown of Dalemark, which ties it all together. The funny thing is, it didn’t come along until twenty years after the third book. It makes me wonder if Jones had the fourth book in mind all along, or if she looked back at three slightly-connected books and decided to bring them together.
Tales of the Marvelous 