Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Movie report: The Dark Knight Rises I saw this movie at a drive-in, and I highly recommend this type of venue for watching superhero movies. The big screen, exposed to the night sky, with cars and kids and bottles of YooHoo: it’s just the right setting for this kind of adventure. This is a solid, dark, and atmospheric movie, as if carved from one of the stones that make up Wayne Manor. Batman has been absent for about 8 years. There’s a good reason for this: Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, is so banged up, in pain and walking with a cane – not to mention the emotional scars we can’t see – that he can’t even leave the house, and lives as a recluse, the subject of Howard Hughes-type rumors. Most of Wayne Manor is draped with furniture sheets, lying unused except for occasional society galas for charitable causes. Selina Kyle shows up at one of these, not to socialize, but to burglarize. She’s an enterprising and spunky young woman who steals things for clients, and escape...

Book report: Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett This is the 7 th of the “Diskworld” comedy fantasy stories by Terry Pratchett, but you needn’t have read any of the others to understand this one. It stands on its own, and then some. It starts with the main character, Teppic, going through his final trial to become a professional assassin, and a grueling trial it is. While he’s grappling up buildings, sneaking across rooftops, selecting knives, and avoiding the booby-traps set by his professor, we learn that he is the son of the king of Djelibeybi, which is Diskworld’s version of ancient Egypt, a land of pyramids and unchanging tradition. Teppic is trying to get away from all that and become a professional man. Unfortunately, his father dies and he returns to reluctantly take up his kingly duties, which include reluctantly sentencing the beautiful young hand-maiden Ptraci to death for not being willing to die in order to accompany the deceased king to the afterlife. Instead, Te...