Kiss Me Like a Stranger by Gene Wilder

When Gene Wilder died in August at the age of 83, the world lost a great entertainer. He's of course best known for playing Willy Wonka and Dr. Frederick Frankenstein but his legacy covers much more ground than his starring roles. His 2005 autobiography Kiss Me Like a Stranger covers his incredible life, his career, and his many loves.

Through much of his adult life, Wilder had visits with a therapist called Margie, and several chapters of the book are framed as stories that he is telling her in treatment. He wrote mostly in chronological order but sometimes a memory was triggered that had to be covered first. He suffered the death of his mother at a fairly early age, and some sexual and physical abuse at a military school; these are explained in a matter-of-fact way but clearly had lasting repercussions. He had insecurities being intimate with women in his teens and twenties, and later he had multiple marriages fail. As a young man he was troubled by an overwhelming urge to pray for forgiveness several times a day, for a sin he wasn't aware he'd committed. He named this affliction his "Demon," and eventually he worked past his feelings of guilt with Margie's help.

He was born as Jerome Silberman and chose the stage name Gene as a tribute to his mother Jeanne, though he didn't consciously realize the similarity until Margie pointed it out. The surname Wilder came from playwright Thornton Wilder. The young Jerry Silberman became interested in acting when he saw his older sister Corinne in a play and was trained by the same teacher; enjoying himself, he continued to study the craft. His first screen role came about when the director had seen him on Broadway, and after a few TV movies, he snagged a small part in Bonnie and Clyde. Mel Brooks talked to Wilder about the role of Leo Bloom in The Producers years before it actually got made. He made his directing debut with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother and of course worked with Brooks again in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. You may or may not know that the first scene featuring Willy Wonka, in which the chocolate pioneer fakes a fall, was Wilder's idea and he wouldn't have done the movie without it.

During the making of Blazing Saddles, Wilder met Richard Pryor who co-wrote the film and was originally set to star, though was replaced by Cleavon Little in the lead. Wilder and Pryor went on to collaborate on several more outstanding comedies such as Stir Crazy, Silver Streak, and See No Evil, Hear no Evil. Wilder greatly enjoyed the chemistry he had with Pryor on-screen, but admitted to finding him difficult in real life, Pryor's drug use making him erratic.

Outside of his film work, in this book Wilder was very candid about his personal life. He was married to a woman named Mary Mercier for five years before they divorced. Then there was Mary Jo (known as Jo) who had a daughter named Katie from a previous marriage, whom Wilder adopted. Unfortunately Gene and Katie became estranged after he and Jo separated. The most famous of Wilder's spouses was SNL's Gilda Radner, whom he met on a movie called Hanky Panky. Wilder was by her side when she suffered depression and bulimia, and when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and underwent chemo treatments. This section of the book is absolutely heartbreaking. The cancer support group known as Gilda's Club was partly founded by Wilder, who himself went through a bout of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma which subsided.

It was after Radner's death that Wilder married Karen Boyer, whom he met when she coached him on how to act deaf in See no Evil, Hear no Evil. This was at a time in his life when he never thought he'd find love again, and he was still married to Karen at the time of his death from Alzheimer's.

Just like in his films, Wilder found a balance between humor and pathos in this book. His roles were mostly comic but with an undertone of darkness. In his writing he clearly expressed his regrets as well as the pride he took in his work and provides lighthearted anecdotes right alongside the tragic moments. He left a worthwhile legacy and will be missed by moviegoers worldwide.

End of Watch by Stephen King

This is the third and final book in the saga of retired Detective Kermit William Hodges. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and check out my reviews of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. Yay self-promotion! Or even read the books, they're good.

About seven years have passed since Brady Hartsfield maliciously ran over people waiting for a job fair with a stolen Mercedes. For most of that time he's been in the traumatic brain injury wing of Kiner Memorial Hospital due to getting walloped by Hodges' partner Holly Gibney at the scene of his subsequent attempt at mass murder. Now the presumably brain-dead Brady seems to be inducing a number of suicides, and the same defunct video game system is found near each victim.

Soon after the first suicide is discovered, Bill Hodges, now in his late 60s, gets diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. Now he's facing a supernatural killer at the same time as being faced with his own mortality. Jerome's sister Barbara almost gets herself run over while using a Zappit. A particular demo screen on the handheld game consoles has a hypnotizing effect on the player, which is a surefire metaphor for how our mobile devices suck us in. Brady has found a way to modify the game's qualities so that someone's mind becomes vulnerable enough for him to invade it, so he's able to control a body that isn't paralyzed like his own.

This series had not used supernatural elements up to now, but the mind control is brought up gradually. The first few times the reader encounters the characters that Brady is controlling such as Dr. Felix Babineau and Al "Library Al" Brooks, they just seem to be oddly loyal to him or brainwashed. But soon they start acting or speaking like the maniac we got to know uncomfortably well in Mr. Mercedes. This is a testament to King's storytelling prowess; any time a situation is joined in media res and doesn't completely make sense, just keep reading and it will be clearly explained later. Sometimes, his dedication to clarity feels overbearing, like when he recaps events from the previous two books thoroughly enough that one wouldn't have had to read them. Or when he takes half a page to have Holly or Jerome explain a bit of modern technology that would be obvious to the younger set, but I'm sure this would be helpful to the readers who are closer to Hodges' age.

I thought this was a very satisfying conclusion to the series. It left me imagining a TV series that could cover the entire storyline of Hodges and his partners. Although the track record of King TV adaptations lately, namely Under the Dome and 11.22.63 have been less than stellar, I think some kind of take on Mr Mercedes and its sequels could work out well. Any Stephen King fan would be happy with the way the books turned out.

One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B. J. Novak

One More Thing is a collection of short stories by that guy who played Ryan on The Office. At least that's how some of you will know him. He also wrote fifteen episodes of the show and this book proves that he's just as funny and insightful a writer on the page as he is for the screen.

All of Novak's stories have a twist that takes them outside the realm of reality. He explores the problem with Heaven being paradise for all its residents, explains the origin of that train-based math problem that everybody knows, and in the final story takes a jab at the publishing industry itself. A recurring element is the sarcastic "Discussion Questions" that appear at the end of a few of the pieces, presenting disturbing queries such as "Do you think Johnny Depp should have driven his motorcycle off the mountain highway to his death? Why or why not?" Sometimes it feels like Novak is mocking  the whole idea of a short story collection, including with the book's subtitle. You would not want to read this book out of order because there are a few recurring elements and characters, which I didn't expect.

Some of these are very short stories, often less than a page or a few lines. With these, he makes his point and moves on.

I highly recommend listening to the audio version of One More Thing, mostly read by Novak, with help from his celebrity friends Rainn Wilson, Mindy Kaling, Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Katy Perry, and more. The various narrators add variety and immersion to the experience. There's one story called "Closure," as voiced by Novak and Kaling, that one could imagine the broken-up couple being Ryan and Kelly from The Office if they had different names. Except that is, when it takes a turn that is too off the wall and dark to be on the NBC sitcom. Another story features a young girl with a desire to go to Niagara Falls "because a couple from a television show she watched got married there" which is a clear reference to Jim and Pam's wedding. But overall, the author doesn't ride the coattails of his well-known series too much.

B. J. Novak has blazed his own path with this collection, which some readers will call "weird" but I call hilarious and original. Sometimes you can determine exactly what question he asked himself that inspired a story, but other times you wonder where he comes up with this stuff. In either case, he takes things in directions I didn't see coming. I look forward to seeing what else he has up his sleeve in the future.

For more about the author and this book, visit bjnovak.com.

Star Trek, The Official Guide to Our Universe : The True Science Behind the Starship Voyages by Andrew Fazekas

In my college years I had the audacity to call Star Trek "boring", which caused a Trekkie to say defensively "What's so boring about an optimistic future?" I had grown up as more of a Star Wars fan, but as an adult I've grown to appreciate the Star Trek franchise for its striking optimism and imagination. Star Trek writers have a boundless outlet to comment on human nature and the universe at large by extrapolating a future that's built on the best aspects of our present. In this book, Andrew Fazekas uses the fictional voyages of the TV series and movies as a jumping-off point to explore real-life astronomy and physics.

To be upfront, this isn't a book that I can "review" as it's pretty much a reference book and isn't intended to be read cover-to-cover (though I did). Published by National Geographic, The Official Guide to Our Universe contains beautiful space photography from NASA (some with necessary false colorization) and information about celestial objects such as stars, black holes, and nebulae. Each section begins with a summary of a Star Trek episode or movie in which the crew encounters the object in question ("____ in Star Trek"), with the following page talking about the real-life equivalent ("____ in Our Universe"), and a few pages later a guide detailing how to spot it in the night sky ("Stargazing"). The stargazing pages includes what area of the world from which the object is best viewed, the best time of year to gaze upward, and a map that shows the nearest constellation. In between chapters, there are pages about Star Trek technologies like starships, weapons, and communicators, but these pages kind of feel like filler that would be better used in a more fan-targeted reference book.

As science fiction, Star Trek certainly tries harder to be accurate to the science than some of its genre brethren, but of course sometimes it just tosses out cool-sounding space words in the name of compelling stories. For instance, in the Original Series, Kirk and company get up close to a quasar, but as explained by Fazekas, in reality that's something that could only be found at the center of a galaxy other than our own. The book is careful to distinguish the fiction from the facts, and it's pretty interesting when the two overlap.

There's one paragraph in each chapter of this book that takes a quick look at how close real science is to reaching the technology that's been depicted on screen, and some of it is closer than one might have considered. Although we won't be traversing the galaxy at warp speed any time soon, we've come close to replicators with 3-D printers, and virtual reality is advancing quickly, just not to the extent of holodecks. We've come a long way in the fifty years since Gene Roddenberry's original series premiered, and continuing innovation at this pace for another couple hundred years, who knows where we'll boldly go. Stargazing has been limited to an Earth-centric point of view, but someday we might see our solar system, or even our galaxy, from the outside. The Official Guide to Our Universe will appeal to any Star Trek fan, and/or anyone with an interest in astronomy, and it may increase your interest in either subject.

Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

Twenty-seven years ago, NBC aired the premiere of a show called The Seinfeld Chronicles. The premise was intended to be a look at how a comedian gets his material from his everyday life. With the help of the talented writers and performers, it evolved into the Seinfeld we know and love that influenced situation comedies for decades to come, and the book Seinfeldia tells the tale.

The book gets its title from the idea that the show exists somewhere between reality and fiction. It introduced many characters that borrow their names and/or personalities from real-life counterparts. Of course there is the character of Jerry Seinfeld, played by comedian-turned-actor Jerry Seinfeld. But almost as famous is the fictional Jerry's neighbor Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) who was based on Kenny Kramer, a friend of co-creator Larry David. And the character of George Costanza (Jason Alexander) was based on David himself, though Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) was an amalgamation of several women who Seinfeld and David knew, including Carol Leifer who would join the writing staff.

The Seinfeld writers got almost all their story ideas from their real lives or from current events, which kept the show relatively grounded and timely despite the comedic exaggeration. Once Jason Alexander protested that nobody would handle a situation the way his character George was meant to, and Larry David fired back that that's exactly what he did when it happened to him. Near the middle of each season David was always reluctant to keep the series going for another year, because it was so hard to come up with fresh new ideas.

Armstrong is clearly a big fan of the show and delighted in being able to interview some of the creative people involved in it. She can't help but describe several famous episodes' plots when they are relevant to the element being described in the book. For example when profiling a specific writer she'll give synopses of the episodes written by him or her. In a few instances, her eagerness has her repeating an anecdote that was already mentioned a few chapters early, and sometimes she presents events out of chronological order for effect, which I didn't think was always the right way to tell a non-fiction account. However, her enthusiasm and research make for an entertaining and informative read.

This is a very comprehensive book, going from the show's infancy all the way to describing what the cast has done recently (yes, including Michael Richards' unfortunate outburst of anger) to the way people are still being influenced by the show. There are several pages about the @Seinfeld2000 Twitter feed (still going as of last month) that began as a frustrated parody of @SeinfeldToday (defunct as of 2015). Since it's still running in syndication and was recently acquired by Hulu, Seinfeld is sure to be enjoyed for generations. And Seinfeldia is overall a very good look at that show that was anything but "about nothing".