Scarlet is the second book in Stephen Lawhead's King Raven Trilogy.  Just as with the first book in the series, Hood, this book is one of Lawhead's best.  The writing is easy going and accessible, the plot moves along at a good pace, and the characters are vivid and lifelike.  

Suppose you were a multi-millionaire music diva who has spent the last five years playing the most successful Las Vegas show ever.  Suppose also that virtually every album you have recorded has gone platinum and has had several top radio hits.  On top of all of that, suppose you had tens of millions of fans (literally) around the globe who would pay large sums of money to see you in person or buy another one of your releases.  In many ways it could be said that you had "everything" so what do you do next?  

Well, if you're Celine Dion then you take a chance and record a CD that is completely different than anything else you have ever done.  You create a CD that moves beyond the sappy love song ballads that were your mainstay for two decades and create songs with depth and maturity.  You explore new styles of music (light jazz, blues, rock, europop, etc.).  The result is "Taking Chances".  A superb CD.

Let me say right from the start that this was one of the best family movies I've seen in a while.  It was engaging, entertaining, and hilarious for the whole family.  Jack Black, as the voice of the Po, the weight challenged kung fu wanna be Panda, was perfect.  Black got it right.  For a family movie this is one not to miss this summer.

 That Hideous Strength is the final book in Lewis's science fiction trilogy.  The first book, Out Of the Silent Planet the main character, Ransom, visits the planet Malacandra (Mars) and discovers an extensive and vibrant life outside of Earth which is referred to as the Silent Planet.  In the second book, Perelandra, Ransom travels to Perelandra (Venus) to stop another evil plot by Doctor Weston.  In contrast, the third book remains entirely on Earth.  In the third book Ransom is again called to thwart evil.  This time he is stopping an invasion of earth by the alien forces that exist outside Earth's protective shell.

 This is another of those fantasy books from the 80's that I somehow missed. The other notable entry in that list was the David Eddings Belgariad series that I reviewed a few months ago.  Daggerspell was better and more interesting that the Eddings books but it still had a few problems.  Or maybe just quirks.  I'm really not trying to be all that critical but some things just stick out like sore thumbs.  After reading Eddings, this book, and some old Shanarra I think I'm beginning to understand why people have always looked down a bit on the fantasy genre.  This book wasn't that bad though.  As I said, just some quirks.

There are a few actors who we know are "hit or miss".  Sometimes we like their movies and other times we don't.  Adam Sandler is one of those actors.  It seems that he is more "miss" than "hit" for us but we thought that maybe the newest movie, Zohan, would be one of the rare exceptions.  We were wrong.  This was one of the worst movies we've seen in a long time.  There were a few funny parts but those were minuscule compared to the overwhelming junior-high level humor.  

Prince Caspian is the second movie in The Chronicles of Narnia series which is following the books in the "as written" order rather than the chronological order.  This movie version was excellent -- far better than the first movie.  Just as with the first movie in the series, the story was followed fairly faithfully with only minor alterations to make it more appropriate for a movie.  However, the quality of the writing, acting, and movie making jumped up to a new level.