I've read a lot on the movie version of Mary Poppins, and have seen a wonderful show on TV, too, but Making Mary Poppins: the Sherman Brothers, Walt Disney, and the Creation of the Classic Film, by Todd James Pierce had all new information for me. It was mostly on how the music and lyrics were written, how Walt (he preferred that to Mr. Disney) picked the people he did (always experts in their field, not always well known as yet). It was a long, involved, convoluted process as they were also consulting with the author, who was not always pleased with their work! The brothers worked on a lot of other projects, too. I loved learning how careful they were with those lyrics ... for example, the one where the older bankers were singing about banking? ... well, those characters were old, would have been born in the late 1800's given the time setting they were working in, so their language and patterns of speech would have been different, so that's how they wrote "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank"! The movie was pretty much a huge gamble on the part of Disney to make, but it worked!

I debated with myself over whether or not I should include this book, I didn't exactly read all of it ... but, the parts I did read were excellent and I figured other readers might make a similar decision ... so, here it is. Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! Interviews with Science Fiction Legends, edited by Richard Wolinsky. While I missed the golden age of the pulps and read a lot of the authors mentioned here after they were well established, the history behind that was fun. There were LOTS of pulp magazines: science fiction, fantasy, Western, romance ... and a lot of the authors wrote for many if not all of them because, face it, if you didn't get paid, you didn't eat! Culled from many resources here are comments from authors, editors, publishers and so on, many from the radio show Probabilities. It got so I read about the authors I knew, whether just by name, or because I'd read their books, but not each and every entry.

Reading Hermit With Dog