‘Pirate Latitudes’ (Books)

It’s pointless to complain about the cardboard characters, dreadful action-movie dialogue and wildly improbable plot points in Michael Crichton’s latest — and last — book, published posthumously.

Sure, “Pirate Latitudes” has all that, in spades, but you don’t buy a Crichton book for psychological acuity and dramatic realism. It’s supposed to be disposable fun, a book that sits out front in bookstores and attracts readers with the author’s name printed larger than the title.

It’s set in 1665 in Jamaica and the Caribbean islands, and it concerns exactly what you would expect: high-seas adventure, a treasure galleon and a whole boatload of swashbuckling. It’s only a little disappointing not to find any one walking a plank or singing a sea shanty.

Once the main story sets sail, Crichton jumps from one spectacular adventure to another without pause, drawing a straight line from the crew’s capture and escape to the theft of the treasure ship, the ensuing chase and the sea battle — followed, of course, by the requisite hurricane, then cannibals and sea monsters.

John Mayer (Music)

If you’re engrossed in the tabloid Internet-gossip that has come to define the celebrity world, then John Mayer’s latest CD, “Battle Studies,” could provide enough fodder to fill at least a dozen Perez Hilton blog posts or at least one story in Us Weekly.

The single, “Heartbreak Warfare,” already has some speculating on its subject with lyrics like: “If you want more love, why don’t you say so?… Bombs are falling everywhere, heartbreak warfare.”

Mayer has rarely shied away from attention. He provides must-read updates to his more than 2.6 million followers on Twitter, engaged in a high-profile romance with Jennifer Aniston (which followed the high-profile romance with Jessica Simpson, which followed a romance with yet another starlet), has written for blogs and magazines and is known as one of the wittiest, media-savvy entertainers around.

“Battle Studies” — his fourth studio album — is what he describes as perhaps his most lyrically complex, and yet at the same time, his most straightforward. Now a veteran musician and producer, he has more confidence and experience when making a record: “I don’t see it as a series of winning bets. I see it as something I do for a living.”

The album finds Mayer at his most emotionally vulnerable, with songs titles like “Half of My Heart” (which features Taylor Swift) and “Perfectly Lonely.” Mayer describes it as the “loose-ends phase of my life.”

Kris Kristofferson (Music)

One of American music’s most celebrated songwriters, Kris Kristofferson continues his renewed commitment to music on “Closer To The Bone,” the follow-up to 2006’s “This Old Road,” his first album in a dozen years.

As with the previous album, Kristofferson works with veteran producer Don Was, who keeps arrangements stripped and focused on Kristofferson’s craggy voice and rudimentary yet expressive acoustic guitar.

Kristofferson states his purpose when he sings, “Nothing but the truth now,” in the title song. These are heart-laid-bare lyrics from a 73-year-old interested in mining his truths rather than entertaining. He’s still whittling on the same themes, too, with songs that continually explore freedom, love and justice for all.

He writes everything himself, with some help from longtime collaborator Stephen Bruton, who co-wrote “Let the Walls Come Down” and “From Here to Forever,” the latter about a parent’s unending love that Kristofferson directs toward his children. (The album is dedicated to Bruton, who died as the album was being finished.)

Most of the 11 tracks are new works, excepting “Good Morning John,” a tribute to his late friend Johnny Cash, and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” written more than 30 years ago. Even those songs deal with the struggle for individual dignity — something Kristofferson writes about with poetry and precision throughout “Closer to the Bone.”