|
Musings from Brian J. Noggle
| |
|
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Book Report: The Case of the Mischeivous Doll by Erle Stanley Gardner (1963) This is a Perry Mason novel. It clocks in at like 140 pages. I understand Gardner dictated two of these a month or something. As such, you should expect it's a formulaic read, albeit one that's pleasing. This one details a plot where an heiress's double approaches Mason to make sure she's not getting chosen to be a patsy in something. She's got an odd story to tell, and when a man appears dead in her apartment during her apparent kidnapping, Mason has to determine if his client is in on it. On a side note, the 1960s technology that doesn't appear so dated for this novel: the speaker phone. When Della hooks it up, it reads just like the speaker phone in the conference room where I used to work. 45 years later, it doesn't read like they're playing eight track tapes. And an odd note about the edition I have: it's a Walter J. Black edition, but mine has a dustjacket. This is the first of the Walter J. Black editions I have of anything that has a dustjacket. Did someone slip a dustjacket for the same title over this one, or what? If Only I Were Given The Opportunity I wish I could, just once, run into Nancy Pelosi on the street, just so I could approach her and ask, "Mrs. Reagan?" Good Book Hunting: August 30, 2008 We walked to a yard sale yesterday; unfortunately, it was one of those where the sale items are jumbled into boxes for you to paw through. Even the four or five boxes of books. I got through two of them, but gave up in disgust. One cannot maintain control of one to two children while pawing through unsorted books whose vendor cannot even bother to put the spines facing up. So I only bought three books and a DVD; that will teach them. ![]() Click for full size
Poverty and Doomsday In a four color insert into the Suburban Journals (online here), Metro continues its apocalypse now threats should it not receive a new tax-backed slush fund. No service west of 270! No Metrolink trains after 8pm (spooking the suburbanites who would go to a ballgame, I suppose)! Take heart, citizens! Even if you don't pass the taxes, not one executive phony-baloney job will be lost and no budget will be spared on preparing promotional items for future tax increases! Metro has its priorities, after all. Saturday, August 30, 2008
Marsh Brings the Me-owr! To Political Argumentation Perhaps Taylor Marsh is more qualified to be vice-president than Sarah Palin:
But I oversimplify. (Link on Instapundit.) Great Moments in Map Reading Courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in this article:
View Larger Map That looks to be due north to me, not northwest. Green Park does not even extend west of Lindbergh, but given that I'm a county resident who traverses these small communities daily and not an insular Post-Dispatch The-City-Is-Back intern, I know these things enough to check them out. Friday, August 29, 2008
Book Report: The Careless Corpse by Brett Halliday (1961) Funny how the periods overlap; this book, written within a year of The End of the Night, is definitely a throwback to earlier detective fiction and the MacDonald book foreruns the more modern mystery (as does all of MacDonald's work). Sure, this book is one in a series with a two-fisted action hero whose name graced a mystery magazine (Michael Shayne), but MacDonald covered that series thing with Travis McGee, and the latter more closely resembles the work of the other MacDonald (Ross) than the hardboiled school (Chandler, Hammett, et cetera). This book details with the theft of an emerald necklace from a rich man with a boozing, thrill seeking wife; after time, he gets a letter blackmailing him about his fraudulently placing an insurance claim on a replica necklace. Shayne comes in to wreck many plans, including some to arm counterrevolutionaries in Cuba. The last bit is the most amusing of all: written right after the revolution, the two-fisted American PI is pro-Castro and some tough speechifying defends the revolution and says that Castro's not necessarily a communist. Of course, a year later, this book would be proven wrong. However, the political framework doesn't take away from the two-fisted action, so it was forgiveable. And amusing. I don't know if I've read a Michael Shayne novel since high school; it seems to me I might have, and I really ought to get more. The problem with these books is that the early 1960s cheap paperbacks are deteriorating for the most part in the wild; this one had several pages loose from the spine, including one that the previous owner had put back in backwards (so I read the even page before I read the odd page--it made more sense when I flipped them to the proper position). It would be nice if someone were to bring out reprints or collections, but I suppose Shayne is too old school for that. So I'll continue to be very careful, only opening the book 25 degrees, and keeping cats off the lap while reading. Thursday, August 28, 2008
Book Report: Nobody's Safe by Richard Steinberg (2000) When I picked up this book, I figured it was going to be a go-go-go suspense thriller like something Heller or Ludlum would write. An uncommonly good cat burglar with a past in shadowy government service knocks over a luxury penthouse and is surprised by the occupant returning. And more surprised when the occupant is hit by shadowy government types. The cat burglar finds the goods that the bad guys wanted, but they're onto him, and he's on the run trying to figure out what they want and whatnot. But he opens the contents of the safe, and it's the Majic-12 papers. Maybe some readers won't know what they are, but brothers and sisters, I got the papers off of the BBSes before the Internet existed and read them. Back in my youth, I was more speculative, and the thought of aliens coming to get you in the middle of the night was kinda spooky (this is before I became more realistic and focused on the government coming to get you in the middle of the night, which is not so much spooky as frightening since it's a possibility). So when I found that, I knew this was an X-Files sort of thriller, not a realistic thriller. It's speculative fiction or fantasy, not suspense. So I was disappointed and knocked right into reinvoking my disbelief. I hung with it, though, and made it through the cat burglary of Area 51, the rescue of the aliens (Joe and Max Gray--Hah! I snorted when I read their cover names!), the flashback of dubious merit except that it would please Majic-12 believers, the dubious deal to set everything right, and then the discovery that the deal won't hold and the sequel is on. It wasn't a bad book, but that didn't make it a good book. Maybe I would have been more tolerant if the book had been packaged as what it is instead of a straightforward suspense book. Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Book Report: End of the Night by John D. MacDonald (1960) This is probably the darkest John D. MacDonald book I've ever read. The story details, sort of, a cross-country crime spree by four drugged-out kids in the late 1950s. The action focuses really on their last murder (of 4, I think) in a small town and the events that lead up to their capture as well as bits from the trial. MacDonald does not go into a straight narrative, instead starting out with a letter from one of their executioners to a former employee at the prison where the bad guys died. MacDonald then weaves in an out of the in-over-his-head defense attorney's blustery memos during the trial, the death row diary of the college-kid-gone-bad in the quarter, some "live" actions of the final victim, her fiance, and law enforcement on the trail of the criminals. It's a bit jumbled, but you get a decent picture. In most of MacDonald's book, we get a protagonist of sorts, in some cases a shopworn hero and in others a pretty ruthless, efficient sort of character, but in this book, the protagonist ultimately is circumstances and dogged law enforcement that leads to their arrest. You get a couple scenes with the functionaries in law enforcement, not one guy doggedly stepping forward. Just the professional grouping and how they come together to catch crooks hell-bent on being caught. MacDonald spends a lot of time on the college-kid-gone-wrong, a kid from a good home who one day decides he's done with common life, so he walks out in the last semester of college and gets into a tawdry adventure and then falls into the group of drug-addled ne'er-do-wells. He has some conscience, sort of, and serves as a reminder that but for the grace of God go we. The final scene of the book occurs after the fiance of the last victim, an architect, sells the property where he was going to build their dream house along with the plans he'd drawn up for them. As he drives away, he suddenly swerves to hit a dog but misses and then feels bad for the attempt and relief that he missed. This is the message of the book: one small swerve, maybe even only on whim, can lead one to great evil. MacDonald's characterization talents are up to snuff, but overall the book isn't among his best because of the choppy pacing and lack of a protagonist. Also, did I mention its bleak outlook? Tuesday, August 26, 2008
With A Name Like That, How Can The Band Be Bad? The Pat Sajak Assassins. The very name inspires me to purchase one of their CDs. Sunday, August 24, 2008
Good Book Hunting: August 22, 2008 The final book fair of the season, the Carondolet YMCA book fair, no longer takes place at the Carondolet YMCA. As a matter of fact, I overheard at the new venue that the Loughborough YMCA is closing down since there's a new, more modern facility available. A shame, really, since the old building was historic in nature. Also, because the books were spread over a number of rooms, they didn't overwhelm one, unlike the hockey rink in a South County park that had a checkout line wrapping into the bleachers when we came in. I didn't even hit the fiction section before calling it a day, as I'd carried my fifty pounds (eventually) of books for part of or most of an hour and a half just getting through four of the six rows of tables. I've got so many books and read so few these days that I get little joy from my compulsive acquisition these days. So here's what I got:
Click for full size
Loading these onto the to read shelves, I note I have just a litle space left. No doubt I'll accidentally fill this in the coming months. Then I'll have to start determining what furniture we sacrifice for more bookshelves. But that's not really a sacrifice, is it? Or perhaps I can somehow justify renting storage somewhere.... Good Book Hunting: August 16, 2008 Last Saturday, we stumbled across a couple of yard sales, reminding ourselves why we've stopped going to yard sales. However, I picked up a couple buck's worth of books:
Click for full size
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Taxes on the Ballot Charlie Dooley burns the midnight oil to get a tax increase proposal on the ballot:
Additionally, Metro is telling us about the coming skyfall if its proposed tax increase does not pass:
Now the transit agency is offering a worst-case scenario: No MetroLink trains after 8 p.m. Bus service in effect nonexistent outside Interstate 270. Twenty-eight of 60 current bus routes disappearing. "This is going to be shocking," Metro President Robert Baer said Friday. "We pray that doesn't happen." Metro is preparing for the outcome of a Nov. 4 vote in St. Louis County on a half-cent increase in the transit sales tax. If the tax passes, the service cuts would be unnecessary. Half of the money would be spent on maintenance:
Friday, August 22, 2008
Book Report: The Private Dining Room by Ogden Nash (1953) It took me some time to read this book, because I'm reading poetry volumes aloud these days and although one child cannot flee from the poetry, the other one can, so it has been slow going. Still, they like Ogden Nash. Or perhaps I like reading Ogden Nash to them. Nash's silly verses are laden with classical education allusions amid the crazy goofing with the language to get a rhyme. Also, a number of the verses are essentially 18 line setups for a pun Nash needed to work in. Still, some of the lines and quips bear repeating and sometimes get it, although most people who quote Nash probably don't know it. Wednesday, August 20, 2008
I See CB and Raise Him CB, because some of the people we know in common read this blog daily, thinks I have pull, so he keeps sending me tips like this:
Brother, I see your antiobamassiah and raise you Michelle Obama Suicide Watch. (My link stolen from Ace, who, in his defense, is not my friend.) Kosovars Cannot Sign Revoke the Games Petition Over on my Software QA blog, QAHatesYou.com, I once noted that some drop-down lists have not yet recognized Kosovo's independence. To this list, add the petition to revoke the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Fortunately, Georgia and the Ukraine remain listed for the time being, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not. (Link seen on Instapundit.) Government To Hinder Conversation On My Front Porch In 2025 We live next to an interstate highway, and the front yard is pretty loud; you need to speak up to be heard. However, I used to say that in 20 years, we wouldn't hear that highway because the internal combustion engine would be out of style. Fortunately, the government is working to save the endangered Noise Pollution:
It has passed a bill to ensure that the vehicles make enough noise to be heard by visually impaired people about to cross a street. (Link seen at Porch Girl's.) Noggle's In The Driveway Again Government making life more expensive for us in today's Kirkwood-Webster Journal. Book Report: Love Sonnets selected by Louis Untermeyer (1964) This is a small collection of sonnet's greatest hits, sort of. About 25 of them, from Browning to Shakespeare and Petrarch. Unfortunately, the poems appear in a handwritten font (calligraphy, the credits call it) and they have "illustrations" on the left page of each. The font hurt my eyes, and I ignored the illustrations totally. Still, I enjoyed some of the poems (again, in many cases, as the major ones are anthologized everywhere else). A couple points:
Journalist Says Your Bedroom Is Not The Right Place For You In a story about a home invasion of Noah Herron, running back for the Packers, the journalist gives in to cliche and renders a judgement on whether the bedroom is actually the right place for you to be:
The absolute right place to be in this situation is where your home defense weapon is. Unfortunately for Herron, this ended up being a bedpost, but fortunately it was enough. Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Here's One Negative Impact Of AB-InBev, So I'll Provide Another James Durbin gives perspective on what the AB-InBev merger means to St. Louis IT in a post entitled The Effect Of The Anheuser-Busch Merger On The St Louis Staffing Market. He takes it from a macro approach, but let me tell you what it means to you, the individual IT drone: There are going to be a lot of former AB contractors chasing a smaller number of IT jobs in St. Louis. But never mind that, let's talk about the real impact on the rest of us: The commercials are going to suck. I mean, I'm not a fan of Budweiser, having only drunk a single Bud Light in my lifetime and only as part of Mardi Gras in Soulard where that's all that was available from Red, the bartender from the Venice Cafe who was moonlighting on some balcony in Soulard proper. My dislike of the product aside, the commercials were often funny. I mean, almost ten years later, I say, "Willie, it's go time," and that's from a non-campaign spot: I watch a lot of sports, and this means I watch a lot of Bud and Bud Light commercials. Have you ever seen a funny European beer commercial? Ever? They're all so earnest at best, at worst they creep me out. Dudes, I have nightmares about this one: Forget the local economy tanking. This is really where it's going to hurt. Book Report: Shadows Over Baker Street edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan (2003) This book will cost you 1d6 SAN. You have Sherlock Holmes and related characters, the poster children for reason, thrust into the world of Lovecraft, where irrationality and things beyond reason rule. You really cannot reconcile the two; the things that go bump in the cosmos win, and it's ultimately not comforting. As a collection of short stories written by different authors using the same characters, the different treatments are jarring. In one, Holmes and Watson are action heroes, for crying out loud, having a shootout in the London sewers with a bad guy carrying an unmounted Gatling gun. That would have been kinda heavy, don't you think? Still, the book is worth a couple of bucks for the concept and the better stories, but ultimately, it's not good Holmes and it's not good Lovecraft. Monday, August 18, 2008
Internet Geekery Lets Me Down So I did an image search for cylon assimilated borg, and I don't get a picture of an old school centurion with paraphernalia.I thought that maybe, just maybe, someone would have created an image in 1997 or something that combined the two motifs, back before "cylon" was merely a hot chick in a tight dress or battle uniform. Oh, but no. I hope you all feel ashamed of yourselves. Sunday, August 17, 2008
Book Report: Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico by Hugh Thomas (1993) Porch Girl posted a This Day In History bit about La noche triste, a night where the Aztecs almost wiped out Cortes and his crew. Huh, I though, that's not something I'm familiar with, and it's definitely something begging a historical essay, so I ran right out and grabbed this 600 page academic tome about the conquest of the Mexica. This is an excellent book on the subject. I mean, the author's completely in the bag for the Aztecs (he saves his most poetic language for describing the glories of the human sacrifice, what he calls the "astonishing, often splendid, and sometimes beautiful barbarities" on p24) and he's as pink as farm raised salmon (his previous books are The Spanish Civil War and The History of the Cuban Revolution, he makes a point of saying that winning wars without fighting are notable goals of Clausewitz and Lenin--but no mention of that Sun Tzu guy, and he muses that the conquistadores must have called each other comrade). But he merely weights things that support his idea; he includes a lot of detail and does not omit things which would counter his bias, so someone not like him--like me--could make other inferences from the data. Now, onto the story. Most history books mostly gloss over the conquest of Mexico, turning it into a very simple tale of Spain pillaging the New World again, this time swapping the name Cortes for Columbus or Pizarro. Still, the story is much more than a morality play where the Western power is bad and the natives are blissful. The Mexica, as Thomas calls them, were a nation built on winning at wars and getting tribute from conquered tribes. They had conquered everything within a reasonable march from their capital excepting those pesky Tarascans who used metal in their weapons (the Aztecs used stone knives and spearpoints). Each leader, elected from a pool of aristocrats, got a bit more lavish with the lifestyle, and by the time Montezuma rolled in, the city of Tenochtitlan was huge and sprawling and, did I mention, totally dependent upon tribute from conquered tribes around them for its lifestyle. I'll be frank, the picture Thomas paints shows me an empire on the edge of collapse, Spanish arrival or not. I think the Aztecs ended up being remember, instead of the Olmecs or the Chichimecs or the Totonacs, because they got conquered by the Aztecs. And let's not forget the human sacrifices. By the 1520s, the priests were killing ever-increasing number of war captives and people sent to the city as tribute. Maybe the gods were building up a tolerance or something. Thomas tries to tell us how the natives could think of no greater destiny than to die atop a pyramid and to have their bodies cast down the steps and how the subjects of the sacrifices ultimately weren't in pain because they were whacked out on pulque or peyote. Thomas, of course, points out that the Aztecs didn't own slaves as such, and that all the tribesmen who carried the tribute hundreds of miles over mountains and through deserts were volunteers who just wanted to see Tenochtitlan. And maybe be sacrificed. So that's the situation when the Spanish show up. Which wasn't sudden, mind you. Ships appeared off of the coast for years and even landed a couple times. By the time Cortes lands, a couple previous expeditions had visited Yucatan and even Aztec areas and had fought battles with the natives. But Montezuma didn't prepare. When Cortes lands, Montezuma, the great Aztec leader, behaves like Hamlet, consulting astrologers, not acting, consulting priests, not acting, weeping because he's doomed, sending gifts to the Spaniards but asking them to stay away from the capital, claiming he cannot meet with Cortes because he's sick, and doing everything but planning to handle the Spanish expedition precisely. On the other hand, the Spanish are a developed society with conscience decrying the treatment of the natives and legal mechanisms for control. Also, they work the iron. Thomas tries to place the two civilizations on equal footing (as do many historians, I wager). However, featherwork, a good calendar, and pretty colors painted on humans whose hearts are going to be ripped out are not really a match for the wheel and iron. Contrary to the short shrift Cortes gets in more summary and cursory historical textbooks, the outcome of the expedition was potentially in doubt throughout. Cortes landed with only 300 men, after all, and not only had to contend with millions of natives, but also with courtly politics and the governor of Cuba who wanted to thwart Cortes. Cortes wanted to capture/dominate the city of Tenochtitlan without a battle and without destruction, perhaps introducing the Venice of the West to Christianity and certainly to exploit its riches. However, the initial plan doesn't work, culminating in the death of Montezuma, la noche triste, and the assault on Tenochtitlan. Even then Cortes wanted to capture it intact and only ended up burning much of it as a last resort. The book was quite the eye-opener and really was well done. As I said, even though Thomas favors the Aztecs a bit, he provides the data that can lead to other interpretations (unlike, say, the Oxford History of Mexico, which devotes only a chapter to the conquest, discards contemporaneous Spanish sources as biased, and uses its authors' own "logic" to suss out the way it really happened almost five hundred years ago). The book lags when it gets into the courtly politics involved and goes into elaborate genealogies of everyone involved. But I cannot but recommend it if you're interested in this event at all. Also, personally speaking, this book re-energized my cultural chauvinism. The closer cultures are to American culture, the better. I mean, how can you defend a culture that does this?
That being said, one final note: in addition to making me want to read other accounts, including Bernal Diaz de Castillos contemporaneous account, I had the urge to watch Mel Gibson's Apocalypto; since I don't have that handy, I'll have to settle for Firewalker, which, as a man, I must own. Also, the book gave me the urge to play Civilization IV so I could take a turn pasting the Aztecs, which I did. Friday, August 15, 2008
Right-Wing Polemic Books Are Pornography; Left-Wing Polemics Are Michelangelo's David Broad-minded St. Louis Post-Dispatch blogger compares Obama Nation and Unfit Command to pornography, building a facile syllogism to support his metaphor. No comment on McCain or Bush hatchet jobs, and the author says he doesn't read the books because he doesn't like peep shows, either. Except that, of course, the books offer ideas instead of naked pictures. But the Post-Dispatch intelligentsia doesn't need to actually read books to tut-tut the wrong thinking within them, doesn't need to actually answer arguments when --hey! Look! Straw man! I don't care for the books myself because they tend to be facile and unconvincing. Kind of like Post-Dispatch analysis. Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Good Book Hunting: August 13, 2008 Oops, I did it again. Today, the J had its book fair in the same room as in past years, but this year the room seemed dimmer. The books certainly were in great disarray, making it hard to browse quickly in the near-dark. However, I managed to find a few just fine: ![]() Click for full size
Depicted to the left is my new copy of Conquest, which I am almost finished reading in a library copy. I liked it so much, I ordered one online. Man, the book fair next week will probably be about all the books I'll ever need. I was afraid of going to the J because I'm running out of space, seriously, on my shelves. My fears were well founded. I'm going to have to develop modular book-based furniture to fit more books into our home. Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Break One Nine CB says, in a random instant message sent when I was at my dream desk last night:
Sang-Froid and Roy Sorry, no post, but I just saw the expression sang-froid in a book and thought of all the wonderful puns I could use as post titles if possible. Since it's looking impossible in the near term, I'll just do a post dumping them for you: Sang-Freud Sang-Fraud And rest assured I will use it in a sentence today. And a two-year-old will parrot it back, much to my delight. Sunday, August 10, 2008
Something To Do Shots For Magazine ranks Milwaukee No. 2 in drinking:
Austin, Texas got the honors, with the Brew City placing second. Never fear: the coming Packers season might be enough to help Milwaukee gain the top spot. Good Book Hunting: August 9, 2008 So I was saying something about not taking children to book fairs or something, and suddenly I read that the People for the Ethical Treatment of People or the St. Louis Ethical Society or whatever the secular humanists, the moral subgroup of the loft people, call themselves was having its book fair. Last year, it was a pretty small affair but fruitful according to my acquisitive nature. This year, it proved smaller, small enough to go through before the children got too many stroller sores, but fruitful enough: ![]() Click for full size I got:
A good trip again this year, and brief, but not brief enough, really, for J Friday, August 08, 2008
Book Report: Phantom Prey by John Sandford (2008) A bad John Sandford book is better than any Ridley Pearson book I've read. Of course, I've only read one Pearson book, and this isn't a bad book, just not Sandford's best. However, I got to deploy hyperbole, and that's what matters to a Web log. This book delves into Goth subculture, something mocked on Saturday Night Live when Will Ferrell was still on it, for crying out loud. When I founded a magazine in 1994, my art editor was a Goth. So he's not exactly delving into a cutting edge subculture here. Now, death amongst the Disco Revivalist Cults, that would be cutting edge. So an old white dude delving into a subculture of whom I've known members sort of made me wonder if he knew what he was talking about in writing it. Then, of course, I thought maybe he knew more than I did since I only knew goths a long time ago. Ah, well. I figured some of it out early, clued in by the fact that the person above suspicion and the suspect both had really good asses. Yes, that's how they were described. This book struck me as more tawdry of Sandford's work, wherein he enters Parkerian territory of the main character being irresistable to all attractive members of the opposite sex, he imagines it, and then he goes home to his significant other (wife in this case). But the discussion of sex and the bawdy talk sort of sticks out in this one. So there looks like there's going to be a plot twist, but ultimately it takes the Chandlerian plot turn into interconnected crimes of the rich and the insane, and the one saving twist I was expecting wasn't there. Finally, we get to the end, where someone who could have gotten clear decides to kill Davenport, leading to the ultimate climax that also makes a major unrelated subplot relevant in that it explains how Davenport survives. So it's not the best of Sandford, but it's good enough. It moves along and works in ways that Pearson does not, and sometimes an attempted writer (me) ought to see the good and the not good in stark relief like this. And this book, since I got it from the book club, is fresh and it only cost me $.20 plus $30 shipping and handling, so it was a steal so long as I don't do the math. Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Disco Redeemed The only thing nearly as cool as Ript doing "Suspicious Minds", we have a metal tribute to the Bee Gees: (Link seen on The Sniper. Finally, that blog is good for sumpthin.) Leaping Women Now A Sex Crime Story's lead:
(Memo to the Post-Dispatch Journalists with English as a Second Language program: bound is the past tense of bind.) Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Slightly Adulterated You know the song "Love Machine" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles? It just doesn't sound right to me without sighing hens. My old school R&B credibility takes another hit, simply because I saw the commercial before I heard the song on its own. Monday, August 04, 2008
Rain Without Rainmakers Instapundit links to a story about falling oil prices:
What is important is that our Converts Are Always The Most Zealous Right now, my beautiful wife is watching the live news conference where Packers coach Mike McCarthy talks about bringing back Brett Favre. UPDATE: I mean to say she sat and watched ESPN news for a half hour waiting for the press conference. Saturday, August 02, 2008
Good Book Hunting: Return to the Book of the Month Club I've been so down about not finding much at garage sales lately that I fell prey to the Six for the Price Of One Book of the Month Club offer. I got these: ![]() Click for full size
But, geez, the printing quality on these books has really diminished over the years. The paper is almost newsprint, word. I'm glad I didn't get any chick lit because my tears would make the ink run. It's hard to see me sticking with the club after my obligated One At Full Price escape clause. Still, they're relatively recent novels, a year before I could get them on the book fair tables for a buck. To make it worthwhile, I have to read them all within the next year I guess. Book Report: No Witnesses by Ridley Pearson (1994) Ugh. Ultimately, I sort of dreaded reading a Pearson book because he lives part time in the next suburb over, so he's the author I'm most likely to run into at the local coffeeshop or used bookstore and the one who could most easily show up on my front doorstep to taunt me that he's a published and successful author and my blog isn't even as well read as his book reviews. Because, brother, this book sucked. It sort of serves me right, I suppose, that I swore off classics because they take so long and then I start a 470 page mass market paperback that I have to endure over the course of two weeks or so. You know what? Maybe I'll go back to the classics. Sometimes, they're good enough that I enjoy them even if they're slow reading. This piece is the third, I guess, in a police detective series featuring a detective and a police psychologist. Perhaps its presence in the series explains a bit how the characters are sort of thin--I suppose they get that way in even the middle of McBain's books or John Sandford's books. But the descriptions are paragraph-long (or more) adjective dumps, and we get bunches of them even for minor characters. Then, they're moved through a series of convoluted, contrived, and melodramatic chapter scenes where individual characters, mostly the female police detective, face artificial peril. Then we get to a semi-climax whose very setup relies on poor police procedure that imperils innocent children based on a prosecutor's (wait, second prosecutor: first was eliminated in a contrived subplot) desire for better charges. It was so bad that the night before I finished, I went into my wife's office after reading it and banged my head into her wall just so I could sum up why I stuck with the book: the punchline "Because it feels so good when I stop." Maybe this is an outlier on the bottom end of Pearson's books. I think I've got at least one more in English here somewhere to read (in addition to the one I have in a Scandinavian language that I cannot read), so perhaps eventually I'll give him another shot. I won't buy any more, though. I have enough else to read. Special memo to Mr. Pearson when he Googles himself: Hey, no offense, and congratulations on making a living doing what I'd rather. I cannot even get agents to review the complete manuscript of my last novel. It Would Shock You If You Didn't Expect It Terry Teachout on Raymond Chandler's speaking voice:
She's Tired Of It Now My wife is tired of my all-purpose punchline/rejoinder If President Obama lets us.. If she's tired of it now, just think how she will feel once it's our (and everyone else's) lifestyle. Meanwhile, I guess I'll have to switch to If it makes Reid money in an obscure land deal or If its good for the Pelosi canneries. Great Moments in Police Professionalism Wellston police scuffle; guns drawn:
The new police chief was named about four days ago, said Pine Lawn Police Chief Rickey Collins, whose department is investigating at the request of the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney's office. The two men began pushing and shoving each other about 3 p.m in a meeting room inside Wellston's City Hall. Collins said he did not know what they argued about, though he said the former police chief recently had been demoted to assistant chief. Guns were pulled during the scuffle, but no shots were fired, Collins said. |
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."
"I will." Heather L. Igert, angelweave.mu.nu "Genuis." Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times "Some wanker." Kim du Toit, on the Noggle Library. "Brian J. Noggle apparently forgot that the proper design for a tin foil beanie calls for the shiny side out." Robb Allen, Sharp as a Marble. "I'm weeping openly right now. Thanks for hurting my feelings, pinhead." Bob Rybarcyzk, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Instapundit Protein Wisdom Ace of Spades HQ Wizbang! Outside the Beltway Robert B. Parker Dustbury Damn Interesting Michelle Malkin Radley Balko's The Agitator Exultate Justi The McGehee Zone Signifying Nothing The Jawa Report Master of None Dr. Helen The Anchoress Electric Venom Kim Du Toit Belmont Club Little Green Footballs Overtaken by Events Rocket Jones Boots and Sabers Triticale Ann Althouse The American Mind Ravenwood's Universe Asymmetrical Information Boondoggled VodkaPundit Professor Bainbridge Virginia Postrel Ken Jennings Joanne Jacobs Faster Than The World Dilbert Blog Junkyard Blog In DC Journal IMAO Baldilocks Powerline Q and O Hugh Hewitt Buzz Machine Daniel Drezner Roger Simon American Digest Blackfive The Volokh Conspiracy Cold Fury Captain's Quarters Tim Blair Chequer-Board Emperor Misha Just One Minute Blame Bush Inaniloquent Trey Givens OverLawyered Suburban Blight Another Rovian Conspiracy Angelweave Bad Example Rachel Lucas View from the Porch StL Recruiting a big victory Spector's Hockey Fark /. TechDirt F*****d Company CNet News Joel on Software James Lileks Mark Steyn Bob Rybarczyk Richard Roeper Neil Steinberg John Kass Steven Chapman Drudge Report Ananova Slate Reason's Hit and Run Best of the Web Today National Review's The Corner Tech Central Station Fox News CNN Washington Post Washington Times Chicago Tribune Chicago Sun-Times Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel St. Louis Post-Dispatch San Francisco Chronicle New York Post Shepherd Express Riverfront Times New York Observer ScrappleFace Bob from Accounting The Onion Top Five List David Letterman's Top Ten BBSpot U.S. Constitution Declaration of Independence Snopes.Com (Urban Legends) Dictionary.com Internet Movie Database Complete Works of Shakespeare Marvel Directory Blooberry HTML Reference
Visualize World Hegemony
Cog in the Machine
Tao Sharks
Humor not displayed
Beware of Conservative April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 |