Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Sunday, November 30, 2008
 
Another Country and Western No-No
Attention country and western singers:

I understand the lure of the Christmas album, and that backlist sales for such can go on for years and years, providing you with a steady, albeit low, income even once your waning popularity relegates you to performing at state fairs and store openings.

However, in your zeal to cash in on the reason for the season, note that steel guitars do not belong in Christmas songs.

I am talking to you, Alan Jackson and Trace Adkins.

Thank you, that is all.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:59 AM   0 comments
Saturday, November 29, 2008
 
Morning Read
Read this first: Of Bibliophilia and Biblioclasm:
    In 1936, George Orwell published a little essay entitled Bookshop Memories. In it, he recalled his time as an assistant in a second-hand bookshop, a time that was happy only when viewed through the soft-focus lens of nostalgia. Irony might be defined as disgust recalled in tranquillity, and Orwell's essay is nothing if not full of irony. He was glad to have had the experience, no doubt, but more glad that it was over.

    Not much has changed in the three quarters of a century that have elapsed since Orwell's experience as a bookseller. Second-hand bookshops the world over still tend to be inadequately heated places, Orwell says because the owners fear condensation in the windows, but also because profits are small and heating bills would be large. There is a peculiar chill, quite unlike any other, to be experienced between the stacks of second-hand bookshops.
I love to browse because navigating Web sites and menus does lose the tactile pleasure of the experience, which also explains why iTunes has not replaced a collection of records, CDs, and audiocassettes. When everything you own is just another node in your content tree, is it really the same as really having it?

(Link seen on Neo-Neocon.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:07 AM   0 comments
Friday, November 28, 2008
 
Book Report: The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald (1985)
This book, the last in the Travis McGee series, represents the most existentially maudlin entry in the series. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I rather like the wistful tone taken in some of the books, but this one hammers it pretty hard.

It's a pretty pedestrian plot as far as McGee novels go. Hired by a rich man to find his stolen yacht, McGee finds it with the bodies of two American teenagers and a daughter of a Peruvian diplomat/drug trafficker aboard. Suddenly, people connected with the case begin dying, and McGee has to survive long enough to figure out if it's to cover up for the crime or as revenge for the crime that he's being targeted.

I've read this book before, and as I purchased this latest copy of it, I misremembered which one this was. I thought it was the one where his wife died, but that's earlier in the set and probably not as melancholy.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:50 PM   0 comments
 
Race to the Bottom
You put money on the Iran/Israeli conflict as the next nuclear wars? Pakistan/India's odds are increasing even as we speak.

MUMBAI DAY 3
Mumbai Attacks Highlight the Cancer That Is Pakistan


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:44 AM   0 comments
 
Selexyz Means Sexy Library in Dutch
Roberta drew my attention to the Selexyz Dominicanen, a book store built into an old Dominican church.

It's giving me ideas for the library in my castle, when I build it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:33 AM   0 comments
Thursday, November 27, 2008
 
I Must Have Heard It Wrong
Happy Thanksgiving, you say?

Well, it's just as well since the T-72s I ordered from Omen Wannabi, a Somalian e-mail contact, haven't come yet.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:20 AM   0 comments
 
Book Report: The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre (1974)
This book collects a handful of Sartre's stories, including "The Wall", "The Room", "Erostratus", "Intimacy", and "The Childhood of the Leader". If you have read a Sartre short story, you have read "The Wall". It's the best of this anthology, and in an odd turn of events, the whole thing starts well and progressively gets worse. "The Wall" is a good story, but "The Childhood of the Leader" is a sixty page exercise in Sartrean pontification and excess.

Let's face it; Sartre is not a writer whose philosophy dribbles out of his writing. His writing exists to prop up his philosophy, kind of like Ayn Rand's fiction really lays out Objectivism. Ayn Rand had better plots, though. Sartre's plots are very literary, and the tone of each story is self-consciously literary. Maybe that's a factor of the translation undertaken by a student or something.

As such, Sartre deals with revolutionaries sentenced to death; a man gone mad and his wife; a man who just decides to kill someone; a wife who married an impotent man but cheats on him; and a guy who grows into an anti-Semitic leader. So these aren't people I can necessarily relate to, which makes reading a chore. However, in some literary and high-brow fiction threads, that lack of identification and even repugnance throws me out of my bourgeous sentimentality or something. It also make reading Sartre for pure enjoyment impossible.

As I said, the books first two stories are the best. "The Wall", about condemned insurgents spending their last night together in their cell and facing the Wall tomorrow, is oddly enough the most approachable. The narrator is forced to dwell on dying and dying well in a limited amount of time. It's almost Hemingwayesque, but with a distinctly Existential twist at the end. "The Room", on the other hand, is sort of two parts: It starts with the mother of the wife, confined to her room, as she gets a visit from her husband, a very practical man who's off to go to tell his daughter what he thinks of her tending to her psychotic husband. He then goes and tells her. In the second part, the woman deals with the aftermath of her father's visit and how she feels about the husband whom she loved. She wonders what his insanity is really like, experientially, and wonders if she's going a bit mad herself. It's a very complex tale, where one wonders about whether the father telling her to send her husband off to an institution is completely consistent, since he himself tends to the woman's mother.

After that, it's rather basic Existentialist hokum wrapped in stories about unsympathetic people. Worst of the lot, "The Childhood of the Leader" relies on the main character becoming the narrator of Nausea at three years of age, questioning his existence and the existence of things outside himself, before growing up, having an abortive homosexual relationship, and then turning anti-semitic for really no reason other than to wrap up the story.

Interesting if you're a student of philosophy, but you can get more enjoyable life lessons out of classic English literature or hard-boiled detective novels.

I think I need to read some Camus to rinse this out of my head.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:57 AM   1 comments
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
 
That's a Neat Trick
I just got a credit card statement in the mail today for my Commerce Bank Small Business Visa. I'm turning around and paying it right away because I missed the last deadline by a day because I'd been in the practice of letting a couple of bills collect before I sat down and wrote a bunch of checks.

So I sit down and look it over. The statement date is November 18. Today is November 26. It took Commerce Bank eight days to get this to me, which gives me a little more than, what, two weeks to turn it around without exorbitant penalties.

I called and told them it was poor form, and the customer service representative sat in silence while I said, procedurally, this was a dirty trick, and I was displeased with the way they conducted themselves. I'm not the best guy at venting my spleen on the phone, and certainly I had no end game (I want a free night at the hotel, I want a charge removed, et cetera), but even calling them to complain ultimately made me feel smaller than if I hadn't called because I don't expect the policy to ever change because we are a nation of small fries (and now, Goverment Sponsored Entities formerly known as Big Businesses).

But I am empowered, through this blog, to tell you, gentle reader who is searching for photos of Natalie J. Rabb or Commerce employee tracking the business's online response. So there you go.

At this point, I sometimes want to throw up my hands and say, Big Government, Big Business, what's the difference? It's all about ossified bureaucracies and procedures designed to glean every possible drop from you for their own purposes. I guess the difference is choice, which means Big Business needs to trick you, whereas government just has to tell you, so it's quite a big difference indeed.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:57 AM   3 comments
Monday, November 24, 2008
 
MfBJN: Your Source For Masculinity
Gender Analyzer is 100% sure this site is written by a man.

That's higher than the industry average.

Meanwhile, my other blog with the word Hate right in its title, only scores 89%.

Because of its inherent sensitivity.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:05 AM   0 comments
Sunday, November 23, 2008
 
Ill Harbinger
Has anyone else noticed that the sun has begun setting earlier since the country elected Obama as President?

What does it mean?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:08 PM   0 comments
Saturday, November 22, 2008
 
America, F---- Yeah!
Things your little army cannot afford to equip its soldiers with? We give them to our children:

Night vision gear for the kiddies


On the other hand, watch for bands of swarthy looking men in cars with Michigan plates driving from Target to Target, buying each out of this item using cash.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:22 PM   2 comments
Friday, November 21, 2008
 
Ahead of the Trend
Let's just say, as far as investing goes, I keep it real. I bought all my current penny stocks before they all did the trendy thing and became penny stocks. I'm no sell out.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:09 AM   0 comments
Thursday, November 20, 2008
 
Metrosexual Alert: Zac Brown
Ladies and gentlemen, up and coming country and western singer Zac Brown is a metrosexual.

Zac Brown: Metrosexual


Let's look at the textual evidence within his paean to all things country, "Chicken Fried":

    You know I like my chicken fried
    Cold beer on a Friday night
    A pair of jeans that fit just right
    And the radio up
Jeans that fit just right? Ladies and gentlemen, real men do not understand the concept of jeans that fit just right. Women's jeans, apparently, have 132 different variables in cut, shape, and jib. Women worry about jeans fitting just right. A man worries about jeans merely fitting, which means the button closes and not too much sock shows. Fitting just right sounds an awful lot like Zac Brown has spent time in trendy urban outfitters, getting custom denim cut for him. He probably uses body wash, too.

And that's just not manly. Know your inseam and your waist and take the one off of the top of the stack at Walmart, you sissy.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:36 AM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Rough Weather by Robert B. Parker (2008)
Well, it's a Spenser book. A fair plot, although at the beginning of it, I was afraid it was going to recast the plot of one of the Paradise novels. Spenser's hired as a bodyguard of sorts for a secluded wedding (40 minutes by boat from the coast of Massachussetts, I think he said), a job he doesn't quite understand, since the rich people have a full security detail. But then The Gray Man recurs, shoots a couple people, and kidnaps the daughter. Someone tries to kill Spenser because he won't stop investigating. Spenser gets information from recurring characters (Rita Fiore, Ives). Then he makes a deal with the Gray Man, and the book ends. Man, I remember when these sorts of books ended with some sort of justice. Now they end with deals with the bad guys.

At least Parker didn't call out the Spenser Superfriends team (Bernie Fortunato, Teddy Sapp, Bobby Horse, Chollo, you know, the diverse cast of people like Spenser). Hawk appears, but I don't count him as part of the SSF because he preceded them. Although, let's face it, his days of menace are gone. Nobody is afraid of Hawk any more but the stock civilian characters who appear to show fear of Hawk. The police tolerate him, Susan Silverman makes kissy talk with him, and so on.

You know, I cannot think of a Spenser novel I liked beyond 1990. I guess that's really showing now in these reviews. This one, I got from the BOMC because I had to get something. The next one, I'll probably get from a book fair.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:35 AM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Heat by Mike Lupica (2006)
In a stunning turn of events, this is the second book I've read with this title this year. The first, Ed McBain's Heat, I read in January. The two are not too similar, even though Lupica dabbles in some crime fiction. Because, in a stunning turn of events, this is the second Young Adult novel I've read in a couple weeks. Crikey, I must be into my second childhood. What's with adult authors trying to jump into the YA market? It makes for some confusing times at the book fairs. Is this Hiaasen an adult book, or a green-preaching YA novel? Is this Lupica book one of his adult plots turned into simpler sentences and shrunken to 12-year-olds? What, pray tell, does Robert B. Parker write for young adult fiction--embrace an arbitrary "code" of relativistic, touchy-feely ethics and bone your neighbor's wife which is okay if it feels good and you don't feel guilty?

At any rate, this book deals with a 12-year-old Little League superstar pitcher from Cuba whose father has died, but whose 17-year-old brother is working two jobs as they keep the death quiet so they don't get turned over to family services and split up. Additionally, the kid's eligibilty is challenged since his birth certificate didn't make the boat ride from Cuba. It's a very complicated story, and it works out with an almost deus ex maquina thing, but it's all right.

For a kid's book.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:19 AM   0 comments
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
 
Another Thing I Could Have Lived Without
A smooth jazz rendition of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door":



That's rolling a 1 on a d20.

And, sadly, that is the version on the Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack. You know, from the very end where Riggs is shot by the South African diplomat on the freighter.

If you don't know the exact scene, you haven't watched it enough.

UPDATE: You know what I really could have lived without? Researching it and finding out who else did the song. Roger Waters? Are you freaking kidding me?



This is an unholy aberration.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:13 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
 
Book Report: 24 Girls in 7 Days by Alex Bradley (2005)
I bought this book because I thought it might be a saucy sort of male equivalent of Sex in the City or something. Without a dustjacket, I flipped it open and landed on the first person narrator's self-description, and that was enough since I had a wallet full of money and a box half full of books at the book fair. I missed the part where it identified him as a high school kid.

So it's a young adult novel, set in high school. The main character isn't so good with the girls, so his friends post an online ad for him seeking a prom date, and it gets a lot of response. So he agrees to evaluate 24 girls for in the week before the prom and then to select one for his date. It takes on a little of a reality show feel, and he deals with the unreality and with the reality of his life.

Oh, and he grows and learns something about himself at the end.

Well, then. I frankly missed the YA thing. I went from Hardy Boys in elementary school to hard boiled detective fiction in middle school. I suspect I didn't miss much, and I used my reading to prepare myself for the grim real world, not the goofy high school world. I'd go on a spurious tangent about how YA books have trained kids to be adolescents in their adulthoods, but frankly, I don't think enough kids read to have that impact.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:38 AM   0 comments
 
Book Report: The TV Theme Song Trivia Book by Vincent Terrace (1996)
I bought this book because when I flipped through it, I landed pretty quickly on the beginning narration for the original Battlestar Galactica, so I thought I'd do pretty well. As it turns out, I got about 10% of the questions, maybe less. Because, let's face it, the popular television seasons spanned a large bloc of years, so the theme songs you remember represent a very small percentage of television shows. The book is rife with answers based on short-running shows from fifty years of television, including four or so decades where I didn't watch television.

As a result, I didn't get many questions right about 1960s cartoons, 1940s detective shows, 1970s meaningful sitcoms, or 1950s westerns. I didn't even get the chance to answer the question about the inexecrable Buck Rogers in the 25th Century theme song lyrics, which the producers fortunately turned into a science fiction march after the pilot. So I knew something that this author might not, which is the best I can do.
Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:17 AM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Smarter by the Dozen by Jane & Bill Dahlin/Doloris & Ted Pepple (1989)
When I bought this book, I expected a book in the line of Tom Braden's Eight is Enough: a collection of anecdotes and incidents about raising a large family, set in a familiar location and with a historical relevance.

Instead, this book is really just a brain dump of parental advice on topics from buying insurance to handling kids' drug problems. Not what I was looking for at all, really, but it made the book--dare I say it?--very skimmable.

One bit of historical trivia: The book has a whole chapter on 16 in Webster Groves, a documentary about growing up in suburban America that CBS shot in Webster Groves. In true reality television style, the network apparently cut the film to portray its story that suburban American children were being brainwashed into the bourgeoisie. Webster residents at the time were upset with it. So much so that the authors include it and spend a chapter railing against it 23 years later.

I'd tell you where the book is for sale, but you don't find it anywhere on the Internet. Its existence is proven electronically only that it appears in a photo in this Flickrstream. Given that this book was printed as a limited edition, the photographer is either a Dahlin, a Pepple, or a nearby resident of Webster Groves.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:02 AM   0 comments
Monday, November 17, 2008
 
Book Report: The Three Musketeers (abridged) by Alexandre Dumas (1974)
I thought this book would be a movie tie-in book because it has the actors from the movie arrayed on the front cover, and it has action stills in the photo section in the middle of the book. Oh, but no. Instead of being based on the script for the film, it is truly just an abridged form of the book (which I read in its entirety last year).

So it lacks some of the more campy humorous bits that the film had. It's a pale version of the complete book and unrelated at all to the movie, but I suppose it does distill some of the plot points that the film captured from the original book. However, some scenes I recall from both the book and the movie (breakfast at the seige of La Rochelle) have been abridged from this edition entirely.

Probably not worth the read unless you're a fan of Readers' Digest Condensed Books, but might be worth your time if you're into treatments of Dumas.

Books mentioned in this review:

The Three Musketeers Exclusive Movie Edition abridged

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:51 AM   0 comments
Sunday, November 16, 2008
 
Book Report: The Explainer by the Writers at Slate Magazine (2004)
This book collects a number of questions covered in Slate's "The Explainer" column and groups them by some sort of similarity. It's better than The Best of Slate as far as collections go, but it's not "The Straight Dope".

Worth a buck, I suppose. If you will have any to spare in the upcoming Obama/Pelosi/Reid Bush depression (overtime).

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:41 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Elm Ave., Heart of Webster by Save the Heart of Webster, Inc. (1984)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Back in 1984, the powers that be wanted to widen Elm Avenue, a north-south road that cuts through the middle of Webster Groves, to make it an artery of sorts to handle traffic from Clayton areas to South County. The residents of Elm Avenue banded together to fight it and had a street party to show off their homes which would be lost or have yards cut drastically as part of the plan. This slender volume is a catalog of the homes on Elm Avenue along with the history of each. Not quite Webster Park, but its aim was much lower.

Last year, as part of preparations for the Highway 40 closing, powers that be floated the idea of widening Elm again, 23 years after this book was published. They got a stop light where only stop signs had existed before and a no-left-turn thing instead, fortunately for the big old houses along Elm.

Sorry, no Amazon link for this book; I cannot find any reference of it on the Internet, either, which means I must be making it up.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:21 PM   0 comments
 
Signs That You Might Be A Little Old, Suburban
You know I wish that I had Jessie's grill.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:28 PM   1 comments
 
Book Report: Back to the Future by George Gipe (1985)
One of the best things about movie tie-in paperbacks, aside from their brevity and probable familiarity with the storyline, is the speculation within them. Did they work from a treatment? An early version of the script? Or the actual movie?

This book dealt with an early version of the script, so it doesn't actually jibe with the movie that well. In addition to the extra depth that the authors add to the interior lives of the characters that you don't get out of dialogue, this book has completely different scenes than what appears in the film. Some are missing, too, such as the original beginning scene (Marty with the big guitar amplifier). Ergo, this book is sort of like a weird alternative-universe version of the movie.

An interesting artifact if nothing else.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:08 AM   0 comments
Saturday, November 15, 2008
 
Researched in Advance
Given potential for inflation coupled with the way Congress is dropping hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money into any industry it thinks of like tourists dropping their last pocket change into the slots at the airport on the way out of Vegas, you will learn that the next order of magnitude beyond trillion is actually quadrillion.

Assuming that the Chinese and Middle Eastern royalty allow our national debt to hit that level circa 2017.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:02 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: The Aztecs by Frances F. Berdan (1989)
This is a book in a series on the Natives of the Americas. As such, it has a lot of images and glosses over the worst of the Aztec empire, providing an inspirational and mostly laudatory account of the tribe. I suppose it's not a bad primer if you're looking to write a sixth grade report, and it could probably serves as a source for that. However, given that I've already read some more complete histories, it lacks in depth or in any gap-filling knowledge. However, in my quest for endless anecdotes about how the Aztecs did it, I can talk about having read one more book about them.
Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:45 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Event Horizon by Steven E. McDonald (1997)
You know, I kind of knew the premise of the book. The sort of thing I like: a mystery involving a big ship and whatnot (such as Ringworld, Rendezvous with Rama, and so on). I didn't see the movie because I heard it was a bit of a gorefest in space with an ultimately weak premise.

I had some hope when the thing began; however, it hit the pivotal climax with disturbing imagery (here, recounted in word, but that's disturbing enough). The bodies start dropping, and random characters survive. The premise, of course, is that the ship has wormholed through Hell or something and it has become possessed by an intelligence that wants to kill people. A sad, weak premise, ultimately, and not up the the hopes I'd had.

But if you go into the Hyundai dealership looking for German engineering, you're bound to be disappointed, but at least you'll be disappointed cheaply.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:45 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: 50 Great Horror Stories edited by John Canning (1971)
In case you're wondering, I finished this book on November 3, a day before the election. I haven't posted on it because I've had other things on my mind, such as the way the world will be to me going forward. Pardon me for the delay.

I was going to entitle this post, or at least sum it up, as encapsulating this book as 50 Horror Stories We, British Editors, Could Anthologize On The Cheap. Because for the first couple of nights wherein I read the book, that's the sense I got. Fiction, poorly written in a British horror sense. We get a couple of ghost stories, and then a treatise on lycanthropy. Were the stories supposed to be spooky, or what?

After a couple glasses of cheap liquor, though, I got into it. Well, a couple of glasses of cheap liquor and a couple of nights of reading, perhaps interspersed with more compelling fiction. But these stories combine actual events with actual recountings of ghost stories, so if you're an Angliophile, you can get into it for the flavor of the past told from the recountings. If the spirit, so to speak, moves you, you can wonder, "Did the authors present this as a piece of fiction, or are they recounting an actual event but providing spooky music?"

Thus, I ultimately enjoyed the book more than I thought I would. One has to leave behnd one's expectation of horror stories, though, particularly if you're an American reader used to a bit more spookiness in the proceedings.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:40 PM   0 comments
Friday, November 14, 2008
 
Go Ahead, Quote Me
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are drinking the water.

Sorry, Mr. Wilde.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:58 PM   0 comments
Monday, November 10, 2008
 
Just Mailing It In
A phishing scam that sends you an e-mail form to fill on the dotted line? Sweet!
    Dear Account User This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Hotmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

    Due to the congestion in all Hotmail users and removal of all unused Hotmail Accounts, Hotmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

    * Username: ...............................
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    After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.

    Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

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    Connect to the next generation of MSN Messenger Get it now!
Bonus for including a hyperlink to a fake domain offering malware downloads instead of MSN Messenger. Demerits for absolutely abhorrent grammar and style.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:16 PM   2 comments
Saturday, November 08, 2008
 
Perspective on Election: Achieved!
In a brief programming note, posting will be light as I am tending to grim family matters. Prayers and small animal sacrifices will be accepted in the spirit in which they're received.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:41 AM   0 comments
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
 
Aside (I)
Every generation must live through its own 1970s. After a decade of an unpopular war, opposed by reflex and not because you might be drafted to fight it, so now we'll have this generation's Carter.

Hopefully, it will only be that bad.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:52 AM   1 comments
Monday, November 03, 2008
 
Book Report: Crossword Poems Volume One selected and introduction by Robert Norton (2000)
When I bought this book, I bought it on title alone, so I expected some sort of collection of crosstic poems or something, maybe poems based on crossword puzzles. As a matter of fact, it's a collection of poems whose lines appear in crossword puzzles a lot. The introduction indicates that the editor thought there was a time where schoolboys new the poems enough by heart to get the poems from quoted lines in the clues, but alas, those days are passing, so here's a collection with the pertinent quotes highlighted in red.

Regardless of the motivation behind it, this is a nice little anthology that reprints a number of often-anthologized poems from English literature, including works from Herrick, Keats, the Brownings, Drayton, et al. Who couldn't use an excuse to reread some of them? Also, at 64 pages, it's compact and not very daunting to start or to carry around.

I guess since this is entitled Volume One, the series includes more. They might be worth a pick-up, but I wonder how they could top this small selection.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:33 AM   0 comments
Sunday, November 02, 2008
 
The Bocephus Endorsement
Hank Williams, Jr., will appear with Governor Palin in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Because, face it, the national Democratic Party doesn't have room for his sort of people. It has massed other, more powerful tribes, it thinks.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:52 PM   0 comments
Saturday, November 01, 2008
 
Book Report: True Grit by Charles Portis (1968)
As you know, I read the sequel, of sorts, to this book earlier this year. So when I found the actual novel upon which the movie True Grit was based, I snapped it up. A two-fer of sorts; I like paperback movie tie-ins/source novels for some reason.

This book is exceptional. The book relies on a double-effect narrator, an elderly spinster recounting her trip into Choctaw country to find the man who shot down her father. At the time, she's 14 and rather precocious, although let's not forget that there was a time when 14 was an adult for all intents and purposes. She hires Deputy Marshal Rooster Cogburn (the John Wayne role) to lead her into the hostile territory to find the man. A Texas Ranger joins them, and together (reluctantly, it must be said--the men don't want a little girl along) they encounter the bad men.

The voice of the book, through the double-effect narration (telling the story through first person, but with the passage of time), really makes it work. Throughout, the character displays primmishness and vulnerability; she's not as tough as she's putting on, but she's tough enough. Additionally, there are a lot of educational asides and a couple suggestions for Bible reading, but it doesn't get in the way of the action and the girl's response to it. Well-played.

I need to read more Westerns, but this does represent the second I've read this autumn. As our world and country changes, I'd like to hearken back to a time where it wasn't how it is now or will be in a couple years.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:56 PM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."