Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I don’t remember when I got this booklet. By “remember,” I mean I did not list it on the Web site in a Good Book Hunting post. But it is the size of something that would have come in a dollar bundle at a Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale.

It contains four short stories:

• “A Chess Problem” by Agatha Christie, a Hercule Poirot story involving a murder during a chess game.
• “Back for Christmas” by John Collier about a man who murders his wife before leaving on a holiday only to be undone (probably) by plans she made while they were away.
• “The Border-Line Case” by Margery Allingham about a gangland hit made incomprehensible and unsolvable by the police actions.
• “Sredni Vashtar” by Saki about a boy and his secret pet ferret whom he worships and an overbearing maiden aunt who would have none of it. I probably “just” read this story in 2023 when I read The Best of Saki.

So, yeah, four short stories, 40 pages total, and I’m counting it as a book.

Man, I am glad I was born when I was, before the ubiquity of computers and mobile devices. I can read and appreciate stories from 100 years ago without being jarred by how different they are. Because they were not as different in my formative years when we did not have them. Fifty years ago. Half the distance to the original copyright date on “A Chess Problem”. I can even relate to things like not having air conditioning (not that it comes up in this particular story) but, you know. I even find historical fiction approachable because I’ve lived in cabins unhooked to the power grid or running water.

I “just” got this book in the spring of 2024 where it was in a dollar bundle with The Yellow Wallpaper which I just read last month. I might make it a twee goal to read all the books from that bundle, but unfortunately, they’re scattered amongst the stacks, and I probably won’t even see them before the end of the year.

Although the title indicates it’s a memoir and the author’s name starts with a P, it looks to be a fictionalized account, as the Ms. P in the book says her last name is Pepperdine and says she does not have a boyfriend–and the back cover indicates Ms. Petrus is married. I guess it’s possible that the author was née Pepperdine, and she didn’t have to change her monogram when she got married. Sure, and it’s possible Petrus is a pseudonym, and she put her real name in the book text. I’m overthinking it, but I’d like to think it’s a fictionalized account with some amalgamation of anecdotes and personalities.

So: It’s a series of short vignettes taking place throughout the school year. Ms. P. teaches third grade. It starts with the first day of school and cycles through different things like parent-teacher conferences, recess duty, the Halloween parade, Christmas, and then the last day of school. And by “short,” I mean that the chapters are two pages or so. The writing is wry, maybe a touch world- or school-weary (even though the Ms. P. of the book is only a couple of years into a teaching career), and I expect teachers, and elementary school teachers especially, can relate.

A quick read, and worth whatever portion of a quarter I paid for it. If you want a copy, though, gentle reader, it might be harder for you to find.

So much wrong with that Amazon listing. But they spelled the author’s name, if that is her real name, correctly.

I said I was going to read enjoyable books for a bit, and I thought I’d pick up some of the thin saddle-stitched books that I buy by the dollar bundle at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sales to pad my annual stats.

I knew this book was prose instead of poetry, but I didn’t look to closely at it until I sat down with it. Published by Hospice of Huntington and with a The Hospice of Southwest Missouri sticker in the front cover, I discovered I was not in for a comfortable read.

Basically, it’s a set of fictional letters (presumably, as they’re not particularly personal) from a woman who is caring for her father who is in hospice care to her brother who does not live in the area. They demonstrate a gamut of emotions and kind of how the feelings change over the course of hospice care to provide an example for those dealing with it in the now (which was then–a later edition might have emails or social media posts instead of letters).

The book uses the metaphor of redwoods, which it says have shallow root systems, so they have to grow together and entangle their roots to survive–like, I guess, caregivers and their non-profit helpers. Also, I’m not clear whether this is just one entry in a series or if the letters in the book are the series in the title. I guess I could do an Internet search, but, eh. CBA.

You know, I’ve never really had to be a caregiver like this–when my sainted mother was sick, she stayed in her house, alone (jeez, I did that whole thing badly). I remember when my aunt died from cancer twenty years ago visiting her a couple of times while she was waiting to die (my aunt who died six years ago from cancer moved in and took care of her, much like my youngest aunt did as she, my St. Charles aunt, was dying). So the book lightly ruffled my unmitigated guilt for not being a caregiver (but not so rawly as Love’s Legacy did).

Given how small my close family is, I don’t think I’ll ever need to deal with caring for someone at the end of life–I’ll probably be the one needing the caring, and if my matrilineal line is any indicator, not too long from now. But should that befall me, gentle reader, remind me that resources like these are available, or I’ll go crazier eating the emotions on my own.

I picked up this book last year Sparta (home of the Trojans) because I had some room in the bag-for-three-bucks and I’ve been working some Westerns into the rotation. I read this book in between chapters of Perelandra, the Venus book of C.S. Lewis’s Space trilogy, and I am likely to cull the stack of books on the chairside table because I’m finding that I’m reading more and more of these enjoyable little in-between-chapter books rather than the others, and I do want to make quota this year.

So: Apparently, this is the third(?) book in a series, and it rehashes a bit of the previous business in spots. A small town is growing due to the influence and spending of a rough rancher and his collection of hired hands, and they turn to a retired lawman who had previously taken care of another badman in town. He brings his tough but genteel wife along, and he hires a deputy barman who is black to help him clean up the town and to serve a warrant for the murder of a mentally disabled man in a put-up shootout.

The text of this 25(!)-year-old book moves along pretty well. It has some sex scenes in it which are not as explicit as a Gunsmith book, but definitely describes what goes where in a manner you would not find in Zane Grey or Louis L’Amour. It spends some time with the setup, but ultimately devolves into a couple of set pieces and questionable decisions that lead to a dramatic staged climax. I mean, not a bad book, but it’s light popcorn reading and nothing more.

Also, I must comment that the main character plus black sidekick staying at the Boston made me wonder if it’s supposed to be a holla to Spenser and Hawk. Dunno.

So if I find any more of this writer on bag day at the Christian County book sales, I won’t avoid them. At the Springfield-Greene County book sale (running now), I won’t make it to the Westerns section, so I won’t be seeking them out. As it stands, I have enough backlogged Westerns for the pace at which I read them, even as I am reading them more frequently these days.

I just picked this book up a couple weeks ago at Hooked on Books, and I brought it up to my bedroom to be the book of poetry I read before bed. Actually, I already had one of those, Pindar’s odes, but I wanted something a little lighter in case I did not want to read six pages of poorly footnoted 2500-year-old name-checks. So now my upstairs dresser, the one by the chair under the lamp, not the book accumulation point dresser, often has two books of poetry on it: The book I’m reading, and the book that I’m reading because the book I’m reading is kinda long and I’ve run out of steam on it momentarily. (The chairside book accumulation point has this progression nested deeply, where I’m reading a western and a business self-help book because I lost momentum on The Space Trilogy because I lost steam on the second book of The Story of Civilization which was to be a little light reading while I await the urge to continue with Pamela–and I think there are a couple of other long-suffering books in there.)

At any rate, this is a gift book circa 1980. Something you’d give to a friend, or something that your great-grandmother would give to a friend. Idealsesque with illustrations, paragraphs of prose, and a mix of poetry from then-contemporary light poets and some of the heavy weights from the classics. I mean, it’s a nice book, a nice bit to read a couple of poems from before bed. And I cannot help but contrast it with the gift books that would come within the decade, where paperbacks took over and got smaller and cutesy.

These books are catnip to me, which is why I pick them up when they’re on the buck cart or sight unseen in bundles at the library book sale. And any Ideals magazines themselves that I can spot in the wild, which is not that many these days and in southwest Missouri.

I got this book a week ago Saturday at ABC Books, where it was the entirety of the martial arts section (wow, has it been over a year since I was last at ABC Books? That cannot be right, but it might–it has been a while–no, I got the latest Wilder book around Christmastime, but apparently did not note it with a Good Book Hunting post). And I jumped right into it.

So: This is a bit of an apologetic that says you can be a Christian and do martial arts. It starts by saying that thirty years ago (which is not forty-five years ago) that a number of people thought that maybe the martial arts were a gateway to Zen Buddhism or Taoism–as a matter of fact, one of the other students at the seminary with the author reported him to the dean for being a martial artist.

The book starts out by defining a martial art, which then leads to the inclusion of Greco-Roman wrestling, boxing, and other non-eastern Asian forms. It offers a high level history of the development of martial arts in China, Japan, and Korea. It also goes into Biblical passages which encourage Christians to be able to defend themselves.

All in all, it’s a pretty good book that makes a compelling case for defending martial arts from being demonic, or at least not being a bad influence. I would have thought that this issue was well-settled before the 21st century, but I guess some dojos and schools might still have a Zen element to them. Mine is taught by a seventh degree black belt (three gold stripes fewer than the author) who is an active member of his church. So perhaps this book relitigated the past a little.

But it does make one (me) reconsider how much I defend, or at least understand, the perspective of some Christians who remind everyone that yoga comes from a Hindu background (see this and this).

As a matter of fact, a friend reposted a similarly themed post just last week:

So although the martial arts are the devil! cultural battle has been won, the yoga one rages on.

Oh, and as a scholarly book, it has a number of references and end notes. And one of them is to Zen in the Martial Arts which I read in 2022. More of a popular book than a scholarly work, but I’m starting to see some cross-referencing in my martial arts reading. Ain’t I smart? Maybe I should drag my carcass to a martial arts class and prove that it’s not so.

I just picked this book up last weekend, and after finishing I’ve Seen It All In The Library, I had a bit of time before retiring for the evening, so I took the opportunity to browse this little gifter.

It’s basically a panel from Peanuts cartoons with the opposite page exhorting you to Be something good. Be dependible. Be endearing. Be polite. Be helpful. And so on.

So I browsed it. I don’t think it helped me to be any more of any of the adjectives depicted than I was already. But I was not the target audience for the book, which I presume was Peanuts fans who got the book as a gift from someone who couldn’t think of anything else to give. I have to wonder if both of those target audiences are dwindling: Both Peanuts fans and people who give or receive books for Christmas.

At any rate, I counted it in my annual total, of course. Which was the goal. Normally, I’d fill the gap with poetry, but I’ve got a book of fairly tedious grandma poetry by the chair and two books for right-before-bed reading upstairs, and I did not want to stack another book on the chairside table.

I got this remaindered library book at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale in 2021, which would have meant that its presence in the library system was only five years and change. Is that a lot? I don’t have a lot of insight into the circulation policies and average item duration in libraries even though I worked for a library software company back in the day and even though I’ve read this book.

I bought it, thinking it might be akin to some of the book collector or book dealer books I’ve read and accumulated over the years (see also Slightly Chipped, Warmly Inscribed, Books: A Memoir, A Pound of Paper, etc.). But, no. This is more of an autobiography of the author’s career as a librarian. The amount of “all” that he has seen is secondary.

I mean, I don’t want to slag on the book too much since it was obviously a labor of love, but although the guy makes sure to tell us that he was reading at the sixth grade level in kindergarten, I don’t get the sense that he likes books all that much. The book is shot through with movie and television show references, but not many book ones–and those sound like they come from his college classes in library science more than the Great Books. I mean, when he describes someone’s beard, he mentions nicknaming the fellow Dumbledore because the Harry Potter movies had come out. And some of the things he breezes over–the first chapter on library history, says, “The Chou Dynasty gave way to the Ch’in Dynasty of 221BC and they took a slightly differing view of learning and reading.” Which is true in the second part of the compound sentence, but kind of elides over the Warring States Period which was about 250 years. A blink in history (especially Chinese history), but, c’mon, man. Maybe I’m just well-read and seeking to quibble.

But, yeah, the kinda disjointed book talks about his youth and falling into a library job in college; the history of libraries summarized from his textbooks; the story of moving the library from one location to another while the library building underwent renovation; some anecdotes about working in the library; a couple of fiction/drama pieces the author wrote; and his getting a job in a supervisory position with another library. It did bring forward to mind the enormous undertaking that it was to switch over from the cards-in-pockets circulation system to the computers-and-barcodes system. Tagging the library holdings in a quick fashion must have been crazy. Not only did I work for a library software company, but prior to that, I spitballed with a friend about building a suite to do that for used bookstores, including having a team of people who would come in and catalog/apply barcodes to the stock overnight or over a weekend. That would have been quite an endeavor for a larger bookstore.

So the book was not especially compelling. It could have been improved with more discrete anecdotes. The writing was passable, but only that. And the cover is not actually the author; it’s made from iStock clip art. I dunno why, but that disappointed me. And although I have checked the local library’s job site from time to time as I contemplate my retirement unemployability in IT as an old man, I have to wonder if I would really like it that much since my experience and this book indicate librarians are more into being librarians and government employees/bureaucrats and not so much people who love books. And the patrons are not people who love books either. Maybe bookstores and especially used bookstores are the direction I would enjoy more.

Sometime on or after seeing my aunt Mary on a recent trip to Wisconsin (How recent? Ten years ago), I learned that she spent time in India as a girl (her parents were missionaries?). I thought that was interesting, and I did some Internet stalking (I’m not close enough to most of my paternal family to, you know, just ask about it), and I spotted this book on Amazon and ordered it (in 2019). So it’s been sitting on my to-read shelves for six years for a moment just like this, where I would be still trying to work up the gumption to jump back into the C.S. Lewis Space trilogy.

I was not sure whether this book was by my aunt or not. The Amazon page for it is not helpful. My aunt and other family members never mentioned it. And as I got into it, I realized: No. Not my aunt, so not a close relation but probably somewhere in the distant chain (probably not as close as my rich cousin who died).

So: This book is a story of her faith journey told through journal entries and connective writing. Ms. Noggle had a tough life. She was orphaned early, raised by a grandmother until the grandmother, too, died when Ms. Noggle was fifteen. She was raped by a carnie in her youth. Her brother died in Vietnam. She had a lot of distrust and anger in her, but she eventually found her way back to (the Catholic) church. But even though she started going to church and praying in her 20s, she still had ups and downs in her relationship with God (and Jesus), especially when her close sister dies in the 1980s from breast cancer.

It would be oversimple to say that the book is but a litany of hardships interleavened with letters (to God, to therapists), journal entries, and prayers, although that is the basic structure of it. But it’s a strangely compelling account, a testament and testimony, about the ups and downs of faith in hard times. And even with the ups and downs, she makes progress to a better and stronger faith through the book. I expected her to become a nun at the end of the book, but that wasn’t the case.

The self-published book is 208 pages, but the text is double-spaced throughout and prayers and letters are indented, so it’s really far shorter than that. A quick read and inspirational in its way.

But, yeah, not my aunt.