Book Report: The Castro File by Joseph Rosenberger (1974)

Book coverThis book is the 7th entry in the Death Merchant series. Every once in a while, I like to wander away from the Executioner series and the SOBs series to see if I might be missing out on any other good pulp paperback series from the seventies and eighties.

And, brothers and sisters, this book is not one of them.

The series deals with a mercenary hired by the CIA for particularly dangerous operations. Richard Camellion (get it?) will do anything for $100,000, as long as it involves killing commies, but not innocents or something. This time around, the CIA sends him to Cuba to derail a Russian plot to kill Castro and replace him with a double to prevent the Cuban dictator from detenteing with the United States.

The plot is okay, but the execution is awful. We have a chapter of action to start off when the Death Merchant’s cover is blown in Havana, then we have some chapters of flashbacks of the Death Merchant meeting with the head of the CIA, the Cubans getting together and talking about their goals, the Russians talking about their operation, and then another chapter of action or so after the board meeting ends. And the action chapters aren’t so great, either. All the exclamation points! Body parts doing balletic things! Derogatory terms for the bad guys in the narrative!

I was going to rank this book as amongst the worst of the genre I’ve read when a visit to the author’s page on Fantastic Fiction uncovered why this book tied with COBRA 2: Paris Kill-Ground: They were written by the same author 13 years apart. And apparently, he had not gotten any better.

On the other hand, the fellow has more individual titles in print than I’ve sold actual copies of my novel, so take that for what it’s worth.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: Cologne published by Greven Verlag Koln (1959)

Book coverI browsed through this book during the Super Bowl. Not that that matters, but you know that’s what I do.

The book was published in 1959 to draw tourists to the German city (West German city in those days, only a decade after the Berlin AirLift). The photography, aside from the dust jacket, is in black and white, and the text appears side-by-side in English and French. Apparently, 20 years later, the Germans wanted the French tourists to invade. But that’s neither here nor there.

Cologne is a beautiful city circa 1959: the old parts of it that survived the war, including its cathedral and some of the gates that remain from the walls that surrounded the old city are spectacular. However, the book spends a bunch of pages on the more modern buildings in the city, built after the war, and they all look like 20th century architecture, which is to say rather unimaginative compared to the old stuff.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever see Cologne firsthand–I’m not eager to travel abroad, as I get the sense Americans are pretty unpopular over in Europe in the 21st century. In my imagination, the 1950s and the 1960s were the time to visit Europe, when the gratitude for America’s intervention in WWII was still high. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I’m inflating my concerns to cover my own parochialism. Maybe I’ll travel on one of Jay Weber’s annual tours, or go a group with Victor Davis Hanson some time. Until then, I have these books between football plays.

Bonus: This book was a gift in 1960 from either schoolmates, coworkers, or something. Check out the inscription below, ignoring the $1.00 that Book Castle priced it: Continue reading “Book Report: Cologne published by Greven Verlag Koln (1959)”

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Book Report: It’s Not Easy Being Green edited by Cheryl Henson (2005)

Book coverThis book is a collection of philosophical quotes about Jim Henson and his work. Well, somewhat. The quotes by Jim Henson are philosophical about the nature of work, collaboration with coworkers and underlings, and the balance of life vis-a-vis work. He’s almost like a cuddly Ayn Rand character when he talks about doing what one loves, working hard, and things falling into place if you do that. I suppose you can get that out of a lot of entertainers, but Henson was more than that: he was also a businessman marketing his product, puppets, and managing crews of people making his product. He sounds like a good boss.

The other quotes in the book range from songs from Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and other Muppet productions, which are all about following your bliss and being true to your nonconformist self to quotes from Jim Henson’s family and underlings who mostly talk about what an awesome guy Jim Henson was.

So it’s a little less than I hoped for. I wanted more quotability, something to tweet from within the book, but all I got was a quote from Cantus Fraggle. I can’t even remember which one he was. And the book does quote the theme song from Fraggle Rock, which is:

Dance your cares away, worry’s for another day.
Let the music play down at Fraggle Rock.
Work your cares away, dancing’s for another day.
Let the Fraggles play….

The thing is, the first couplet is sung by the Fraggles, and the second is by the Doozers, so the discordant philosophy in the lines makes sense.

Strangely enough, the book presents Henson as both a Fraggle and a Doozer. Wrap your minds around that if this sort of thing is your bag. At 185 pages including contributor bios with one quote per page, we end up with a short read. Once could blow through it in a couple of nights, even when sick like I was when I read it.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: The Sweathog Newshawks by William Johnston (1976)

Book coverHow long have I owned this book? Here’s a photoshopped cover of it I did in July 2005. Oftentimes, I’ve picked it up when looking for something quick to read between weightier things, but Robert Hegyes, who played Esposito in Welcome Back, Kotter died, and I heard “Welcome Back” by John Sebastian on the radio (in tribute to the aforementioned Hegyes). So now seemed the time.

You know what? This is a pretty good book for such as it is.

I’ve read books based on hourlong dramas before (Adam-12 here and here, Murder, She Wrote here), but this might be the first book I’ve read based on a half hour sitcom. And it was pretty witty and true to the characters. While I didn’t laugh out loud at any of it, I was amused enough to want to watch some of the old programs and maybe come up with other books in the series.

As with any 70s paperback, the order forms in the back are always a treat. The books available in paperback immediately preceding this book include several in the Get Smart book series and other pulp. I’ve never, to my recollection, seen a book where the order forms are clipped, indicating someone has actually used them to order books. I wonder if the sort of people who did that were the sort of people to throw books out when they were done, or whether there never really was that sort of people.

UPDATE: How soon they forget. While cataloging this book, I learned I’d already read something by this author. That would be a Happy Days book, Ready to Go Steady, which I read in 2009. This book is far better than that Happy Days book.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker (2010)

Book coverThis book is the fourth of the Cole and Hitch westerns, and they find the duo back in Appaloosa, site of the first film. They’re not the law now–there’s a marshal in town with designs on higher office–but they catch on with the local saloons as private security when the local shopkeepers grow tired of the real town marshal’s protection racket–the merchants pay up extra to make sure that the law arrives in a timely fashion.

While they’re defending a saloon, Cole kills the son of a local rancher (who has taken up residence in the homestead of the last Appaloosa bad guy Cole dispatched), who then hires a killer to dispatch Cole. When a raiding native threatens the town, Cole brings it to the attention of the marshal, who walks right into the native’s trap as Cole and Hitch join forces with the rancher and the killer to save the town from the natives.

It’s a quick read–quicker than The Virginian or Wild Horse Mesa— but it’s a modern book, and it probably sacrifices some depth for pageturning. Which is opposite of what I usually complain about, I know.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: Blockade Billy by Stephen King (2010)

Book coverAs I mentioned, I bought this book last Wednesday, and I knew it wouldn’t take me long to get to reading it and to read it once I started. Blockade Billy is a novella in a hardcover along with a short story called “Morality”.

The title novella covers the discovery of a star catcher for the Titans. Blockade Billy, as he comes to be known, is a simple-minded youngster brought up from a AA team when the Titans’ catcher is hurt. He comes to town, focuses on the game, but he has dark secrets in his past that will come to light and make him the only player ever erased from Major League Baseball history.

King’s at his best here, pulling along with just the right voice and foreshadowing. The frame story is that Mr. King is interviewing the third base coach from the Titans to discover the real story, so it’s told in a very conversational style that’s easy to read.

The short story, though, “Morality”, is hardly worth reading. It’s a dash of the film Indecent Proposal thrown in with a twisted preacher and how his indecent proposal causes a marriage to break up. There are no characters in it worth sympathizing with and it’s rather stock.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: The Absolute Beginners Guide to Stitching Beaded Jewelry by Lesley Weiss (2010)

Book coverI paid almost full price (40% of with coupon, so “almost full price” means “more than a dollar”) for this book at the Hobby Lobby because I wanted to make sure I had something to read one warm January day when I was to take my children to the park. However, I didn’t end up reading it at the park–I can’t remember if we didn’t make it to the park or if I didn’t want the Springfield-area mommies to beat me up for being a beading sissy.

So I browsed it while watching football instead.

It’s a collection of stitched bead jewelry projects that shows one how to make the stitches and whatnot. I haven’t done any beading in a year or so, preferring to mix up my cheapskate self-made crafting Christmas giving this year. But when beading, I do like to do stitches which is more complicated and creative than simply stringing some beads and a pendant together. Although I have other reference books that show me the stitches, I’m glad to have picked up this one to freshen and inspire me and to give me some other ideas on how to use different bead sizes in my patterns.

Whether I put those patterns to use any time in the near term, though, is another question entirely.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: The Sword of Bedwyr by R.A. Salvatore (1994)

Book coverYou know, I haven’t read a bit of pulp fantasy in a while (the previous Salvatore I read was five years ago, and that review was fun to re-read because it touched on my old gaming memories). I read The Lord of the Rings last year, I know, but this book is pulp fantasy regardless of its hard cover and dust jacket.

Within it, the son of a duke chafes under his father’s accommodation of a wizard who rules the land through his Cyclops army and subwizard governors. After he slays one of the one-eyed centurions, he flees his home and his birthright and takes up with a halfling thief. They meet a good, or at least not as bad as the baddest, wizard who tricks them into invading a dragon’s lair but gives them magic items for their trouble, including a cloak of invisibility. The duo move onto a town and live the lives of successful thieves until the cloak of invisibility reanimates the legend of its previous owner, the Crimson Shadow, and reanimates the town residents’ hopes for freedom.

As always, this is but one book in a trilogy, so it sets some things in motion that I won’t see conclude. It’s a decent enough read, but the climax and the denouement, such as they are, come rather suddenly. So, like I said in 2006, I won’t shy away from Salvatore’s other works, but I’m not running out to get them right now.

I had another thought while reading it: In modern suspense and thriller pulp, it’s pretty common to knock authors who make mistakes with guns. Is it only our lack of true familiarity as a culture with ancient weapons–aside from some real hardcore SCA geeks and the like–that keeps us from nitpicking the use of a sword? As I read this book, I noticed that the army of the Cyclopses used a variety of weapons straight out of the Dungeons and Dragons equipment charts. Thrown spears and bows for missile weapons, and then swords, battle axes, and polearms for bladed weapons. Wouldn’t you expect an army, especially an invading/occupying sort of army to have more standard equipment? Nah, I’m just trying to nitpick where none is warranted.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Good Book Hunting: January 18, 2012

Wednesdays can be a dangerous day for me. The younger lad has only a half day of school, so instead of driving into town and then home and then into town and then home in a three hour stretch, I hit the gym for an hour and a half or two hours, but then I have an hour to roam town. A town with many book stores. And on Wednesday, I hit two: Barnes and Noble (to spend a gift card) and The Book Castle.

And I bought a couple books.

Books from Barnes and Noble and the Book Castle

I got:

  • A copy of Strunk and White for my ha’brother, who is in an MBA program and could use it.
     
  • The American Patriots Almanac, a daily reader of founding documents and founding fathers.
     
  • Evil Dead on VHS. I’ve not seen any of them. What sort of bad Gen X geek does that make me?
     
  • A picture book of Cologne, France. Not cologne.
     
  • A collection of alternate Robin Hood stories where Robin Hood is not in medieval England.
     
  • Blockade Billy, a short hardback (130 pages) by Stephen King that was $5 at Barnes and Noble (on sale). A short, cheap read? What a concept!
     
  • It’s Not Easy Being Green by Jim Henson.
     
  • A stir fry cookbook for my wife.
     
  • A collection of works by Gil Elvgren.
     
  • A collection of presidential papers from 1841-1860 or 1821-1840. Right before the Civil War.

The books from Book Castle were all from its sale shelves and room; I spent $5 and change there. After the $20 gift card from Christmas, I spent $12 at Barnes and Noble. So about $17 total. Not bad for the stack, especially as three of the books are new.

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Book Report: The Handle by Richard Stark (1966, 1988)

Book coverI bought this book back in November, and I’ve already read it. I do sort of have a last-in-first-out method. The fresher the purchase, the closer I am to the eagerness to read the book that drove me to buy the book.

I’m not sure if this is the first Stark book I’ve read; I don’t have any other book reports on them on the blog here, so I haven’t read one in the last ten years. If I did, it probably came during my high school years, but I don’t remember it. So it’s like going into a series fresh except for knowing what the series character is and seeing a portrayal of it on the big screen (Payback, donchaknow?).

So Parker is an amoral, immoral bad guy who does heists for the Outfit. One or two a year, not enough to get greedy. This time, the Outfit wants him to hit an offshore casino run by a former German officer on an island claimed by Cuba. When the Feds get wind of the operation, they want Parker to grab the man himself and bring him in. So Parker cases the island, builds a team, and executes the plan–which goes awry when a rejected team member tips the casino that the heist is coming.

It’s a quick, pulp read. It’s just a little off in that some of the detail and description in the beginning is, I don’t know, a little overdone, a little out of the pace of a proper pulp novel. From the front matter of this book, I see that Stark is a pen name of Donald Westlake. You know, Westlake is an author of whom I’ve read a couple of books, but not someone I’ve rushed out to read all. I wonder if the poor pacing in the beginnings is what does it. I don’t know.

This volume is a LARGE PRINT EDITION from 1988, which is 22 years after the initial publication date. Man, those pulp books could stay in print, couldn’t they? Aside from some of the huge bestsellers today, what do you think will still be in print in 2034? Not a whole lot, probably, with the industry changing as it is. I mean, if you look at the sales stats today, the more modern edition I’ve linked to is still in the top 100,000 books sold on Amazon. So it’s got longevity that even my torpid review won’t dent.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: Woman in Mind by Alan Ayckbourn (1986)

Book coverAs you probably don’t know, I like Alan Ayckbourn ever since I saw his plays The Norman Conquests when the Rep in Milwaukee was putting all three of the plays on, rotating which play was showing nightly, so that viewers could see all three. Even though I was a hardscrabble working college senior, I managed to see all three–and with three different women (and Table Manners twice due to a scheduling error). Norman would have approved.

This book is a single full evening play. Within it, a woman who is hit on the head gets some attention from a doctor as she comes around. As he goes to get some tea for her, her loving family, clad in tennis apparel, checks on her. She’s a successful historical novelist with a doting husband, an attentive daughter, and a protective brother. But as the doctor returns, they fade away, and her family is really an uncommunicative and distant son and a parson who’s estranged from his wife. As the play goes on, the family visits intersperse, and her doctor tells her she’s suffering from hallucinations related to the head injury.

So as I’m reading, I’m interested to see how this will resolve and somehow hope that she’s really suffering from hallucinations of the bad family and root for a twist where she’s really the successful woman hallucinating a poor existence, but we end with a penultimate scene where the faux daughter is at her wedding, but it’s really a horse race where she’s a horse, and it gets surreal (obviously) and the play resolves where the woman with the head trauma has imagined all of it and is in an ambulance right after the head trauma.

So it disappointed me, ultimately, because I like my plays to veer a little less into the surreal. I mean, I can read a surreal play and know what I’m getting into (The Balcony) and even enjoy it (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). But when a play leads me to believe some surreality is going to resolve but ends up more surreal and unresolved, well, meh.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: Acapulco Rampage by Don Pendleton (1976)

Book coverThis book is not one of the strongest in the Executioner series. In it, Mack Bolan travels to the Mexican resort to keep the Mafia from getting a stronger grip on the criminal warlord currently running the rackets there. After he kills a frontman and contact point for the bad guys, Bolan takes in the man’s secretary and traveling companion who claims to be innocent. He gets on-the-scene help from a washed-up actor that had been a front man for prostitution and white slavery as Bolan tries to find a solution that will keep the Mafia out of Acapulco.

Sadly, although its plot like the others differs from boilerplate, this book ends rather abruptly with a twist for a twists’ sake.

Not one of the better ones in the series, but still a quick and interesting enough read.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: A Treasury of Early American Homes by Richard Pratt (1949)

Book coverThis book is a sixty-year-old collection of Ladies Home Journal stories about old houses. You know, you hear the word McMansions to refer to large homes in the suburbs, but there’s a vast difference between large homes in the suburbs and most of these mansions.

One element of this book raises it above other volumes of its ilk that I’ve seen: this book was previously owned by someone related to one of the homes within’s original owners. Check out the handwritten notes:

Carter's Grove

Fascinating and poignant.

A good browser, for certain.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Book Report: Red Hammer Down by Jack Hild (1985)

Book coverI read this book as a break in more serious books. It is the sixth book in the series, so it’s the one right after Gulag War, which was the first of the series that I read in 2009. It deals with the aftermath of that book: After a successful mission to Siberia that embarrassed the Soviets, the SOBs scatter and hide out, only to find Spetsnaz kill teams on their trail. The SOBs discover that a fallen team member isn’t dead and is bait for a Russian trap on Majorca. But if you’re trying to trap the SOBs, you might find that the metal clamps shut around you.

The book is 218 pages, and about 120 of those pages are the climactic battle on Majorca. The preceding 90 are also action-packed and move along very rapidly indeed. There’s less exposition and setup even than the Executioner novels. Although, ultimately, this means they’re not as deep nor character-rich, but as an ensemble cast of sometimes expendable characters, you should expect some of that.

I’m surprised that the SOBs didn’t get some sort of movie treatment in the 1980s, frankly, and I look forward to stumbling across more of these books in the future.

Books mentioned in this review:

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2011: The Year’s Reading In Review

Well, here they are: The 106 books I read in 2011.

  • Buried Treasures of the Ozarks by W.C. Jameson
  • Remembering St. Louis World’s Fair by Margaret Johanson Witherspoon
  • Missouri Bandits, Bushwackers, Outlaws by Carole Marsh
  • A Political Bestiary by Eugene J. McCarthy and James J. Kilpatrick
  • This Is It, Mike Shayne by Brett Halliday
  • Battlestar Galactica by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston
  • Split Image by Robert B. Parker
  • The Turqouise Lament by John D. MacDonald
  • The Virginian by Owen Wister
  • Great Sonnets by Edited by Paul Negri
  • Fresh Lies by James Lileks
  • Goodbye, Nanny Grey by Susannah Stacey
  • Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
  • Code of Honor by “Don Pendleton”
  • Unsolved Murders & Mysteries edited by John Canning
  • The Brookline Shoot-Out by Shirley Walker Garton and Bradley Allen Garton
  • The River of Used To Be by Jim Hamilton
  • Telefon by Walter Wager
  • The Gingerbread Lady by Neil Simon
  • Dave Barry Turns 40 by Dave Barry
  • Fletch Forever by Gregory McDonald
  • California Hit by Don Pendleton
  • Boston Blitz by Don Pendleton
  • Thunderball by Ian Fleming
  • Where There’s Smoke by Ed McBain
  • Battlestar Galactica 2: The Cylon Death Machine by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston
  • Traces of Silver by Artie Ayres
  • The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Selected Poems by John Donne
  • Casual Day Has Gone Too Far by Scott Adams
  • Garfield Takes Up Space by Jim Davis
  • Washington IOU by Don Pendleton
  • Bite Size History by Hugh Westrup
  • Triviata compiled by Timothy T. Fullerton
  • The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Vintage Reading by Robert Kanigel
  • San Diego Siege by Don Pendleton
  • The Well-Stocked Bookcase
  • Sicilian Slaughter by Jim Peterson
  • Jersey Guns by Don Pendleton
  • The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Texas Storm by Don Pendleton
  • The Best of Clarence Day by Clarence Day
  • Can a Lawn Chair Really Fly? by Jess Gibson
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Dave Barry Does Japan by Dave Barry
  • Storm Prey by John Sandford
  • The Treasury of Clean Jokes by Tal D. Bonham
  • The Seinfeld Universe by Greg Guttoso
  • New Orleans Knockout by Don Pendleton
  • Firestorm U.S.A. by Jack Hild
  • The Bittersweet Ozarks at a Glance by Ellen Gray Massey
  • The Kentucky Rifle: A True American Heritage in Pictures by The Kentucky Rifle Association
  • No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem by Jeff Foxworthy
  • Point Blank by Jack Hild
  • Ozark Tales and Superstitions by Phillip W. Steele
  • Treasure Hunting for Fun and Profit by Charles Garrett
  • Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
  • Atlas of Ancient History: 1700 BC to 565 AD by Michael Grant
  • The World’s Great News Photos 1840-1980 by Craig T. Norback and Melvin Gray
  • South Park Conservatives by Brian C. Anderson
  • Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
  • Hawaiian Hellground by Don Pendleton
  • Silent Prey by John Sandford
  • Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker
  • Sixkill by Robert B. Parker
  • Bad Blood by John Sandford
  • Anerica Alone by Mark Steyn
  • Incredible Super Trivia by Fred L. Worth
  • Run to Daylight by Vince Lombardi
  • Paris, Tightwad, and Peculiar by Margot Ford McCullen
  • Triumph TRs by Graham Robson
  • Missouri Hard to Believe But True by Carole Marsh
  • A Bag of Noodles by Wally Armbruster
  • Remembering Reagan by Peter Hannaford and Charles D. Hobbs
  • One Hour Crafts for Kids by Cindy Groom Harry
  • Bruges and Its Beauties
  • Gainsborough: A Biography by Elizabeth Ripley
  • Ripley’s Believe It or Not Special Edition 2005 by Mary Packard
  • Great Quotes, Great Comedians by compiled by Michael Ryan
  • Jokes and Anecdotes for All Occasions by Ralph L. Marquard
  • Corporate Madness by Mark Lineback
  • Orvieto: Art-History-Folklore
  • Whiplash: America’s Most Frivolous Lawsuits by James Percelay
  • 28 Table Lamp Projects by H.A. Menke
  • Three Aces by Rex Stout
  • Empire of Lies by Andrew Klavan
  • Halo First Strike by Eric Nylund
  • Outland by Alan Dean Foster
  • I’m Not Anti-Business, I’m Anti-Idiot by Scott Adams
  • The Porkchoppers by Ross Thomas
  • Ghost Radio by Leopoldo Gout
  • The Book of Questions and Answers by Joshua Coltrane
  • Canadian Crisis by Don Pendleton
  • Daytrip Missouri by Lee N. Godley and Patricia M. O’Rourke
  • Home for Christmas by Lloyd C. Douglas
  • Wild Horse Mesa by Zane Grey
  • Kill Me Tomorrow by Richard S. Prather
  • Colorado Kill-Zone by Don Pendleton
  • General George Patton: Old Blood and Guts by Alden Hatch
  • Love and Marriage by Bill Cosby
  • Attila, King of the Huns by Patrick Howarth
  • Buried Prey by John Sandford
  • Do the Work! by Steven Pressfield
  • In Odd We Trust by Dean Koontz and Queenie Chan
  • Missouri by Bill Nunn

To sum up:

I read a lot of Don Pendleton’s The Executioner series, as is only fitting because my beautiful wife bought me 47 of them for my birthday in February.

I spent a lot of time this year getting my geek cred back by reading The Lord of the Rings and Dune, and I threw in Time Enough For Love by Heinlein. That’s some 2000 pages of science fiction and fantasy right there.

In the late spring and early summer, I started and even finished a number of compendium books, especially about literature, in advance of my Jeopardy! audition. Since I’ve forgotten most of what I read in them, it’s just as well that I’ve not been summoned to Los Angeles.

I didn’t read too many classics or serious things this year. I got in a couple of bios, especially late, and a number of Robert B. Parker and John Sandford works.

This next year, I expect I’ll read more seriously but will get my fill of pulp and picture books.

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Book Report: Missouri by Bill Nunn (1982)

Book coverCenterre Bancorporation brought us this book to celebrate the opening of its new headquarters in St. Louis in 1982. Don’t remember Centerre Bancorporation? Boatmen’s Bank bought it out in 1988. Don’t remember Boatmen’s Bank? NationsBank bought it in 1996 and sent the Boatmen’s Bank Guy pitchman to MagnaBank, where he became Magna Man. Don’t remember MagnaBank? That’s not relevant here. Don’t remember NationsBank? It eventually became Bank of America.

Whew.

At any rate, I got this book from the library as a picture book I could browse while watching football games, but the text-to-photos ratio is not particularly conducive to that. The book is almost endcapped by glowing tributes to the revitalizations of St. Louis City and Kansas City, and it’s almost handicapped by those tributes. For the last 30 years or so, St. Louis has always been on the verge of returning to its glory back in the days where it had the only bridge over the Mississippi River. But it never gets there, and any boosterism text is suspect.

But the book also takes a bit of a tour through small towns in Missouri, and it has a lot of pictures of historic Missouri (of 1982!). So it’s got that going for it, and it wasn’t an unpleasant couple of hours of browsing.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Walking through Book Stores Today

Tam explains the difference between fantasy and urban fantasy:

Nowadays, if someone tells you that a book is “fantasy”, it is best to ask if it is “urban fantasy”, because the latter, despite the similar-sounding genre name, is not at all the same thing. Sure, it may contain an elf, but if it does, she’s a bisexual wiccan detective elf who owns an occult bookstore in Miami and only increases her psychic powers through knockin’ the boots. People who would rightly be ill at the thought of necrophilia suddenly find it a turn-on if the corpse is still walking around, has fangs, and looks like Robert Pattinson.

As someone who reads some magazines about books, I knew this difference.

But wandering through the bookstore last week, looking to spend a gift card, I found end caps and end caps filled with steam punk historical science fiction. You know, science fiction kind of books set in the Victorian era using a lot of steam and pipes instead of atomic packs and nanobots.

It’s like a less imaginative retread of Jules Verne, without the future speculative nature of the Verne (instead, the stories speculate an unknown future from some safe past era that we know it turns out all right for that generation–aside from masses of their children dying in The Great War, of course–instead of the unknown future ahead of us, whose speculation would be hard).

But they no doubt feature what Ms. K would call “some arch humor and modern sensibilities” that Verne, Lovecraft, Wells, and Burroughs lacked.

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Book Report: Get to Work! by Steven Pressfield (2011)

Book coverThis book is a short little self-help program designed to cheerlead you through getting some sort of creative endeavor completed (the author tries to extend it to anything, but basically, it’s about writing a book or something). My wife borrowed it from the library and told me to read it. So I did.

The main schtick is that Resistance is the enemy (well, the main one) when you’re out to accomplish something, and during any project you’re likely to encounter resistance in a number of forms. The book rah-rahs you through those moments and then tells you not to overthink something, since overthinking it might just keep you from doing it. The book explains that you should just rush in, fool, and get it done and then correct it later.

This doesn’t account for the fact that revising and rewriting itself can be a great obstacle, and creating the first draft of a masterwork is not the end in itself.

So I wasn’t that impressed with it. But I’m not the target audience.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories