Month: October 2026

Ah, gentle reader: This is a little, 62-page book without a UPC published by Bottom Line Secrets. Since it has no point-of-sale information and because I do not see it on a Good Book Hunting post anywhere (and I don’t tend to pick up financial books at book sales anyway), it’s entirely possible that I received this as a free gift for subscribing to the newsletter. A newsletter it was: On paper, a couple of pages, brief items likely cribbed from somewhere else back before blogs were a thing. I vaguely remember the newsletter; perhaps I subscribed to it briefly when I was planning to be fiscally responsible, or perhaps my sainted mother did and I inherited the book from her.

At any rate, that’s what the book is: Short, blog-sized bits of different financial advice grouped into chapters like Retirement, Taxes, Investing, Saving Money, Business Smarts–well, I guess like is not operative here as those are the five chapters presented not in the order in which they appear in the book. It’s more of a time capsule than advice that’s applicable today–even though this book might have come out in 2003 (it also lacks copyright information, but all contemporary references are to the dot-com crash and tax years are in the G.W.B. administration).

I mean, one of the tips in the saving money section is to take advantage of double coupon day–and to start and present a petition to the grocery store manager to have a double coupon day if your local store does not. The snippets talk about pensions, which I’m not sure even historians know what that word means any more. Tips range from things you would find in Mary Ellen’s columns from the 1980s to great esoterica in the tax code that probably only were operative for a couple of years before they got re-legislated or re-interpreted.

I think the target audience would have been older boomers and maybe the previous generation (which I resolve no longer to call “The Greatest Generation,” Tom Brokaw’s flattery be damned) who probably handled their accounts themselves and were upper-middle class or striving to be there (as I strove, was, and strive again).

But there’s not a lot of applicable advice for today. No Don’t eat out twice a day (limit yourself to twice a week). It does say maybe to not lease a new car every two years–my mother-in-law and father-in-law actually bought new cars every few years, and we’re driving her last new car these days (circa 2008). No Don’t go to Starbucks twice a day (advice I would not have taken circa 2006 when that was an option, and livin’ was easy). No Don’t burn fires every night because they will damage the fireplace whose construction cut corners forty years ago, and you’ll have over a month of increasing costs including to maybe rebuilding the whole chimney from scratch–just let it be and let it be the problem of the next owners or let it fall when Nogglestead is razed for a subdivision (advice I probably would not have taken either).

But the book did provide me with one bit of amusement. A bit of advice on investing:

[The bondholder] Dies early in the year. The accrued interest on the bonds maybe be taxed at low rates if the dececedent had little or no other income in the year he died. Reason: In the year of death, a decedent can claim a full standard deduction (if not itemizing deductions) and a full personal exemption–no proration required.

C’mon, man, don’t make the decedent work that hard. Let him rest. Not quite The Wall Street Journal’s Lifetime Guide To Money‘s ever-lovable euphemism “your retirement ends.” But up there.

So: Well, the strategy of knocking out short books is working–I am able to focus at least this long (well, over a couple of days) while my home is bit by bit going through demolitions of varying degrees, and I might just hit 100 books this year yet.

I picked this book up in Florida in May and put it into the stacks, hoping that by seeding the stacks with a bunch of Christmas books in various locations that I would be able to find a Christmas book when I was in the mood for my annual Christmas book reading. I suppose I could organize the stacks, but…. Nah, I would need a lot more stacks for that. Kind of like the extra space we had to organize my library when we moved to Nogglestead, which was then overrun by things I have bought since. At any rate, since I have decided to read shorter books while my lower level, spot of my nightly reading, is torn up and tented off, I went looking for the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas book which I had just had in my hands last week when selecting one of the shorter books I have already reported on. But, of course, the Mannheim Steamroller (sorry, Chip Davis) book is lost in the stacks for another couple of years, and this book came to hand. I recounted how I heard of Rodrigue and the Blue Dog in the linked post about how I bought the book, but I’d been in his gallery before this book came out.

The book is a tie-in to a series of…. Prints? Featuring the Blue Dog in Christmas settings, including as the angel atop the tree, in the snow, and so on. The art itself is very simple and pop-art–I know I mark myself as hoi polloi or bourgeoisie when I say I prefer Kinkade or Hargrove’s more realism. Here’s a sample of Blue Dog I posted in 2012 when I mentioned misstating his name in a conversation with my beautiful wife (note that the sample is not from the Christmas series):

Not really my style of art. But I remember it and the artist.

The text is not fiction; rather, it’s a bit of memoir about the artist’s Christmases in his youth in rural Louisiana and the joy he felt, underlining that he had two dogs at the time. But then he grew up, went to school, the dogs died, and as an adult he lost the feeling of Christmas until he became a successful artist, his adult dog died, and he found Christmas joy in being able to put Blue Dog in a bunch of paintings. That’s the arc of the story, but really it’s about putting some text and dog memories beside prints in the then-contemporary series.

A quick read upstairs away from the rustling plastic and masonry dust. I don’t think I’ll count it as my Christmas book, but we will see if I can find another one in the next two months.

Although this book was on top of the stacks, I did not just buy it–I bought it in September 2024 at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale. It’s not quite a self-published book, or at least not how we do it now; it says it was printed by Standard Printing. So maybe this is a self-published of the variety where you order 1,000 copies of your own book to be printed. It’s definitely a little less onerous to self-publish your work now, but that lack of friction has made it so that anyone can, and just because you’ve published a book, that doesn’t mean anyone is going to see it. Especially if you’re a bit of a misanthrope. Perhaps if I had 920-some copies of John Donnelly’s Gold sitting in my closet I would be more inclined to move them. Actually, I do have several copies of John Donnelly’s Gold and Coffee House Memories lying around. I guess I will have to trot them up to ABC Books for their shelves since they looked like they were about out last time I was up there.

So: Becker was a regionally successful poet in Topeka, Kansas, in the first part of the 20th century. She wrote and published (in papers and magazines, not just self-published books) poetry and plays and contributed to several operettas. And, you know: The poetry is pretty good. It’s not purely grandmother poetry, not re[etitively focusing on Christian themes. She touches on relationships, lost relationships, nature, and, yes, eternity with reference to Christ and God. But the breadth of the topic matter was refreshing. The poems themselves had varied styles, from free/blank verse to tightly iambic and rhymed poems. It was actually a joy to read, and when I’m up in Kansas again, I’ll remember to look for more of her work in used book stores.

Probably not as likely here, though. This particular book was a gift to the “Little Hults” and has the local address of what one presumes is or one of the Little Hults. And as it was a gift to children in 1955, it has pencil scratchings and whatnot in the first pages.

Amazing in this 21st century to think that people gave children the gift of poetry in the middle of the last century, but that was probably the beginning of the decline in American education. Not because of the poetry, of course, but the decline led to not giving the kids poetry and Captain Underpants books instead. At any rate, I probably have similar books from the 1970s given to me. And one final desecration note: The poem on page 35 or 36 must have been the best of the book because it was torn from the book.

So: A cut above grandmother poetry and the stuff you find in Ideals magazine (not to mention most modern poetry magazines). If you find one of her books in the wild, snag it; they look to be listed at $30 and up on Ebay with first editions going for hundreds of dollars. And they’re full of pleasant poetry.

I got this book at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale last month as something to browse in the event of watching football games. I have not, in fact, had the opportunity to watch many football games, but I am finding that the shorter, snippet-sized books are easier to focus on (that is, they do not require much focus) while my family room is bisected by increasingly porous plastic sheeting (coming up on three weeks and maybe going into four or five).

So: This book is a collection of famous paintings from the classical and Renaissance with parenting advice text on them. Kind of like the classic are memes you see on the Internet these days. Amusing in spots, but I’m past most of the parenting advice these days. To be honest, I didn’t get a whole lot that I remember even though I was the primary caregiver and urchin squire from the time the oldest was toddling. Maybe it’s a woman-to-woman thing, some social thing where the advice giver is trying to assert higher status over a peer by offering the advice which is sometimes subtly damning and sometimes is often judgmental.

It probably doesn’t help that I read this on Saturday night, and on Saturday one gets Powerline’s The Week in Pictures and Sarah Hoyt’s weekly meme post.

But this book is one of those small gift books that you give on small gifting occasions. Collections of cartoons, poetry, and now printed memes. One has to suspect this is the final form of the little gift book, and perhaps one that won’t be around for long. This was a library book which was in circulation in the library for under two years. I think that might underline my point, but I really don’t know how long things stay in circulation these days.

I cannot find this book in a good book hunting post, which probably means it came from the culling of my youngest son’s bookshelves earlier this year. After finishing Pleasures of the Porch, I really wasn’t eager to jump back into one of the other, longer books I’m working on (Caesar and Christ, the Edna St. Vincent Millay collection I just picked up, and Susan Keene’s Tattered Wings which I am not finding compelling) whilst half of my family room remains tented off and depressing. So I grabbed this book.

It’s a youth-based novelization of an animated film. In it, a mysterious figure styling herself as the Batwoman is interfering with a triumvirate of Gotham City’s underworld figures (the only badged one being The Penguin) who are building sophisticated and science-fictiony arms to export to a middle-European country in conflict. She blows up a rolling truck, she blows up their factory. The real Batman tries to pin down her identity but just when he thinks he’s got it, he sees the Batwoman and his suspect at the same place. The triumvirate summons Bane to take care of the Batwoman, but he cuts himself into the action.

So it’s maybe just a touch simpler than a men’s adventure paperback, but not a bad read. A comic book story, which you don’t find in modern comic books (in my experience) which are all about the comic art and not so much plot. So….Yay? And it counts as a book in my annual list, so I’ve got that going with me.

When I was tossing my stacks for something like this, I came across a Superman title and several collections of cartoon books which look familiar. I’ll have to double-check to make see if I’ve already read/reported/added them to the book database. Or…. I can read them and find out afterwards. Books is books. They all count in pursuit of the annual total.

I got this book in September, and although I started to browse it during one of the Kansas City games I watched on a Sunday evening or afternoon (when I had an intact lower level, which I will have again, maybe, maybe in 2027). However, the text-to-photo ratio made it too wordy for football games. So I’ve been working my way through it on evenings in my bisected family room.

At any rate, this is a coffeetable book about decorating porches and enjoying them once you’ve done so. It’s broken into chapters covering the types of porches, good porch furniture, what to do on a porch, decorating porches, and planting on or around them. The chapters are laden with text describing, generically, and each page has one or two small (well, mostly small but sometimes medium sized) photos to illustrate. So it’s a strange combination, text-heavy, and seemingly anachronistic. Most modern builds have decks in the back instead of porches, but it did make me think back to the homes in Old Trees and Lemay, the houses which were a hundred years old and such, where porches were more prevalent. And it made me think back to porches I have mostly not known.

• The first apartment complex: No porch, maybe a concrete pad. We moved from that place when I was four, so I only remember a couple of glimpses, like drawing on a metal green sedan with a rock and the talking to I got after that.
• The projects: A concrete step/platform shared with the Whites and later the Johnstons next door. Not enough for a “porch” but enough brick wall between the doors to throw a tennis ball and catch it when it came back or to use as a backstop for games of strikeout.
• We lived with the family friends that my sainted mother inherited in the divorce in a ranch house with maybe a concrete slab out front?
• When we lived in St. Charles with my aunt, the house had a little concrete slab out front, but not a “porch.” (I checked my seven-year-old now photo of the house to be sure.) It did have a deck out back, though, not that I remember anyone sitting on it–although I am sure my brother and I lounged on the hammock out there once or twice.
• The trailer had a little “deck” which was about, what, 10 by 10 feet? That would be 100 square feet, and that doesn’t seem right. Maybe 7 by 7. No furniture, maybe a little grill, and a place to sell Tim C. Vince Coleman rookie cards for fifty cents per. I wondered if I was getting taken, but it seemed to be a good trade at the time. Fifty cents in 1986 or 1987 is like $80 now, and you’re all saying, “Vince who?”
• Down the gravel road, the house had a concrete slab; I remember putting a lawn chair out one Hallowe’en, stuffing some clothing around a five gallon bucket, and putting a jack o’lantern atop the bucket. But it wasn’t a “porch.”
• My father’s house in Milwaukee, where I lived with his family while I was at the university, had a set of concrete steps to his front walk. I did spend some time on those steps early in my college career, trying to learn harmonica in the darkness. It was early in my college career, before Dave went Airborne. But, mark it: The first time I spent out of the house nearby. Like, on a porch.
• When I lived with my sainted mother in my aunt’s house in Lemay, it had a bit of a porch which was a couple square feet of concrete up some steps which led to the front door and the kitchen door (which were adjacent but turned ninety degrees).
• My first apartment opened to a breezeway.
• Our first house, the one my beautiful wife and I rented as we married, had two porches: An open porch on the front and a screened-in side porch. We used the side porch for storage and probably did nothing on the front porch but accept deliveries. Not from Amazon, child.
• Casinoport (the house I called Honormoor, sweet Christmas, after “To Lucasta, On Going To The Wars”, a poem I’d forgotten that I remembered in 2020 but recently exhumed evidence indicates was true had a concrete slab out front behind pillars, and we put a bench out there (did we?) and some plantings, but we did not spend time out there except working on it. We had a small deck out back, and we might have had something on it, but we did not spend time out there, either–I traversed it grilling or taking the garbage out. Ai de mi, I spent more time underneath it, bailing water from the bottom of the walkout basement steps or sweeping and clearing it daily so I wouldn’t have to bail. But Pleasure? No.
• Old Trees: Ah, now, we’ve got a front porch that we used. Even though it was within shouting distance of an interstate. We had a porch swing we used. My wife had plants out there. We had a stroller staged for our young son because we walked him all over Old Trees. We even had the painted porch improved with staining and grinding into the appearance of flag stone. Ah, were we getting older?
• Nogglestead has a slab out front with a step outside the front door. Ah, and, oh!, but my oldest has decorated the “porch.” When we were in Alton, Missouri, at a fundraiser for a marriage-cousin with cancer, he bought a birdhouse/craft thing and put it on the brick stoop (the two I bought are on the mantel–one is next to the Christmas Intruder 2026 and the other is just to the left of the frame). And, at some point, he dragged the rocking chair which his grandmothers painted and placed in his bedroom before he was born so that we could rock him out there. And he might have sitten there a couple of times, but, ah, brothers and sisters, it is my go-to for reading First Things and New Oxford Review. I sit out there, sometimes in the middle of the day (which is, you know if you’ve been paying attention, scandalous behavior). Nogglestead has also featured a robust deck (past tense, and maybe future tense if the fireplace does not cost us our small fortune and burn the house down) and a bit of a “patio”–a concrete slab below the deck. I’ve enjoyed them in turns over the last seventeen years. Because I’ve changed to enjoy outside time, I guess.

You know, the house my grandmother rented the last years of her life had a front porch with a swing and a screened-in back porch that was mostly storage. My aunt had sunrooms on the back of her houses–when my sainted mother and I were living in her rental house, I slept in that sunroom for a time. But aside from the sunrooms, none of the porches were as elaborately done up as the ones in this book.

So I kinda enjoyed the book, but more I enjoyed the reminisciences it spurred.

This book came out of the last box of books that I received from my mother-in-law when she downsized, what, four years ago? At any rate, I shelved it as part of cleaning my closet last week, and I thought it would make a good football game browse. As most of our lower level is still tented off for firebox replacement (two days of work over five calendar days has turned into, maybe, if it all goes right–which it hasn’t so far–, five or six work days over almost four weeks, followed by a possibly lasting fear of ever using it), I watched part of the Packers game with the Roku and its streaming apps hooked up to a computer monitor. And although Nogglestead is chock with extraneous, smaller-than-we-have-hooked-up-now monitors as well as auxilliary/second monitors and even primary monitors that are larger than most televisions I had growing up, apparently, we have not bought monitors with speakers. After all, we have actual speakers for computers we want to make noise and internal speakers on the computers we have that do not. So I got to watch the first half of the Packers game without any sound which, as we know, is how Friar prefers to watch Sunday night football games. So, I flipped through this book without interruption by the commentators and commercials and replays.

So, at any rate, allow me to continue this book report which ultimately might have as many words as the book itself. I would tell you how long the books is or how many cartoons it contains, but I’ve have to count as the pages are not numbered. But it’s a fair number. Some are amusing. Some are conceits which would have been, maybe, amusing 40 years ago but are just the way we do things today (one panel is a book, and the people in the panel explain it’s a book of what one family ate every day for a year–as we know now, you can find many, many Web sites, blogs, social media feeds, and video channels that do just that in real time).

Okay, amusing. Probably a gift to my mother-in-law at some point from a student or colleague. I am not sure books like this get into hardback form in the 21st century, and I’m sure that most people would not have gotten many of the gags. But I did well enow as a person who recited “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to his future mother-in-law on our first meeting (ah, like an old man, I repeat my stories, but I will not repeat the link to where I repeated the story at this time).

So: Good?