Author: Brian J. Noggle

This book completes the four books I bought at Calvin’s Books the last time I went there. I was afraid that they were closing, as the Firefly books were only three dollars each, but they were not that inexpensive because they were closing. But they closed never the less.

At any rate, I read the Firefly scripts in Firefly: The Official Companion Volume One and Firefly: The Official Companion Volume Two last summer and Firefly: Still Flying in January (when I thought it might count as a collection of short stories for the library’s Winter Reading Challenge, but it’s not really).

So this book means the end of the road unless I find some of the comic books or the recent novels cheap. So I am a little sad to come to this end. I’m sure some of that is mixed in with missing Calvin’s Books as well, although I need more books like I need more sunny days without rain here at Nogglestead.

So: It’s the shooting script for the film Serenity. As a reminder, this film came out three years after the television series, so if you watched them altogether as we did, you’ll notice things. Jewel Staite, for example, lost some weight (she said she had to eat a bunch to keep at Kaylee weight for the series in one of the previous books). And they played the characters a little different, and it was cut without some of the humor and playfulness of the television series. So the tone was a lot darker–although it might have been more in the acting and editing than the scripting. And they try to answer a lot of the questions from the television series in a fashion that’s disappointing, not on the Lost scale, but still

The book also has some inside looks at the making of the film, as the previous book does, but having read Star Trek Memories earlier in the year, I notice quite a difference in tone in the descriptions of making the film, even the nitty gritty technical aspects of it. In Star Trek Memories, making a television show is a more blue collar affair, with discussions about hitting budgets and physically doing the work, whereas these books are more about artistic vision, and the people who worked on the show take themselves very seriously. Perhaps it’s a difference in the elapsed time between the books and the television show/movie they depict (26 years have elapsed between Star Trek and its book, whereas these books came out within a couple of years). Maybe it’s a generational shift between the movie makers or between the fandoms. I dunno.

The book talks about a possible movie franchise, but that did not pan out. Maybe killing a couple of the main characters and tweely solving all the mysteries will dim that prospect for you–at least in the Star Trek movies, they only got into the habit of blowing up the ship every movie.

But, you know what? It’s been almost twenty years. Maybe it’s time for a reboot.

As I said, I was a bit sad to come to the end of the books, so I started re-watching the television series. Time will tell if I make it through again and if I watch Serenity. I invited my boys to watch, but they were not interested. So I guess I should stop making allusions to the show since perhaps nobody younger than forty-something will get it or even care.

I bought this book a couple weeks ago at ABC Books when I made the first of my recent runs on the martial arts section. I read it on a recent business trip to Chicago, and I really enjoyed it.

It’s not a long book–133 pages, and the chapters are short, generally a page or two story or anecdote from martial arts training and a bit of a lesson. The Zen it goes into is not the ontological Buddhism nor the practice of completely emptying oneself to escape the futility of life. Rather, it’s more geared to what we would later call mindfulness, with lessons on being present in the moment fully and in flowing. So good reminders.

And let’s talk a moment about the author. I had no idea who Joe Hyams was, but look at his Wikipedia entry. Born in 1923, served in World War II (Purple Heart and Bronze Star), worked for Stars and Stripes, went into newspaperin’, was sent to Mexico to cover illegal immigration (is that still a thing?), wrote a blockbuster story, was given some time off in Los Angeles as a reward and was told–perhaps jokingly–to interview movie stars that he met, and ended up scoring interviews first with Bogart and then his co-stars, became a full time entertainment columnist, studied martial arts as a student with Bruce Lee and then took lessons from Bruce Lee, studied several martial arts disciplines, wrote stars’ biographies, travelled with his wife Elke….

Jeez, the guy is Hemingway: The Next Generation, but without the legacy of novels.

So, yeah, the book has a lot of stories about Bruce Lee teaching this guy lessons. But they’re good lessons. And I really enjoyed the book. If I can remember to and if I’m not overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the unread books in the Nogglestead library, I should like to read it again. Definitely a better devotional than the Thich Naht Hahn, the Joko Beck, the Pirsig, the Suzuki, or even the forgotten The Zen Way to the Martial Arts.

Oh, and his wife Elke? He married Elke Sommer when she was 24 and he was 41. It’s not often I can turn a book report into a Rule 5 post, but here we are.

Continue reading “Book Report: Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams (1979, 1982)” →

This book bears no copyright date, but some of the poems that are dated come from the late 1960s–and the first is dated 1937 and says it’s the poet’s first poem. So we can assume this is from the 1970s or 1980s–maybe even a little later given that the collection has wingdings between poems that might come from the birth of desktop publishing. Remember, younger readers, desktop publishing referred to being able to lay out your books on your desktop computer for printing, not blogging or e-zines where the work never actually leaves the desktop (which these days includes mobile devices).

The author was a teacher, and perhaps an English teacher, as the poems come in a variety of forms and styles, so it’s clear she liked to noodle with words a bit. The quality varies from simple to some that are actually halfway decent. So it’s a bit of grandmother poetry with a little dash of the cool teacher who might have inspired you to write. Strangely enough, I can’t think of anything in my middle school or high school career where English teachers actually wrote, and my college mentor, such as he was, has published only three or four books in his career.

At any rate, a quick, light read from when poetry was designed to be quick, light reads.

Well, it’s been a while since I bought this book–I got it at the last LibraryCon, in 2019. As I might have mentioned, I recognized the author, who under a different pseudonym wrote Dammit Bre!. So I’ve bought at least six of this guy’s books; this is the second, and the first fiction of them I’ve read.

I guess the point was to write a quick bit of fiction blending urban fantasy with Miami Vice. And, you know what? He did it. I’m going off of his author’s notes here, a bit of Piers Anthony’s thing, as I recall, putting author’s notes about the writing of the book and the reaction of fans to his work.

Alright, so, the plot: The olden folk, elves, orcs, and whatnot, have gone to ground and have hidden from us for centuries, but they’ve also participated in the world a bit where their interests are concerned. In the modern day, an operation of their kind goes awry, and one of the elves betrays his fellows in law enforcement, leaving his partner wounded and left for dead, whilst the elf goes off to help distribute a drug that has different effects on the races. It makes orcs into berserkers, and it elevates humans to be able to see through the magic that hides the other folk. The olden folk want to keep the drug off the streets, and that means that an orc has to partner with a human detective to break the drug ring up.

So it’s a quick, fun read. And I’m a bit inspired by Levi Samuel Rickard–he’s banging out these books, and they’re likely getting better (this is only the second of his I’ve read, but I have four fantasy books floating around somewhere). It’s almost enough to inspire me to work on one of the novels I’ve plotted or stubbed out here, but not yet. Perhaps when the boys are out of the house. But most likely not. But I can appreciate the efforts of those who do.

I bought this book last Saturday, and it would have been a good bet to guess it would be one of the first that I read.

It helps that this book, like so many from the era, was written for children who were getting into martial arts in what must have been a post-Karate Kid boom–so many of the books I see are from the 1980s or now with fewer selections in between. And it really is the basics, designed as something you can review at home after having seen the things in class (and many of the chapters indicate your instructor will likely show you more examples).

So it’s a book that shows basic moves and basic forms with black and white photos for starting positions and ending positions, but unfortunately, that does not capture the flow in any of them. So if you’re thinking you’re going to learn the actual moves from a book, you’re mistaken–as I was in the 80s, when I checked out at least one book from the library about karate. But it’s like learning a language–you have to do more than read a dictionary (which I’ve also done, trying to learn foreign languages from dictionaries before I understood verb tenses and whatnot).

Still, for me, it’s a nice refresher. And I note, again, that the sparring stance for tae kwon do is a more guarded, hide-behind-the-lead-shoulder posture than the one my school teaches. Which makes me want to ask the kyoshi where he got the stance preference.

This book was in the poetry section at ABC Books, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. The author’s bio calls him a social media influencer, and the book reads like a bunch of Instagram posts. Some are a couple paragraphs of prose, and some are “poetry,” although they’re just prose with line breaks.

Thematically, the work is about a man who was sensitive, and then became quite the pick-up artist, but then repented of it and is celibate until he finds his future wife. He talks about an absent father, he apologizes to women he’s wronged, and he encourages them to wait until they find a man worthy of their affection.

I mean, it’s a good message, but I had a complicated relationship with the book. I mean, I’ve known some men who’ve been good with the ladies, my own father and Mike amongst them. And I’ve behaved myself chivalrously and neurotically with women even in my salad days, mostly. So I don’t have much of a score in the scoring department. So when presented with material about a reformed philanderer, I bristled a bit. I’ve always been a good boy; where are my accolades? Eh, not in this world.

Also, when a manipulator says he’s reformed, you can take it to the bank. The river bank.

Still, I hope he’s sincere, and I would have preferred a coda where he has found his soulmate and has been true to her. But I wish him well.

You know, I had almost forgotten that I was working my way through these books earlier this year. So when I was looking at the to-read books in the hallway, I thought, Oh, yeah, and this book provided just what I was looking for: A quick and pleasant read. I mean, I have to get my stats up. I’m only in the 40s in the books read in 2022 list, and it’s almost August. And I’m not sure we’ll have the football package this year for me to browse monographs and chapbooks.

So we’re about half way through the book series which ultimately will include most, if not all, of the episodes of the original Star Trek series turned into short stories by a British author who has presumably seen some of the series even though he had not when he began writing the books–which was about the time the show was on, but this book first appeared in 1972, when the show had been off the air for a couple of years. One has to wonder if the popularity of these books (this 1975 edition was the 10th printing already).

But because we’re halfway through the series, we’re starting to get to the more obscure episodes. This one includes:

• “The Savage Curtain”, wherein an alien race, hoping to learn more about good and evil, pits crewmembers from the Enterprise, Abraham Lincoln, and other notables against Ghengis Khan and some other violent people.
• “The Lights of Zetar”, wherein an interstellar brain containing the minds of the survivors of a long-dead alien race seek a human host to live in the real world again.
• “The Apple”, wherein a paradise-like planet is run by a giant computer whom the child-like natives think is a god.
• “By Any Other Name”, wherein aliens from a distant galaxy lure the Enterprise to their rescue; they hope to take over the Enterprise and to use it to return home in several hundred years’ travel, but they find that their presence in humanoid bodies gives them humanoid appetites and emotions.
• “The Cloud Minders”, wherein the Enterprise is sent on an emergency run to a planet that is the sole source for a needed material, only to find that the society is bifurcated between the people who live in the cloud city and the miners who do the work.
• “The Mark of Gideon”, wherein the Enterprise visits a planet that had avoided contact. Kirk apparently beams to an empty Enterprise that only contains one of the natives, and she’s trying to get infected with a disease that almost killed Kirk in the past because her planet has no germs and the population has remarkable healing powers–so that overpopulation has overcrowded the place, and Kirk’s infected blood can help people die.

I only kind of remembered “The Apple” from my viewing days. Still, a quick, pleasant read with characters I know.

But more interesting is that I am this book’s second owner.

Continue reading “Book Report: Star Trek 6 by James Blish (1972, 1975)” →