Category: Book Report

Ah, gentle reader. When I saw ABC Books’ Facebook post about the author having a Thursday night book signing. When I bought a copy of Superstar 2020, I noted his book signings are generally on weeknights, and I learned it’s because he’s from around here but does not live in Springfield these days. As a matter of fact, when he lived in Springfield up until his early teens, he lived in a neighborhood not far from where my beautiful wife and her family would live in a decade later (and, yes, he does include a Brad Pitt story).

The book stems from a series of columns he wrote for an Internet site, basically reviews of old records that he finds at flea markets, garage sales, and other places–including a couple that he has ordered.

He leavens the columns with anecdotes of his life, from his time working in a record store to owning a record store to being a personal assistant on a couple of rock tours, his time in Springfield, his youth in Florida, and so on. He also tells (sometimes) about his purchase or acquisition experience of getting the records, a bit of history of the record’s production, and/or some approving critical appraisal of the tracks.

His tastes tend to run toward classic rock that he first heard new on vinyl when he was a kid: The Cars, Alice Cooper, The Beatles, and so on. Stuff I would have heard on album-oriented rock stations when the songs were but a decade old. He does have a Tony Bennett record, and I do own two records on his list of fifty (Sweet Talk by Boots Randolph and Heart Like a Wheel by Linda Ronstadt, both of which I purchased on May 4, 2019).

I expect our differing tastes in records we collect accumulate (in my case, anyway, as you know, gentle reader, I will buy a lot of things sound unheard for fifty cents, especially if it has a Pretty Woman on the Cover (PWoC)). First, we came up in different eras; although my sainted mother and my father had a few records, by the time I was buying albums, it was on cassette and not on vinyl. Although I did have a brief run on picking up Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, Tin Tin, and Marian Segal with Silver Jade records in college because they were cheap as older collectors moved from vinyl to CD, most of my experience with new music of my growing up would be on cassette. Many of the titles didn’t sell as many copies on vinyl, so they’re not available easily at garage sales, book sales, or even your cheap crates at antique malls or used media stores. And most of the titles he mentions in this book and the classic rockers of the 1970s and 1980s are the very ones that collectors in that Generation Jones and Generation X are snapping up.

SO: My collecting has been buying what’s available, cheep! And that’s been big bands and easy listening music that our grandparents (and some of our parents) would have bought in the 1940s through the 1960s. As I mentioned to the author, most people don’t remember that the charts were dominated by the easy listening artists in the 1960s–Herb Alpert and the had a string of giant records, sometimes several on the charts at the same time. So I’ve been able to find a lot of Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, Boots Randolph, Eydie Gorme, and even older Big Band acts for fifty cents a throw. I’ve also picked up some non-Miles Davis or Ella Fitzgerald jazz–a lot of Dave Brubeck (!), George Shearing, Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughan, Diana Washington, and so on. AND! I’ve had the chance to pick up a number of international artists–the Brazilian records I bought in 2016, Mireille Mathieu, Özel Türkbaş, and so on. And when I come across a new artist that has several records available for fifty cents, I buy them all just in case I like the artist.

So, where was I? Oh, yes, this is an interesting book and a good read. I liked it, and although I might have found to enthusiasm a bit forced, I did meet the guy, and I think it’s probably how he really is.

Spread over a year’s worth of columns, the enthusiasm and calling a record a “stinger” would not have seemed quite so rote. But that’s maybe the only knock I could make against the book except noting a few typos.

So I’ll have to dig out that copy of Superstar sooner rather than later. I kinda know where it is in the book stacks which are just as disorganized as the record library which is fuller than it was in 2024.

I bought four of Billy Pearson’s books at a book signing at ABC Books seven years ago. As I mentioned then, Billy Pearson started writing when he was 80 years old and had nine books in print by the time of his book signing. So I have to admire that and to look upon his works with a certain affection even though they’re not very good. I previously reported on his novel The Chemistry of Love in 2019, not long after I bought them. The gap is as much because I have so much to read as more than I’m avoiding them.

At any rate: You know I read a lot of grandma poetry. This is the equivalent grandpa… short stories? The book title says Short Story Adventures, but I’m not 100% sure these are not just reminisciences and memories jotted down. As I said previously, I think he dictates these in text-to-speech and does not read/edit the result. So they’re in the vernacular but also the unproofed vernacular. I didn’t have trouble reading them having just gone through The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, half of which were in a different vernacular, but I got used to reading phonetically and not based on words.

So the… stories… in this book cover a lot about growing up in rural Missouri in the middle part of the last century, so you know that’s catnip to me anyway. A couple of pieces are clearly nonfiction as they lament the current state of the country and particularly one past president (unnamed) who apparently does not love the country. Heaven help us that we don’t come to a time where someone could read the book and think “Which one?” but if that comes to pass, we probably won’t have a country anyway.

So: Okay, quick read, 158 pages of pretty good print. A quick Internet search indicates the author might still be alive. Good on’ ‘im, and I bet he’s still writing if he can.

This book marks the fifth and completing one of the Summer Reading Challenge. I picked it up from the free book cart at church which again has some books on it–the powers that be emptied and closed the library at the satellite church campus and had a mega-free-book giveaway a couple months ago, and that emptied the free book cart as well when the remainder got donated to whereever they went after the tables in the narthex. After I picked it up, it lay on my desk for a couple of weeks because I couldn’t be arsed to shelve it. Which made it easy to pick up.

I called this book a Christian self-help whitepaper, and that’s not far off. The author is a pastor of 13 years, and he has led some research in how congregants characterize their “gifts” from God. So the book is equal parts generic self-help Bible quoting, not far off of what you would get from Joyce Meyer followed by a set of charts and text explaining what the surveys said when the researchers asked churchgoers about their gifts.

The book has a couple of personal anecdotes: One is about how he misjudged the man his mother would marry; about a man who was important as a liason for students on mission trips in Argentina, a large guy with a neck tumor; and a Russian who has been a gangster, but turned his life around (and somehow ended up “running” his Russian town). The anecdotes are pretty high-level and impersonal and don’t necessarily reflect well on the author. And they’re just not that punchy or real like you would get from, say, Norman Vincent Peale whose little personal narrative asides and examples were far more effective.

I mean, I did get some good ideas from the book. He distinguishes “spiritual” gifts from “common” gifts and says that churches tend to over-emphasize and target the former rather than celebrate and share the latter. So I thought about some ways that our church could do some fellowship and neighborhood outreach by focusing on skills-based seminars and knowledge sharing.

But this book, ah, this book, is a pointer to a complete non-profit sales funnel, and wants you to complete its EveryGift survey itself (even before the author whipped out the first chart, I could tell where we were going because it talked about “research” and came up with a copyrightablemanteau for its program). And here’s the Christianeagram where you’ll find yourself:

You have one category for “technical” gifts which, presumably, would cover a hella lotta gifts from woodworking, carpentry, good with animals, gardening, understanding motors and mechanical things, and so on. But most of them are white collar or academic-style gifts, and most of the time when he talks about using your gifts, he talks about art and making music, and going to conferences. Not so much about serving at the food bank or vacuuming the sanctuary.

I dunno. Seems a little upper middle class consultant comfortable to me.

So I got a couple things from it, I guess, but probably not what the author wanted. I did pass it on to my beautiful wife who is more into this sort of thing than I am. AND! I get to take my completed Summer Reading Challenge form to the library to see what my free gift is. I wonder what it will be?

I got this book from the diminished (in more ways than one, apparently) philosophy stack (not plural, and not much of a stack) at the Midtown Carnegie branch of the library recently. Oh, my. I am not sure if it’s a step up or a step down from the British Marxist comic book biographies I’ve read (Einstein for Beginners and Sartre for Beginners). Maybe a step up because it has quotations from the original sources, but maybe a step down because it–I was going to say “just misses,” but it misses on the side of Marxism and embrace of contemporary policies of a certain idealogical (and culturally suicidal) persuasion.

The book has chapters on a variety of topical matters, including life, money, work, happiness, beliefs, you, health, feelings, love, education, politics, and death. Each chapter is mostly the author’s summation of Stoic thought on the topic along with some compare/contrasts with other philosophies and/or religions, but without any actual quotes or citations to back up the assertions. The chapters are leavened by a couple of quotes from Stoic sources, almost exclusively Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca, with several paragraphs of the author explaining what the quote means. The chapters conclude with “Think About” thought exercises and “Going Further” which are ways to put (the author’s view on the) Stoics’ insights into practice.

I considered doing a thoughtful response to it, but I can’t be arsed, so here are some of the quibbles I have.

Ancient Athens was an intellectual melting pot, a Mecca for those who sought to imbibe philosophy at its source, and so drew students from far and wide.

Using Mecca as a metaphor for melting pot where all students are welcome seems, erm, dumb because in reality, Mecca is not those things. Only in common, uninformed idiom is (was) it viewed as a good thing, and generally as a point to aim for, like a North Star.

In her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Japanese author Marie Kondo askes that we apply the simple criterion (the KoriMari method) to each thing we own: is it either useful or does it ‘spark joy’? If neither, then we should discard it.

This is probably a useful exercise for us all, especially book hoarders (yes, I’m looking at you! Ahem…)….

Ah, the Marx/Kondo connection. Prepare your mind for having less. Not what he meant here, but, no, my books remain until a tragic fire or my estate sale, mate.

One of the benefits of wealth is that it allows us to help others. In 2009, the philosopher Peter Singer (1946-) published The Life You Can Save, which argued that people living in affluent Western countries have a moral duty to help those living in poverty around the world.

Again, the Stoic direction to non-attachment means send your money to nonprofits, have less, and Elon Musk should not be a trillionaire (implied, and probably on his Twitter feed even now). Citing Peter Singer is a nice touch.

Utilitarianism (at least, in its original form) is mainly concerned with happiness in terms of how certain outcomes make us feel.

Okay, cog. Serve others and die when your utility is spent. That should make you happy.

We should try to treat others fairly and live within established legal codes (justice).

Legal codes != justice. C’mon, man.

I don’t want to presume as to what views you currently hold as to the nature of life, the universe, and everything, and nor do I want to prescribe what those should be.

42, of course. But I’m pretty sure if he doesn’t want to prescribe justice via legal codes, he’d be happy to nudge you in a behavoral economics way to his preferred viewpoint.

But what do we do when we feel overwhelmed, or sense the creep of unwelcome anger, lust or depression [sic–he is so egalitarian that he doesn’t use the Oxford comma because it’s elitist, one presumes]? Aside from false judgements [sic–have an extra E in that word since there’s no room for a U], we should do our best to avoid, prevent or suppress the growth of the harmful passion. Your partner has left the toilet seat up (again) or done a shoddy jb with the dishes; your boss continues to ignore your worthwhile contributions while favoring the pretty new recruit; your racist auntie has again outlined her views on asylum seekers… you get the idea.

Strangely enough, like Marx, asylum seekers are mentioned more than once in a positive light. Stoics should love them!

The problems most of us face in the matters of love is that they often stir up negative emotions. Drawing upon and developing existing Greek concepts, Christianity divided love into four main types: érōs (sexual love), storgē (parental and familial love), philía (love for one’s friends), and agápē (unconditional love for God and one’s fellow humans). As you can see, apart from agápē, all the other forms involve potential conflict. Sexual desire can lead to lust, deviancy, jealousy and envy; familial relations between children and parents can lead to grief, betrayal, coercion, resentment; even friendship or a feeling of communal belonging can create rifts and internal disputes or animosity towards those we consider ‘other’ or outside our group or tribe. It is only selfless universal love that avoids these issues.

So, basically, a good Stoic is a liberal who prefers asylum seekers to his auntie.

What fooking balderdash, mate. Also, someone press him on what he defines as deviancy, and we’ll see whom he offends.

Applying this in more practical terms, we may break it down into two main concerns: conmtrolling the passions and eradicating prejudice. We must guard against the power of erotic love to overwhelm our reason and will, and we must try to extend our concern beyond the borders of our own family, tribe and nation.

You see, he meant it.

This wonderful quote reminds me of a Zen Buddhist parable, where the teacher is pouring a cup of tea for his student. When the tea reaches the top of the cup, the teacher continues to pour, causing the student to point this out. “It’s a bit like you, isn’t it?” says the teacher.

I came not to say “What an intellectual yob,” but to point out this is the third book this year that has included this parable. The other two were Be Water, My Friend and The Secret Power Within: Zen Solutions to Real Problems.

There are countless small ways in which a citizen might do this [help out in the polis]. Neighborliness is a good one–offering to mow the lawn of the old coule who live nextdoor, or pick up their prescriptions, helping someone mend a fence or move furniture. The same obviously applies to colleagues, friends, and family. You might write a letter of recommendation for your boss’s niece to help with her application to university, or volunteer to help an asylum seeker deail with intimidating government bureaucracy.

No, seriously, fook you auntie, mate.

All these incidents [Stoics falling on their swords] emphasize not only the Stoic belief that death is nothing to be feared, but also the idea that, if done at your own time and choosing, it is possible to have a ‘good death’ (which is the actual meaning of the modern term ‘euthanasia’).

All righty, then. Stoics thing Canada’s MAID idea is a good idea (perhaps especially for your auntie to make room for some asylum seekers).

Ah, gentle reader. This book almost let my passions rule me in my, erm, disagreement with the author (but, as he does not know me, he loves me more than I love him, I must acknowledge).

This book is unnecessary and probably counterproductive, seeking to introduce people who are curious about Stoicism into Stoicism as Liberal political thought. The original sources, at least in good translations, are easily accessible and don’t need exegesis, especially of this sort.

On the other hand, it did make me want to go back to the primary sources. My oldest and my mother-in-law have started working their ways through the Marcus Aurelius. And I did “just” (three years ago) score a paperback copy of Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. I should definitely look for that once I get my current chairside accumulation of in-progress books under control.

And it did make “Taylor-Swift-Loving British Pseudo-Stoic” into my new go-to insult, and when I use it here in the United States, I fully expect it to be fighting words.

Ah, gentle reader. As you know, I am a fan of Bill Cosby even now. I’ve read his books (Time Flies in 2004; Love and Marriage in 2004 and in 2011; Cosbyology in 2010; Fatherhood in 2010) and ‘ve watched his videos (including :49 last year, which indicates that the copy of Himself which I purchased in 2024 awaits viewing). And I know it is contemporinternetguache to still appreciate Cosby’s work, but I have expressed my concern about decades-later accusations of sexual impropriety in an post on Brett Kavanaugh when he was a nominee–therefore but for the grace of God go I, and you, too, gentle male reader.

So: This book tackles some stories from Cosby’s youth in the projects of North Philadelphia, when he ran with a group that those of us of a certain age would recognize as the models for the characters in Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. The book was written after the long run of the cartoon series and after some of the stories likely appeared on Bill Cosby’s comedy records, so I guess in 1991, it might have seemed like recycled material. The anecdotes and their lessons deal with family, siblings, kids playing on the street and amusing themselves, and growing up. Cosby compares his youth to that of the contemporaneous kids (of the 1980s) who get bored and play a lot of Nintendo instead of roaming the streets, inventing their own games with their friends, and improvising amusements. His parents might have said it, but I am sure every generation since has said it, and it’s probably truer now than even in Cosby’s curmudgeonly parenting days.

One chapter, though, is a little, erm, poignant given his 21st century woes: It’s about the pubertyish proto-Junkyard Gang trying to score some Spanish Fly and to dose some of the young ladies of the neighborhood with it. It turns out they’ve bought cornstarch from a Navy sentry, so no hanky-panky occurs, but although in the 20th century, this bit would have been a boys-being-boys story, especially as the ploy did not work, in the 21st century it’s doubleplus ungood wrongthink–and, probably, such spirited hijinks have been trained out of our youth. But, Brian J., they could have poisoned and/or sexually assaulted those girls! Yeah, but they did not. And their failure to do so and the fact that they were taken advantage of makes it funny. Well, amusing.

Ah, never mind. If you’re offended, you’re probably not reading this anyway.

So I’ll watch Himself someday, and I’ll pick up his other books if I see them–it looks like I’m halfway through his written oeuvre, and the 21st century books might be lesser sellers and harder to come by. This particular book is a paperback, but it’s a Deluxe paperback, which means it has a stiffer cover. I thought it had flaps simulating dustjacket flaps for extra copy (as did Hour of Lead), but I was mistaken. Also, note the cover: Emmanuel Lewis, another 1980s sitcom star (Webster, which was an Alex Karras vehicle re-written and re-titled to focus on the adopted son, clearly to piggyback on the success of Gary Coleman’s similar show Diff’rent Strokes). He’s still alive, by the way, but his height and young looks have limited his options in acting, so he has become an entrepreneur over the years.

I got this book two years ago in a bundle for a buck at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale. So I didn’t pick it specifically, but the book was facing out, so I did not ignore the bundle on account of it.

As such, it is a 32-page gifting excerpt from an earlier, full-length book called Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead. This excerpt deals with handling grief; the title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem, one of the ones in my repetoire when I was doing open mic nights. I presume it is–this excerpt never mentions it, but Anne Morrow Lindbergh is a poet. A poignant story behind this particular book is that the space for gift-giving inscription is to Mom for Mother’s Day from Tracy in 1987, which might indicate a loss in the family in the spring or a little earlier.

Lindbergh, in addition to being a poet, was Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, and her 1973-ish musing on grief is based on the kidnapping of their child and discovery of its body. Hope, then dashed, and then the aftermath. The author find her journals from those days decades later and produced Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead from it.

A quick read, a bit helpful if you’re dealing with someone’s death. Better than A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir, maybe not as good as Love’s Legacy by Stephanie Dalla Rosa–but this book is but an excerpt, so maybe the whole thing is better or more broadly focused than these two.

But as a gift. On Mother’s Day. Man, I feel that.

After listening to the fifth part of the Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition lecture series, which included a lecture on Pope, and specifically on “The Rape of the Lock”. And, brother, did that come in handy.

Ah, Pope. The man is more the parts than his sum.

This collection has three poems: “The Rape of the Lock”, which is a poem in five cantos totaling almost 800 lines that depicts an aristocrat who takes a lock of hair from a young woman for his collection, but the poem seems given over to a very detailed description of a card game which is not a game I’m familiar with; “An Essay on Man” which is written to a Henry Bolingbroke (not the Shakespearean Henry Bolingbrokes, though, as Pope was writing in the first part of the 1700s which was 100 years after Shakespeare who himself was writing 200 years after the Henrys in question) and comprises about 1500 lines in four “epistles” which describe man’s nature, nature, and God and the interrelationships and proper places of each, including reason and instinct/passion/what have you; and “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” is a shorter piece, 419 lines, and covers some of the same themes.

Pope writes in couplets, and many of them are eminently quotable. But the individual poems themselves are long, and you might wonder where it’s going–which is why the lecture helped. Pope helps himself by including a summary of the contents of each epistle in “An Essay on Man”, and footnotes by Pope himself and editors of various editions (the original and this edition, presumably) tell us the names of the contemporaneous people Pope is talking about, but that’s not exactly a help or driver into reading large stretches at a time. I exercised some discipline in reading sections, cantos, or epistles completely, much of the time, but this is mostly drawing room poetry to amuse or irritate aristocrats of the time. So while one might want to and actually quote Pope on occasion, it’s not something that many in the 21st century will read for pleasure (see also the complete works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the second and longer part of The Complete Works of Keats and Shelley, set in a holding pattern behind a stack of literary magazines and Ideals).

At any rate, let’s see what I flagged during my slog.

• Trough worlds unnumber’d though the God be known,
  ‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
  He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
  See worlds on worlds compose one universe.

  From “An Essay On Man”, early in Epistle I. Given all the headlines about UFOs in government files recently, one question is how religion would adopt. In the 18th century, Pope was nonplussed by it. I imagine the Judeo-Christian religions would adapt.

• Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
  Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.

  I think I will put this on my business cards. If I ever order any again. The last batch has lasted almost 17 years, and the box is still half full, which is how a pessimist describes his box of business cards.

• One from Grubstreet will my fame defend,
  And more abusive, calls himself my friend.
  This prints my Letters, that expects a bribe,
  And others roar aloud, “Subscribe, subscribe!”

  Shades of the modern Internet culture in penny publishing in the 1700s.

I had a couple other things flagged, but I didn’t remember what I wanted to say about them.

As you can see, the couplets are generally a little epigramatic, flow together, and as I was reading along, I was following; however, at the end of a piece, I was like, “What’s that all about” even though at a high level I knew what and I enjoyed a couple of couplets along the way, the whole did not strike me as greater than the sum of some of the couplets.

Ah, well, I am a product of my times, prefering short, punchy, and pointed poems.

After I read this book, I came upon, shelved just a couple of similar Riverside Literature Series down, “An Essay on Man” in a similar Maynard’s English-Classic Series edition. Unlike the Walter J. Black Classics Club editions, which were marketed to middle class adults, these editions were college textbooks, and it shows. The book I read has faded pencil notes on the front flyleaf, and “Rape of the Lock” has underlining and margin notes. Which, gentle reader, probably means that more than one student used this as I’m pretty sure “dialoging with the text” was not an early 20th century thing. An LLM indicates it was mentioned in an influential 1940 volume called How to Read a Book and became widespread in the 1960s, and this tracks with my experience–editions of classics I have starting in the 1960s start showing this juvenalia marginalia about then. Essay on Man, this other edition, does not indicate such.

I will just move this second book to the read poetry shelves with the one I read, and I’ll put it in by the old and mylar-wrapped complete works of Pope. I have a paperback copy of the complete works of Pope as well around here somewhere, but I won’t be in a real rush to read the rest now.

Like Look Who’s Here, the Family Circus collection I read before this book, I could not find the book listed in a Good Book Hunting report, and it is in really good shape, so I think I bought it for my boys a decade ago and they didn’t read it a bunch. Which is a shame: Heathcliff was fairly big in the 1980s–I remember watching the cartoon series, and we took the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which included it. So perhaps it was just big for me in that moment of my youth. Apparently, it’s still in syndication, although not in The Licking News, the only paper I took until recently which had a comics page.

Ah, gentle reader. Unlike The Family Circus, I’ve read a lot of Heathcliff collections over the years, including:

• Sweet, Savage Heathcliff in 2008
• Heathcliff Strikes Again in 2009
• Heathcliff At Home in 2012
• Heathcliff Round 3 in 2013
• Heathcliff Tresure Chest in 2013
• Heathcliff Smooth Sailing in 2015

And the Heathcliff comic book I received for my birthday this year (not reviewed).

Although this book was published in 1984, the copyright dates and the dates on the comic panels themselves indicate 1976 and 1977, and we even have a couple bicentennial-themed panels. Which means that they’re fifty years old now, but aren’t we all?

If you know Heathcliff, you know what you’re going to get: He’s going to dump trash cans (which is what we used back then instead of wheeled bins); he’s going to woo Sonya; he’s going to fight Spike; he’s going to sing on the back fence; and so on. According to Wikipedia, the comic only started in 1973, so it’s very early in the run, so everything feels fresh and not dialed in. Of course, I’ve not read a collection of the paper cartoons in eleven years, so all the tropes would seem kinda fresh just because I’m older than the cartoon itself (aren’t we all? If not, do not taunt in the comments). I probably mentioned before in one of those other book reports that I favor Heathcliff over Garfield (although I have read a Garfield collection in my time) because Heathcliff is more of a Byronic hero than Garfield. Well, perhaps I’m trying too hard when I say “Byronic,” but he definitely was more dynamic.

Ah, gentle reader. That’s really all I have to say about that, and, good news/bad news: I have several more collections I will probably knock off in short order, which is good for the annual book count but I’ll probably have as little to say about them as I do about these last two.

I might as well macro this bit: I claimed this book when we culled the bookshelves in my youngest’s bedroom in January because I’ve delved into this well–which is a spot on my bookshelves where I’ve put all the cartoon books from that gleaning–several times (book reports forthcoming) and will indubitably do so in the future (to be clear: the book reports are coming, because I need to pad my book total for the year as we are in the month numbered 6, and I’m not in the book total of 50ish).

Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. Reporting on a book of cartoons. You know, this looks like it’s only the third Family Circus book I’ve read (the others being When’s Later, Daddy? in 2009 amd I’m Taking A Nap in 2013).

For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, Family Circus is a daily single-panel cartoon which, Wikipedia informs me, is still running and is the most widely syndicated cartoon in the world. Although it’s a single panel with a single gag daily, some story arcs appear as the family travels to see family, Billy’s birthday is coming, Christmas is coming, et cetera.

And, you know what? I’m of a generation who can still appreciate the warmth and humor of the book, coming at that tail end of the middle century where although the nuclear families were disintegrating, they still dominated popular culture. So I get the tropes, even though these panels would have come out before I was born, but maybe my son would not have. Given how good of condition I found the book, it was not one that they read over and over again like some Lego titles.

So a pleasant couple of minutes. And another book entry for the annual total, which was looking a little anemic before I started knocking out cartoon books.

You know, gentle reader, for a long while the contents of ABC Books’ martial arts section included (and merely was often) two books on Chi Walking. I mention it on many occasions, and I have even mentioned buying/owning two books on Tai Chi walking, but history indicates that I bought the two remaining books in the martial arts section in 2022, which were this one book on Tai Chi walking and a book on mixed martial arts (Raw Combat) which I have yet to read. Which leaves a bit of a mystery: Do I have another book on Tai Chi walking in the stacks, or do I have two more that I bought later? Come to my estate sale early to find out!

So I started this book a couple years back because it could fill a category for a Winter Reading Challenge, but I bogged down for a long time in it (it was on the decommissioned living room book accumulation point for years). As part of a recent project to finish some of the books I’ve started (and which have accumulated on side tables), I decided to power the rest of the way through it.

Yeah, it’s a couple hundred pages of mindful walking practices. And although they have different names and “goals,” basically it’s monitor your breathing and walk. I’m not really the target market for the book–presumably, it was targeted to older or inactive people who had seen tai chi in the news or in the park or whatnot and wanted to get something out of it but didn’t fancy themselves martial artists. Man, do you remember when Tai Chi was a thing? It was everywhere for a while, what, twenty-five or thirty years ago? And now I don’t see it anywhere, in any news stories, et cetera. Did China actually finish stomping it out? I posed this question on Facebook for my friends, but I’m not sure my Facebook contacts have seen it.

I did get something out of this book, lo, those many years ago when I started reading it. It talks about posture when running, you know, leaning forward a bit (fun fact: I used to lean too far forward when sprinting, in college, which led to me perfecting my shoulder roll before studying bujitsu–I would run, topple over, roll over my shoulder, and come up still running until I learned not to do that). I mean, I do this when running outdoors (or did, when I ran, and ran outdoors). But when running on treadmills, I would keep my body vertical, maintaining distance from the controls of the treadmill, which was suboptimal. So I corrected that before an indoor triathlon–which also indicates this book was started but incomplete for years. I have not done a triathlon, indoor or out, for over a year now (the indoor ones are drying up, I think, and the outdoor ones are sprint length or longer). So: Maybe I am rapidly growing into the target market for this book after all.

I claimed this book when we culled the bookshelves in my youngest’s bedroom in January. I actually thought I was reclaiming the book because it looks like the kind of thing I would have bought and reported on, only to have my young boys poach the book from my shelves and put it into their rooms. But, maybe not: I don’t see a mention of the book in either a Good Book Hunting post or a previous book report, so maybe it was one of the things we picked up for them at ABC Books when I dragged them up there before they got phones. Well, it’s mine now.

So: This is an official ICanHasCheezburger.com book. You know, I first mentioned that site on this blog in May 2007, so not quite twenty years ago. Clearly, I was or am the target market for the content: Pictures of cats with captions. Although this book is about kittens specifically.

Okay, amusing. I have to admit that I’ve not hit that Web site in a long time, even though in 2007, the olden days, I hit it several times a week. Maybe the modern stream of memes on social media and in meme posts on blogs have taken their place.

But this cute little book was a quick browse, and as I said, amusing. And the authors/proprietors have had better luck than I have trying to capitalize on kittens and cats (of Nogglestead), which include a soon-to-be defunct line of t-shirts at NicoSez.com (ah, gentle reader–am I giving up by planning to not renew for a third year of Web hosting and expensively provided SSL management? Yes, yes I am; although my intentions and my actions often do not coincide) and two apps (Nico’s Kitty Translator and Feline Fly Assassin, both featuring my cats). So they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.

And I have 39 books read this year. 100 is within reach!

Ah, gentle reader: As I mentioned when I bought this book in 2020 with a gift card, I had read about Dunbar somewhere and had bookmarked his Wikipedia entry for later use when writing an essay or something. Back when I thought I was an essayist. I guess it’s only been 20 years since I had a piece in History magazine and a couple in Writer’s Journal. Could I have bookmarked it that long ago? Ah, gentle reader, I have exported my then-Firefox and now-Brave bookmarks every time I’ve upgraded computers, so…. Maybe.

As I might have mentioned, I have returned to reading in my bedroom immediately before bed–some time ago, I had a full-sized lamp beside the bed, and I read in bed for a while before sleeping, but we moved a small chair into the bedroom because my beautiful wife has always favored the idea of a “reading nook.” She doesn’t read there frequently, but I’ve taken to having a stack of literary magazines handy there to transition to bedtime. I’ve also read poetry books there, including the first part of The Complete Works of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Odes of Pindar, and some Salesian Missions things. For the last couple of months, I’ve had this 479 page long collection.

I don’t remember where I first came across his name, but I’ll definitely say that (in my opinion), Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of America’s best poets, certainly of his time (the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th). Much of his poem has rhythm and rhyme and is eminently approachable and readable and has actual substance to it, sometimes unexpected but plausible takes and metaphors. But.

But, and this is something that can be used to ding and to dismiss James Whitcomb Riley (Dunbar’s contemporary). Dunbar wrote a lot in the vernacular, and in his case, as his speakers were former slaves and black, the vernacular probably triggers modern readers. But even within the poems in the vernacular have depth and poetic sensitivity. Another thing that separates him from modern poetry, well, a couple of things: One, his poems not in the vernacular are rather formal in structure, so they’re not authentic enough. And the other thing modern professionals might think is a sin is that some of the former slaves who miss their lives as slaves. You know, when they were freed, they lost a lot of social structure, comraderie, and suddenly had to live a completely different life. Which led to some complexity in human emotion, ainna? But that would be doubleplusungood thought expressed in the 21st century. I guess I should add here because it is the 21st century that I am not advocating slavery, but I can imagine some counterintuitive and conflicted emotions on the part of the freed slaves.

So, yeah, I liked this book. Over the months of working through it, I flagged a number of poems. I’m not going to recount them here for you, gentle reader–I’m thinking I might at a later time pull this book from the shelf and re-read what I have flagged. I also bought a later edition of his first work, Lyrics of Lowly Life in 2023. When I bought it, I pointed out to the volunteer counting my books that he was an important black poet and one of the first to achieve fame from it, and she thought it was great that I knew it. I think it a failure of our collective society that nobody else does.

Dunbar died at 33; how unfortunate, but like Keats, he burned brightly. And wrote more poetry by that age than I can have been arsed to write with a couple of extra decades. But I’m working on it.

Like Mother Tried To Tell Me… And I Wouldn’t Listen, I got this book last May at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale. It is a short collection of poems dated June 2015 through March 2019, and the Print on Demand date in the back indicates the book was printed in May 2021.

The subtitle is “a tribute to living life on the open road”, and the first poem is about a van she named Frida, and it sounds like she’s planning to live in it, an early representation of Van Life or perhaps homelessness, but the poems are not exclusively about travel. They’re about relationships, et cetera. And although they hint at some poetic sensibility, some underdeveloped moments, most of them are not very good–they’re just prosaic thoughts broken into lines, sometimes lines with only a word or two on them, and not especially descriptive or evocative.

Sadly, in reading a lot of lesser poets (and modern magazines), I’m still concluding that the changes in education over the last, what, century and a quarter? have really diminished the depth of poetry across all levels of skill and professionality. Some of the grandmother poetry, or, heck, the poetry my father wrote (which I’ve posted on the blog, somewhere, but I cannot find it now), has depth that the casual poetry writer today lacks. Because they’ve not been fed the classics as input, so all they have is tweets and insta-poetry to learn from. And it shows. Even the college-trained poets these days suffer from it.

Ai.

At any rate, this is book 37 for the year (and the third on the night when I also read browsed Up Close! and Mother Tried To Tell Me… And I Wouldn’t Listen). Annual book count: PADDED.

I got this book last May at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale, and it was shelved close to Up Close!, so when looking for something to read in between epistles in Pope’s “An Essay on Man”, I pulled it as well. As I have only read 35 books so far this year, I have to pump my numbers up.

This is a little gift book, not very long, which is bound at the top. Each page contains a truism or quip, advice that I suppose your mother might have given you. And by “each page,” I mean one per sheet of paper–the “top” page of the book/back of the “bottom” pages, are blank. The individual quips are things like “Tact is the ability to close your mouth before someone else wants to.” and “You can give without loving… but you can never love without giving.” In cursive, as though someone just wrote them down on a notepad.

So, yeah, it took me a couple of minutes to read it. But I am counting it as a book. Because I make the rules around here.

After thinking about Gary Coleman, I thought about this book. Which I had knocked akimbo on the to-read shelves whilst dusting on Monday, so its location was fresh in my mind.

As you might recall, gentle reader, I have picked up these elementary school book fair celebrity bio books before (see also TV Superstars ’81, TV Superstars ’82, TV Superstars ’83, TV Now: Stars and Shows, and any number of similar books about sports figures). The difference, though, it that the aforementioned book covers a period 40 years ago when I watched network television and new who the people in the books (like Gary Coleman) were.

This book, though, is from 13 years ago. So these child stars–and they’re all child stars–I guess some of them are in their 20s, but, c’mon, man, to someone who was down with the celebrities 40 years ago, anything under 35 looks like a child, ainna?–come from an era where I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to television. Especially Nickelodeon, where many of these stars matriculated. Some, of course, I’m familiar with because they’re still around. But some not.

The book includes brief bits with lots of exlamation points! about:

• Big Time Rush, a boy band from a Nickelodeon show
• Victoria Justice
• Rachel Chow
• Andrew Garfield
• Jennifer Lawrence
• Josh Hutchinson
• Chloë Moretz
• Lily Collins
• Cody Simpson
• Bella Thorne
• Zendaya Coleman
• Justin Bieber
• Selena Gomez
• Taylor Swift
• One Direction
• Willow and Jaden Smith

So, yeah. About half are still relevant? I’m not sure I’ve seen a film with any of them except the Spider-Man film which had Zendaya and Andrew Garfield in it. The one thing I’ll take from this book is Zendaya’s last name since she’s dropped it. And the book describes Taylor Swift as the Queen of Country, although in 2013 should would still have been princess-aged, and the last line, punctuated with an exclamation point! says she’ll be the Queen of Country forever. I am from the future, and I have some startling news for you.

At any rate, I’d say it’s good fodder for trivia nights, except:

1. At thirteen years old, this book is likely outside the range of the questions at trivia nights we’ve been to in recent years: Questions written by college kids who were too young to pay attention 14 years ago when this book was compiled or questions about very contemporary things. Also, when it comes to pop culture, Disney categories rule more than Nickelodeon television shows do.
2. I’m likely to forget everything except Zendaya’s last name after I schedule this blog post. It helps that she has the same last name as Gary Coleman, to be sure.

Still, the passage of time, neh? I am not sure where I got this particular volume, but I’m likely to dabble in others like it in the future.

Wow, it’s been eight years since I bought this book at the Friends of the Christian County Library book sale back when they only had it twice a year in Ozark. One would think I would have jumped on this book sooner. But one would also have thought I’d also jump on Chuck Norris’s autobiography, too, but yet it languishes here, somewhere, amid the stacks.

I’ve got to say: I’ve read my Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind in 2017), and I have read my Joko Beck (Everyday Zen in 2020), and I have read other non-Zen Buddhists including Thich Naht Hanh (various), but this book is maybe the best book on mindfulness I’ve read. Not true Zen, but mindfulness.

The book is not a true biography, but it has enough biographical elements and anecdotes to be interesting. But its focus is on what we now call mindfulness which Norris was introduced to in his various dealings with the inscrutible Orientals in Korea where he learned tae kwon do and later in California where he had a chain of martial arts schools before he got into acting. He talks about emptying the mind, focus, breathing, et cetera, and, again, it’s leavened with the anecdotes and name drops. He mentions Bruce Lee, of course, and even includes a story/koan/sutra of the empty cup that was in Shannon Lee’s Be Water, My Friend. He mentions that Steve McQueen recommended he try acting when he was at a crossroads (being open to those pivotal points is a lesson taking a chapter).

So it’s a little like Joe Hyams’ Zen in the Martial Arts, but, to be honest, better. Because it’s Carlos Ray Norris, man. And I say this even though I’m only slightly afraid that if I posted a bad word about him that he would spin kick me from beyond.

And I’m kinda encouraged to find his autobiography. More inclined to do so than to watch The Jimmy Stewart Show based on reading the latter’s book of poetry.

Having run out of Readers Digest magazines on my recent Florida vacation, I delved into this book, which I bought in Daytona Beach during the trip. It took me less time to read it than a Readers Digest because it’s 31 pages long.

It features four (4) poems total plus an introduction telling about how he started writing poetry on a bit of a lark and an introductory couple of paragraphs about how he came to write each poem. We have a poem about a step in a hotel in Junín, Argentina, that trips guests; a poem about how cold it is in the Aberdares mountain range in Kenya; a poem from the point of view of a movie camera nipped by a hyena also in Kenya; and an eulogy for a not particularly well behaved dog.

It’s not high art; it’s a bit of doggerel, although it has decent rhythm and rhyme to it. But what’s most telling, and a bit sad, about it is that it reminds us that people, normal people and celebrity, tried their hands at poetry in the middle of the twentieth century before the practice was completely turned over to the priests of academia, and that people, normal people and celebrity, would read it. Would read at all might be the case, although a woman next to me on one of the flights had a book when the most of the rest of the people were left to their own devices. Also, it’s kind of bittersweet to find a hardback priced under ten dollars.

At any rate, it reminds me that I have a DVD version of The Jimmy Stewart Show around here somewhere. Maybe I’ll give it a watch sometime soon. But I often say that here on the blog, and then I do not.

I just got this book in January when spending a gift card at Hooked on Books. So I came across it while taking a break from “An Essay on Man” by Alexander Pope (itself a break from That Hideous Strength, which is a break in the complete works of Shakespeare…).

So: This comes from the middle part of Leary’s career, although I guess he’s continued to work since 2008. But it’s in the middle of Rescue Me which was his dramatic fireman series which ended in 2011, fifteen years ago. He’s been busy with other television shows, films, and voice-over work, but because I associate him mostly with the MTV ads in the 1980s, No Cure for Cancer which I listened to over and over in the middle 1990s driving to Milwaukee and back, and his roles in 1990s films like National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I, The Ref, and Demolition Man, I think of anything past the turn of the century as part of his later work even though most of his career has happened after that arbitrary point.

So, what do we have? Well, Denis Leary schtick. He rants about the importance of hard work, families, and gores some sacred cows about our softening society (eventually having to walk back some bit about autism). Being it is 2008, he takes some shots at George W. Bush and lauds Obama; I wonder whether he feels any differently eighteen years on–and whether he could or would admit it if he does.

So I flagged a couple of bits:

• On page 25, he mentions Donald Trump making a vodka when he doesn’t drink.
• On page 90, he mentions Paris Hilton who was a thing back then before the onslaught of the Kardashians. I just watched Paris Hilton in National Lampoon’s Pledge This!.
• Here’s a long and slightly vulgar bit:
  

  I could update that bit [a bit from Lock’n’Load about coffee-flavored coffee] this very second with my thesis on how Starbucks may be responsible for the pussification of America–I reresearch the subject once or twice a week when I stand in line there and listen as some limp-wristed, yellow-Lance-Armstrong-bracelet-wearing, metrosexual-har-goo-sporting, Hillary-Clinton’s-tired-old-ass-worshipping puke spends twelve minutes trying to decide between the Orange Cranberry Vagina muffin or the Pumpkin Cream Tampon Cake while fingering a Save the Rainforest Compilation CD featuring Sting, Sheryl Crow, Joni Mitchell, Sting’s Abs, That Hot 19-Year-Old Blonde White English Chick Who Sounds Like Janis Joplin, and Sting’s Penis–who apparently pops out of his master’s yoga pants to sing his new single “How I Have Tantric Sex With Trude Styler For Seven Straight Hours.”

  He means Joss Stone. I was there in 2008. It was so long ago, but not that long ago.

• Donald Trump again on page 191. I mean, for late boomers coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s, he was quite a touchstone. Especially after his television show.
• Talking about memory in male/female relationships, he says “Unless we’re talking about sports or The Godfather Part One and Two or the Vanessa Williams issue of Playboy magazine.” ACKSHUALLY, the photos that toppled her reign as Miss America appeared in Penthouse. My brother had a copy back in the day.
• He says: “Here’s hoping that–two decades from now when perhaps another twenty-million Mexicans have settled in here and begun to legally prosper, vote, work, and play–racists will have at least five or six more slurs to shout at them during an altercation.” Well, here we are twenty years later (almost), and whole swaths of other populations have arrived on these shores, and Americans of all stripes have indeed updated their dictionary of derogatory ethnic terms. And, yet, somehow anti-semitism is the sentiment of the day.

So: It’s slightly a product of its time, with the political jabs at Bush and whatnot, but it’s also notable for how some of the things he identifies are still relatively timely–and that’s not just the parts about where he talks about the importance of family. The seeds for current sociopolitical concerns were already germinating in 2008. And were fertilized by the administration Leary welcomed.

I got this book in Sparta in 2024 with a couple of other loft interior design books. I read the others, Small Lofts and Minimalist Lofts, not long after I got them. This one, however, languished partially complete beside the reading chair for quite some time before I recently finished it as part of my drive to finish up (or reshelve) books that have been there for a long time.

It’s because it has a high copy-to-photo ratio. It has these chapters:

• the loft look
• space
• light
• materials
• color
• styling
• outside in

Yeah, not capitalized, because that’s stylish.

Each two-page spread has three photos, generally a larger one and two smaller ones, but a lot of gushy, purple, catalog-style prose. Each chapter has a “case study” which is slightly more specific, more of the same. Although the book did not depend upon the word liminal quite as much as the others.

So, to underline (as this book does), the loft style of the early 21st century (and maybe beyond) is to create open floor plan condos that look like Scandinavian museums with their light and neutral colors and simplistic furniture and art presentation (a limited number of things per room), objects chosen for how well they conform to the contempraneous concepts of style and nothing else. Architectural elements like floating steps which look like they might last a decade, but don’t most loft dwellers, especially those buying bespoke lofts like those depicted in books, make me wonder what they’ll be like in five or six years. To say nothing of twenty. But, again, I imagine lofts turn over a lot, and everyone who’s buying a pied-à-terre is going to pay designers and architects to redo it in their vision anyway.

You know, I prefer craftsman to almost lodge design, so for me, a loft has exposed brick and industrial elements but also thick wood accents and tend toward the dark colors. And as for décor, the chapter “styling” opens with:

The key to styling urban spaces is balance. Balance between personal treasures and cohesive, clear and contemporary home style. With our choice in furniture, fabrics, and a hundred other details, we stamp our personality upon a room, we make it ours.

I mean, if you cannot trust a philosophy described with a missing serial comma and a comma splice, what can you trust?

So much of interior design, it seems to me, is self-referential and artificial within the industry itself. Making spaces look like other spaces, with external indicators substituting appearance for meaning. Of course, when I look around Nogglestead, I see things and decorative items with meaning. Going along the mantel on the oversized brick fireplace in our family room, for example, we have a needlepoint girl which was a gift to my beautiful wife; a pair of replica dueling pistols which belonged to her uncle; her acryllic plaque for being on the park board; a shadowbox containing duck and goose calls belonging to her father; a time/thermometer/barometer bit which was a gift; the flag from my mother’s casket; the little crystal lamp I bought in 2018; the cartridges from the salute fired at my father-in-law’s funeral in a triangle flag shadow box; a scale that belonged to my sainted mother; a shadow box containing three garrison caps from my mother’s veterans organizations; a mirror which belonged to my favorite aunt; a marble chessboard that belonged to my grandfather and then my mother; a tin cat garden decoration I bought for my wife; two cat sculptures that belonged to my godmother aunt, including one I bought for her; a fireplace tool set which was decorative at my mother-in-law’s house but is functional (some times) at Nogglestead; and a porcelain cat sculpture I’ve named Darla which belonged to my favorite aunt. I look around the rooms, and I can tell you why the things are here. Some elements do not scream Brian J. did this–mostly gifts consumer art from my godmother aunt or chosen by my beautiful wife (although we have one set, down from two, of cheap consumer art I bought in my Ebaying days). So no balance between personal treasures. All personal treasures.

Should I someday have a loft, it will not look like this. It will look like Nogglestead but probably with a more open floor plan. And I will invent industrial lodge cluttercore.