Category: Book Report

This book is definitely not one of the stronger entries in the series (contrast with Red Hammer Down, Point Blank, and Gulag War). Actually, I think I liked Gulag War the best and have been hopeful that these books would recapture some of its pulp glory, but for the most part, after it they’ve all been hackish.

This one, too, suffers from more problems than good parts. The books spends a good portion of the first half with the set-up, which is before the title characters appear. Apparently, there are some elements of the Bolivian armed forces double-crossing US anti-drug military forces and Bolivian military members in the field; the Swedish prime minister is assassinated; there’s a coup in Bolivia where a crooked general with the backing of a Swedish chemist who can make artificial cocaine throws out a democratic reformer. Then we have a chapter of the Washington contact for the SOBs being pulled away from a glorious dinner to tend to the problem. Then we have a long chapter of the team members on their own after their recent most adventure getting restless and awaiting the call from Barrabas. Then, some sixty percent of the way through the book, they get to Bolivia, split up into teams, and then we get some jump cuts between the teams, even the team that is essentially sitting around and doing nothing, and more not much exciting happens, until we reach a simplistic climax that is a bit deus ex maquina. Most of the team doesn’t get a lot of action, but they get a lot of pages.

Again, the book does have the feel of an eighties action film baked right into it, but it’s more akin to a straight-to-VHS action film than something that would star Chuck Norris.

Books mentioned in this review:

I had hoped that this book would be akin to Dear Customer: You Are A Loser so I could get double duty out of it and to post a blog entry on QAHY about it (such as this, which apparently actually sold a copy of the title to my benefit).

Oh, but no.

Instead, this book is a collection of short anecdotes about bad business ideas throughout history (this just in: Tulip futures in Holland hundreds of years ago–what up with that?) and out-of-context quotes from luminaries and businessmen (hey, it’s 2001: let’s throw something in from Bill Gates! Hah! I didn’t get it, and neither will most people who weren’t at the Microsoft convention!). Worse, in a lot of cases, the anecdotes seem anti-capitalist (Martha Stewart got hers for insider trading on the ImClone thing! Neener neener neener! Although in truth she was convicted for conspiracy and obstruction of justice). I mean, what sort of magazine is Business 2.0 to revel in that?

Oh, a failed magazine. Right.

(Full disclosure: I was a subscriber there at the end, when they killed it and sent me Fortune magazine to fill the subscription instead.)

At any rate, it’s a brief read for an idea book, but not something worth spending a lot of review time on, and not something I enjoyed all that much, really.

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When I wrote about my visit to Smallin Civil War Cave last month, I mentioned this book, which is a book about Ozark caves that the Smallin Civil War Cave’s proprietor wrote about caves in the Ozarks. He wrote this book before he bought and ran the cave.

The book is more of a memoir than any sort of actual field guide, since it doesn’t talk much about actual caves per se. It talks about the author’s experiences in amateur spelunking as well as some experience of being a cave guide (from which I drew much of my glibness about cave guides from the book). As a personal memoir, it interested me than a more stilted book would. Bright recounts stories about chasing goats and discovering caves, finding abandoned home sights in caves (and the attendant story therein), and a host of other folklore and geology filtered through his experience and explorations. The book also contains a large section of pictures from the author’s collection. As such, it clocks in at 128 pages, which makes it a very easy, quick, and pleasant read.

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I’ll be honest: I was not in a real hurry to pick up the Zombie Parker titles, including this book, a Spenser novel written by Ace Atkins. However, a piece about it and its author in Mystery Scene magazine changed my mind. So I started watching for it in the library. As you might know, I found it. And I was pleased.

Atkins does his best to capture old Spenser novels from the pre 1990-something era, where the books had some depth and lyricism to them. The plot: Spenser is hired (for a box of doughnuts) by a fourteen-year-old girl from South Boston who wants Spenser to investigate the murder of her mother four years before. He looks into the murder, which the police have already solved, and finds that the man in prison probably did not do it. But once he gets that notion, finding out who did puts Spenser and the girl in jeopardy from scary individuals in the crime syndicates and whatnot.

As I said, it’s a good throwback to the old style Spenser novels, before Parker stacked them up with nothing but dialog. Atkins adds depth and, get this, new allusions. He throws in references to previous books and characters, but also peppers the book with quotes and references to other material. I dunno, maybe Parker stopped reading, or maybe he thought his readers were more interested in references to the Spenser mythos (and now that there are two authors in the field, it has achieved mythos), but I find the new allusions satisfying and fresh.

Sadly, though, Atkins does go to the established baddie well much like Parker would have done (Gerry Broz plays an important role in the plot), but it’s not the sort of book where Spenser knows the answers but has to work out a solution. Instead, he, Hawk, and the girl spend a lot of the book trying to figure out what’s going on, and that makes the story move along well and keeps one going.

It didn’t take me just a night to read like they did in the old days–the old days are gone, as are the short Parker entries in the series–but I did read it in only two nights. I’m looking forward to the next entries in the series more than I have in some time, although I’ll probably go with library copies. But if Atkins–or other designated heirs–keeps this up, I might take to buying them again.

Books mentioned in this review:

As some of you might remember, I visited the Smallin Civil War Cave a while back, and while I was there, I picked up this book in the gift shop. One of the cave’s owners wrote this book before he and his wife purchased the cave, but now they’ve got a good retail outlet for it.

The book itself is not a field guide to caves, per se. It doesn’t identify many locations to visit or that sort of thing. Instead, it’s the musings and recollections of an amateur spelunker who grew up in the Ozarks with its river caves that he could explore while out hunting. He talks a little about a cave operation and being a guide in a cave. Remember, this was written before he owned Smallin Cave, so he wasn’t just going into the industry on a lark.

I enjoyed it better as a memoir than if it had been an actual field guide.

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This book is far less topical and dated than Dixie Convoy, which was definitely stuck in the 1970s with its CB focus. This book has a more typical Executioner excursion into the heart of Mafia territory: Manhattan.

The bosses in New York are scrambling for power after the recent death of the Boss of all Bosses at the hands of Mack Bolan. A confidante of the BoAB has been working to secure his own place as the old man was slipping, but his quiet push for consolidation encounters some scepticism from some of the other leaders of the mob. The power behind the Aces, an autonomous group of mob super-hitters, looks into the mess, and Bolan steps in to make sure that mess keeps boiling and the mob men keep dying.

Does that sound like a blurb for the back of the book?

As I said, this is a better book than #27 (I missed 28). Not only does the book avoid dated technologies, but it also has a climax (two, sort of) that rather smoothly fits into it.

At this time, I’m closing in on the end of the Pendleton books of the series, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to miss them. I’m not sure who the publisher used immediately after Pendleton, but I know the far later books lack some of the depth and philosophical musings that lift these books above the other period pulp. And I’m not just saying that for you, Ms. Pendleton, although I hope you take some pride that your husband’s work continues to be enjoyed 35 years later.

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This book offers a template through which you can view the relationship with your significant other, typically a spouse as this is a lightly Christian-flavored book (although it’s lighter than something like So What’s The Difference, so non-Christians can get something from this book if Christianity does not offend them). Chapman identifies five distinct silos of behavior types to which classify interactions with one’s significant other (or others–more on that later). He uses the metaphor of a “love tank,” a vessel that holds positive feelings towards one’s SO, which is constantly draining but that you can fill up with one or more actions in the template.

The five love languages (sorry, apparently this is a registered trademark, more appropriately The 5 Love Languages®) are:

• Words of Affirmation, which is saying something nice.
• Quality Time, doing something together.
• Receiving Gifts, which relies on physical tokens.
• Acts of Service, which is doing something for someone.
• Physical Touch, which is pats, hugs, holding hands, and sex.

So finding your partner’s primary love language and showing love for your partner will help to “top off” that love tank and keep the relationship strong and healthy. Okay.

Well, it is a new framework in which to view one’s relationship, and by thinking of the relationship and the trappings/interactions of the relationship qua relationship, I can see where this is helpful. However, the book focuses a lot on primary love language, where I can see how using more than one of them as expressions of love in daily interactions can be more beneficial still than only focusing on one (although one might have primacy over the others, yes, I get that).

Chapman explains or wonders whether the source of the primary love languages stems from youth, what the child lacked at home or how the child saw his parents interact and chose to emulate or reject those patterns of behavior. That can be a little forensic, really, and what matter most is in the present application of the framework.

The book is told as a series of composite sketches, where Chapman talks to people or couples and they have epiphanies every chapter. I guess I can live with that fictionalized dramatic recreations of complete conversations. But after he gets through with his thesis, Chapman tacks on a couple chapters of further examples that were a bit superfluous and includes a chapter of using the framework with your children, which I didn’t find consistent with the premise that the source of the primary love language came from childhood. I can see it being something on the nature side of the ledger, but in the first chapters, the source of the primary love language comes from the nurture side. I dunno. Didn’t work for me.

So it’s an interesting read and might be a new framework, a template for considering your interactions with others, but it’s just a template, ultimately, and if or how you choose to apply it should remain up to you.

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This book is the 27th Mack Bolan book, and you might as well call it Mack Bolan on the CB. Bolan travels to Atlanta to take down the transport hub of mob illicit goods and rescues a pair of sisters from under the thumb or protection of an aging mobster from New York.

Obviously, Pendleton was influenced by the song “Convoy” from 1975 (but not the film based on the song, which would come in 1978), and the book hits the common knights of the road and CB lingo tropes from other pop culture in that era and that vein.

Unfortunately, like some of the other Bolan books (even the early ones), Pendleton seems to hit his word count and wrap it up with a very quick climax that seems tacked on. That’s unfortunate, since Pendleton’s one of the better writers in the silver age of pulp. But a man had to eat, I guess. Worth a read if you’re a fan, but if you’re just looking for good action paperbacks, you can probably skip it.

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This book collects a number of related short stories that Turtledove published in Davis publications. Back in the olden days, all the personally named genre magazines were owned by Davis Publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Isaac Asimov’s Literary Magazine. Come to think of it, I probably have some rejection slips myself from that very era in my book. So they published a collection of short stories here under the big letters ISAAC ASIMOV PRESENTS. It seems kind of funny that now, in the 20th century, Turtledove is more known than Asimov. Or maybe that’s just in the blogosphere, which went through a big Turtledove phase some years ago.

Anywho: This set of alt-history pieces is set in the late middle ages. In it, the Roman Empire never fell, as Byzantium held out. A young man in the military leads a daring mission to recover a new tool of the barbarians, which turns out to be a telescope, which is giving them an advantage. He becomes an intelligence officer and the stories feature him working on cases where he ends up recovering or applying new technologies to thwart the Persian empire.

It’s a good bit of reading. The interrelated stories make for easily chunked reading. The characters are engaging. The stories are interesting. On the whole, it reads better than a whole novel of Turtledove, which sometimes can drag on as he shows how much research and imagining he has done (such as Ruled Britannia).

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This book was a pretty fun little read for a British midcentury version of Dilbert with slightly less absurdity.

The author was a naval historian who also dabbled in the study of organizations, and this book collects some of his essays that examine elements of bureaucracy and poke some fun at them. The schtick is that of a very serious scientific study, but the tone is tongue in cheek. The author’s “law,” sometimes quoted, is that work expands to fill the time and effort available to do it, but Parkinson also takes a look at perfect buildings, hiring practices, the proper time and method of conferring retirement on the elderly, and other things.

As with Dilbert, a certain amount of truth rings through the humor, and it’s funny and educational because it’s true. And note that I brought up yesterday’s post because Parkinson also recommended checking out the bathrooms of places when considering a position there, but he did it fifty years before I did, when bathrooms were all steampunk by nature.

I got the book via ILL because of the Instapundit post linked above, ultimately, and I’m glad I did. Although I seem to have hit a bit of a library book period interspersed amongst my longer reads (I’m currently working on a couple of books over 1000 pages and a 700 page collection of short stories), so I’m not knocking off any of the books on my to-read shelves these days. In my defense, the accummulation has slowed quite a bit, too.

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First of all, let’s log the defect. The book is called St. Louis 365, but it includes February 29, so it should be St. Louis 366.

That said, it take each day of the year and relates a set of things that happened on it in St. Louis history. Sonderman and his assistants scoured newspaper archives, apparently, to come up with this list. It includes a lot of one-off tidbits that give you neat little origins for street names and whatnot throughout the city and county, but also provide some narrative in identifying events in a series for larger stories, such as the Greenlease kidnapping and the World’s Fair in 1904.

It took me a while to get through it, since it’s not a book that drags you along. It is, however, a good book for stop and start, pick it up for a couple minutes in a doctor’s waiting room, sort of reading. I started reading it last year when I was going through browseable books during ballgames and only finished it in January.

But a good idea book and something that will give me odd bits of trivia to throw out randomly in conversations where the trivia don’t exactly fit and will meet a sort of stunned silence as people puzzle out the irrelevance. But that’s why I read.

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This book is a basic survey of religions other than Protestant Christianity and how their tenets relate to the Bible and Christianity. As a Protestant-centered book, each chapter gives a brief overview of the other religion and identifies where the other religion differs from the Protestant Christian worldview and with the Bible. It’s written for a Christian audience to give them insight into why the other religions fall short.

Strangely enough (or maybe not), the book spends three chapters on Catholicism, probably because the similarity to Protestantism is so much relative to the other religions that the inquiring Protestant might not think the differences are a big deal. Au contraire, this book argues. The book includes a history of the church, a bit of the divergent beliefs that led to Martin Luther’s theses, and a whole chapter on why you would not want to marry a Catholic (basically because there used to be a contract at some point that practicing Catholics had to present to non-Catholics ensuring that all religious training in the house had to be Catholic under the penalty of excommunication and worse). I think the book focuses a little too much on this and tying American Catholics to the yoke of Rome, but it takes its faith more seriously than most churchgoers and Catholics.

It’s by no means a collection of Christian apologetics, but instead operates a priori from there to provide a summary and comparison. Interesting and educational in the sense both of an overview of what the other religions think and what evangelical Christians are to make of them according to Fritz Ridenour.

I understand the later edition has 20 different religions, cults, or chapters in it. The world of religion in the United States has diversified quite a bit since 1967.

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I saw this book on the shelf at the local Price Cutter and was intrigued. A small press book, local, and it was a collection of jokes and cartoons. What was not to love?

Well, it’s a collection of common jokes, not particularly Branson-y or Ozark-y. Additionally, they are old jokes, coming from the days before Orben’s Current Comedy. I recognized many of them, thought maybe one was worthy of tweeting, and generally was disappointed with the collection.

Still, I admire the pluck and the drive to get the book out there.

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