Category: Book Report

This book represents the third book in the Stars and Stripes trilogy, but I didn’t know that when I threw it in my box at the St. Charles Book Fair. All I knew is what the front cover told me (A Novel of Alternate History, Harry Harrison, and the title), and that was enough for me. I’ve done a Turtledove in the recent past (Ruled Britannia, reviewed here) and another Harrison novel earlier this year (The Stainless Steel Rat for President, reviewed here), so of course I picked this one up, even though it’s an ex-library copy and I would later realize it cost $2.00

The premise of the series: At the onset of the Civil War, Great Britain seizes a Confederate diplomat and unites the Union and the Confederacy into a war against Britain. Apparently the books deal with the initial conflict, subsequent conflict, and finally (this book) an invasion of Britain itself. It’s a quick read and stood well enough apart from the others in the series that I was not lost in it.

Unlike Turtledove, this book is pretty straight-ahead action without a lot of reflection or repetitious, almost extraneous character development. On the other hand, it does skip a bit on actual drama and conflict, since the technology and the battle-hardened nature of the American side and its brilliant strategy pretty much ensures that events unfold as planned without significant hinderance from the British.

That simple, almost logical progression not only plays to my jingoist American sensibilities, but also acts as fast forward buttons on the reading.

So I liked the book and wouldn’t mind reading the others in the series, but let’s face it: I’ll try not to pay $2.00 for ex-library editons in the future. Unless the book fair bug strikes again.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

 

This is Dave Barry’s first novel and the source for the 2002 film, so of course I bought it when it was available from the St. Charles County Book Fair for $2.00. I’ve been meaning to see the movie, too, but now I can compare it to the book, unfavorably no doubt.

As Dave Barry works with Carl Hiaasen (Book reports: Strip Tease, Skinny Dip, and Basket Case), one could expect that the absurdist crime caper bacterium would contaminate the works of the normally serious Mr. Barry. And so it has. The book is full of oddball characters, strange coincidences, and other contrivances that make the work funny. It’s not serious fiction, so it’s good camp and high fun. Or vice versa.

I need to start pitching my books to agents as in the style of Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry. I’ll just have to be more careful to spell their names and book titles correctly. If you’ve clicked through those Hiaasen reviews, gentle reader, you’ll note I’ve misspelled both in various places.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

 

 

What, you think I mention other books just to get the links on the front page of my blog? I am shocked, shocked at the accusation! But it’s a new quarter, and I’m hoping to break my new record for quarterly referral kickbacks of $.08.

I used to read Stanley Bing’s column in Fortune magazine in 1996-1997, back when I was making $15,000 to $20,000 a year but was thinking big. It’s also before Fortune magazine and everyone in the Time stable started unscrupulously sending out magazine subscription forms disguised as invoices or shipping Sports Illustrated calendars, payment due, to anyone who entered their contests. So while my appreciation for all things Time-Warner fell to the disdain level, my fondness for Stanley Bing did not.

So when I saw this ex-library hardback at the St. Charles Book Fair, I said what the heck, and I picked it up for two dollars. It’s a satirical, slightly humorous look at life in the higher echelons of a multinational conglomorate. Lloyd, an executive vice president or some such, is a man with a title but no department who becomes the special envoy between the corporation and its parent as it begins to trim headcount in preparation for an acquisition. In addition to prose, the application includes relevant slide show presentations and graphs to illustrate Lloyd’s lifestyle relative to what it was when he began his career and how it was when he began the year captured in the book. In between business deals, navigating the literally and figuratively murderous world of scheming underlings and scheming overlords, Lloyd must deal with the temptations of a fiery vice president who’s available to a man of his obvious charisma.

Still, all temptations of the flesh and the power aside, the main character is a bit of a cipher; other characters explain how he fills a room, but that doesn’t come off of the page nor out of the mind of the character. Perhaps that’s intentional from Bing, a kind of representation of how even the most charismatic can fill out their interior lives with doubts. As I’m not particularly charismatic, you could easily convince me this is the interior life of more affable people, and I’ll let Bing get away with it. Because in spite of his self-doubts and cloddish behavior, Lloyd gets a redemption of sorts, unlike Brandon Sladder (from The Columnist by Jeffrey Frank, reviewed here). So the good will in the overall story of the book and its non-American Beauty ending, coupled with the palatable satire, carried me along through the book.

It was an entertaining book, but it might have run a couple or fifty pages too long. Sometime in the turn beyond the 200 page mark, I started wondering where it was going, and then it wrapped up somewhat abruptly, but perhaps that’s appropriate given the semi-absurdity of its ending. It’s an enjoyable book, and I recommend it as not only humorous story, which it is, but also as an inspiration for some people ascending the corporate ladders. Sure, it’s satire, but it’s also human in that it shows that people in power, in the apex of their fields, still suffer from the existential angst when they wonder if that’s all there is. I can appreciate that, and it’s comforting.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

I finally broke down and bought this book from the Bridgeton Trails branch of the St. Louis County Library for a quarter. If you peruse the poetry sections of used books stores, garage sales, or many new book stores, you find an awful lot of this McKuen guy’s work. I’ve pooh-poohed them because 1. They’re popular and prevalent, and 2. That funky old-timey script and design probably indicates that they’re old, from like the 60s or something and probably chock full of San Franscisco park goodness.

Well, sorta.

The book started out exceedingly well, with a poem dedicated to Jerry Kramer, the former right guard for the Green Bay Packers (Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer reviewed). I mean, a poem dedicated to a Green Bay Packer. You don’t get much better than that.

That poem, which deals with the aging and retirement of a great, and the other pieces within the book are eminently accessible, as their language is facile and freeversic. So I could follow each poem, enjoy some of them, and spot a turn of phrase or two that was clever. And by the next day, I’d remember little. Very light poetry, with little of lasting sustenance. I can’t imagine trying to memorize one of these to perform at an open mike night, unlike “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, “Love, Though For This You Riddle Me With Darts”, or “The World Is Too Much With Us”.

Still, sometime in the 1960s, apparently McKuen was a popular poetry dynamo, with millions of books of poetry in print and albums of spoken/sung poetry, hit records for other people, and other things that landed him an IMDB entry. The most financially successful poet of all time, and he’s all but forgotten thirty years later. Unlike, say, Robert Frost.

Like his fellow popular celebrity singer/poet Leonard Cohen (Selected Poems 1956-1968 review), perhaps McKuen did more harm than good to poetry by making it so accessible, so real, and so ultimately like spun cotton candy that required no digestion other than putting it on one’s tongue. I mean, they’re not bad poets, but if they’re held up to the popular mind as the ultimate in poetry, well, the public mind has digested it and has turned elsewhere for sustenance.

So it’s not a bad book, and I won’t dodge 25 cent offerings of other McKuen books in the future, but I don’t rate him among the giants of the field, past or present.

On a side note, this book is the first one read to my son. Remember, 25% of your purchases through the Amazon links below will be dedicated to my boy’s future therapy.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

 

I’ve read Chris Rock’s Rock This, I’ve read Bill Cosby’s Time Flies and Love and Marriage, Rita Rudner’s Naked Beneath My Clothes, Judy Tenuta’s The Power of Judyism, and more recently, Jeff Foxworthy’s You Might Be A Redneck If…. So I’ve read my share of the comics’ attempts to cash in on their fleeting fame with a book deal. So I picked up Sinbad’s Sinbad’s Guide to Life (Because I Know Everything) from the St. Charles Book Fair for $2.00. Because I read these things habitually.

Honestly, I probably have seen some of Sinbad’s stand-up routines, but I know him mostly from Necessary Roughness. I didn’t have expectations of his style of comedy. After reading the book, I still don’t. I’m sure he’s a pretty good comic, but he’s not that good of a writer. Even with help, the substance of this book is hard-pressed to actually fill out the book. Part memoir, part humor, I guess Sinbad wanted to pass on some of the lessons he learned the hard way.

But it’s tricky to translate comic success to hardbound books. Cosby did it, but that’s because his humor is topical and bound in storytelling, so he’s got a head start on people who simply fire off zingers. Rock’s biting topical commentary offers some humor and some laughs. Even Rudners musings are amusing at times. And the Foxworthy book was a picture book of one liners. So rating these books, I’d put Sinbad a step above Tenuta; her schtick doesn’t translate well to the printed word, and maybe Sinbad’s would have, but it really didn’t make me laugh, educate me, or teach me anything.

It’s not a bad book, it’s simply a book hardly worthy of any adjectives. Probably not $2.00 either, but what else could I do? I have a library to fill.

Books mentioned in this review:

Because of who is he and what he meant to my youth, I bought this book like all other Robert B. Parker novels at full price, in hardcover, when it became available. Because it’s a Sunny Randall novel, though, I didn’t immediately read it right away. Heather actually read it first, which meant she could duly be impressed when I verbally anticipated plot points when they became obvious.

A serviceable piece of genre work, this book combines elements of the Parker books Looking for Rachel Wallace, Stardust, and Double Play and almost channels Lupica’s Full Court Press. And although it channeled the books, it didn’t completely retread them, so there you go. Sorry, that’s a Robert Crais catch phrase, not “We’d be fools not to,” the Robert B. Parker catch phrase.

Serviceable, worth a couple of bucks, but it’s not as deep nor satisfying as Parker’s other work, but I’m not as young as I once was, either, so perhaps I’m just more demanding or less in need of moral instruction.

Books mentioned in this review:

As you know, I have glutted myself on cheap book club editions of Ed McBain books at book fairs throughout the St. Louis area this spring. I bought this one for a dollar at the Greater St. Louis Book Fair, much like the others I’ve read recently Poison and Ice. As the 1990 entry, this book takes place two novels after Poison.

The main plot deals with the murder of a priest in a small, rundown church in a small, rundown neighborhood. Carella and Hawes have their hands full trying to decipher from among the myriad stories and possibilities. Was it a drug dealer who had hidden drugs in the church? Was it the neighborhood toughs? Was it the local Satanist church, or perhaps someone who was carnally involved with the priest?

Main subplot deals with Marilyn Hollis, introduced in Poison, who has to deal with her dark past as two men associated with her Argentinian pimp who’ve come back for money, for vengeance, for subplot reasons.

This book comes from the time where I started contemporaneously reading McBain; once I started reading his work, I started with some of the older books, of which there were plenty; after this point, I started reading them as they came out. I don’t recollect reading this one, but I remember how immediate the characters were and how they aged and evolved in realish time for me after this.

Of course it’s a good book, and I’d recommend it for some light suspense/mystery/police procedural reading. But you, gentle reader, know if the blog post title says “by Ed McBain” or “by John D. MacDonald,” you’re in for some sloppy kissing on my part. Consider this installment done, but for the gratuitous links to Amazon by which if you should click through and buy one of the titles, I can make pennies!

Books mentioned in this review:

 

 

I bought this book for like a quarter this weekend at a garage sale. Did I overpay? Probably. Although, I have to say, Jeff Foxworthy is pretty funny performing, although his country countdown radio program isn’t so exciting. I’ve got one of his comedy CDs and everything.

However, this book merely collects Foxworthy’s most famous one liners. That’s it. Just the one liners without Foxworthy’s expert comic timing or delivery. Some are amusing on their own, but in the aggregate, they’re not as funny collected in a book as, say, The Late Night With David Letterman’s Book of Top Ten Lists. The humor in these stands alone, aside from the performance.

Of course, you have my opinion here versus the opinion of buyers everywhere who kept this book in print for fifteen years. It’s a quick read though, worthy of a browse, I suppose, as you’re waiting for a hockey game to start, much like I did. Also, it’s good for boosting one’s annual books read rate.

So it’s probably a waste of time, but in the book’s defense, it doesn’t claim to be anything else and it’s not much time anyway.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

This 87th Precinct novel runs a weighty 317 pages and delves into character depth that many of the novels don’t. As a matter of fact, one of the great appeals of this particular series, over its 40 some years, is that the books vary not only in plot, but also stylistically. Some are quick epidodes at 150 pages with lots of reproduced police forms to pad them, and some, like this one, are denser prose.

The story details the murder of an actress in a hit play downtown. The 87th Precinct inherits the case as a small time drug pusher in their precinct died from the same lead poisoning days before. As they try to find a connection between the coke dealer and the actress, they have to deal with their own issues, particularly Kling’s failed marriage to model Augusta Blair.

I suppose it helps read these books in order….for example, the book I read previously, Poison, takes place after this books, so the personal relationships are advanced beyond where they are in this book. I already know how the romances and whatnot will turn out, but the books don’t hinge on the personal relationships alone. Instead, the plots and the basic familarity with the characters and the rotation of the characters and….blah blah blah.

You know I like ’em, and I’m going to keep reading them and picking them up whenever I can for a buck a crack at book fairs. I got this one, among others, at the Greater St. Louis Book Fair. So be warned, this won’t be the last book report of an Ed McBain book you ignore in the coming months.

Books mentioned in this review:

As some of you know, I bought four of Roger L. Simon’s Moses Wine novels The Big Fix, Peking Duck, The Lost Coast, and this book) for $5 a throw at a remaindered book store in November, 2004. Oh, how the world has changed since then. Roger L. Simon is now an Internet mogul. Byron Preiss, the man behind the company that reissued the novels, has died and the iBooks has gone belly up. And I’m in no danger of becoming a Moses Wine fan.

This book deals with Moses Wine, ca. 1985, joining a computer company patterned after Apple as its director of security. Wine is given cryptic instructions by the Wiz (not Woz, get it?) that Wine’s not only to handle security, but to look into…something. It’s corporate espionage and it requires a trip to Japan (much like Peking Duck requires a trip to China). We get the obligatory action in Japan, wherein the first person narrator who’s never been to Japan and doesn’t know much about the country provides some excellent expository information. In the end, of course, it’s the government agent gone rogue that’s killing everyone. Except for the Russians, who are killing people too. Or someone.

Here are some quick bullet points that capture what bothers me about this book and the series:

• Moses Wine has been on the cover of Rolling Stone. When a private detective becomes a celebrity, I don’t really relate to the character much. See also Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole.
• The voice of the first time visitor to Japan laying on the expository information and Japanese terms rankles me. It’s the sound of an author who wants to show he’s done his research.
• Although I didn’t work at a computer company in the 1980s, I’ve done my time in the 1990s and the 2000s. I found the characterization of the culture at Tulip facile.
• The introductions by the author were a bit much. I guess that’s what they wanted with the reissues, but I found it self-indulgent.
• Moses Wine reminds me less of Lew Archer and more of Dirk Gently, with drug use and nonchalant sex.

There you have it. I made it through the four books I read, and don’t plan to seek out the remaining in the series.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

 

 

Executive Summary: Thomas Aquinas is teh suck!!!1!!!

I don’t remember where I got this book; it’s either a book fair bag filler or something that was in the free bin at Hooked on Books. However, since I was on a short, smart book kick, I picked it up.

This cover calls the book a penetrating analysis of trends in modern thought. The introduction goes further: as it’s an evangelical book, its goal is to frame traditional, even fundamental Christian thought with modern philosophical schools of thought. As such, it studies the dual nature of man (nature and grace) and how this fundamental dual nature has been corrupted through various schools of philosophical thought. When Thomas Aquinas intimated that only man’s will suffered from The Fall but that the intellect was capable of arriving independently at grace through its observations of nature and so on, he set into motion the eventual slippery slope where the autonomous lower half of man will overrun the higher half.

Ergo, throughout philosophical history, Kant and Rousseau saying that Freedom is the higher order of man and Nature is the lower, but the mechanistic view of human nature eventually logically trumps freedom, or the Christian Existentialist view (courtesy of Kierkegaard) that divides man’s duality into reason and faith (where the leap of faith is rationally inexplicable), or the regular Existentialist view where an act of will is the highest order.

I don’t remember most of the primary texts that the author refers to, so I can only say that the book poses a relatively sound exploration of the theme. I’m not sure, though, whether I’d characterize the Existentialists as embracing the dual nature of man. The author refers specifically to Sartre’s Nausea and how the Existentialists triumphs over the absurd and achieves the higher portion of himself through an act of will, of seeking authenticity. I remember just enough of my Sartre to suspect that this is a convenient reading of true Existentialism, which is monoist in nature.

So although the book does take a couple things a priori, such as the basic framework of its evangelical Christian roots with the cmbination of Jesus and The Scriptures as a framework for all thought, science, and art, it provided a handy (and short) mechanism for me to resharpen my old philosophical edges.

It looks as though this book and others by this author remain fairly popular–hence their higher prices at Amazon. Perhaps I lucked out in getting this first American printing so cheaply. I better bronze it.

Books mentioned in this review:

I got this copy of Poison from the Greater St. Louis Book Fair for $1.00. I know I’ve read it before because my Aunt Dale owned a copy of it; I remember the hot blonde on the cover. For all I know, I own that copy, too, since Aunt Dale is the aunt who passed away a year and a half ago and bequeathed me many of her books. This one, though, still has the price sticker on it and was on the floor in my stacks instead of in boxes or on my completed reading shelves. Well, there, you have my history with the copy I read most recently.

This book represents a mid-career Ed McBain 87th precinct novel, where the 1960s era is early and the 2000-esque books are late. As I’ve mentioned, McBain wrote a long series of books which hold up very well. The back cover offers a quote comparing McBain to Georges Simenon. Peh. He’s a modern Erle Stanley Gardner, and beyond; the books hold up beyond the time in which the author wrote them.

This installment deals with a murder by nicotine poisoning that Carella and Willis catch. Willis starts falling for the lover of the victim. She’s hot, blonde (hence the cover), and emancipated in that 1980s, I sleep with a lot of men way. When her other lovers start dying, the detectives of the 87th Precinct–well, except for Willis–start suspecting she’s the killer.

McBain was a master. I lament the knowledge that there won’t be any more of the 87th Precinct novels, but I know I can reread the ones I’ve read previously again as I acquire them or as the mood strikes me.

Books mentioned in this review:

For some reason, my mother-in-law gave me this book for Christmas. So I read it, disinterestedly, as you might expect. Who am I kidding? I was hoping for a deeper understanding of what I was supposed to be going through than my friends intoning that I was going to lose some sleep circa the end of this very month. This book provided me some of that.

At turns, this book: touched my own anxiety and fear (singular, gentle reader; I have but one of each); made me cringe at the differeces between a pregnancy experienced by a native New Yorker and, well, anyone in the rest of the country; made me snigger at the Roberyt Blyian concept of manhood and its attendant rituals; and made me skim the scientificism of some of the speculated parent-child-father hormonal responses.

Also, the book made me assure Heather, unnecessarily (I hope), that just because I was not puking in the mornings or cooing at other people’s babies in the supermarket, I would be a good enough father to not warrant divorce or murdering while I slept but she fed the baby. The book spends a lot of time talking about couvade, which is either ritualistic or physiological symptoms that the husband has which the author indicates is a subconcious, hormonal way of signalling he’s going to be a good father to the wife. Meanwhile, I’m working for a living, leaving my beautiful wife to gestate on her own.

The writing style is hip. By “hip,” I mean it’s readable and contemporary, but uses the word “shit” far too much for non-fiction. Also, the author is intelligent and makes a number of classical allusions that made me feel smart for recognizing them, but unfortunately he also alluded to the classic Roddy Piper film They Live as Them, which really makes me wonder if all of his other allusions are mistaken, and whether I am a fool for thinking those other allusions were right.

An interesting enough read, and worth the price I paid. (Sorry, Ms. Igert, I mean, it’s a good book, and thanks!)

Books mentioned in this review:

When I saw this book for $.33 in the new secret cheap books back room at Hooked on Books in Springfield, I had to have it. After all, Levar Burton is the former host of Reading Rainbow and star of The Midnight Hour. As I have mentioned before, I think one of my collecting niches is books based on movies, books upon which movies are based, and books by movie and television stars. Hence, I thought this book by a relatively obscure actor would be worth the cold, hard coinage. Plus, I had two other books, no doubt.

This book takes place in the coming decades, after the following has occurred:

1. The United States spends too much on a space station, foreign aid, and small wars so that it’s nearly bankrupt.
2. A black man is elected president and is subsequently assassinated by those damn white supremecist militias.
3. The New Madrid fault goes.
4. Climate change stresses the world. Not just makes uncomfortable, but drives down agricultural yields and so on.
5. A 3 year race war occurs, representing a second coming of the Civil War. Fought on American soil, it pits whites against everyone else in set piece sorts of battles leading to bombings of corn fields. Oddly enough, though, the rest of the world doesn’t intervene, and at the end, no one is bowing to Mecca or speaking Mandarin.

Remember, this book bears a 1997 publication date, so it was probably written ca 1996. Bill Clinton is running for re-election. It’s one year since the Oklahoma City bombing and three years after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Perhaps in this era, the books concerns were plausible; however, to me they seem very dated given the way the world has turned. On the other hand, just last week, I had a Jewish friend express rather earnest concern that George W. Bush was going to outlaw Judaism and round up the Jews. Perhaps some people see a racial/creedist civil war still possible in our cards rather than the red state/blue state divide which I think separates us more.

But I digress; this book has a plot. A scientist comes up with an electromagnetic brain stimulator which not only affords healing properties for the human body, but also can sometimes produce, as a side effect, telepathic and precognitive ability. Which comes in handy when some corrupt members of what passes for the post-apocalyptic medical establishment kidnap her for her secret.

The scientist reaches out and touches an Indian medicine man, a now-homeless former meterologist, and a now-homeless young woman to come to her aid. The bulk of the book comprises their individual stories and their eventual coming together for her rescue. And then, suddenly, in the last moments of the book, they resolve the situation with a climactic Hollywoodesque ending. Something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation, almost.

Still, it’s a fairly compelling book. The shifting points-of-view among the major characters and interactive, not overly expository histories make the first portion of the book easy to read and drive toward a conclusion. Unfortunately, again (like in Sharky’s Machine) I can almost sense when a movie option is signed or an author is ready to be done with the book, so the sudden career into a slam-bang finish occurs.

So it’s a good enough genre piece, even if it’s somewhat dated. It reminds me of the 1960s-era topical science fiction I read, so it will live on in that vein at least. If Mr. Burton wrote this himself, he’s not a bad writer, but then again, I would expect nothing less from the well-read public television evangelist of childhood reading and bona-fide star of television and screen.

Books mentioned in this review:

I paid $4.50 for a used copy of this book from Hooked on Books when I went on my books-on-books binge (more details here). Of the other books, this is the one I liked least.

In the introduction, the author mentions that the book stems from a humorous essay. Perhaps the author should have left well enough alone. I bet this was a humorous essay. As a full-length book, though, it’s wanting.

The book defines biblioholism too broadly for my test and paints the accumulation of books as trying to just have books or to build a library to look smart. Maybe it’s a gag. Maybe it’s too close for comfort to me, so I cannot enjoy mirth that ensues as the author lists various and sundry obsessive and compulsive behaviors associated with liking books.

I’m not sorry I read the book, but I am sorry I paid $4.50 for it. Since you don’t trust a word I say anyway, feel free to buy the revised edition noted below for almost $6.00.

Books mentioned in this review:

I bought this book for $1.00 at the Greater St. Louis Book Fair because, as some of you know, I’ll soon need to know when it’s appropriate to place your baby in the icebox. After all, my beautiful wife is reading a number of parenting books; why shouldn’t I pitch in?

Imagine my feigned surprise when I discovered that this book was not actual book about child care, but rather a collection of short pieces by the author of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity!

As its title indicates, this book collects a number of short pieces from Cain, including a number of the bucolic “dialogs” he wrote in his early career as well as some of the grittier crime fiction he wrote for some serious money.

I enjoyed the book. The early pieces reminded me of Franz Kafka in that they’re more slice-of-lifeish than anything earth-shattering, as though they were written as fictional smalltalk than I’m accustomed. Still I appreciated their language more than Kafka’s.

The crime fiction portions were more pedestrian pulp, but that’s what I handed over the dollar for. Enjoyable, and slightly unrealistic crimes, but set in the thirties and fourties, so they provide small glimpses into the past as well as into lurid crimes.

And in case it ever comes up, the time to put a baby in the icebox is if your husband has unleashed a hungry tiger into your house to kill you and you’re holding the tiger off with a flaming brand which will inadvertently set fire to the house. As soon as I finish this review, I’m going to scan the indexes of some of Heather’s parenting books to see if this holds as true in the 21st century as it did in the 1930s.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

Continuing what only appears to be 70s Week here in the MfBJN book review department: I bought this book at the Kirkwood Book Fair for $2.00 because I recognized the name from the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie and thought that, since it was only $2.00 for a stated second printing, it might be worth something Of course, since I seem to be falling into collecting books that are the sources of movies (more to come from the Kirkwood Book Fair where I fell), I guess it is worth that to me, even though I’m not making a killing on these books. Perhaps it’s just my way of reading the pop culture that everyone talked about some years ago.

At any rate, this book depicts a narc cop (Sharky) who gets put on vice detail when one of his narc stakeouts takes a deadly turn. Once in vice, he gets a case to run, complete with supporting personnel (the “machine” of the title). A simple investigation into a prostitution/blackmail stakeout leads to a presidential candidate looking to unseat President Ford bankrolled by stolen World War II gold.

The book starts out Ludlumesque, but about 300 pages into its 370 page length, the book goes Hollywood. You can almost hear the pens of the Hollywood people signing the option while Diehl was still writing. Nevertheless, the book represents some interesting, accessibly 70s pseudo-pulp. The book relies on a third person limited omniscient narrator, but cuts back and forth betwene characters and even begins with the 1944 theft of gold to engage the middle-aged reader of its day. Equal parts MacLean, Ludlum, and 70s film detective fiction, this book satisfied me. For a couple bucks, who could go wrong?

Of course, you cannot expect to get a stated Second Printing for a couple bucks like I did, gentle reader. You should expect to pay $30 or $150 or something so as to inflate my perceived value of my own collection. If you’re not buying the stuff off of Amazon courtesy the handy links below, it’s the least you could do.

Books mentioned in this review:

I bought this book at the Belleville Book Fair last weekend for a couple pennies because frankly I needed something to fill the $2.00 bag I’d already bought. Besides, it sounded interesting. The cover freatures the title in a very seventies script and offers this teaser: The powerful true story of one woman’s confrontation with every woman’s nightmare. Granted, that was 30 years ago, and some women have different nightmares by now, but a spouse’s affair remains a nightmare for some subset of the population.

The first section is entitled Ending, the second Midway: The Second Year, and the third Beginning. So the book right away carries with it the progression of some sort of self-help mental health journey.

Ending does capture the pseudonymbous author’s discovery of her husband’s affair as they return from a trip. His mistress just cannot help herself and writes him a letter delivered to the hotel, and the husband proceeds to read it on the plane in front of his wife. The woman then has to question their marriage, their life together, and everything she’s known for 25 years. I thought perhaps the book would serve, if nothing else, as a fable of how marriages crumble under time and hopefully could serve as a reminder to not let the dwindling communication and elusive intimacy affect your marriage.

However, somewhere towards the end of the ending, it became clear that Jo Fleming was going to overcome the affair by becoming some sort of whackerdoodle post-Sexual Revolution open marriage proponent, and that at the climax of the book, she would overcome her Victorian upbringing and have an affair of her own as she went beyond fidelity.

Ergo, the book develops a series of diary entries chronicling her growth with her husband into some 1970s era Greatest Generation Geriatric emotional swingers. It’s rife with dream recreations and interpretations, dialogues between her and her husband, her and her therapist, her and her husband’s therapist, and her and herself. The writing’s somewhat adolescent and repetitive, easily skimmable–a quality I learned to appreciate by the end of the second year.

Essentially, it’s a twisted rendition of The Total Woman; to build a better, more loving marriage, instead of working inside that marriage, this book advocates going outside the marriage to fulfill your emotional and sexual needs. Now, while that might play on Manhattan, where the narrator of this book resides among the so-cosmopolitan set, here in the middle of the country, that sort of thing sometimes gets a person dead.

Oddly enough, even though it’s purportedly a true story by a diarist who wants to be a writer, I thought the book might be a clumsy novel. I mean, most spouses don’t frequently sit down and share weepy moments while exalting in their spiritual growth and moral nihilism immediately before encouraging each other to keep growing, where "growing" is a euphemism for going all the way with the handsome fellow in the office. Therefore, I felt perhaps someone had packaged up a rough draft of How To Save Your Own Life without Erica Jong’s Jongness, or whatever made that particular novel worth its weight in wood pulp.

Perhaps I’m being unduly harsh on this book. Perhaps I’m reeling from the offense at being blindered, as the author says:

Some people, reading this diary, might disapprove of the freedom we have tried to introduce into our marriage; they will be the ones who grew up when I did and have somehow managed to keep their blinders on. (p 160)

Well, lovey, perhaps some of us aren’t so ready to sacrifice our morals and our standards for to serve a tawdry narrative, even if that narrative happens to be a life.

So I spent a handful of pennies on it, and I personally wouldn’t spend it again on this book, but I did get my money’s worth on personal outrage and words for the blog, ainna?

Books mentioned in this review: