Category: Books

I picked this book up a couple years ago at Hooked on Books in Springfield for 33 cents. It’s taken me until this month to get to it simply because the title was so, well, bland.

The book centers on Ned Allen, a regional sales director for a computer magazine who finds out he’s in a jam. Seems a major client has decided to pull a promised insert at the time the magazine is being acquired by a German publishing company. The Germans are going to replace the magazine’s publisher with the regional sales director, effectively putting him in the position of climbing over his mentor to the big time. However, things go awry very quickly when Ned twists an arm to save his job, but effectively loses it and finds he’s made enemies that will keep him from working in his field and maybe even New York again.

The book sort of struck me as a fun mash-up between And Then We Came To The End and Lloyd, What Happened? for their high-flying corporate business ways and Vienna Days for its compelling central character who, through weakness, tends to make poor decisions and is perplexed a bit by the consequences.

However, about 2/3 of the way into the book, one screw too many turned, I thought, and then suddenly the book departed into a crime-suspense novel with a murder, blackmail, and a resolution out of a Spenser novel, where Ned Allen talks down the big bad level boss and makes a free-wheeling deal to extricate himself and others from danger while giving a bad man his comeuppance. The character’s name could even have been Tony Marcus, for crying out loud, or that guy in LA.

The book, then, really seems like two different books stitched together a bit unsuccessfully. A pity, really. I still rather enjoyed it, but my praise is not unqualified.

I’ll probably keep my eyes out for another Douglas Kennedy book, though. What the heck, I’ve given David Morrell (of First Blood infamy) another shot.

This is a collection of fantastic stories for children, which explains why not many brown people were oppressed in the book, although the book does include the word nigger in it. I’m sure one could go in depth to find language structure and plot points to identify how Kipling wanted to use this book to indoctrinate the young in old England to believe in their cultural superiority and need to overrun the heathens. I think many have.

However, it’s probably best just to enjoy these stories for what they are and for the language within them.

Please note that this children’s book represents the 49th book I’ve read this year. I don’t count the board books, but things over 100 pages, especially Rudyard Kipling, count in my annual reckoning.

As you know, I’m a fan of Lupica’s fiction (Wild Pitch, Bump and Run, Too Far, and Full Court Press), and I’ve even read some of his nonfiction Mad As Hell). So of course I was very, very happy to find this book earlier this year.

It’s a sequel to Bump and Run. Unfortunately, it’s also mostly a repeat of that book. Jack Malloy, having secured ownership of the New York Hawks NFL team, dissipates a bit and sells half of his share. He has seller’s remorse and tries to get it back, particularly after the paper billionaire who bought it begins edging him out of the life he loved. Before dissipation.

The characters are fun, the plot moves quickly, and it’s not a bad read at all; however, it does seem to be a simple recasting of the original novel. I’d hoped for a little more.

As you might now, if you’re Gimlet, Gimlet’s mom, or Deb (that is, someone who reads my book reports), I’m trying to intersperse some classical literature within my normal reading diet of cartoon books, space operas, and crime fiction these days. Here’s the first American author I’ve read in some time, dabbling in the French (Hugo and Dumas), Russian (Tolstoy), and British (Austen and Dickens) literatures lately. And you know what? Oddly enough, writers who use the American idiom, even the American Idiom of 200 years ago, are more accessible to the modern American reader (or at least me) than the imports.

This book collects a number of short stories from Washington Irving, the first American-born novelist to get note (or so the insert tells me). He wrote a number of tales in a series of volumes, many of which focused on the regular American theme of the old rural ways versus the new urban ways (rural=better). The theme goes back 200 years, back to a concept urban that we would find rural and quaint today. I can surmise where Irving would stand on the direct election of Presidents/elimination of the electoral college issue.

The volume includes The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, the two tales most alluded to or made into cartoons. Additionally, it contains a number of other stories from the same volume, so they have the similar tall tale sort of flavor to them (the volume is based on the premise that it’s a collection of papers and true stories from Diedrich Knickerbocker). This book also contains a selection from the Tales of a Nervous Gentleman series, including a series of ghostly stories told by a group of hunters in a remote lodge where each tale follows the other in telling as the speakers riff off of each others’ stories.

Very enjoyable, and it makes me want to get the originals from which the stories appeared. Also telling: the number of Yahoo! IM statuses I got from turns of phrase in the book. I think it was 3. Three lines I quoted from the book. Far more than I get from most of the volumes of poetry I get, and far beyond what I get from space operas or crime fiction (that is, more than nothing). I guess that’s what makes this literature classic.

Here’s a crazy sort of sidelight into my mind: I’m sort of a fan of looking over house plans. Back in the days when I was working at a startup, spending half my day working like crazy to build an award-winning set of manuals for a software product nobody eventually bought, I spent the other half of my days spending my stock option millions. I looked at a number of Web sites offering the plans for sale and dreamt.

I mean, I bought a number of magazines and whatnot containing them and had a good run of selling them on eBay around the turn of the century, so I ended up with a bunch of them in my unsold inventory. I even bought a cheap piece of home designing software to play with in my spare hours in the old days where I didn’t think I had any time for spare hobbies, way back before I knew what that meant. So I sort of sometimes dabble in this as an interest. Dreaming still of that stock market wealth, I suppose. I’ll have some when National Lampoon stock goes to $400 after a couple of splits.

This volume I bought at a garage sale sometime in the past. And I perused it while watching a number of baseball games. If you’re not familiar with the genre, it’s a bit of marketing text along with a bare home layout schematic coupled with some measurements (sometimes) and the way to order the actual plans from the stock architectural firm if you’re interested in actually building the home. Each page also includes an artist representation of the home and sometimes a photo of a built unit.

That said, slight hobbying aside, it took me a while to get through it because each page is almost the same, and many of the homes have very similar layouts when the architectural firm starts with a template and rearranges the interior a bit. So I got bored every couple dozen homes or so, particularly when I was reading all the marketing fluff bullet points. I started skimming a little faster, though, and I got through it.

In case you’re wondering, the elements I like most in the plans and that I’d like to see in my future dream home include:

• An atrium/courtyard.
• An octagonal shaped house.
• A tuck under two car garage with basement workspace.
• A loft.

I mean, sure, I could just buy this house when I buy the lottery, but the original on the site was far larger and I have seen a map of its lands at the time of its construction, including orchards, toboggan run, tennis courts, and whatnot, so its pale comparison to its former splendor would break my heart daily. Maybe.

Given my love for books that were made into movies or movie novelizations, of course I picked up this book at a book fair. I didn’t look too closely, though, as it’s neither. It is the tie-in to the movie, but in this case, it is a forward by the producer, an introduction that includes interviewish fan magazine style pieces on the stars (John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn), and then the script for the movie.

As such, it’s an even quicker read than a novel would have been.

The movie is a sequel to True Grit, and I’ve not seen either of the films, so I had no preconceived notions about it. However, I’ve read books that include the script of a film I liked (particularly Casablanca, and I’m always struck with how thin the scripts seem compared to the actual film. As a writer, of course I’d like to think that the words are paramount; however, the actors and cinematographers add something. Don’t get me wrong, a movie with poor choices of words makes a bad film as easily or maybe more easily, but the other factors add a richness to the experience that the script itself cannot.

That being said, it’s a decent Western story, sort of a stock bit but serviceable.

Now, of course, I’ll have to see the film to see if I’m correct in my thesis. I’d add it to my wish list on Amazon, but none of you googleheads looking for free book reports to turn in as your own bother to read this far, much less click my wish list. At least, I hope you’re smart enough to read enough to turn in something else. None of these book reports has particular scholarly merit. But in case you don’t, I’d like to add HEY TEACHER/PROFESSOR, YOU SUX!

It looks as though it’s been four and a half years since I read the first Book of Lists, and what a four years it has been. Punchlines about Iraq and President Bush, written in 1990 about a different set of circumstances, still cause one to do a doubletake.

Like the other book, the best lists are on topics that aren’t dated; the ones that are, I can appreciate for the historical/nostalgic value and get some of the humor from them, but they’re not going to last long. Of course, you can get these lists on the Internet now, but when has free availability online ever stopped me for spending a buck or less for a paper copy?

Et tu, McBain?

I guess it comes as no surprise. Many of his post-2001 books, particularly the ones after 2003, offer their asides that identify exactly how McBain felt about President Bush. He managed to dodge overt political disapproval for almost 50 years, but the climate and tenor of the times allowed him to unleash his disdain, so this book includes a throw away about how Bush ruined the economy and two references to the Iraq War as a Bush crusade. These sorts of things put me off of writers almost daily; it’s only McBain’s exemplary career beforehand that keeps me from dismissing him as a leftist hack. Sadly, that’s what it’s like to be a semi-conservative reader in the early part of the 21st century.

Now, this book is a Florida book. Because I’ve not read a Matthew Hope book for a while, it’s easy for me to forget that McBain did his dabbling in the world of MacDonald (mentioned by name in this book) and Hiaasen. It seems like he’s trying to emulate the latter a bit here, with a cast of odd characters weaving in and out.

The titular Alice is a recent widow whose husband drowned in the Gulf of Mexico. She’s running out of money, waiting for the insurance company to finally pay up, and trying to keep it together. When someone kidnaps her children, the various law enforcement agencies move in with little success and Alice herself has to do something.

The book falls short of the Hiaasen standard and doesn’t move quickly enough to fit into the MacDonald mold. Ultimately, it’s a lesser book in the McBain canon (politics aside), but it’s not a bad book on its own. If someone writes the incomplete Becca in Jeopardy, I might read it. But it’s not an 87th Precinct novel, that’s for sure.

In retrospect, Tamara K. was not recommending this book at all. She mistook it for something else. This is not a Stewart Cowley book, this is a Steven Eisler book. I didn’t expect Tam would remember fondly a book that called Robert A. Heinlein a fascist.

Okay, here’s what we have: a book of unrelated space paintings with essays about the evolution of science fiction stories. Within these texts, we discuss how some science fiction is juvenile (that is, the right-winged stuff). Also, the first half of the Fantasy chapter is about sex, not, you know, fantasy fiction. It’s hard to square elitist academic posturing with space paintings, but even demigeeks can get tenure, I guess.

Then, within the captions, we have the schtick that this is some historical document from millenia hence with a history of mankind’s space travel. Each disparate painting is worked into this timeline, including the images from obvious fantasy novels.

It was meh. Coffeetable art book for science fiction geeks from the 1970s. Even though I’ve read some of the novels the book refers to (mostly in a derogatory light, since if they were enjoyable, they were right-winged Power-Is-Truth stuff, unlike Solaris which was mind-broadening, man).

But it counts as a book that I’ve read this year, and I did it during a baseball game. Woo.

I liked this book the most out of the Dickens I’ve read recently (notably, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations). Within it, adults do things, and there’s something at stake. This book tells a number of stories: A daughter of a Utilitarian, raised on Facts, marries a wealthy capitalist; the brother of said woman escapes his Utilitarian upbringing by becoming a ne’er-do-well; a worker refuses to join the union and is accused of a bank robbery; and a circusman abandons his daughter, who will be raised by the Utilitarian.

In short, it’s not about waifs, which is a boon.

The book is short and has some messaging going on, but it’s not a straight ahead book bespeaking the glory of the masses. Instead, it’s more of an individualist/Romantic bit, so I didn’t find the themes odious. However, the shortness makes some of the storylines truncated, and it seems like Dickens was making it up as he went without an idea of how he was going to resolve things. So when the book came time to end, so did some of the storylines in offhand ways. Also, one of the more speechifying characters, who reveals a lot of the message and philosophy book, speaks with a lisp which was very distracting.

But Dickens was Hemingway to Austen’s Faulkner, relatively speaking, and I’d rather pick up another Dickens than an Austen at this point.

As I mentioned when I bought this book, it would probably be a good book to read during a ball game. It was.

I admit I wasn’t that familiar with the Pogo comic strip. Of course, one book doesn’t make me a knowledgeable fan by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t get into it in high school, when I had access to a daily paper carrying it. The humor is sort of dry and carries over between the different days into storylines. That’s the way they did it in the old days, before the strips became mostly episodic and didn’t rely on daily readers to keep up.

Funny how television has reversed that as consumers rely more on DVDs and timeshifting to keep up. I wonder if Web comics will do the same, or if they’re doing it already.

The comic tends to skewer a right and a bit of left, poking at the powerful regardless of their persuasion or means to power. Good enough. Even when it skewers my particular oxen, it doesn’t do it hatefully, so I’m not offended. Maybe I’m layering on the sepia, but political opponents and humorists who were politically different didn’t always acutely offend, apparently.

On the plus side, I got this book at a book sale for under a buck; you can get it from Amazon for as little as $35 and change.