Category: Books

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.

Now, this is an idea book (unlike this). This volume collects 11 essays about real criminal cases, written by famous (or semi-famous, or at least published) authors of suspense or crime fiction. Most of the cases were sensational in the day, but time and probably O.J. have erased them from our minds. As such, they’re worth a bit of exploration from decades later and retelling. The book also includes a science fantasy story by Harlan Ellison about Jack the Ripper, which is out of place.

A pretty enjoyable read, although as one Amazon reviewer notes, some things go on too long, including a recap of the Snyder-Gray trial in 1927 and Erle Stanley Gardner’s explication of Argosy magazine’s “The Court of Last Resort” series. But still worth the time, I’d say, especially if you can score a copy cheap, such as one cent plus fifteen dollars shipping and handling through the convenient link below.

I grabbed this book because I owned it and because I’ve gotten into the new good habit of looking at these browseable books while I’m watching a baseball game instead of leafing through a magazine or trying to get into something of my denser, deeper reading between pitches.

This book, apparently dating from the 1960s (it’s not dated inside, but Amazon or its users says 1969), so who am I to argue? It looks to be a companion to a museum exhibit or two. It contains a brief (30-40 pages of text?) biographical sketch of Michelangelo and images of his work. It explores his movement in Renaissance Italy and the trends in his work. Interesting stuff, particularly since I was not that familiar with his time period or whatnot.

Coupled with my other recent read of Renaissance Italy (John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy), I’m getting more familiar with this pivotal period in history and whatnot. Interesting bonus factoid/intersection: Less than 100 years after Hawkwood was chief of Florentine defenses, Michelangelo took at turn at the walls, literally, as he was the Governor General of fortifications and lent himself to constructing the walls and whatnot.

Interesting, and something one can browse during a televised baseball game. Culture and Cardinals baseball are going to be the hallmarks of my summer.

I received this book as a Christmas gift. It provided a couple hours of browsing while watching baseball, as it’s that sort of book: a number of Top 10 lists about various and sundry subject grouped into categories like music and sports and leisure. Definitely a coffeetable/browsing sort of book, as there’s not much text besides the lists, the sources, and the occasional tidbit.

The first chapters on science and nature didn’t really hook me, as I really have little interest in the top animals by size or the most common or uncommon elements. Once we moved into to the entertainment sections, though, I could get through more of them in a sitting.

Probably not worth the amount it’s going for on Amazon, but it was a gift. If you’re looking for lists, you’re probably better off with The Book of Lists series, which offers more interesting lists with better commentary/detail on the list items.

I hoped the book would be a good idea book for historical essays. However, the “But True” part was overstated. Maybe it would be a good book for fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy, ideas instead.

I guess I should have guessed by page 43, in a piece about Springheeled Jack, where the sentence “But one theory that does fit the facts is the alien hypothesis.” appears. Prior to that, we’ve got some interesting historical anecdotes which might provide fodder for historical research and some “Hmmmmm” essays, but this piece on the English folklore tips the author’s hand: he’s ready to accept the Fortean and the Fate magazinean as “true”.

Well, that’s not what I was looking for in this book. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve read many of the anthologies of the mysteries of the unexplained (Reader’s Digest, of course), but I was hoping for something more, um, proveable from this book. Not (from p311-312, in the chapter “The Green Children” which doesn’t provide much more data than the Reader’s Digest book and lacks the black and white reimaginative photo) “The only credible explanations seem to point to extraterrestrial life or a parallel world.” Not (from p370, the chapter “Doppelgangers”, which comes after the chapter “Vampires” and the chapter about the intelligent life on the moon) “Until scientists can open their minds to the reality of the doppelganger, societies will continue to live in fear of this phenomenon.”

Some of the things prove interesting food for thought and speculation (Was Edgar Allan Poe a murderer? Who was Prester John? What about that song by Reszo Seress?), but ultimately I was a tad disappointed that the material skewed speculative fiction instead of speculative historical fact.

I don’t know how much more I can explain that. I did, however, read the book. Whether fiction comes of it or not remains to be seen.

This is a short Perry Mason book (171 pages, but the short chapters make it seem like less). When a woman is framed for carrying narcotics, Perry Mason proves her innocence, but it turns out that the charge was part of a greater plot to discredit her as a witness for a will of a wealthy woman. When the wealthy woman’s recent bouts of stomach illness prove to be arsenic exposure, Mason semi-investigates but has to find out the real story when his client is charged with her murder.

It’s a Perry Mason novel. Quick, pulpy, and not dated much. I cannot get enough of them, and someday I hope to own the complete set in Walter Black editions.

I have the movie tie-in edition for this book, so it has Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover and movie photos inside. The novel, however, is not the movie. As I do a number of these books upon which movies were based, I’m discovering vast differences in the books, and at least between this one and First Blood, I’m ultimately disappointed in the book.

In this book, Richards is married and has a kid and he goes to the network to participate in the Running Man game show to get some money to support them. Instead of a confined area with comic book villains, the contestant tries to hide out in the open United States with law enforcement trying to find him and citizens looking for him for bonus money. I don’t think that would have been good movie material, so I can see why the movie changed it a bit.

Still, I enjoyed it a bit until we came to a sudden absurdity and the final climax which was ultimately dissatisfying. We end up with the offer from the movie, where Richards can be one of the network people, but ultimately he exacts suicidal revenge upon the network.

It’s definitely not a Stephen King book, so you should expect a different writing style. It’s not bad for a pulp paperback, but a little unsatisfying, as I mentioned. I liked the movie better. Of course, I was kind of hot for Maria Conchita Alonso, so that last goes without saying.

Well, this book certainly wasn’t steeped in the hard science fiction that is hard to read, nor the bureacratic science caper that would thrill readers of Bob Woodward’s books about the presidencies, although it does feint in this direction by making the main character an ambassador and a diplomatic negotiator who’s made governor of Mars in a tough spot. After establishing the colonies off world, Earth has become dependent upon them for food and for resources. A strike and violence threaten that, so as punishment for siding against a career politician in adjucating a corpor/national plot to annex part of Australia, the negotiator finds himself sent to Mars not only to solve the problem, but to find out who wants him dead enough to invade his home and kill some of his employees and his dog.

It could have been boring, I suppose, but it’s space opera. The bureaucrat picks up a gun and investigates, gets into scrapes on the fourth planet, and ultimately comes to a successful resolution. The ending is very abrupt, though, and it’s clear that either Shat or his ghostwriter had watched Total Recall, but it’s a fun enough book with semi-Libertarian demirants against The Man.

Well, that’s interesting. Given how this book ends, they must have done a Morrell on the story to get a whole television series out of it.

If you’re not aware of the plot, it involves a psychic from Maine and a politician from New Hampshire who might become President with disastrous results. Actually, it’s more of a character study of the psychic from Maine who awakens from a coma with the ability to recognize the future and the present and the past from a touch of a person or an object. He solves a serial killer case and then encounters the politician, but given that the main story bit comes late into the book, the ending ultimately seems a little rushed and the story goes from the first person limited omniscient narrator to a series of letters and then back to action. That cheapens it a bit.

The book runs only 350 or so pages, which is very short compared to King’s later work. Later works which sometimes seem to drag, but are not often rushed.

The book also contains a number of noteworth allusions: One to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct stories, where Cotton Hawes has his white streak of hair from a knifing; one to the novel Carrie, written by King himself; and unfortunately, one to the Dirty Harry movies, but Harry’s gun is misidentified as a .357 Magnum. Very contemporaneous to the time in which the book appeared.

A pretty good book in King’s line.

I love Mike Lupica’s fiction, and this is the first of his nonfiction I’ve tried. Its subtitle is “How Sports Got Away From The Fans And How We Get It Back”. I read it over the course of two nights, and each was different.

I read the most of the book on the first night, and I almost felt like I’d been plagiarizing Lupica’s points about sports since he wrote it in the middle 1990s, and I hadn’t cared enough to make points until after 1999 or so. Still, he lays into the owners who don’t understand the sport, city “leaders” that give rich owners what ever they want just to attract/retain a sports team for the prestige it gives the city and themselves, the players who are out for themselves at the expense of the sport and the fans, and the fawning media that offers little but rah-rah coverage and machismo posturing from its jock-wannabes sports reporters. So I was really into the book.

On the second night, I got further into it and into some solutions. First, though, we have the problem of all the white people in attendance at the sporting events when most of the athletes are black and Hispanic. All righty then, I thought we’d covered that with the expensive nature of sporting events, but Lupica needed another chapter, so he introduces with a Bryant Gumbel bit about showboating as cultural and then goes into some sort of racial overtones of his own. And then he offers as a megasolution a consumers’ watchdog group for sports fans headed by Ralph Nader (this, remember, is when he was a semi-obscure consumer advocate before he became a semi-obscure presidential election spoiler).

Ultimately, the book is a bit repetitive at the end and really seems to want some sort of macro-level top-down solutions to the crisis in sporting, but ultimately I think that the problems inherent in the sports world are reflections of the diminishing class in the country at large. So having a special commission or board of fan poobahs along for rules changes or whatnot would really only give a set of corruptive influence to another set out people who would ultimately lack class and would act in their interest as board members instead of fans.

So my enjoyment of the book is not unqualified, but since I agree with many of the viewpoints, I appreciated seeing them represented in print by someone I enjoy reading.