Category: Books

Well, there it is. A novel about QA. Well, no, strike that, it’s a literary novel set in software development in the 1980s where a software defect is the MacGuffin and one of the main characters is a software tester.

Not by choice, oh, no. You can tell you’re reading a LITERARY book because the main character is clear to state that she has a doctorate in linguistics and only ends up working as a software tester when her academic career peters out. This is how you direct a book to an audience that does not work in the field the book covers, by saying ATTENTION! This character is the fish out of water and will explain to you the things you need to know because this character is just like you (in the field of academics or whoever reads Literary novels) except they work somewhere exotic (software development in the 1980s).

The book, as I mentioned, takes place at a database developer in 1984. They’re building a database from the ground up, including a GUI front end written from scratch that uses a mouse and everything. The main character, aforementioned, finds a defect that crashes the system, but is hard to replicate and appears to happen randomly, but usually in big demos. The book bounces back and forth between a first person double-effect narrator (since the story is told from present day ca. 2000ish after the dot.com bubble bursts, spurred when the narrator sees the one of the old screens still in use) and a limited omniscient narrator peering into the point of view of the developer to whom the defect is assigned.

The defect itself is a MacGuffin since the book deals mostly with the break-up of the tester’s and the developer’s personal relationship and the breakdown of the developer as he doesn’t think he’s a good developer and struggles to find this bug. That’s pretty much it. Enough technospeak and actual code and UNIX commands thrown into the mix, kind of like you’d find Hindi interspersed through a Kipling work to add authenticity. The tester finds self-actualization or empowerment by learning to code. The developer abruptly hangs himself, and even that did not cheer me. Uh, retroactive spoiler alert.

I didn’t care for it much, either for the plot nor the technical aptitude. The main characters are pathetic; I didn’t like either of them. The secondary characters are very, very stock and cardboard. The other testers are, essentially, the boss who is tough and fair minded and the other one whose dialogue mostly consists of her character tic of saying, “Meep.” The developers are mostly interchangeable except for their specialties, told to us of course. And I don’t know what the point of the frame story is, frankly. To show us the pathetic main character becomes rich but remains pathetic? Or to allow someone to feasibly set a book in 1984 when it’s written in 2002?

The best QA fiction is definitely genre fiction, mainly a thriller. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been written.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book includes a representative sampling of Frederic Remington’s drawings, paintings, and bronzes along with text that tells of his youth, his desire to be an artist at an early age, and his stints as Western artist for major magazines back East. I saw “Back East” as though Remington did his work from the frontier. He didn’t. He visited the West numerous times, including Mexico, and captured the spirit of the Fin de 19th siècle West in drawings and photos that he took home to NY to work on.

He found a lot of success as an artist, living from his art’s ample proceeds and able to experiment with a sort of Impressionism and enjoying some critical success at it. I’m always inspired when an artist has success in his lifetime.

Also, the book has lots of pretty pictures. One can flip through them and their explanatory text while watching football.

Watching football and looking at pictures of horses helps me recharge my Man Points after a hard day of découpage. At least, I hope it does.

Books mentioned in this review:

This is the second Dick Tracy book report on this site; the first was a collection of the actual comics (The Dick Tracy Casebook in 2005–good Lord, has it been five years?).

This is a collection of original short stories including Dick Tracy written by a number of popular authors of 1990, or at least people Max Collins knew. It was released to ride the success of Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy film (which also starred Madonna–good Lord, has it been twenty years?). As such, it’s a mixed bag. Most of the stories are tolerable, but one of the volume is darn near unreadable as it goes into very heavily cinematic action and the writer can’t capture it well in the text.

Sometimes I get the urge to read short fiction as my primary fiction book because I think how easily I can put it down when it’s time for bed. That’s a double-edged wrist radio (sorry, I should have issued a spoiled metaphor alert). It makes it too easy to put down sometimes, and this book is a good example of that.

I suppose the book is more worthwhile if you’re a big Dick Tracy fan, but what person under the age of fifty is. I mean, really.

On a personal note, someone ran a contest tied into the movie where you could win a yellow trenchcoat and fedora like Dick Tracy. I entered the contest, and that’s when I started thinking of myself in a trenchcoat and hat. A couple years later, I got my first trenchcoat for Christmas and then my first fedora from Donge’s on Third Street in Milwaukee. Twenty years later, I still affect that look.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

You cannot find this book on the Internet, mostly because it’s a 40-or-more-year-old (although I think it’s a later printing, but it’s still undated) comb-bound publication of the Naborhood Link News, a small free newspaper in south St. Louis County at the time. It’s a little better than photocopied typewritten article proofs, but the content is fascinating.

I lived in Lemay for a couple years in the middle 1990s, when the Naborhood Link News still existed (it ceased publication in 1996). This precedes my interest in reading up on the history of the region where I live, so I overlooked this book at that time. But Lemay has a far greater history than Webster Groves, word. Currently, the Lemay area is kinda defined as a portion of the unincorporated area in South St. Louis County where they tried to make Southpointe (with an E, like the car dealership whose owner led the charge) and that the small, 900-resident Bella Villa, best known as the eight-square-block speed trap on Bayless Avenue, helpfully offered to annex about the same time. However, historically, the Lemay area used to include Affton, Lakeshire, St. George, and a bunch of other municipalities that later made their own little town halls to…well, I suppose, impose a subdivision’s will on neighboring subdivisions.

The book tells anecdotes about Jefferson Barracks, how the villages that came to comprise Lemay were founded, the origins of Lemay Ferry Road and Telegraph Road (this last used to be called “El Camino Real” because it was built when the area was under Spanish control, which preceded French control, which preceded the Louisiana Purchase). A restaurant my wife and reviewed for our wedding rehearsal dinner dates from the 18th century; Lafayette purportedly stayed there once. Lemay was once considered for capital of the United States (story here).

And so on. Of course, the stories are all told informally with a lot of basis in recollections of the locals and some recourse to Missouri history periodicals. However, it’s best not to take them as the gospel truth. Still, good starting points for historical research or, at the very least, good legends to pass on.

I didn’t live in Lemay for that long, although my mother, the former owner of the book, lived there for much of her life, so I drove down some of the streets mentioned in the book (often accompanied by parentheses and “Now called Orient Avenue” or “Now called Ripa Avenue”). I sort of wish I was still in St. Louis so I could go look to see if many of these locations remain after the sixty years between the book’s publication and now.

As I mentioned, I inherited this book from my mother, who might have inherited it from her sister or mother. I wonder if my mother read it. I wish I could ask her and talk about it with her. One of the things I used to do on Sunday mornings was to have breakfast and coffee with her and regale her with stories and histories from books I read. This would be extra poignant as it is a book about her town.

Books mentioned in this review:

I’ve been a fan of Vargas’s work since the Great Playboy Caper (someday, I’ll have to re-relate that story since I cannot find it on the blog here). Vargas (and his s-less alter ego Varga) did pinup and nude art for Esquire and later Playboy. They were always playful and attractive, so when I saw this book at Barnes and Noble, marked down, I knew it was the proper way to spend a Christmas gift card so long as I didn’t mention it in the thank you note by name.

The book chronicles the eras in Vargas life and selective art from each period from the collection of Vargas’s nephew. There’s plenty of text to tell the sad story of Vargas, from his start doing promo portraits of Zeigfield girls, to his rise when discovered by Esquire, to the final contract at that magazine that rooked him into indentured servitude, his break with Esquire, the lawsuit over the contract and its aftermath, and then his return to publication with Playboy.

He had a rough life, fiscally for sure, but he produced some great work. I cannot help but compare his life with that of Frederic Remington, whose art book I expect to complete during the Packers game next Sunday. Remington lived a generation before Vargas, and his work came from a life that was pretty cush and unfraught with drama. It puts lie to the hypothesis that great art must come from rotten lives. Sometimes art comes in spite of surroundings. Which is what I tell myself since I live a pretty cush life, which contrasts with my most productive writing period.

Although, to be honest, the Great Playboy Caper brought me more fiscal reward than my creative writing has.

So this book is worth a look if you’re not too embarrassed to buy it or be caught reading it. Because the other Republicans might ostracize one who knows who Vargas is or has an event in one’s life called The Great Playboy Caper.

Books mentioned in this review:

This is a little souvenir book you could pick up if you were stationed in Detroit (what will they call tourists in 2014 Detroit? The National Guard). Me, I bought it since I’m a silly sucker for picture books of Detroit (see also the review for the full-sized coffee table book Detroit).

I cannot tell from the photos really when the book was published, but they still talk about the Silverdome. Part of the book is given over to the University of Michigan campus and other nearby other cities, so the authors had some trouble coming up with enough nice in Detroit to fill up this slender volume.

I have to wonder what sort of drinking problem the copywriters for this sort of thing have. I don’t intimate that they’re probably drinking on the job to write this glowing prose when Detroit was a punchline at least as far back as 1977. A real professional can make anything sound shiny and to say that Detroit is ever-ascendant while working, but when they go home and think about what they’re reduced to writing day in, day out instead of writing the sweeping novels they’d envisioned in college, I bet they tipple till they topple. Maybe I shouldn’t mock so much professional writers who get paychecks while I’m here on the blog plan with its fifty dollars a decade salary.

I’m looking through these books nowadays with an eye for patterns and images I could burn on wood. Unfortunately, all of these are so Detroit-specific, focusing on its famous buildings, that the photos are not generic enough. I could burn one of the halls at Michigan or the Renaissance Center, but only someone from Detroit might recognize it. Instead, all I get to do is make fun of the book and Detroit. Which makes it worthwhile anyway.

This is the first in what has become a 20 year series of novels. In it, Lucas Davenport hunts down a serial killer who varies his methods and his targets to confound the police but cannot help leaving notes with the rules to which he adheres in killing. The series starts right out with the tropes that become tropes as the series progresses, including as much time spent handling the media as detecting and with the soap opera loves of Lucas. I guess Sandford had a series in mind all along. After all, he did start right out with a psuedonym for it.

The books all have a very contemporary feel to them: Davenport uses all the latest technology and whatnot, and if you read the latest books, you recognize they’re current day. So it startled me a bit to read a book from the great before, where Davenport and everyone exchange notebook notes to synchronize them every morning, people need to use pay phones, and Davenport makes wall charts with paper notes. You don’t think a thing of it when Perry Mason books or Ed McBain’s detectives type up reports because most of their books came from that great Before, but when you read someone who has crossed that gap and you read his latest works first, the transition can be remarkable. Reparagraphable, even.

As with many of the Davenport series, the end seems unsatisfying and a bit contrived. Davenport sets the killer up and vigilantes him, but Davenport remembers to execute his carefully crafted execution in a state of emergency, when he’s flown in his Porsche from one twin city to the next while a crime is in progress. It’s very pat and very novelesque, as though Sandford plotted the ending before getting the book to that point, and even though it didn’t seem to fit congruously, he was going to use it anyway.

Strangely enough, as he says on his Web site, the original ending was even worse.

A decent book. Still available in paperback. I actually borrowed this from the library because I’ve run short of things to read around here (meaning that the number has dropped under 3000). I’ll look to find this if I can at a book fair to flesh out my collection.

Books mentioned in this review:

I bought this book at the Kirkwood book fair some years back, and I started looking through it a couple baseball seasons ago. It’s definitely a flip-through kind of book, as it includes a short history of Currier and Ives and the market for illustration in the nineteenth century. Each chapter, if you will, then takes on a series from the Currier and Ives line and presents four pictures from it in full color and full page. Of course, if you’re familiar with the Christmas song, you know how the company’s prints impacted how the nineteenth century Americans viewed themselves and their countrymen and, even more importantly, impacted the nostalgia of the time. Think of it as the equivalent of their Thomas Kinkade, except instead of purposefully painting nostalgic historic scenes, they created images that were contemporary, but warmly evocative, that became nostalgic as time went on.

I like the pictures and would consider collecting the company’s prints, but I’m not as DINK as I once was, so I’ll have to watch for the foldered quarter folio prints at garage sales. I’m also considering scanning some of them to use elements within for some of my woodburning projects.

And as a final note, the book includes some of the Currier and Ives hidden animal prints, wherein the artists hid animals in the background of a picture, and the viewer could look at them to find the animals, kind of like a puzzle. I remembered when I saw these prints in the book that I had had a book of these as a child, no doubt a gift from my Nana who worked at the Milwaukee Art Museum. I don’t have those books any more, and I kind of miss them.

At any rate, worth a look if you’re into Americana or art. Also, prepare yourself for a couple of art books to come along hereabouts as I look for flipping books I can look at while I watch football games. I think my Man Points maintain status quo if I watch football while flipping through artsy books. The craft books, though, continually drain the Man Points.

Books mentioned in this review:

I’m a pretty big Cosby fan. I just watched Bill Cosby Himself earlier in the month, I’ve listened to his old comedy albums on audiocassette during long drives, and I’ve read a number of his books before.

This book is a short afterthought to some of his earlier works, though. It collects a series of shorter essays and musings, some meandering. They’re not particularly strong material, either. A bit of amusement, but not a lot of insight.

Still, it’s newer Cosby. I’ll take it over nothing but not over his earlier works.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book stems from an era, lo those 25 years ago, where it was slightly fashionable or at least humorous to oppose the impersonal answering machine. I didn’t really recollect it until I saw this book. But there were lots of books in that era about having funny answering machine messages and this book about leaving funny messages on someone’s answering machine. Wow, the novelty of that has passed, hey? Do you remember seeing actual pretaped humorous answering machine cassettes? How old am I?

As I mentioned, this book includes humorous messages you could leave to show your disdain for the answering machine. Its first chapter, in fact, is about bad outgoing messages and having to talk to a machine yourself. There are some messages purportedly from celebrities and then some from fake businesses. Finally, there was a section on jokes, most of them corny, but the only laugh I got out of the books was from the joke What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic? About half way.

The book apparently rode a trend and was some kind of success at the time; this is a printing five years after the original edition. The publisher and authors also had a line of books with funny outgoing messages. I wondered about people who would buy these books new, which led me to wonder about people who buy these books second hand. Before I got too introspective, though, I smelled the book and realized that I hadn’t bught it at all–the book had been my mother’s, tucked among the four shelves of books in her office. How-to home improvement books, some antique reference she’d gotten from her sister, a couple dictionaries, some paperbacks from television shows she’d liked that I’d bought her (which I’m reading these days), and this book. I wonder where she got it. I wish I could ask.

At any rate, the hour I spent on the book was worthwhile for the anachronism of the subject matter and for the anachronism of the contemporary humor within it, not to mention one funny joke. That makes it worth a whole Reader’s Digest without the latter’s modern turn into Gaia-worship.

Books mentioned in this review:

This is a very interesting book.

It’s a collection of connected short stories that take place over the course of 20,000 years as mankind travels to other planets in the solar system, advances in technology, and slowly loses its civilization until the dogs and then the ants take over.

That is, cheap land (hydroponics replaces farming, which leads to cheap land), cheap transportation, and a benevolent central government make it so all mankind, or at least the ones in America and Europe, can live on lots of land. Cities (including the city in the lead short story that leads to the name of the book) break down as there are fewer people to fund services that no one really uses any more, but the local governments insist upon providing. Then, agoraphobia sets in as man grows very accustomed to his surroundings and does not want to leave his homestead for anything. This leads to a surgeon who specializes in Martian anatomy failing to help a friend, a Martian philosopher who has discovered a philosophy that could advance mankind hundreds of thousands of years. Then, a descendent of the fellow learns how to build a star drive, and another descendent advances dogs to speaking and learning.

The book has a frame story as a scholarly tract relaying myths and legends of man. A dog scholar, way in the future, discusses each story and outlines the controversies between other dog scholars who might or might not believe the stories or true or that the race of man existed at all.

The book is a quick enough read, and it really looks into a number of themes of race (human) versus individuals and the programming of the race (in the book, man is unperfectable in that he will always be warlike and future non-human civilizations must be protected from his influence). However, it’s not that straight man is bad, since other animal races, when raised, retain some bloodlust and desire to hunt. So it’s a very thought-provoking book, and although you can somewhat figure out what Simak thinks, the author leaves you room to ponder.

That’s old school science fiction.

I understand a later edition of the book has an additional epilog added. I’ll have to hunt that one down so I can find out what that means. The book I read was the old edition.

I’ve read some Simak before even though I can’t find any reports on the book the blog here. I don’t mind reading another if I find it at a book fair or even on my own shelves.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book collects some humorous anecdotes and quips from each president, ranked by how humorous the presidents were (according to Bob Dole, I guess) as well as the Al Gore and George W. Bush, who were running for President in the year in which the book was written.

Only a few of the anecdotes are truly examples of the President’s wit, and most of those come from recent presidents whose every utterance and quip lies either in archival television footage or in Presidential library complexes. Other anecdotes include amusing anecdotes about the President or the President’s family or insults and barbs directed at the President.

That said, it gives a little historical insight into the conditions of each President and his times and tribulations that everyone could probably use now and then. However, the arrangement of the Presidents not in historical order makes this a little more tricky to put into historical context. It also provides perspective into how vile politics has been throughout history. Somehow, in our current self-flagellating ways, we have forgotten this in a quest to be the worst ever at everything.

And as every one of these books leads to Jeopardy!, reading this book let me question the answer “This US President’s son died as a pilot in World War I.” So I got to impress my wife anyway.

A good little read.

Books mentioned in this review:

Now this is what Junk Beautiful book should have been. It relies on the writing of two sisters, both of whom must have married well since they have lots of houses and cottages amongst them to decorate with repurposed materials.

The projects outlined in the book don’t end up looking like jetsam that rolled onto the beach. The authors of this book add some fabric, upholstery, or Heaven forfend paint to make things look better and to fit in.

However, it’s still as much an interior design book as it is a project book. But it’s an easy couple of nights browsing. It’s saying something, but I read more of the accompanying text with this book than I do most.

Books mentioned in this review:

John Sandford is getting there, but unlike Ed McBain, he doesn’t have 50 years of good will built up.

The there is pissing me off with the ragging on Republicans and conservatives. It took him only until page 12 to identify that the hardened criminal in charge of the enterprise was a self-identified conservative; if this book were published in 2010 instead of 2009, he’d probably identify with the Teabaggers. Twelve pages later, George W. Bush is mentioned by name in a less than flattering light. On page 35, someone is told he looks like a Republican as an insult. Seriously, Sandford, knock it off.

The stories in the book (and now that he’s a serious hardback author, they must weigh in at 400 pages. Remember when only Stephen King did that?) revolve around a group of crackerjack criminals in town to rob people and hotels at the Republican National Convention and about a criminal getting out of prison, paraplegic, and blaming Davenport, so of course he’s going to get revenge. The two stores touch at points, made to do so to validate the decision to pad out the book with the second, but really, it’s two shorter novels in one. Cut aways to the other story pass for building suspense, I guess.

Finally, one comes to a head and then Davenport solves the other with a little help from a dream or a hint from the semiconscious mind. Sandford must have realized he’d achieved the proper weight to cost $30 in hardback. Then it ends with some dangling ends that Sandford can bring back another time, a la the hitwoman Rinker.

I’m being a little harsher on the book than it deserves, perhaps, but Sandford did his best to put me in an ill and opposing mood at the beginning of the book. By about page 50, the book drops off with the political “Rightwing nuts!” stuff and gets down to the plot. Which makes me wonder why he bothered to put it in at all and risk alienating 47% or more of the population. To establish his Minnesota Democrat bona fides? Brother, Al Franken is your senator. It’s worse than when my state elected a dead man, for crying out loud.

He’s really down to my last nerve on the political stuff and the gratuitous swearing. All the characters drop f-bombs in random spots and use it as people’s middle name throughout this book and the series. Come on, I gave up the mad swearing when I had kids, and I didn’t do it professionally for any part of my life. Grow up, Sandford. Grow up.

Books mentioned in this review:

Those of you who are my friends on Facebook know I’ve started baking and doing handcrafts and already suspect my masculinity. Now, you encounter a review of a book based on a television series based designed for little old ladies with cats. Well, in my defense, I would probably not have bought this book for myself even given my propensity for books based on television series and films. However, I bought a couple of these books at a garage sale or book sale quite some time ago to give to my sainted mother since I thought she wasn’t reading enough and she might read it. I don’t even know if she did or not, but now the book has passed to me. And I read it.

It’s about 250 pages in paperback; I think it’s a paperback original. Its pacing isn’t what I usually read. It’s not choppy or punchy. The first person voice of Jessica Fletcher spends a lot of time talking about side issues, musing on Key Lime Pies and the relationships of those around her. Two cases in point: The book spends 5 pages on Fletcher’s ride from the mainland of Florida to Key West for a weekend even though it’s mostly discussing key lime pies and the changes of scenery. Later, she spends a long paragraph hoping that a recurring character has a good relationship with an old friend even though these are not germane to the plot.

Maybe that’s how women think, or maybe that’s how Bain thinks women think. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been knocked early and often for my fallacious depiction of fictional women. But the pacing dawdles until about 50 pages remain, and then we get to the sleuthing. The story: Jessica’s retiree friend in Florida dies, and it might be murder. Jessica comes down and ends up investigating 100 or so pages later when they think it is murder. Was it the husband? Was it the businessman? Who are you kidding? It was the businessman. About 200 pages in, the pace starts up, and with 25 page to go, the first person narrator asks a question of a witness/involved person and doesn’t tell the audience what it is so she can point at the businessman and his lackeys dramatically. The main verbal trap relies on a klew obscured by 240 other pages of fluff and extraneous conversations among colorful but sort of extraneous characters.

But Bain’s a professional. He hit his word count and provided something that the target audience appreciates. I guess this is the 21st book in the series or something, eight years after the series went off the air. The series is actually ongoing to this day. As a writer, he’s doing something right. However, this is not the sort of thing I dig. And, sadly, I’ve got at least one more and maybe more to go. Curse my giving nature.

Interesting factoid: apparently, there are two series of novels based on the series. One is Jessica Fletcher’s novels and the other is Jessica Fletcher’s adventures in real life. Way to keep it going, fellows.

Books mentioned in this review:

Confession, gentle readers. I bought this book on impulse at the grocery store for nearly full price on Thursday after I watched a Jeff Foxworthy videocassette on Wednesday night. It seemed like kismet. So when I had some time to while away at an airport on Thursday, I brought this book and read it in a little over an hour.

I thought the book would be some amalgamation of Lay Low and Don’t Make The Big Mistake, a book I read apparently before I began keeping reviews or a book whose review disappeared into the aether like Martian Knightlife, The Complete Geek (An Owners Manual, some Scott Adams, and a touch of You Might Be A Redneck If….. However, it’s distinctly the latter.

Amusing, but no real laugh out loud moments. Foxworthy and co. apparently continue the “How to Really Stink” series by identifying ways to get hired and to underachieve at work. It recycles at least one gag from the video of almost 20 years earlier (20 years of Jeff Foxworthy? Hey, his little girls must be in or out of college by now).

Better than Lay Low… and The Complete Geek, anyway.

Books mentioned in this review: