Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 186 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

Book Report: Iroshi by Cary Osborne (1995)

May 10, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I bought this book a couple weeks ago with the others in the trilogy and got right on it. It’s a short book (216 pages, which is short for modern books, and I do tend to think of this pre-turn-of-the-century book as modern), so it wasn’t daunting as far as reading it (sometimes, I admit, I pick up a book and think, do I really want to spend the next couple of weeks reading this?).

All right, then. The book is about a swordswoman trained in Kendo and some other martial arts. The book starts with her arriving at an out-of-the-way planet and looking for ruins, and then it delves into her past in flashbacks: She’s from a poor family whose father abandoned the them, she went to Earth, the nominal center of a fraying empire, to study with a master. The master was attacked by ninjas as the result of an old mysterious conflict, and when he could teach her no more, he sent her on her way with a sword, and she became a mercenary and a bit of a legend. Now, she finds ruins and finds the spirits of an alien race, and they offer to ‘join’ with her in building a guild to help humanity keep from destroying itself.

Then we fast forward ten years, and the guild is established, and she heads back to Earth to keep the government from moving its seat to the planet with the ruins. There, she discovers the old master’s quarrel was with his own sons whom he disowned because they got involved in organized crime. And they begin their final assaults. Which Iroshi defeats, and part one of the three books ends.

It’s a rather scattershot affair. It’s broken into several parts, with the first being her search for the temple punctuated by flashbacks; then, Part II jumps ten years into the future when she’s been building up this guild of fighters (called the Glaive). There’s sword-fighting, there’s politicking and intrigue, there’s a brief reunion with her father, and then there’s a large ninja assault and some space battles. I don’t think it hangs together all that well.

And it’s the beginning of a trilogy.

I’ll have to jump on the other two books soon so I can sort of remember what’s going on in them and because it’s probably not something I’ll return to after a couple of years with any eager anticipation.

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Good Album Hunting, May 9, 2018: Ozarks Treasures Antique Mall

May 10, 2018May 10, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

I had a couple of minutes to kill before picking my children up from school yesterday, and instead of going to Hooked on Books and spending a couple minutes browsing the dollar books, I went to a nearby antique mall to browse.

Which led to buying some records, and often for more than a dollar each.

I got four for a total of like ten bucks.

The list includes:

Just Sylvia by Sylvia because I get Internet celebrity when I buy Sylvia albums.
Another Place by Hiroshima. They must have had some sort of following here in Springfield, since their LPs show up from time to time. Since the band itself has been active from 1979 to now, I guess I’ll have to get some of their work on CDs.
Billy Preston & Syreeta, a collection of duets from the eponymous R&B singers.
Who’s Fooling Who by R&B group One Way (definitely not to be confused with One Direction).

Note that the last features a woman in lingerie on the phone:

This is not the first record in my collection with that motif:

You might think to yourself, “Brian sure buys a lot of records with pretty women on the cover,” and I’d like to remind you of what I said in 2013:

If “pretty woman on the cover” were the only criterion, though, I’d own a lot more Sylvia albums today.

In my defense, my accummulation of records is reaching such a level that I can find numerous motifs in them.

For example, take the back side of the One Way album:

The two cigarettes and two wine glasses motif appears on other albums such as:

Jackie Gleason presents Music for Lovers Only and:

Music for Romancing, which also features a woman reclined.

What was my point? I am not sure I had one. Although I’m pretty sure I need to get to building the record shelves that I’ve been promising or threatening for over a year now.

(For more motif comparison in record covers, see this and this. I’m no LP Cover Lover, except that I am. And I can see the blooming things, unlike the thumbnails of the cover art one sees in computer-based music players.)

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Forbes Is Apparently Going Down That Road

May 9, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

I’m not too far behind on my Forbes magazines these days. I let my subscription lapse for a while, and when they offered me a regular magazine rate for it instead of the expensive magazine rate you get for titles like this one and National Review, I resubscribed.

Forbes has gone through an ownership change, and it looks like a lot of the old columnists are gone. Probably some of the old writers, too, with the new regime. It has a bunch of mattress ads, too, which is weird since one of the latter Forbes I read talked about the way the mattress industry manipulated the online mattress review sites.

But I have to wonder if it’s taken a pretty hard turn left. Here are a couple of snippets from the April 30 issue that make me fear for my future enjoyment of the magazine.

From Inside Beachbody’s Billion-Dollar Fat Burning Empire:

Now at the “15-star diamond” level, she’s Beachbody’s top coach, making over $2 million a year. Thanks to Beachbody she’s paid off the mortgage on her suburban Pittsburgh McMansion and takes dream vacations each year to places like Turks and Caicos and Bora-Bora. Her husband, Matt, quit his corporate gig at Heinz to work full-time for his wife. From her spacious home office, filled with flowers, photos and scented candles, Mitro, blonde and blue-eyed with Stepford-wife good looks, spends her days tending to her blog, her podcast (“Women Inspiring Women”) and other social media platforms in an effort to motivate her team. “Ninety-nine percent of my business is social media,” says Mitro, 35.

Sweet Christmas, dismissing the woman’s business (albeit MLM business) acumen and the things she’s bought (McMansion) and her looks (Stepford-wife good looks, which does not make sense in the context of the book which the young journalist might not have read but I have).

So, what, the suburbs sux? Seriously? This is just dropped into an article and not excised?

Then there’s a story called Inside Erik Prince’s Return To Power: Trump, Bolton And The Privatization Of War. The lede is:

Amid reports that special counsel Robert Mueller had taken an interest in his activities, Erik Prince decided to host a fundraiser. On March 18, more than 100 people flocked to Prince’s sprawling farm in Middleburg, Virginia, for an afternoon of pistol shooting in support of Putin’s favorite congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, who the FBI reportedly found had his own Kremlin code name. As the day progressed, the group headed to the barn, where, over sandwiches and Budweiser, they heard from Oliver North, the central figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, and Matt Gaetz, a member of the House who’s big on Deep State “cabal” conspiracy theories.

Wow, okay, you know how far I got into this “business article”? Yeah, that’s it right up there.

These are not people blogging on the Forbes Web site, which is (or was) apparently open to everyone. This is from the print magazine.

Which I might not renew my subscription to if it cannot tell its business stories in a neutral fashion.

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Book Report: Vendetta in Venice Mack Bolan/The Executioner #117 (1988)

May 8, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I decided to break up the serious reading with my first Mack Bolan book of the year. It’s been almost six months since Vietnam Fallout. This book, the 117th in the series, is only four later, but their increased girth means they’re no longer quick reads to pick up when I’m in between other lengthier works. They are the lengthier works.

In this book, Hal Brognola is in Amsterdam for a conference when he goes on a bit of a walkabout and ends up getting mistaken for a customer in a person smuggling ring. He taps Mack Bolan to investigate it. Bolan does and discovers it’s really one guy, mostly, and some time later he breaks it up and gets the girl.

The book differs from other characterizations of Bolan–instead of a hypercompetent wish fulfillment protagonist, Bolan here comes off as bit less competent and not necessarily even the driver of the action. He’s more passive, and there’s 250 pages of stuff happening to Bolan. The book only finishes up in Venice, so the title is a bit odd (but is alliterative).

I’d like to think I’m going to read more than two Bolan books this year–I have 72 in the Executioner and related titles to read–but unless they start getting better in the average, I might not. Especially at my galacial pace this year.

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The Edge of 12: A Photographic Study

May 7, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

A mess of hair care equipment and a Transformer.

I remember when I was about that age, a friend told me the story of a kid he knew who (this being before the Internet, you had to trust the stories of a guy who knew this guy who) took all of his toys and put them in a pile on his thirteenth birthday and lit them on fire.

That was taking Paul a little far.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I thought of my G.I. Joe collection at the time and rebelled against the thought. But that time would pass, as will that time for my children. Someday, they might not have toys by their sink. And, if they’re like me, no hair care equipment either.

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Book Report: Well, Duh: Our Stupid World, and Welcome To It by Bob Fenster (2004)

May 7, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I read this Internet listicle of a book while sitting in various bleachers while my child or children practiced basketball. This has proven to be my most focused reading time of late, which is why I’ve not yet read twenty books this year, and given the locale, it’s not suited for particularly heavy reading. So Internet listicles in print fills that “I want to be reading something, but now I’m distracted” void.

This book is a collection of stories and bulleted lists about people doing stupid things. What do I remember from it? Only that you cannot trust a word of it, as it recounts the Rutherford B. Hayes knocks the telephone story that I know is not true. You know, in books of trivia, the authors sometimes insert incorrect trivia to try to catch people who violate their copyrights. I doubt this is the case here: instead, it’s just a collection of stories the author heard on the Internet.

So it killed some time for me, but that’s about it.

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Something Other Than Coyotes

May 6, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

As the sun is coming up here at Nogglestead, we often hear the coyotes calling as they return to their dens in the national battlefield just across the fields.

But yesterday, about 5:40, we got a novel new sound: a high speed police chase.

Police closed part of U.S. 60 in Republic Saturday morning after a pursuit led to a crash.

The crash happened near Farm Road 170.

Republic police say the pursuit was initiated by the Greene County Sheriff’s Office.

What does a police chase sound like? A siren in the distance, getting closer, and then cars passing by at high speed. I caught sound of the sirens and looked out of my office window to see the fleeing car through the trees followed by a couple of deputies at some remove.

This is the second high speed pursuit I have seen within a year. The last was when the fleeing car and the deputy passed me in the opposite direction on the county highway. Everyone, I was pleased, stayed in their own lanes.

For the record, I prefer the coyotes.

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Good Book Hunting, May 1, 2018: ABC Books

May 5, 2018September 10, 2022 Brian J. Noggle

You would think that, given that we’ve just passed through the semi-annual book sales for the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library and the Friends of the Christian County Library, that I would not need to go to a book store any time soon.

Oh, but no.

We like to include gift cards in the thank-you notes we compel our children to write for their various teachers and coaches at the end of the year (or sport season, which for track and field falls at the end of the school year). Our go-to gift card for the last couple of years has been ABC Books because the owners are members of our church and are not pups like that kid at Hooked on Books.

So we went for our semi-annual gift card purchase, and since the owners are downsizing the store because part of their store was apparently below the water table and flooded whenever anyone in the vicinity wept. Which is good for us, because it meant $2 books on select titles as they cleared inventory.

Of which I partook.

The Eastern philosophy and Makers of the Modern Theological Mind books I tend to buy this particular location were not on sale (and, to be honest, I’m not sure where to find them in the reshuffled store). But I did get:

Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams. Fun fact: When I was a senior in high school, I killed it in our Western Civ class’s chapter review version of Jeopardy! I beat everyone easily without much effort. So when it came time for a Civics Bee, everyone thought I would do well. They provided us with a book to review on history and the stuff they would quiz us on, and I probably opened it, but I was cocky, and I did not study it at all. My first question was on Jane Addams, and I bombed it. But I’m more sure of what she stood for since then. But I’ve not read her book. Until fourteen years from now, when I rediscover this on my to-read shelves.
A Nostalgic Almanac by Edna Hont, a reminiscence of life on a Midwest farm. The kind of books I like to read and clearly like more to buy to read later.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon, a more recent humorous memoir or something.
Travels in a Donkey Trap by Daisy Baker. The flaps indicate it’s about an elderly rural woman who bought a donkey and cart for commuting in the 1960s or 1970s.

The cost of the books: $8. The cost of the gift cards? Well, we won’t go into that. Getting some of the school staff to visit ABC Books, which is a bit out of the way for southern Springfieldians? Priceless.

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Book Report: And Eternity by Piers Anthony (1990)

May 4, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover In my book report on Job: A Comedy of Justice, I said:

You know, trying to weave actual theological entities into fantasy novels is most often a real mess (see also Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, the for-a-while-last, but now penultimate, book dealing with God somehow–I’ve not made it through that particular volume).

Didn’t you once write a short play set in Heaven with God drinking at a bar? That wasn’t fantasy. That was supposed to be funny. But probably only was to a certain small set of collegiate drama writers, wherein that set might have been exactly one. Given how my humorous plays sell in real life probably proves the point.

At any rate, I picked this book up again and tried to power through it. The last time I got a little caught up feeling squicky with the age of consent philosophical treatise culminating in sex with an underage girl bit along with not remembering what was going on in the series business (apparently, I read the preceding volume, For Love of Evil before I started this blog, so it was some time ago indeed). Between those two factors, I put this volume down and went onto other things. But with the reading of Job, I thought it might be part of a brief theme. Not outlier sex practices, though: more “Actual theological entities in fiction.”

This book deals with the (I assume) long-running series business of a plot to unseat God by Satan. I assume it’s series business. To be honest, I read the first three or four books in the series in the middle 1990s, the fifth book a couple years later, and the sixth sometime around the turn of the century (but apparently before I began the blog–was there such a time? Was it real?).

In this book, a ghost companion of Orb, the incarnation of Nature (Book 5, read twenty years ago) and the consort of Satan (Book 6, read fifteen years ago) who is also married to Orb (Book 5 or 6, but I’ve forgotten which) has been tasked to watch over a woman who was tied to Chronos (Book 2, which I read ca 1994) who is saddened when her baby dies. She commits suicide, and starts to sink to Hell until the companion of Orb (Jolie) catches her and keeps her from descending. The incarnation of Night (Nox, book 8 which was published in this century) snatches up the soul of the child and will return it to the distraught mother if she (Orlene) completes a quest. The two spirits inhabit the body of the aforementioned teen girl, an addicted prostitute whose mother is important to fighting Satan’s plot because MacGuffin. The now-trio must complete the quest, which is to collect something from every other incarnation.

So they do, and they must visit every incarnation in its native habitat to secure the gift, and work toward maybe thwarting Satan’s plot or identifying a candidate to replace God in case Satan’s plan gets that far. I saw the ultimate twist pretty early in the goings on in my second go-round with the book, so the eventual denoument (there really wasn’t much of a climax) didn’t surprise me much.

It wrapped up the series except for, as it became evident, the final incarnation Nox. But I’m not sure how much I liked the final books over the first couple of them. But perhaps my pleasant recollection of those book is colored by the pleasant recollection of those years themselves more than the books themselves.

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A Quick, Pithy Review Of The Hudsucker Proxy

May 2, 2018November 2, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

A less-fun retelling of The Secret of My Success with the aesthetic of Metropolis. But instead of the a fun romp with the engaging Michael J. Fox, we get an earnestly dim Tim Robbins, whose midwestern boy from the mail room character remains a bit of a cipher throughout.

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The Blues Song of the Wisconsin Existentialist

April 29, 2018April 29, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Sometimes, when I try to say:

Nitschke

It comes out sounding more like:

Nietzsche

This actually happened to me on Saturday, when I threw an elbow that was more like a forearm club, and I tried to say, “Just like Nitschke.” But it sounded like the philosopher.

Which was just as well. The white belt was not from Wisconsin, but was familiar with the philosopher. And if you’re in a martial arts school, you’re supposed to spout off on Eastern philosophy, but Existentialism? Truly, I am a black belt, and studied in alternate forms of thought.

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Good Book Hunting, April 28, 2018: The Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale

April 28, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Well, I did it again. I returned to the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County semi-annual book sale on Half Price Day and went through the better books section seeking more bargain-like books.

And, honestly, I mostly looked for audio courses like those produced by The Teaching Company. And boy howdy did I find them. In the past, they’ve been priced at twenty or thirty dollars, and I could get them for half that. But this time, they were originally marked ten bucks, so I got them for five dollars each.

Here are the stacks:

The Teaching Company courses include:

Psychology of Human Behavior
The Lives of Great Christians
Algebra I
Luther: Gospel, Law, and Reformation
Geometry (by James Noggle)
A Day’s Read

Books include:

Milton’s Minor Poems
The Murder of Lidice by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Brush Up On Your Classics by Michael Macrone
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and illustrated by Frederic Remington
The Literature Lover’s Book of Lists by Judie H. Strouf
Under the Sunday Tree Paintings by Mr. Amos Ferguson/Poems by Eloise Greenfield
Guitar 2, a book about guitar techniques and whatnot
Miles Davis: Sketch Orks, a music book for trumpet for my youngest or my beautiful wife, both of whom play trumpet

Records include:

Black Satin by the George Shearing Quintet and Orchestra
The Chick Correa Elektric Band
Handel Sonatas for Recorder, Op.1
Time Further Out The Dave Brubeck Quartet
Boots Randolph Plays 12 Monstrous Hits

The records were cheap, too (a buck or two each after the price was halved). Overall, the prices were more affordable than I remember. Which is good.

The pickings were less books than things to listen to, but that’s alright. I have plenty to read until the next sales.

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Good Album Hunting, April 25, 2018: Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale

April 27, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Friends, I hit the Friends of the Library Book Sale on the first day it opened this year within fifteen minutes of the big bell ringing. Except they don’t have a big bell.

It was busy, but not packed, and I made my way to the record section in the back, as is my wont. I discovered again to my dismay that the record section is shrinking–or at least the dollar section (there’s no telling what my lie in the Better Books section, but one of the things about my record accumulation is that I’d prefer not to pay over a dollar for a record. Which lends itself to buying some discs of ill use and hoping for the best.

The diminished selection probably means there will never again be a day of buying sixty albums at a shot. I did, however, optimistically buy seventeen.

I got:

Foreign Tongue by Taxxi. Clearly, this is the best album with two scantily clad women on horseback bearing crossbows that I own. Although you never can tell. I might own a couple like this.
Mad Love by Linda Ronstadt
Snapshot by Sylvia (all right, I yield! I will buy the Sylvia albums!)
Energy by the Pointer Sisters
Eydie Gorme’s Greatest Hits, most of which I already own on the original records. But I must be complete in my accumulation.
Handel: The Complete Flute Sonatas by Jean-Pierre Rampal
Love Is A Game Of Poker by Nelson Riddle. Although I have Linda Ronstadt and Nelson Riddle, not together. Although I already own the three records they did together anyway.
The Yakin’ Sax Man by Boots Randolph
To the Limit by Joan Armatrading. My beautiful wife mentioned having one of her records once. So I bought that one for her and now another.
Jackie Gleason Presents Music For Lovers Only. Do I already own this? It’s hard to tell because I already own so many, and Gleason put “For Lovers Only” in a lot of the record titles.
Give Me The Reason by Luther Vandross. The first record I spun; unfortunately, it skips a bit on the first song, so it might be time for a penny on the needle arm.
Rapture by Anita Baker. Clearly, I’ve moved into more R&B as I can find it since I’ve pretty much topped up my collection of swinging 60s music.
Jackie Gleason Presents Music For The Lonely Hours. For those without lovers only, perhaps.
Reach Out, Burt Bacharach, Burt Bacharach and Friends, and Burt Bacharach Plays His Greatest Hits. No, now my swinging sixties music collection is topped up. For now.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll go back for some actual, you know, books. And the more expensive, although half priced, LPs. And some CD courses, perhaps.

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I’m Also A Murderous, Grotesque Monster

April 25, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

An empowering meme from Facebook:

You know, if you see a quote from Shelley, it’s probably from Frankenstein. And, odds are, if it sounds remotely ’empowering,’ it’s either Frankenstein’s monster or Frankenstein in the throes of his hubristic feeling of power in making the monster.

This is a lot like posting a gun-loving quote from author William S. Burroughs, who shot his wife.

File this under the unread write. Or meme, which is, sadly, the modern equivalent.

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Read This, Not That, Since Modern Readers Have To Choose One

April 24, 2018April 24, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

For some reason, Friar delved into a list of books provided by GQ entitled 21 Books You Don’t Have to Read:

We’ve been told all our lives that we can only call ourselves well-read once we’ve read the Great Books. We tried. We got halfway through Infinite Jest and halfway through the SparkNotes on Finnegans Wake. But a few pages into Bleak House, we realized that not all the Great Books have aged well. Some are racist and some are sexist, but most are just really, really boring. So we—and a group of un-boring writers—give you permission to strike these books from the canon. Here’s what you should read instead.

Sounds like the ill-read leading the unread to me, but it does present itself as a book quiz! Here’s the list. I’ve bolded the titles I’ve read:

Old Canon:	New, Improved GQ Canon:
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty	The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger	Olivia: A Novel by Dorothy Strachey
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves	Dispatches by Michael Herr
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway	The Summer Book by Tove Jannson
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho	Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway	The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy	The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
John Adams by David McCullough	Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Clarice Millard
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain	Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
	The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis
The Ambassadors by Henry James	The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
The Bible	The Notebook by Agota Kristof
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger	Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein	The Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin
Dracula by Bram Stoker	Angels by Denis Johnson
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller	The American Granddaughter by Inaam Kachachi
Life by Keith Richards	The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen	Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon	Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut	Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift	The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Stern

Of the entire list, the books that I have not yet read but might someday includes Dracula and maybe some Pynchon (although I think the title I have on my to-read shelves is The Crying of Lot 49). The rest of it? Meh, the kind of thing you already find on college syllabi these days.

But to call them canon–even some of those on the left side of the list–presupposes that anyone will give a flying fish about them in a couple of decades. Which I doubt.

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How Can We Miss It If It Hasn’t Gone Away?

April 23, 2018April 22, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

THE RETURN OF MAD MAGAZINE AND ITS ALL-NEW GANG OF IDIOTS:

MORE THAN 40 years ago this month, MAD Magazine founder William M. Gaines managed to outrage hundreds of his loyal readers, all by barely lifting a finger. For the April 1974 issue of his happily juvenile comedy rag—a mix of pop-culture parodies, political humor, and sound-effect-saturated comic strips—Gaines’ staff went with a cover illustration guaranteed to shock school teachers and parents around the country: A raised middle finger, accompanied by the declaration that MAD was the “Number One Ecch Magazine.” Gaines had casually approved the image, which he didn’t even find that funny. But when some of the magazine’s nearly 2 million readers began complaining, he wound up personally writing letters of apology. “We put it out, and the roof fell in,” Gaines later said of the issue.

It’s hard to imagine a similarly outraged reaction to the just-released MAD No. 1, the first issue since its publisher, DC Entertainment, announced a much-needed relaunch.

Wired makes it sound like Mad had gone away. But it had not. As a matter of fact, we bought a subscription for our oldest son for Christmas.

I wonder if the Wired writer knew that. Or it mattered.

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Not Me, But Don’t Think I Haven’t Thought Of It

April 22, 2018June 1, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Self-storage units surge in Milwaukee because ‘people don’t like to get rid of stuff’

As you might know, gentle reader, I like to retain things as artifacts of my youth as I’m a few decades ahead of my peers in not having many friends or family with whom I can reminisce. So I have bunches of things from my dead family members on mantels and shelves and in boxes in my closets. I also collect a lot of things, from comic books to old computers, that take up space in our store room. I don’t like to let things go.

But strangely enough, the only time I’ve considered renting storage space is to clear space in my garage, where we have boxes of children’s or my beautiful wife’s books, some kitchen stuff not in frequent (that is, once in a decade) use, and some craft gear that I’m not actively using, and some furniture that I’ve been meaning to refinish for the last twenty years (what, you say–have I really moved these articles four times? Yes.). If I put them in a storage unit, I can make room in the garage for me to actually do things in it.

But so far, no. I’m afraid of what would happen were I to get one storage unit. I fear it would be like putting the first item in the bag at a book sale’s bag day.

So I’ll just have to resign myself to the remedy that we’ve used over the years: buy a bigger house.

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Good Book Hunting, April 19 and 21, 2018: Hooked on Books/Friends of the Christian County Library Book Sale

April 22, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Well, it is Book Sale Month here in Springfield. The friends of the local libraries hold their book sales. Did that stop me from swinging by Hooked on Books to see what they had on their dollar carts when I had a few minutes to kill on Thursday? Of course not.

I got:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks which I don’t have to read in case her case comes up in a trivia night as it already has.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. The suspicious young man who didn’t know Hooked on Books used to put red dots on the spine for dollar books was skeptical that this book by a popular author was on the dollar books cart, but he found some damage to the spine that might account for it. Probably brought some termites home with me or something on this book.
Golden Times: Tales Through The Sugarhouse Window, which looks to be a collection of columns or musings.

Meanwhile, in Ozark, the Friends of the Christian County Library book sale had already kicked off to little fanfare, and we only managed to go on Saturday morning. Bag day. It still had a sizeable selection when we got there, which allowed me to fill only three bags (and my beautiful wife filled one). So, for eight dollars, we got:

The Willow Bees, a collection of musings from a local author, I reckon. There was a stack of them available.
1001 Ways To Be Romantic. Probably not like Keats and Byron.
Death of a Doxy, a Nero Wolfe mystery.
Act of Treason by Vince Flynn. Heather likes him, so I’ve been picking up his books. Since I’ve not started reading them yet, I’m probably picking up multiple copies of each. But, hey, bag day. I had to pick this up in case I hadn’t already.
Country Editor’s Boy, a collection of country memories.
A collection of stories by Dorothy Parker.
Athabasca by Alistair MacLean.
Naked Came The Manatee, a novel by a collection of Florida authors including Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry.
The Secret Power Within by Chuck Norris, a Zen musing by the actor.
Two collections of Sally Forth comics by Greg Howard.
The Trivia Lover’s Guide to the World.
Home Song, a Cape Light novel that might not even be about Christmas. What’s next for me, cozy mysteries and romance novels?
License Renewed, one of Gardner’s later James Bond novels since I’ve been watching the films with my boys.
The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Susan McBride, one of the Debutante Dropout mysteries by the St. Louis area author. My god, is this a cozy? How far have I fallen?
Nightmare Town, a collection of stories by Dashiell Hammett. I’ve probably read them before. But not in this volume.
Fast Fiction: Creating Fiction in Five Minutes, a writing book. Because I’ve been meaning to delve into fiction again.
Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric. It looks to be a collection of quotes with explanations about them.
Einstein for Beginners. After my recent failed forays into higher physics, I probably need this. If I can’t get it, the next stop is Physics for Dummies.
Sharpe’s Fury, one of Bernard Cornwell’s historical series. Which I might already own in paperback, but bag day. Although I probably would have paid a buck for it anyway just in case I didn’t have it.
Skin Game, one of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. Which I probably don’t already have.
Pocket Quips, a little paperback of one-liners and gags.
The Bourne Identity. We passed through Nixa on the way to the book sale, and I remember that someone recently put up a joke sign on the Welcome to Nixa sign that said “Home of Jason Bourne”, but I guess that’s the movie version. I’ve not read the book, but some years ago I listened to one of them on audiobook. My wife loves them, though.
Starwolves: Battle of the Ring and Star Wolves: Dreadnaught. Because they had a similar name to Star Wolf: The Weapon From Beyond. But the series are quite likely unrelated.
Iroshi, The Glaive, and Persea. I picked up The Glaive to see if it’s related to Krull (no). It’s the second book in a series about a hero with an actual glaive. I found the first (Iroshi) and another in the series nearby, so I bought them. Because bag day.
Gust Front by John Ringo.
March to the Sea by John Ringo and David Weber. I’ve been seeing a lot of Ringo hit the book sales and used book stores lately. There must be something in the publishing cycle of an author that dictates how soon this happens after an author gets notice and sales. Ringo seems to have hit that point in his career. I really should read one of the ones I’ve been picking up to see if I like them before I acquire the whole collection only to determine I don’t like them. Well, another besides The Hero, I guess.

So that’s, carry the one, thirty-three new books. Or, at my current pace, two years’ worth of reading. For essentially nine dollars.

I’d better get to reading instead of telling you about it.

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Word of the Day: Chautauqua

April 20, 2018April 5, 2020 Brian J. Noggle

So I started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance this week, and the narrator keeps mentioning a Chautauqua, which is his lesson he’s trying to impart in a chapter. I kinda meant to look it up, but I didn’t.

The Greene County Commonwealth, currently the only paper I subscribe to, has a throwback history article every week, and Wednesday, it talked about circuit Chautauquas in the Springfield area in the early part of the 20th century.

Apparently, a Chautauqua was a summer camp like thing for education, where common people could go listen to lectures and hear great music. Circuit Chautauquas were kinda like traveling carnival versions of the same. They were started by an organization that held the first on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in New York, and they got the nickname from that.

Man, I hope that’s a question in a forthcoming trivia night since it’s something I learned and will probably retain.

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