Musings from Brian J. Noggle

This book is a collection of love poems written by 70s and 80s best-selling novelist Danielle Steel. It’s a poetry series of sorts, sort of a concept album of poetry describing the break-up of a relationship, the loneliness thereafter, and then the resumption of dating and perhaps the start of a new, lasting relationship.

The poems themselves are not bad–a cut above some of the things I read in chapbooks and whatnot–but the poems have a collegiate feel to them. The lyrics have a good sense of rhythm and some nice imagery, but suffer from excessive line breakery–where phrases are chopped into separate lines because that’s how one does poetry. Or did in the 1970s and 1980s and in scholastic notebooks.

At any rate, I got the book for a buck at Hooked on Books on their outdoor cart o’ cheap thrills, so it was worth my purchase. It’s still available on Amazon, though, so if you’re so inclined, you can click below. Remember, every time you purchase an item through the Amazon links I provide, I get absolutely nothing from it because Amazon had a mad-on for Missouri from time immemorial (in that I don’t remember when it started). I think it was because Missouri wanted them to collect sales taxes; Amazon does now, but it doesn’t give me a twopence for all these sweet, sweet outgoing links. And to be honest, I’m not sure if I’d want them to suddenly allow me back in the program, as I’d have to prolly manually update thousands of links on this site for a couple bucks a year. But I digress.

This book is quite a downer.

I read America Alone almost six years ago (when this current title was still fresh). This one is less optimistic: in the interim, America Alone (ish) elected Barack Obama, and several years’ worth of his policies were underway, so Steyn is concerned that America has joined the rest of the west in entering its decline. So he talks about what the world will look like after the United States cedes its hegemony to other nations with less noble intentions.

The thing I said about America Alone also applies here:

Five years after the book, I’m not as gloomy as Steyn was (and is now, given the title of his latest book–After America for those of you who might not know). The sweep of history is broad and long, and its predictors are more often wrong than not. However, the book does crystallize, or should, that our Western traditions and heritage are better than all the others that have been tried and do require some conscious defense thereof. If you merely enjoy liberty without recognizing its sources, someone will quickly take it from you.

Right down to how long it took me to read it after its publication.

As I said, it’s pessimistic, and it’s too much like reading his blog in book length. Which is to say, depressing if you take it too seriously. He might be right, he might be wrong, and most likely he’s part both. But there’s no good spending one’s evenings before bed wallowing in it. Also, the recent past might suggest a change in the wind for the United States which, one way or another, will render its half-decade-past prognostications out-of-date.

So read it if you’re reading this blog post from somewhere in 2011 or 2012 when it’s fresh. Otherwise, stick to shorter, current doses on the Internet.

And remind me to stay away from current events books at the upcoming book sales.

As I might have mentioned, I found this book when I went looking for The Legend of Gilgamesh. This book was on the book shelf where I’d last seen the earlier work, so I read it instead when I could not find the epic. They’re almost the same: You’d have to explain to anyone under thirty-five who either of these guys is. Or was.

At any rate, this book collects a bit of Berra’s recollections from his life in baseball and presents a little life advice based on it. That’s about it. He talks about breaking into the big leagues, playing in New York in the days before baseball players made millions, and his youth in St. Louis. It explains how he got the nickname Yogi and, more importantly, his real name (which is probably available on his Wikipedia entry, but I’ve never looked at it). Both of which could help me should they come up in a trivia night. Which would have to be run by someone older than 35.

A nice piece of filler reading material. It won’t change my life, but it was pleasant. Also, take a look at that title page: It looks as though this book is signed by the author. How cool is that?

It’s unfortunate that the first Executioner book I picked up after reading Rated R was this book. Whereas Leon is funnin’ with the cartoonish violence in a bit of almost campy fun, I’m afraid the author of this Executioner book is earnest. Which is unfortunate, because we have ACTION! like this:

He encountered another two-man patrol walking its beat near the intersection midway between the blocks separating the high command from the checkpoint.

This couple did not know of their encounter with the Executioner until the heartbeat of their death.

He came at them fast, the edge of each stiffened hand slashing downward hard enough to break both necks. The soldiers crumpled to the pavement at Bolan’s feet with soft sighs.

And on the next page:

The Executioner tugged open the driver’s door, reached in and rapidly pulled the driver out, down into a raised knee that smacked the man’s face with such force, Bolan heard the neck snap.

I’m not sure the physics works out in either of these cases, but it’s sure like what you saw in the movies in the 1980s (and beyond). Old men’s adventure fiction was informed by authors who’d read classical literature. Some of these post-Pendleton Executioner novels are informed by authors who watched direct-to-cable actioners.

At any rate, the plot, ripped from Reader’s Digest reports: Bolan gets word of the Russians developing a new chemical weapon even worse than Yellow Rain at an out-of-the-way base near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Bolan hooks up with some mujahedeen and a CIA operative to find the location and put a stop to it. In a Bolanesque fashion.

It’s a cut below the average Bolan fare. I know what you’re asking: Does Bolan smoke? (As you may recall, gentle reader, Bolan did not smoke in the Pendleton novels, so I gauge how well the house author knows about the canon by whether Bolan lights a cigarette or not in any given volume.) Yes, yes, he does. And I get the sense he will more and more in the books to come.

I mean, look at this action bit in the wilds of Afghanistan:

He opened fire, the impact of so many bullets flinging the men off of their feet into shrubbery nearby where only their legs protruded, tremulous in death.

Leaving aside the comma splice which this particular writer loves to use, he describes bushes or brush as shrubbery (numerous times). Shrubbery is part of a garden or maintained yard, ainna? Not something you find in the woods or the mountains of Afghanistan.

Oy, vey. But the text of the book aside, we get some cinéma vérité or breaking of the fourth wall with the transcription of some espionage instructions from a numbers station in the front cover:

Lottery numbers, you insist? Maybe in your mundane world. But in my action-packed world, they’re espionage instructions.

Except I hope they’re not for me. We haven’t covered snapping two men’s necks simultaneously with knife hands in my martial arts class yet.

My beautiful wife bought this book from a Facebook friend because a portion of the proceeds went to help people recover from the Tennessee wild fires last year. She might have given it to me, or I might have taken it from her in a fit of kleptomania. Regardless, I started working through it during the football season as I often do such volumes of poetry, and I recently picked it back up from the stack of books beside the sofa where some of the books have been sitting for several football seasons awaiting my perusal. It’s like the Rooneyfication of reading materials over there.

At any rate, the poet is a three letter woman with this volume of poetry: She is a former professional singer and has appeared on stage on multiple continents; she followed that up with a visual arts (drawing and, one assumes, sculpture) period that included traveling to arts fairs (revealed in the book). Then she decided to take up poetry, and the result is this book.

It’s not a bad book, but it is a bit of a doodle book of poetry. The author includes a number of poems that are just noodling with words and poetry. Much of the work lacks a refining touch. There are some turns of phrase here and there that are pretty good, but mostly it’s just self-expression.

Hey, I’m not knocking it. I’m finta do my own collection of poetry one of these days. The meaning of poetry comes from what effect it has on you, the individual. This particular collection didn’t resonate with me, but I’m more of a classicist when it comes to poetry. Your mileage may vary.

This book is a short discourse on the development of weapons from the middle of the first millennium to the middle of the second, but the focus is definitely on the period from roughly 1000-1500 AD. It says “Knight,” after all.

The chapters are broken down into weapon groupings: Spear and Lance; Axe, Mace, and Hammer; Sword and Dagger; and Early Firearms. The individual chapters are told in a bit of rambling discourse style, as though the author were speaking off-the-cuff, although there are a number of black-and-white illustrations included to show the weapon innovations as he talks about them. Unfortunately, these illustrations are a bit crude and might have made the text clearer if they were not.

At any rate, it was an hour or two through, as it only is a shade over 100 pages plus glossary and index. I learned one thing, for sure: I need a glaive in my personal collection.

Also, even though Ewart Oakeshott sounds like the name someone would choose in the Society for Creative Anachronism, he was a weapons collector and illustrator who definitely knew his material. It’s just that the presentation in this novel could have used some improvement with some charts and timelines and some better organization. But if all you’ve seen is the illustration in the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, you could learn something. And by “you could,” I mean, “I did.” Although none of this material came up in the Geek Trivia Night I attended this weekend, unfortunately.