Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I got this book in October, and when I was looking for something sort of escapist to work into my rotation, it was right there atop the stack.

This is the ninth book in the Dresden Files series, which is indeed about a powerful gun-toting hard-boiled wizard. In this volume, the wizard is looking for someone who is killing witches. While dressed up in his usual clothing. Some clues indicate his brother might be involved. His brother is a vampire, you see, but not a blood-sucking vampire. Instead, he feasts upon the emotions of his victims.

So the book starts out with the current crime and details and starts working us into the case, but just as suddenly it veers into Series Business. Characters from previous books and plotlines impact what’s going on. Of course, the houses of the vampires are politicking and manuvering against each other. Then there’s a mysterious figure whose identity is not revealed at the end, which means that’s something for a later book.

So it’s an interesting conceit–not unlike Hard Magic. But the Series Business distracts me and emphasizes that I’m an outsider to this series, not someone who’s been with it from the beginning. And I think it detracts from the current book’s plot some. It’s not only this book, gentle reader; as you know, I often complained about Robert B. Parker’s later books for the same reason. In the middle 1990s, I started the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton, but I dropped out after book five or six (of apparently 21 by now) because so much of the business in each book deals with characters and plots from other books. You don’t get much of that at all in classic pulp, but I guess the modern publishing world relies on the brandification of series and this sort of thing solidifies the connection with recurrent readers. But I don’t like it.

At any rate, reading Butcher’s bio indicates his path to becoming a published writer (and apparently a better-selling author than Larry Correia. He wrote and wrote and submitted and finally started doing conferences where he met…. Laurell K. Hamilton. And his career was on track. It’s pleasing to read of hard work leading to success.

But in a final reflection on the book: I’ll take others in the series if I find them easily, but I’m not going to go buy them new for myself or specifically looking for them at used book stores or book sales. I did, however, buy the first two in the series for my nephew (the same one I got the Correia books for a couple years back). So I did put a couple pennies in Butcher’s kitty which is more than I do for most authors I read these days.

Oh, and this book is the second one I’ve read this month that was originally sold at a Border’s (Blog being the other). I hadn’t thought of that book store in a while. I remember a time when there were a bunch of big book stores like that in St. Louis and here in Springfield. We’re still lucky enough to have a free-standing Barnes and Noble that’s only half-given over to Nooks and toys, and I only get in there three or four times a year. Sadly, I have enough to read without hitting a new book store frequently.

This book is a self-published memoir of a man who served as a chaplain during the Korean War. It’s built from his daily journal, so each day or so we get a paragraph or two that details where he was going, what he was doing, and the services that he held. It’s a remarkable time capsule and throws light on the daily activities of a chaplain in a war zone that you don’t get from M*A*S*H‘s Father Mulcahy. I mean, he has a box he throws in his jeep, and that acts as his altar and whatnot when he stops amongst a squad or brigade to perform an impromptu service. He highlights a piece of scripture, does a short sermon, and then encourages the men. It’s remarkable; Griepp actually won a Bronze Star for performing a service calmly while getting shelled.

At any rate, I highlighted (well, flagged; I’m not the type to put my own ink in books) a couple passages for comment:

In response to a letter from his mother, I looked up Pvt Roy Hartford of the King Company, age 16, and arranged a minority discharge for him.

Can you imagine a modern 16-year-old lying to get into the military? It happened a bunch back then.

Met some of the Marines, as they are fighting right next to our troops. Good soldiers, too, neither superior nor inferior to troopers of the 7th Cavalry.

My whole line wilts a little at this thought. On the other hand, this is a chaplain, so he has to say nice things about his sheep.

May 12 is “M-Day” for Operation Mascot. All of these children had experienced abandonment, rejection, or loss of both parents. Now it was time for another separation.

Apparently, various companies adopted orphans and lost children, and it got to be such a problem that the Army had to make a concentrated effort to keep its soldiers from taking care of the weak and the unfortunate in a war zone. Contrast this with the behaviour of most armies throughout history. And make a point of it in a history class if you dare.

Our personnel officer and Lt Edward Jirikowik, the center company commander, are having a problem. The Lt is expected to locate men to fill vacancies for jobs other than riflemen. Rotation is sending the riflemen home, but leaving typists, drivers, radio operators, and wire men. Such men cannot go until they are replaced by men of like skills.

My father, fresh out of boot camp, was lined up with the others and the first ten men were sent to Okinawa for a clerical position if they knew their alphabet, and the rest went to Vietnam. Which is why my father spent his overseas time in Okinawa. I always thought he felt bad about that because it meant he was unable to fight with his mates, but he might not have liked it because it represented a lengthened committment. I’ll never know, of course.

At any rate, it’s a fast and fascinating read if you’re interested in the history of the Korean War or whatnot. As I mentioned, the book is not just a book, it’s an artifact of a man who wanted to publish it. Check out the rudimentary layout:

Dan Rather emailed me to say that was laid out using Adobe Pagemaker on an Apple II.

The book also bears an inscription to a presumed comrade (forty years after the conflict). The handwritten message is for the recipient to see page 28; page 28 is starred. I presume this is where the Chaplain and the inscribee met. I hope it’s not the first clue to a treasure hidden in the Korean wilderness since I mentioned it on the Internet and would have put myself in the crosshairs of unscrupulous fortune-seekers if I did.

This book is a little Hallmark gift pick-up from the 1960s, the kind of simple gift that says I’m thinking about you but don’t know what to get you that’s more substantial. In the late 20th century, gift certificates served the same function. This particular volume was given as a Mother’s Day gift in 1966.

Unlike some books of this type, it collects poems from real poets, like Longfellow, Emerson, Wordsworth, and so on. Real poets whose works were (and still are) in the public domain, but the poems themselves had a greated depth than more recent ones. Of course, the Classics Club was popular enough to be in business in this post GI Bill world of the middle 20th century, so readers and compilers of gift volumes aspired higher than a collection of images with quips cribbed off the Internet.

And this book was not only read, but the recipient read the poems within at socials, and she noted which she’d read so she wouldn’t repeat herself, I guess.

So someone enjoyed this book more than I did, for sure.

It’s a nice, brief collection, and it most pleased me to know someone else, someone’s mother, read and appreciated the poems, perhaps even without a college degree in English.

As you can guess, I flipped through this book during football games.

As a Eyewitness book, it’s a graphically designed, visually oriented work with a number of images surrounding brief text, history, and explanations. Like a lot of these survey course coffee table books, the book covers a lot of ground in the Impressionist movement, a brief history, and a bit of individual information about the artists. It has sections (two page spreads) covering some themes and practices shared by the Impressionists and reasons why they’re considered Impressionists. As survey books, it’s not bad; I also see there are titles in the series that deal with the individual authors as well.

Serious students might think these books are a waste of time, but unserious students like me can pick up some tidbits. Two I did from this book: Renoir was one of the first to prime his canvases (that is, put down a base coat of white or gesso so that colors overlaid on the base coat would pop out more) and that Renoir worked wet-on-wet (I know what that is because Bob Ross did that). So I learned something certain in addition to adding to my familiarity with the works and images.

The book also gives a bunch more depth to the non-painting work, such as the sculptures and the cast bronze of the artists. Some other books shy away from this a bit because the paintings are easier to represent two-dimensionally perhaps.

At any rate, a good book to look at for a bit. I’ll keep my eyes out for others in the Eyewitness Books series on art. I think I have one or two on other topics that I’ll have to move up in my reading queue.

Books mentioned in this review:

On Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law brought trinkets and gifts for the kids, and I guess I qualify since she brought this book for me. She found it at a church bazaar or something, and it has Brett Favre’s picture right on it (as did this book which is about the same thing).

This book is a Scholastic paperback aimed at grade school children. I’m not sure what sort of statement my mother-in-law was making in giving this book to me. Or was she? Did I just steal a book from my children only because it has Brett Favre on the cover? WHAT KIND OF MAN AM I? Well, it’s only fair. They steal my cartoon books.

At any rate, the book gives brief laudatory bios of good NFL quarterbacks of 2004, including Tom Brady, Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, Michael Vick, Donovan McNabb, and Chad Pennington. The first three are creme-de-la-creme; Michael Vick played for a long time; Donovan McNabb had his day; and Chad Pennington was a quarterback in New York, which New Yorkers think is automatically worth two elsewhere before the season starts and they stink.

It was a quick read, and I was able to finish it on Thanksgiving before the Packers game which the Packers lost. I’d have been better off re-reading this book six times rather than watching that tragedy.

So it’s a bit dated, but not as dated as it will be in four or five years when all of the aforementioned quarterbacks are out of the league and some are in the Hall of Fame, including Chad Pennington if he goes to visit.

Books mentioned in this review: