Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I was never a Cub scout. Oh, I attended an organizational or informational meeting for it, once, in about the second grade. My mother, my brother, and Boogie and his mom went down to a church on Teutonia to hear more about it, and we were very excited about it, but it required some sort of financial outlay, and we couldn’t swing that back in the government cheese days.

Fortunately for me, this book can help me overcome that disadvantage, at least as far as tying knots goes.

I mean, I know two knots, basically: a slip knot and a double reversed slip knot that I think my father taught me as a square knot. So when it comes to tying things down in my truck, for example, I’ve had to rely on them. With success, fortunately, so far.

But this short book contains a menu of 24 knots and includes cardstock pages through which you can lace some string to practice the knots in a helpful, step-by-step manner. It’s not quite as good as having someone there to help guide you, but it’s better than a mere set of photos alone. Which will become important when it comes time for me to pass on generational knowledge to my children, knowledge whose knowing I’ll have to get from books instead of getting them from actual, you know, preceding generations of my forefathers.

Sorry, I was talking about a book here before I somehow wandered into a self-involved bit about growing up in a broken home.

The book includes these knots:

• The Bowline
• The Clove Hitch
• The Two Half Hitches
• The Tautline Hitch
• The Better Bow
• The Bow Tie
• The Trucker’s Hitch
• The Constrictor Knot
• The Ring Knot
• The Prusik Knot
• The Timber Hitch
• The Killeg Hitch
• The Sheep Shank
• The Rolling Hitch
• The Coil
• The Package Knot
• The Harness Loop
• The Short End Bend
• The Figure 8 Stopper
• The Incredible Magic Loop

As you can guess, it’s not a long book, but so it’s a quick run through. But it’s a solidly constructed piece of work, coil-bound and on cardboard so you can practice. I’ll probably keep the book on my desk so I can practice some of these knots while I watch a process run or such. A little bit of practicing on something every day to get better at it. Something I never learned to do. Probably because I was the product of a broken, government cheese kind of home as a youth. Or more probably because I have quite a touch of the lazy in me and always have.

Books mentioned in this review:

I admit, I fall behind on the Robert Crais reading. I don’t know why I haven’t been seeking out his books at the library like I have John Sandford’s (until recently). But I haven’t. I read Chasing Darkness over four years ago.

But when I fall behind, my beautiful wife is there to provide me with nice hardback copies of the books for Christmas, like this one. And I read it promptly.

It’s a Joe Pike-centered novel, where Joe runs into a crime in progress and intervenes, only to learn that the victim is on the run from a vicious, relentless killer who has been looking for his targets for years. Joe’s heart goes pitter-pat, such as Joe Pike’s heart does, over the “niece” of the victim who really isn’t his niece at all.

So the basic outline of the book is that Pike and Cole try to uncover who these people are and who is after them while also trying to find where they’ve run to next. It’s pretty standard stuff, but I rather enjoyed the book. I got the feeling that I did when I read the old Parker books: I wanted to be like the protagonists. I aspired.

It’s not something I tend to get from the Davenport books or the John D. MacDonald one-offs, or even the Executioner series.

My beautiful wife gave me three of these books, and I’m looking forward to reading them, not just finishing them.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book smells like the 1970s: it’s an inexpensive paper and an inexpensive hard binding designed for school libraries. Or maybe that’s just how they did it in Great Britain in those days. I dunno. It’s got a bit of a musty odor that it shares when you read it.

As the title says, it’s a a book about how to take a couple of sticks, some paper, plastic, and/or other material, and string to make a kite. Like most craft books, it starts out with basic techniques and moves to specific projects of different types of flat kites (box kites are not included). Also, note that the book does not include directions for embedding glass in your kite strings, so no fighting kites, either, children.

But it’s something interesting to consider as a project to work on with one’s children. You could go to the drug store and buy a wing-style plastic kite for two dollars, but if you really want to make an impression in their future memories, you can take a couple dowels (or better yet, tree branches) and do the same thing.

Maybe I’ll do that one of these days.

At any rate, this book is only 28 pages, so it’s not a grand tome on the history of kites through the ages (which is what it would have been if it had to be padded to an adult craft book). It’s just sticks, papers, designs, and some instructions on flying a kite. A simple pleasure, or so I remember.

Books mentioned in this review:

Reading the pulp fiction blogs newly in the sidebar reminded me that I had not read a John D. MacDonald novel in quite some time (not since The Damned in March 2012). So I picked up this book.

The novel focuses on an American ex-pat in Mexico who wants to get a little extra income to supplement his savings, so he talks to another ex-pat, a decadent aging beauty who suggests an artist workshop. They line up a couple of artists to teach, rent a rundown failed hotel for the summer, gather a staff of inexpensive indolents, and lure a varied cast of characters to the workshop. Students include a retired career military man who likes to paint landscapes where battles were fought; a newly married couple on a honeymoon, a recent widow who is beautiful but who seems to have given up on life; a player who’s out to conquer more women in his scientific study of the species; an artist working low-paying jobs; a high school teacher with a hunger for sex; a couple of rich Texan girls; an ad man who suffered a mental breakdown; an architect whose firm is breaking up because his partner’s wife has fallen in love with him, and a couple of older women who paint as a hobby.

That’s pretty much the plot, too. They come together, meet, interact, pair off somewhat, and then they leave.

With a MacDonald book, you kinda wait for the death or crime as a pivotal moment, but there isn’t one in this book. I’m not sure there’s even a pivotal moment, although a party has some dramatic impact on the people and turn their lives a bit.

But it’s an interesting book, and one filled with MacDonald’s writing. So if you’re a fan, you’ll enjoy it more than if you’re not, but it’s worth a read. Also, you should be a MacDonald fan. Thank you, that is all.

Books mentioned in this review:

I bought this book in the discount bin at the grocery store a couple years back. It’s an art gallery style book sampling modern comics, particularly focusing on independent artists who are doing creative work with the new technologies.

I mean, there are some smaller books in the Marvel line mentioned, but most of it is smaller artists publishing their own work. The focus is not American comic art, either; the book features a lot of British, Brazilian, Japanese, and European artists. The author is himself a British comic book editor, so there you go.

The biggest insight I got out of it really has more to do with my own relationship to the comics, such as it is these days. As I was going along, I read the captions for the art first and only then, sometimes, looked at the images briefly.

So that might explain why I take a little less out of books like Frik’in Hell and why I don’t do comic books as much as I did when I was younger; I’m more into the prose than into the art, and when that art takes precedence over the story, I’m not sold on it. I’m that way with films, too, I guess. Come to think of it, I’m that way with prose books, too.

So it’s an interesting book to page through, and I liked it. But not enough to go buy a stack of comic books.

Books mentioned in this review: