Musings from Brian J. Noggle

This is the second book in the Tarzan series. Given its origins in pulp fiction, one must forgive some of the circumstances that come around for no other purpose than to spin a good yarn.

Tarzan leaves the United States after leaving Jane to his cousin, who has assumed Tarzan’s birthright. Then, he enlists in the French secret service. Stop snickering. Then he goes to Africa on a mission, meets some of the desert nomads, is almost killed, and then catches a ship that also holds Jane’s best friend. Tarzan is pitched overboard by bad guys, but he survives by swimming to Africa and then has some adventures becoming the king of a tribe and going to a lost city of gold. Meanwhile, Jane meets her friend, who tells her Tarzan has died. They start cruising up the west coast of Africa and are shipwrecked near where Tarzan’s cabin from the original book lies. Then Tarzan comes back, finds his cousin has died, rescues Jane from some bad men, and they are married.

Man, if I were Jane, I would never get on a boat again. I wonder what will happen in the next book, too. These pulp adventures are a guilty pleasure.

This is a collection from one of those poetry contests that makes everyone a winner and then puts all the winners into a book and then sells the winners copies of the book for $50. Full disclosure: I appeared in one of these books in 1984, and my sainted mother bought a copy. I probably even still have the copy of the Henderson Highlighter that reprinted the poem. But I digress. As for book quality, this isn’t the phone directory of the olden days like my poem appeared in, with 15 poems to a page of newsprint. This is actually like a real book of poems, with one or two per page.

Unfortunately, the poems aren’t that much better than I could have written in the sixth grade. I’m sorry, that’s not true; some of them are on more sophisticated subject matter, but that doesn’t mean that many of them are any good.

On the one hand, it really is awful that I subjected my children to hearing these as I read them aloud. On the other, it’s good to run through a bunch of these poems, especially after one has gotten a little bored with Ogden Nash, to recognize, again, what good poetry is.

This book is the novel that launched two films. The paperback I have is not a true tie-in since it doesn’t have the stars of the original on it, but it does mention that it will soon be a major motion picture.

The book hinges on four guys who take a subway train hostage. It’s gritty seventies suspense, and seems somewhat dated because these days we expect more dastardly plots than the lives and deaths of sixteen hostages. The book bounces between scenes and characters and occasional flarings of violence.

Frankly, I don’t see how you make it into a movie featuring Mattheau or Washington, since the dispatch cop isn’t a featured player, but there you go.

Good piece of writing. I enjoyed it, but it does seem dated.

So far, I’ve kept my word. I didn’t buy this book, I checked it out from the library. It’s not that bad of a bit, really, compared to some of Parker’s other recent entries. In it, Hitch and Cole rescue April Kyle Susan Silverman Allie from a whorehouse and they move to Brimstone, a town on the upswing. There, a revivalist preacher works to shut down the saloons. Hitch and Cole work as marshals and set up shop and home with Allie and the daughter of a farmer. The unholy alliance between the preacher and the biggest saloon owner breaks down violently, and Spenser and Hawk Everett and Virgil call winner. Then they decide to leave Brimstone and return to Appaloosa to settle down.

I think I got the major things, but I left out a sidebar about an Indian with a vendetta against the saloon owner. But Parker could have, too.

I think David Barry wanted to write A Christmas Story for our generation. The book is short (117 pages, which is just right for a movie script). It’s a sweet little story that’s not full of quite the absurdity of his normal work or his full novels, and it’s cut into a short number of scenes. It tells the story of a dog’s death on Christmas Eve against the backdrop–or maybe it’s the foreground–of the children’s participation in the Christmas pageant.

Now, the text itself is not 117 pages. As a matter of fact, almost fifty percent of the book is old pictures and illustrations designed to visually evoke the scenes, although they are not direct illustrations of the scenes. It’s Lileksian.

It’s a plenty short piece and an easy read, so it’s worth its time.

This is a lightweight tip book, a self-help bit. It focuses mostly on staging your home when you’re still in it and provides a lot of ideas about how to alter your furniture arrangements and little things you can do with your accessories to help sell your home. As such, it wasn’t that helpful for me, since we’re vacating before selling.

However, if you’re selling your house with your stuff is still in it, this book is probably worth your time.

It takes a strong man to buy a book of photography depicting cats and then to admit it on his blog, publically. At least that’s what I tell myself before the beatings start.

This book focuses on cats in the workplace, mostly in New York City, in 1979. It’s worth more for the backgrounds of the workplaces than the cats in the foreground. A liquor store that Ed McBain would have described. The window of a bodega looking out on the New York street. Broadway full of 1970s cars. That sort of thing. I think I’m turning into James Lileks. Moreso. Of course, I’m not scanning them and making a Web site dedicated to them. Yet.

Also, if you like kitties, this book has them. No chinchillas, though.