Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Now, Dave Barry is a humorist. He oozes absurdity so much he has to wear special clothing to keep from leaving a mess on furniture. Scott Adams can’t touch Dave Barry in the sustained funny department.

Smurphy T. Murphy loaned me a copy of Dave Barry’s history book in our shared Honors Western Civ class, and I read through it, not but not fast enough to avoid leaving a food stain when I returned it. That was 1989. This book came out in 1992, only three years later, and it’s taken me this long to read it.

It’s funny, but it’s also tragic in a way, because we know how Dave’s marriage to Beth will end, so the jokes about her divorcing him might have been funny then, but now they’re very sad.

A historical artifact and a funny book. Worth reading.

This book collects a number of blog posts from Scott Adams’ blog on Dilbert.com or something. As such, it ultimately proves that Scott Adams is not really what he fancies himself, a humorist, but is a cartoonist with some good cartoon ideas.

Well, maybe he’s a humorist, but this particular book takes on more thoughtful themes such as evolution, free will vs. determinism, and whatnot, and Adams condescends and mocks those who disagree with him, since the evolved determinism he takes on faith are the positions of smart people. He uses a self-defense against the accusations of thoughtlessness by admitting he is thoughtless.

Sadly, the book diminishes Adams in my estimation. He has real insight into business foibles that he illustrates in the comics, but ultimately, this collection puts his thinking into the worst of condescending geek culture. I have worked with people like Adams. I haven’t been friends with them.

This volume collects two crime fiction novels by Benjamin, a dog trainer by trade. As such, they feature a well-trained pit bull named Dashiell and both novels involve other dogs and one involves the world of dog trainers.

I know a lot of women mystery writers turn out paperbacks in the mold of a woman detective with a twist of some sort, and I hadn’t really gotten into any before this volume. Normally, I hit on the normal hardboiled stuff or the eggs benedict they serve instead these days. But the books are light enough and breezy enough to enjoy.

Plus, you can tell a woman wrote these books, unlike other books written by men (Robert B. Parker) featuring women protagonists. I think the epistemological differences are subtly apparent in not only the language but also the focus.

So to make a long book short, I enjoyed it and would not only mind reading more by this author but in the genre.

This is the Virgil Flowers book, although the difference between Flowers and Lucas Davenport is in their dress, their vehicles, their off-duty neat things, and that Flowers hasn’t married the love of his life and can pursue women. Like Davenport, Flowers is an ass man and spends a lot of the book commenting on women’s asses. Of course, I guess when you’re dealing with genre material, you really don’t get a broad variety of protagonists. And the book really doesn’t suffer from the similarities in the characters, unlike in, say, Robert B. Parker’s works.

The book takes place outside the twin cities, in small town Minnesota where a series of murders erupts with, dare I say it, ritualistic deaths? In a Sandford novel? Get out! No, really. Flowers works over the town, discovers many motives to kill a rich man who lived a lavish and swinging lifestyle in the early 1970s and earned the hatred of the townspeople in a business scam, and finally discovers the killer with a crack in the case that left me unsatisfied.

An average book, I suppose. At least Sandford didn’t feel the need to trash Bush here.

This is a later volume from Nash, and it shows. His preoccupation with his children has passed onto his preoccupation with his grandchildren. His poetry is more gloomy amid the humor as he recognizes he’s aging and won’t be the young man again. Hence, it really doesn’t exhibit the playful nature of his earlier works which really is the strength of his poetry. As a Nash aficionado, I’m glad I read it, but it’s not a good starting point in his work.