Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I bought this book for fourteen bucks in paperback at Borders (well, I used a gift card for part of it) because I like Bob Greene’s work. As some of you might recall, I read Bob Greene’s America last year. He’s much better at columns and essays than at full length novels, it would appear based on this single sample.

This book chronicles the aftermath Bob Greene’s father’s death. Greene explores his relationship to his father and seeks a better understanding of the World War II generation as he interviews Paul Tibbets, the man who not only flew the Enola Gay but commanded the military force responsible for putting together the mission. So Greene weaves together the individually compelling stories in what, ultimately, proves to be a less than satisfying mishmash.

Greene wanders between his memories of his father’s last days, his interviews with Tibbets, and the audiotapes that his father made to tell his children his WWII experiences as an infantryman in Italy in the war. Throughout, we get Greene’s earnest voice, sometime plaintive and sometimes naive, discussing the events as they unfold. I’ve complimented Greene’s columns and his collection of columns for their concision and transparent eyeballness, but he cannot sustain it in this longer work. And at the end, Greene gets to meet the two other surviving members of the Enola Gay crew as the three reunite in Branson, Missouri. We get to see they’re older and that most people don’t know who they are, and at the end of the weekend, the book pretty much ends. It doesn’t build to a strong insight or conclusion of any real meat, and although a column doesn’t have to, a book should.

So I’m ultimately disappointed. I look forward to more collections of his columns, if any exist, but have some trepidation regarding his other long works and his novel. But I’ll try at least one, since it’s on my too-read shelves.

Okay I read another of these. I bought 5-10 for 33 cents each at Hooked on Books in Springfield, and they’re well worth it. Star Trek 6, like the others in the series, gathers together some of the episodes from the original Star Trek series and does them in a short story format. They’re quick reads as they run about 130 pages each and, as paperbacks, they fit in one’s pocket.

A couple of things strike me as I read them:

• Wow, you mean there are episodes of the original series I haven’t seen? I guess they made, what, 80 of them over three years; I just assumed that through the years of syndication, I had seen them all. I haven’t. Which means there’s probably a TOS DVD box set in my future.
• Man, do you remember when paperback books had order forms right in the back? Have you ever encountered a paperback book that had its order form clipped out? Me either. Do they still do that? I remember the old paperback versions of Ayn Rand’s writing actually had a card glued into the middle for information about the ARI, but I haven’t seen a paperback with the order form in years. Of course, I haven’t bought a new paperback book in years….

I actually ordered Cold Service from Amazon, so I’m a week late in reading it. But I read it in a single night, as is my wont. It helps that the books are thick, but the print is large and the most of the book is dialogue.

The plot basically recycles Small Vices and Pale Kings and Princes in that Hawk gets shot, almost dies, and when he recuperates, he and Spenser will pit the various organized crime elements against each other to get revenge on the gang who shot Hawk and the people whom he was protecting (some bodyguard–sorry, that’s A Savage Place).

The same knocks I make on Crais novels I can make on Parker in the last couple of years. The plot centers on a favor for a friend instead of a case, it features a problem and not a mystery, and it features an ethnic gang of the month (Ukrainians). Still, I was partly raised by Robert B. Parker since I read the best of the Spenser novels in my fatherless formative years, so I give him a little more leeway for the books he phones in.

Still, I enjoyed the book well enough, but I’d prefer to see Spenser work on some cases, not some guerilla campaigns against organized crime.

I saw this book last winter at the 80% off book store before I saw its predecessor The Probability Broach; however, I found the first one and read it first and finally, five months later, got to this book.

This book is a short story stuffed with Libertarian policy. A couple of crimes occur, and the heroes interview a number of authoritarian straw men and shout them down with Libertarian reason. Then, on page 250, a member of the villains committing the crimes comes forward and explains to them what’s going on in the plot and how to reach the climactic shootout where the bad guys die, the good guys are only injured, and an unexpected cavalry arrives.

I guess if you eagerly bought the book, this is kinda what you hoped would happen. However, I found the book tiresome to read without a plot, although the writing was simple and easygoing enough. But it’s hard to overtly root for an ideology as the antagonist.