Review: Summerland

Summerland by Michael Chabon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had wanted to read this book for a long time. Chabon, Summer, Baseball, Fantasy -- what could go wrong? I found that I just wasn't into it, though. Perhaps it was because I read it in the fall, at the end of baseball season. The book felt too constructed to me, written to a specification. I did find myself very interested in some scenes, but the whole story - the connectedness of the scenes - just didn't grab me.

View all my reviews

Review: Poem a Day, Vol. 1

Poem a Day, Vol. 1 by Nicholas Albery
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It only took me about two and a half years to read this poem-a-day book. I'm not good at doing what people tell me, I guess. Instead of a daily read, I tended to read this in short chunks of a few days at a time. I appreciated the variety, although I enjoyed the more modern poets much more than the ones from centuries ago -- there were way too many of those classics in there. I enjoyed reading these, slowly. I was impressed to read in the foreword that many people would memorize a poem a day. That would be quite an accomplishment with this collection, with so many rare and/or dated words. But the poems are mostly one pagers, so memorizing might be more readily accomplished than longer poems. Overall, I enjoyed this but would have liked more modern and fewer classic poems...and maybe even more American poets -- this is the American version of a British poetry book, and some British poems were traded out for American poems, but not nearly enough for my liking...

View all my reviews

Review: Clete

Clete by James Lee Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The most amazing part of this audiobook was that the narrator does Clete's voice with a gravelly texture. It has got to hurt his throat doing that voice. And here, he does it through almost the entire book. Kudos to Will Patton.

Strange thing is, now that we get into the mind of Clete, he's almost identical to Robicheaux in how he thinks and imagines. Clete spends a lot of time talking to Joan of Arc in between "investigating", which was very much like Dave seeing the Confederates every few chapters. I'm not sure it's a good thing that two friends seem to share the same mental issues, but that does explain why they are friends.

Typical Burke story, at least typical of the last several Robicheaux books. Burke still describes the oppressive atmosphere in the bayous and parishes of Louisiana and the supernatural visions that atmosphere can release, but it doesn't seem as steamy as it used to be.

View all my reviews

Review: Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock

Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock by Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story here is interesting, from the start of California country rock, courtesy Linda Ronstadt and others. Focuses on a few key people and venues, and concludes with post-punk country. Lots on the Byrds, Eagles, and some other less known bands. The pictures are all large in this large book, but I thought there was a surprising preponderance of Nudie suit pictures. I would guess from the quantity of these pictures that the Country Music Hall of Fame, the source of this book, devotes a lot of space to these suits. This is probably more interesting to a clothing designer. The book made me a bit less interested in visiting the museum, which I'm positive wasn't the intent. A short read with nice pictures, and will give you some new bands or musicians to listen to if you didn't grow up in the California country rock music scene.

View all my reviews

Review: Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut by Mike Mullane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found it odd that Mullane, in the middle of the book, talks about how the shuttle designers changed a system and that change caused problems and flight delays. He used the common quote "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Then, at the end of the book, bemoaning NASA's loss of quality in the build of their shuttles, repeats a story about how an aspect of the ship's design was below tolerances, but it flew safely despite those functions being outside the specifications. When Mullane discussed this issue earlier in the story, he says that the spec writers saw what was needed for their part or process to be safe and added some contingent safety requirements, then the designer took those specs and added his own additional safety tolerances so that things tended to be oversafe. Yet by the end of the book he is saying the opposite. You can't have it both ways - "if it ain't broke don't fix it" is the opposite of "sooner or later it'll get you". I'm hoping Mullane at least understands the dichotomy here, but the way this is written, I'm not sure.

I enjoyed the book, despite Mullane's fraternity-level personality. He grows on you.

View all my reviews

Review: Life of Python

Life of Python by George C. Perry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book provided chapters on each of the Pythons' history before the show began, with some stories about how the group worked together for the television show, subsequent movies, and ancillary projects like the records and books and live shows. Interesting as a book about entertainers, it's also interesting in how the creative group came to be and how it created, which changed over time and project. Enjoyable, with plenty of black and white pictures that didn't add much to the text, unfortunately. Somewhat short, but that was a good thing here.

View all my reviews

Review: ABC for Book Collectors

ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a hobby now of flipping modern classic books found at estate sales. I always check the prices from various amateur and professional booksellers online, and I kept finding that the professionals have their own patois. Wanting to know more, and to make my own ads with some knowing verbiage, I took a chance on this classic glossary of book related terms. So this is a British book, written with that low-key British wit throughout. I actually enjoyed reading this, and I went through it alphabetically. However, the focus here was more on books over 150 years old than on those more modern. I ended up skimming about half of the entries because they were about books I doubt I will ever see, or bindings, or research sources. What I read was interesting and entertaining, and I know more than I did, so the book did its job well.

View all my reviews