tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36298962100662182482023-11-16T10:51:58.538-05:00Steven E. Belanger: Writing It DownSteven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.comBlogger574125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-76490267779451491542022-12-21T21:44:00.003-05:002022-12-21T22:02:39.651-05:00Movie: Lizzie, about Lizzie Borden. With Chloe Sevigney and Kristen Stewart<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div></div></div><p></p><p>I wasn't feeling great today, so I watched Lizzie, a movie I've wanted to see for awhile, on HBO Max. It's not supposed to be nonfiction, but it sticks close to the facts--except that it combines Uncle John with the town constable. This is unfair. The real Constable/Sheriff did a great job, actually, while the real Uncle John was indeed a shady character. As shady as he is in the movie, I don't know, but rather shady.</p><p>This movie tries to answer the Why more than the How. It shows that Lizzie did indeed commit the murders. It is very well directed and very well acted. If you have an interest in Lizzie Borden, it is well worth your time. If you don't, though, this may be a tough sell for you. It stretched the truth a little, but it really focuses on Lizzie Borden's possible lesbianism, and Bridget's, too, for that matter. I disagree with this approach for two reasons. A) though her lesbianism is possible, it isn't definitely proven in anything I've ever read--and this was the most heavily-covered crime of the 1890s, and it's still very popular. I'm not saying she wasn't gay. I'm just saying it isn't established fact. She did provably live with an actress from NH and NY for awhile at Maplecroft, but that doesn't mean she was heavily active as a gay woman. Had she been, someone would've proven it so. No one did, and no one has. And, B) Her possible lesbianism doesn't matter in terms of whether she committed the murders. She definitely and provably did, and her being gay actually didn't have anything to do with it. I'll come back to that.</p><p>The biggest difference of this movie, compared to other movies/shows/books, etc., is that Lizzie killed Abby while naked. John Douglas, in his book The Cases That Haunt Us, doubts that she did. (He mentions the movie, and the Elizabeth Montgomery flick.) He says No simply because Victorian women of a high class wouldn't do such a thing. I agree with almost everything Douglas has said about any crime or culprit in any of his books, but I disagree here. The problem with that logic is that it's the same thought the all-male jury had when they voted Lizzie not guilty. They simply couldn't believe a Victorian woman could commit these murders. They were very wrong. There was definitely a temporary insanity going on with Lizzie that day, and crazed people do things they wouldn't normally do, by definition. Now, this doesn't mean that she did kill Abby while naked, but it also doesn't mean she didn't. Being naked solves the problem of quickly washing in a basin (the house didn't have a tub or shower, or piping of any kind; Andrew was a miser in many ways), burning the clothes in the stove or fireplace, and re-dressing. Ultimately this doesn't matter; there's plenty of evidence that she killed Abby Borden. But the movie goes into Why, beyond the financial reasons.</p><p>The movie shows Bridget, the housekeeper, as a lover of Lizzie's, which is almost definitely false. It shows Bridget stripping naked to kill Andrew because he'd been sexually assaulting her. (And of failing to kill him, so Lizzie did, instead.) This is also not a proven thing, though it is a very commonly expressed option. It was common at the time for some wealthy men to assault the hired help. The movie also insinuates that he'd been doing the same to Lizzie beforehand. This has also never been proven, though it was not unheard of. In fact, it's a bit of an 1890s Victorian stereotype. But commonality isn't proof. John Douglas thinks it's possible that he did maybe assault Lizzie. I've read that in a few places, and that her kleptomania, the overkill, and other behaviors were indicative of that. But it's never been proven, and commonality isn't proof. I like to stick to the facts. And, again, I think the overkill could've been due solely to the proven fact that Andrew was leaving Abby almost everything in the will, and snubbing his daughters. This also explains why Abby was killed first, by an hour-and-a-half. His last existing will stated that in his demise, Abby got everything, but that if she deceased first, the money goes to his daughters. Which is what happened. Had he died first, the money immediately goes to Abby, and if she dies, even moments later, the money goes to her family--and Lizzie and Emma get nothing. That was reason enough for the overkill, IMO. Provably, before and after the murders, Lizzie cared a lot for her perceived social standing. An awful lot. For example, after the acquittal, she and her sister had millions. She could've gone anywhere in the world and started over. She could've lived in luxury anywhere. Changed her name. Become a new person. Been loved by new people. Instead, she returns to Fall River, buys Maplecroft and has that name engraved on the stairs and a gate--unusual for the time, even amongst the very rich--and lives on the hill, where she'd provably said a ton of times that she always wanted to be. It's just blocks from the modest house/murder scene. And the town ignored her. And she never left.</p><p>I'll backtrack for a second. It's almost definitely not true that Bridget and Lizzie were lovers for a few reasons. First, there were no secrets in that house, and nobody proved they were lovers. (Admittedly, it's also possible that nobody from law enforcement ever asked. Such questions were not asked--and the law enforcement did a good job here. Even though 90% of the city's police were at Rocky Point that day!) Second, Bridget would never have jeopardized her job like that. Plenty of evidence showed that she needed it badly, and that she liked working there. Which leads to, third, she and the two sisters have not been proven to actually get along. Lizzie and Emma called her Maggie, after the former housekeeper, and that may also have been a possibly-negative name for Irish help in general. Andrew and Emma called her by her actual name, and there's a ton of evidence that she really liked and respected Emma. And Bridget was not one who would lie well enough to get away with it. And she almost definitely wasn't in the house at all when either of them were murdered. I'll get back to that.</p><p>So, about the time of the murder, and the suspects. I've never read anywhere how incredibly convenient it was that Lizzie was the only one in the house at the time. If I were to write a book about all this--which I hope to hell I will--I would focus on how much Emma, Bridget and maybe (but probably not) Uncle John had to know about the murders in advance. I say this because a) Emma went to see friends in Fairhaven for a few days before the morning of the murders. Okay, she did this often, but it's still a coincidence that she and Bridget and Uncle John were all out of the house at the same time. But it's also been proven that Emma waited a few days to return when she was informed of the murders. There were three or four train trips between Fall River and Fairhaven before she finally took one. You get the call--yes, a phone call--that your father and step-mother have been murdered, and you...wait a few days to return? Seems like she wanted it all to blow over a bit, to get her bearings, to rehearse what she was going to say and do, doesn't it? And b) Bridget was washing windows and hanging up laundry the whole day. Sure, washing all the windows of the house is an all-day job, but she is coincidentally doing them on this day. And, she was violently ill that day, provably throwing up lots of times that day. Whether it was because of another failed all-family (or, accidentally, for Bridget) poisoning, or whether it was because Andrew was so cheap, he'd made everyone eat bad mutton stew for a few days (both have been proven; Lizzie went to three or four places that week to buy poison, which she said she needed to kill lice on capes and coats. Every store proprietor refused to sell it to her--because she'd bought some weeks before, and because you needed a prescription at the time to buy poison for any reason, and she never had one)--still, do you climb ladders and stand in the August heat all day if you're nauseous and throwing up all day? You do if you have to be out of the house and seen by others, right? Because she was seen by neighbors and by people on the busy street. The house was sandwiched between other homes and the busy street, and still is. And, c) Uncle John was again walking around town that day, as he had the previous few days he'd stayed over. He'd been doing small errands for Andrew, his brother, and he'd also just been hanging around town. But the day of the murders, when he approached the house, he was seen lingering outside for a few hours, eating pears from their tree, standing around the yard, talking to people. You see tons of townspeople, and the police and doctors, at your brother's house, where you've been a few days, and you don't break down, cry, yell, push past people to get inside, to see if everyone's all right? Seems just like Emma in Fairhaven, doesn't it? </p><p>Emma and Bridget had a life-long falling out with Lizzie. Bridget, after she was brought back from the inquest and testifying, packed up, spent time with people in the city, and ultimately moved to Montana. (My novel starts there. Bridget had gotten deathly sick at some point, and told a loved one she had something about the case to confess. But she got better before she did, and apparently never again spoke of it.) Emma moved in with Bridget in Maplecroft for awhile. She left during the time Lizzie had tons of parties there for her actress lover--who also left her quickly. Emma moved to NH and lived in solitude, unmarried and without lovers or children, just as Lizzie did. They'd also had an earlier falling out while Lizzie was in prison awaiting trial, but reconciled before they split again.</p><p>So the movie doesn't show any of that. It focuses on the unnecessary (to evidence and to history), possible gayness of Lizzie and Bridget. Some nice touches in the movie include:</p><p>--using the same hatchet that Andrew had used on her favorite birds when she'd broken into his office and into Abby's room and stolen jewelry. The killing of the birds is a possibly apocryphal story that John Douglas didn't think actually happened. Andrew was said to be cheap, cold and cruel, but not necessarily a killer, of animals or otherwise. I agree, because I think he'd be too cheap to sacrifice eggs and meat later. Anyway, that same hatchet was then washed thoroughly by Lizzie, and then she used it to kill more birds, so that when it was found, the blood tested would just be the birds'. The movie shows her breaking off the wooden handle and burning that, to get rid of the fingerprints.</p><p>This is awesome stuff! It explains the real hatchet that was found and put into evidence as the murder weapon, minus the shaft. The labs did test it and it did have just birds' blood and hair on it. This did make the police look bad at the actual trial. This is great stuff, except--could Lizzie be as CSI aware as we are today? Could she have known to do that, knowing the police would find it, test it, and look bad, thereby making her look more innocent? I don't think so. I'm not saying she wasn't dumb or calculating; I'm saying nobody in 1893 would know to do this, for these reasons. But that's a nice irony, using the same hatchet as Andrew had to kill him, and then to hide her guilt by killing her favorite birds with it, as he is said to have done. But I don't think so. Could she have done this, in a fit of frenzy, just in case? Maybe. If so, she was lucky. But during the investigation and the trial, she had in fact been very lucky. Today, the labs would find microscopic particles of their blood on it. Or, the police just got unlucky and bagged the wrong hatchet. There had to be others. Or, maybe she just got rid of it somewhere entirely.</p><p>--after killing Andrew, in a moment of love and pity, she placed a pillow, and then his folded coat, beneath his very bloody head. This is great, too. There had never been a pillow beneath his head, just his folded jacket, and this has perplexed us for over a hundred years. Would a miser infamous for his cheapness fold his expensive coat like a pillow and take a nap on it, awkwardly, in a half-seated position, on the couch? Investigators say No, but the evidence shows that he did. He'd been whacked with the hatchet while his head was on the folded coat, close to the arm of the couch, while his feet were still on the floor, like he'd just passed out. This was very possibly the case, as he'd also been sick from his own ripe mutton stew (and maybe a little poison) and he'd just returned from overseeing a few of his businesses and property, on a very hot day. He could've just sat down, realized he was going to pass out, and folded his coat and half-lied down and passed out. It's plausible. But what this movie shows, that he was killed while simply sitting there, and in the process he'd fallen sideways with his feet still on the floor, and that Lizzie had lovingly placed the coat beneath his head afterwards--Man, that just fits his personality better, and it's just a helluva nice touch. Haven't you ever fallen asleep on an arm of a couch when you can't find a pillow? Have you put a coat or a backpack beneath your head moments before you passed out? I've done both. Behaviorists and profilers like John Douglas (and I'm an acolyte) would like that, too. He's shown a ton of times how when someone kills a loved one, they do something loving and personal--like but a blanket over the body, cover the face, fold the hands over the stomach, or in this case, give the father a pillow that he wouldn't have given himself.</p><p>Well, that's it! Thanks for reading my geek-out about Lizzie Borden and the case. Lizzie is currently streaming on HBOMax.</p>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-66007291071787485732022-11-27T20:20:00.001-05:002022-11-27T20:20:44.574-05:00I'm Baaaaack...<p>Yes, I'm back, after a few years. Lotsa crap happened, as I'm sure it did to you. There may be some changes to this blog, to the format, or I may move it elsewhere, but I'm back. To all those who were fans of those blog, I hope you're still around. To anyone else, seeing this for the first time: Welcome. Check out other posts and other pages. I'll be posting here, frequently, soon.</p><p>I've read a lot of books in the meantime, of course. All of Stephen King's, all of which were good. Compulsively readable, as I've been saying for years. The Outsider series was good, much better than the book, which at least wasn't terrible. Fairy Tale was okay. Not great.</p><p>The best lately, off of my tired head, was The Witches. Read that if you haven't. Stacy Schiff, I believe. I'll be posting more soon. It's good to be back.</p>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-4294608026128800742019-11-09T13:58:00.000-05:002019-11-09T14:00:38.903-05:00Slow Burn by Ace Atkins: A Book Review<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNYTaSjVovgrJPQ24ZRGEuk7eOt8BugsmvIEn2dxN9gk1CbbW4xwazQ8zJ4Mn2OffSO4Pxel8hAAfhRQMor9GOAtrouca3tK3GtQPy2t_5fW7daWDm4NBIe69OOUXpmQrC6pDjnEf1dqUQ/s1600/26067907.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNYTaSjVovgrJPQ24ZRGEuk7eOt8BugsmvIEn2dxN9gk1CbbW4xwazQ8zJ4Mn2OffSO4Pxel8hAAfhRQMor9GOAtrouca3tK3GtQPy2t_5fW7daWDm4NBIe69OOUXpmQrC6pDjnEf1dqUQ/s400/26067907.jpg" width="265" /></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Not too much to say about this Ace Atkins effort. Pretty good. Not bad. He's done better. I've read a lot worse from writers hired by the Parker Estate. (Are you hearing me, Michael Brandman?)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This one is a comfortable pair of slippers for those who've read all of the Spenser novels. It fits in, and does not detract, from it. It doesn't add to it, either, exactly, but that's okay. That's not why people read #44 of a single series, is it? For something very different?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was a little jarring to read that Spenser has had a knee replacement, though. Not quite as bad as Superman needing dentures, but still an unwelcome reminder that even our heroes get old. Spenser won't be keeping up with any long-distance runners (a la <i>Crimson Joy</i>), I guess. Susan Silverman, by contrast, seems to be getting younger, thinner, sexier. This is a glaring inconsistency that you'll go along with, because who wants to hear that Spenser's had a knee replacement, and that Susan needs to wear Depends? What's next, Hawk swinging around his walker and whining about taxes?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So it was pretty good. Not especially memorable. Not bad. A comfy, if worn, pair of slippers.</span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-3609605745842026802019-10-03T19:33:00.000-04:002019-10-03T19:33:44.178-04:00Book Review: The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Photo: The hardcover's cover, from Goodreads</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Very, very good book, a bit of an improvement over Lagercrantz's previous in this series, which I didn't like as much. (To be fair, I really loved his first one, taking over for Larsson.) I'm not totally thrilled with the writing of the ending, though the ending itself was fine. But that's probably just my preference. The reader will have to judge for him/herself. I guess it depends on how you mind, or don't, how an author blatantly stops the progress of an action sequence to show characters talking about something important. It's done not to info-dump--though it may come across as that here--but to artificially create cliffhangers that keep the pages turning. That's a device that Nordic Noir takes to an extreme, and it's done here. I dealt with it, but didn't prefer it. Others may be more, or less, bothered.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">For beginning novelists, which I still think I am, despite the many (over and over) I've written, take a look at the structure. The Prologue begins like any of the many police procedurals on TV: with the death of a character that starts the plot rolling. I'm really interested about this one because as I read, it became clear fast that this book could've started with any number of scenes, including the deaths during a blizzard on a mountainside, or maybe Salander's attempt on her sister. I think most authors would've started there, even in a prologue. That didn't happen here, because the main plot is that of the murder shown, which leads to Blomkvist's appearance, and not that of Salander's conflict with her sister, which ends up engulfing everyone at the end. It's also up to the reader as to which one he finds more intriguing, but it explains the split-screen writing at the end. This is strange, as the main characters essentially get ensnared in the subplot, and the minor characters end up resolving the main plot. Weird, but interesting, if you're into reading into writer's choices.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">I gave this 4 stars, rather than 5, because of this oddity. It wasn't handled badly, just strangely. As for the book itself, there's a lot going on here, maybe too much, and I can't help but feel that the author could've held off the plot-string involving Salander's family, as it seems more tacked-on here. The main mystery is interesting enough, but I also understand why Lagercrantz did it: It ends the second trilogy's plot-string, as if maybe the series itself will end and he felt he had to wrap this up. Maybe he's got a different plot-string for another trilogy already outlined, ready to go. I don't know, but it seemed largely unnecessary, except that each of these books is "A Lisbeth Salander Novel" and not "A Mikael Blomkvist Novel" or anything else. She is the main plot, not whatever mystery is given to us. I get that, and I don't, and I can abide by it, and I don't like it, all at the same time.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">The cooly distant tone and writing are staples of Nordic Noir, so I was good with them. A little more disconcerting is how Blomkvist--a writer for a successful news and politics magazine--is treated like a rockstar. Everyone knows who he is, and he's stopped on the street for autographs. I know the Nordic countries have much higher literacy and readership numbers than does the U.S., but this has always struck me as off in this series, in all six books. War correspondents and writers of great importance should be treated like rockstars, but they're not. Nobody knows them. I like to think of large crowds suddenly stopping James Ellroy on the street as he's hailing a cab, clamoring for his autograph, but that doesn't happen. Yet Blomkvist is mentioned by name and image on TV, and he's clearly a celebrity in his own Millennium universe, but more than anything else in this series, that's always been a head-scratcher to me. He's a pale, portly figure who woman trip over to sleep with, too, but...well, you get the idea. You're okay with all that, or you wouldn't be reading the 6th book in the series by now. But it's all an eye-roller for me, and I just had to say so.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Ultimately this one is well worth your money. Salander, despite it being her series, is hardly in it but for the beginning and for the end, and she doesn't say more than 20 words in the whole book, but you're used to that by now, too. Yet I'd be okay with giving her more to say and do in the next one. The last few sentences of this one hint that maybe the author thinks so, too. Read and enjoy. </span></div>
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Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-832227441811751892019-09-19T23:36:00.000-04:002019-09-19T23:36:50.071-04:00Book Review: The Institute by Stephen King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Photo Credit: The Hardcover's Cover, from Goodreads</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">I've got all of King's books, and I've been writing that his stuff lately is okay, but that we need to accept that the genius is...resting. Producing, but resting. I've been writing that his stuff is "compulsively readable" for so long now, I can't remember when that wasn't the best that I had to say. REVIVAL was a rare exception, but for a long time before that, and now for a long time after, "compulsively readable," and that I read his newest book in X number days, were the best I could say. But then I read that The New York Times, and that Kirkus, had given THE INSTITUTE rave reviews. They said he was back to form, that he hadn't written about kids this well since IT (but with the release of IT Part 2, what else would they say?), and that this novel was extremely well structured--all rare positive review bits, especially from the NYT and Kirkus, who are not always enamored with King's stuff. So I bought it, as I would've anyway, because I own all of his books in hardcover, and because I knew I'd read it swiftly (check) and that I'd at least find it compulsively readable. But this time--THIS TIME!!!--I felt confident I'd have more positive things to say.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">And, well...I read THE INSTITUTE's 561 pages in about 2 1/2 days. And...it's compulsively readable.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">It isn't IT, and he doesn't write about kids as well in this as he did in IT. It's possible that this is the best he's written about them since IT, but how many of his recent books have only been about kids? Maybe, none of them---since IT.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">The book starts off with a drifter, and a small town, and how the drifter ingratiates himself in this small town...but King has done that millions of times, and can possibly write that now in his sleep. (Which he possibly did, here.) Then it switches rather abruptly to The Institute, which seems suspiciously like The Shop, from FIRESTARTER. But this ain't FIRESTARTER, and the baddies from The Shop are much more so than the ones here. (There are similarities, too. There's a John Rainbird character here, of the opposite gender, but Rainbird was a badass that nobody here approaches.) Nobody here is Charlie McGee, either. Those were better written characters than anyone here. I mean that in the kindest of all positive ways.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">This book is really about Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil." The whole book, in fact, could've been from the point of view of those who work for The Institute, and maybe that would've been a better book. (Sounds like a helluva good idea to me.) Here, there's a cleaning lady who could've been fleshed out better, and at the end there's an 81-year old woman who seemed very interesting. Why did she stick around, and with such gusto? THE INSTITUTE tries to go there, but mostly doesn't, which is a shame. The baddest badass of them all gets short shrift at the end, to the extent that King himself suddenly seems to give up on her, and all she gets is the other characters calling her "the queen bitch." She was badder than that, and deserved better, if you know what I mean. She could've been this book's Rainbird. The one who gets that honor doesn't deserve it, and in fact seems kind of lame. At the end, you won't care too much what happens to him.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">In the meantime, the kids are drawn out well enough, and you will care about what happens to them. But, A) they're kids, so that's maybe automatic, and B) it's really their book, so they get the most airtime. Still, you get caught up in the going's-on, and it is compelling in a slow-moving train kind of way. It'll pass the time, and it is compulsively readable.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">But it could've been so much more. The people who work at The Institute have their reasons for doing so, and King strongly insinuates that these reasons are compelling--but never appropriate, of course. The ends don't justify the means, here, and that's really the point of the book. But why do such people work for such banal evil? Many of them are obviously deranged, but some are maybe almost good people, or those who could've been. This book could've been essentially the same story, with that theme been better pondered and shown. It's never answered, not even close, but King seems like he wants to go there, that he wants to try and answer it--but then just drops it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">And so ultimately it's a good read. 561 pages in just short of 3 days means the book is good on some level. Yet maybe this is what's lacking in King's work now. The why. The big themes. King was never "deep," per se, which he takes pride in, and on some levels he's right. He wants to entertain more than he wants to instruct (he could've stayed on as an English teacher if that's all he'd wanted), but the fact remains that THE SHINING, CARRIE, IT and many others had more depth to them, more heft, without ever sacrificing story. Lately his stuff is about 95% story, to the exclusion of perhaps all else, and that's why they seem lesser. CARRIE, for example, never tried to explain how religious mania could screw up a family and a kid, but it sure did show it very well. THE SHINING showed how a very, very flawed man could redeem himself to save his wife and son. THE SHINING therefore had a hefty thing to say about personal redemption. I could go on...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">King's stuff now frankly just lacks this heft. It's all story, all the time, and it doesn't have too much to show, or to say, about things that it could, and should, show and say about. In this case, Arendt's "banality of evil." That's too bad, because it could've easily gone there, and it would've made this book a lot better. It's not as bad as the Bill Hodges fiascoes, but...you won't want to read this one again. It'll sit in my bookcase with all the others, but...it probably won't come out of it again.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Too bad. THE INSTITUTE is okay, but it could've been one of his better ones in a long, long time.</span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-63115189993841394662018-12-04T21:22:00.003-05:002018-12-22T18:20:46.134-05:00Book Review -- Mephisto Waltz by Frank Tallis<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN7aR4mHJrakGiRPAFgHsbw0vUsR2oWokU6TMRy8ixDN0p5Jx-ilHLVi7UDwOxqFv4ZtexfAFhIKHilQavbeRrUjFfZuflp9Dcu2mEf31oHj_KcnFzg51imsCvadB2pwbmq8teyqGF2Phx/s1600/35407569.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN7aR4mHJrakGiRPAFgHsbw0vUsR2oWokU6TMRy8ixDN0p5Jx-ilHLVi7UDwOxqFv4ZtexfAFhIKHilQavbeRrUjFfZuflp9Dcu2mEf31oHj_KcnFzg51imsCvadB2pwbmq8teyqGF2Phx/s320/35407569.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Review <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mephisto Waltz</i>.
Disclaimer: this copy free from Pegasus Books<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Another excellent entry into the historical / detective
fiction series, this time set in Vienna in 1904. Think: Jonathan Kellerman’s
Alex Delaware and his cop friend Milo Sturgis, except here it’s the time and
place of Freud. The case: there’s a bomb-wielding anarchist on the loose, and
nobody knows who he is, including the people who work with him. He goes by one
name: Mephistopheles (hence the title; go to YouTube for the actual music), and
he’s always hidden. The book starts with a three-member jury sentencing someone
to death. His face is melted with acid, so you don’t know who. Other killings
(one accidental) follow, and there’s a last-second cipher to figure out, and a
bomb to stop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That’s enough summary. The mystery is handled well, but in a
way you may not be familiar with, and I mean that as a very good thing. There’s
no CSI-like structure, or procedural. There’s an ME, of course, and he may
remind you of one from TV’s procedurals, but that’s it. The coolest things
about this book, and done well in the whole series, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i> done well here, are:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"> A)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->you
get a slice-of-life (of just under 300 pages) of what it would be like to live
in 1904 Vienna, and it’s taken just as seriously—if not more so—than the
murders. The crimes are part of this early-20<sup>th</sup> Century world,
before WWI and, in fact, in the time of early cars (Herr Porsche is a minor
character, his car is a push-button, as many of the earliest ones were, and he
drives a hybrid!), so these are treated as something that would be an everyday
part of this world. No sensationalism; no guns. None of the tropes of the
genre. They happen as they would happen in that world, and that world molds them.
The world isn’t altered to enhance the crimes. The crimes enhance that world.
You really feel like you’re there, tasting all that strudel. And-- <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">B) It’s a treasure trove of cool things to
look up, to learn about, to listen to on YouTube. This is the kind of thing
that makes Dan Brown books so interesting: I buy those in their Illustrated
Editions to see the paintings, to look at the sculptures, to learn about the
locations (Good idea to Pegasus Books: Consider publishing Illustrated Editions
of this series, going back to the first—and why not include a CD or a link to
listen to the constantly-referenced music of the time?). And I do the same with
Tallis’s series: I’ve listened on YouTube to all of the (very) many songs and
music mentioned. They’re actually very good. (Favorite: “The Elf-King” from a
few books ago.) I’ve looked up all the real-life personages (This one does a
very good job of listing all of them at the end, and of offering quick bios and
glimpses.), from Porsche to Freud, and all of the princes and princesses. So
it’s not just a simple mystery and you’re done, a ton of books in a series so
alike that they all bleed into each other and you couldn’t explain one to
somebody (Are you listening, Kellerman?). This series is different, each one a stand-alone,
distinct. Tallis publishes one every five to six years, and maybe for this
reason.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mephisto Waltz</i>
even has a cool, gaslight-noir cover. It’s my first hardcover of the
series—thanks to Pegasus Books. (That’s my disclosure. Again.) So grab this one.
You may read it in one sitting, like I did. When you’re done, get the other
six, and enjoy. And feel free to look up the music, the people, the art, and
the inventions of that world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-86528548505909196632018-11-17T12:53:00.000-05:002018-11-17T14:04:41.511-05:00A Short Plea to Charities that Send Depressing Pics<span style="font-size: large;">Well, I'm back. I've been gone for about ten months, for personally devastating reasons I'm not going to get into, and if you're close to me, you already know. But I'm happy to be back, and hopefully I can post consistently as an avenue to better days.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If you're a constant reader, thanks for staying with me. If you're not, welcome aboard, and thanks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My first blog back is a plea to the ASPCA and such charities that I have a mind to send in to Bill Maher and his New Rules:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"New rules: If you already give a hefty amount of money to organizations like the ASPCA, the Animal League, and a few other such organizations, you should automatically be exempt from getting mail with pictures like this..." Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going upstairs, listening to depressing music, and sobbing hysterically...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-74288712228018046892018-01-25T21:16:00.000-05:002018-01-25T21:55:27.483-05:00Three T206 Baseball Card Sales<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Okay, so a long-time wish of mine may actually come true this summer. I've wanted to open up my own baseball card store, or at least deal in them with a guy I do business with on eBay on a more frequent basis. So I took a test drive on 18 cards, and I've done the business math on 3 of them. Overall I made a profit of $149.62 on just 3 cards! Buying on eBay and yard sales in the summer; took just minutes for each; just had to go to the post office. $59.62 profit on the Keeler. $51.02 on the Evers. $39 on the Brown. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just did all the math. I originally spent $523.87 on all 18 cards. They all sold for $652.90. So the profit was $129.03. Total time buying all these and going to the post office to sell them would be about 2, maybe 2 1/2 hours total. That's about $50-$60 per hour, sitting on my ass in my central air office, with no overhead. I learned: Deal mostly in HOFers; and buy in the summer and sell in the winter.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Willie "Hit 'em Where They Ain't" Keeler, batting. Hall of Famer. Paid $62.88. Sold 1.23.2018 for $122.50. Profit: $59.62.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Johnny Evers, with bat, another Hall of Famer. Paid $44.98. Sold for $96. Profit: $51.02.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU0YJaCsaOVJA6ZfEBS0QQ3z6coQuY8GMNIJzVqh80CiTw7GoF1h-NFw815fvoDmJSSq8OU0OEtPSI2cS_dq9PTbYmt-VVZa26TeTv5cJwel1KF1Buj8WIXpcF2bp3LY8sSkxi0-aag0Xh/s1600/je1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="982" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU0YJaCsaOVJA6ZfEBS0QQ3z6coQuY8GMNIJzVqh80CiTw7GoF1h-NFw815fvoDmJSSq8OU0OEtPSI2cS_dq9PTbYmt-VVZa26TeTv5cJwel1KF1Buj8WIXpcF2bp3LY8sSkxi0-aag0Xh/s320/je1.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And "Three Finger" Mordecai Brown, another HOFer. Paid $30.54 raw, add about $10 to get it graded, mailing, etc. So say $41.00. Sold for $80. Profit: $39.00.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzEZOxjNoKvvEfSTl8WlL_kE7WFkmVo_fWP9iVEsHLnbfKMyL2tMt-7Cmgy3htXyDxKNBHBSd3UmeiIoWfH-BiO8Gdfqoy9BEoKByeliCn6g4vo-bgIbcFW9I8_0mNsUGSNkCtVN_VcahV/s1600/mb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="982" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzEZOxjNoKvvEfSTl8WlL_kE7WFkmVo_fWP9iVEsHLnbfKMyL2tMt-7Cmgy3htXyDxKNBHBSd3UmeiIoWfH-BiO8Gdfqoy9BEoKByeliCn6g4vo-bgIbcFW9I8_0mNsUGSNkCtVN_VcahV/s320/mb1.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I sold these three, plus 15 more, via Probstein123 on eBay, for a total of $652.90. On these three cards alone I saw a profit of $149.62. Not too bad. Maybe I'll try to do this part-time over the summer, see how it works.</span><br />
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<br />Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-3097111217389004682018-01-06T12:08:00.000-05:002018-01-06T12:08:16.113-05:00Sleepin' In<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Old Man told me to wake him when it's warmer.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-51598119589117846862017-12-11T19:19:00.002-05:002017-12-11T19:19:16.348-05:00Goodbye, Carl and Hello to the new Walking Dead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Carl, I'm shocked that you'll be gone, and it won't be the same without you.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/walking-dead-is-carl-going-die-chandler-riggs-exit-interview-1066031" target="_blank">[photo: from the Hollywoodreporter.com, at this link.]</a></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-1251207757097631272017-12-03T18:38:00.001-05:002017-12-03T18:38:13.677-05:00We're All In This Together by Owen King -- A Book Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Photo: Book's cover, from its Goodreads page</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Extremely good writing here, in Owen King's first effort, which I decided to read after having read his recent collaboration with his more-famous father, <i>Sleeping Beauties</i>. The self-titled novella is a bit over-written about in the promos, and it took awhile to grow on me, but the shorter stories are excellent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">More Jack Ketchum than Stephen King, Owen King does sad and weird very well, which I mean as a compliment. (I'm thinking of Ketchum's excellent and sad zombie stories as I write this.) The stories here, though, also have an odd scariness, more of the everyday and common-to-life variety, I guess. There's a 1930s ballplayer who's bringing his kind-of girlfriend to an alley abortionist and wondering if he's a decent person: "Wonders." (That scene isn't to be missed--and it's not grisly at all.) There's a tooth-pulling in a locale straight out of <i>The Revenant</i>--and this in 2006, long before that movie: "Frozen Animals." There's a sad and strange story about life-drifting people who would seem like losers if they weren't like so many of us, and perhaps most of us: "My Second Wife." As I said, the novella picks up steam halfway through and is touching and meaningful by the end, and has perhaps the best fleshed-out characters. One story, about a lost teenage boy running into a shyster and his snake at a hole-in-the-wall mall didn't really work for me, but has things in common with the other stories that worked in those.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The end result is a memorable read, with scenes very Tarantino-like, more of a build-up to a tense payoff than anything horrifying. The writing and characterization are really very good, up to par with his father's characterization at his best, and frankly the overall writing is better here--though Stephen King is a much better storyteller. Overall I prefer Owen King here to anything Joe Hill, his more-famous brother, has written, though in fairness I haven't given Hill's stuff a very serious look. I have given it a serious effort, though--and just can't get into it. Owen King's stuff was much easier to dive into. One wonders why Owen King hasn't become more popular, especially since he shares the famous last name that Hill has gone out of his way to distance himself from. Maybe Owen King hasn't written as much, and not in the same genre. </span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-22155117013759423392017-11-13T10:00:00.000-05:002017-11-13T10:00:06.103-05:00A Man Called Ove<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Outstanding book, alternately funny and sad, wise and silly, that became a huge bestseller around the world via word-of-mouth--a true rarity. The author, a Swede living in Stockholm, hadn't had a bestseller before, but the grapevine took off with this one, and rightly so. You should read it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Ove is an older man who loses his wife and his job in six months. Like most of us, especially as we get older, his life revolves around those two things, and with them both gone, he's got nothing. Or so he thinks. He spends a great deal of time not living, both before he met his wife and after she died, and this book is a good warning to not live that way. Your life is what you make of it, so you'd better make something of it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">The book is never preachy, but it seems very true. Things turn out pretty well, and almost everyone in it is like the Abominable--good people inside who just need someone to flesh it out. It's a little too nice and neat at the end, but that's the kind of pleasant book it is, and you'll be okay with that, even if you're not normally, in books and in daily life. I'm sure as hell not, and it worked really well for me.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Also true to know is that Ove is an older guy who is the definition of a curmudgeon. I've often been called a little grumpy myself, and the thing to know, this book says, is that such people a) have reasons for being that way, all sad and unbelievable, and b) that's not all who and what they are.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">What is also good and rare about Ove is that he is no talk and all action (Stupid is as stupid DOES), and that he has a set standard of morals and life lessons he lives by that seem strict and unbending only to those who don't have them and who don't understand those who do. I speak from experience here. But he is a very strong and steadfast guy, of a high moral compass, even if he does come across as just a tick easier to deal with than Jack Nicholson in <i>As Good As It Gets</i>. But where Melvin Udall (the character name just came to me) has a clinical obsessive-compulsive diagnosis (which Ove may also share), Ove has a life of hard knocks and solitary strength that has led him to become this man. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Seeing him learn to live life again, and yet stay true to his own character, is a helluva ride that you'll want to take. And you won't forget that you took it. I recommend this book very, very much.</span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-17475991110932729292017-11-11T21:44:00.002-05:002017-11-11T21:44:52.628-05:002017 Comic Con: John Cusack<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I spent all day Saturday in Providence, RI at the 2017 Comic Con. I took TONS of pics and spent a couple mortgage payments there. Lots of pics to come in the following days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">First one up: John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler in <i>Say Anything</i>. When I was at the signing table, h</span></div>
<span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">e smirked in a grumpy way when he used the wrong pen, instead of my blue sharpie, and his assistant said he'd sign a different picture in my blue sharpie, which he did. And then he kept the sharpie! I'm glad I got his autograph, but he lived up to his curmudgeon reputation. But it was poetic. Just as Ione Sky gave him a pen in <i>Say Anything</i>, so did I at Comic Con.</span></span><div>
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Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-42543553037821837402017-11-11T19:29:00.002-05:002017-11-11T19:29:58.959-05:00Pedro by Pedro Martinez and Michael Silverman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhprfF-_aEDTPIar4zBylZnPLJbCV5kg3MsgV0RmEV50yg9hA4W9Y9alIFWMvCpG1WLrQIgKemn1Ldf2ix3v3fanXGmWQfm_nRm_JgOHIY7mq2oi4MHDQwXaQyIt-lPbx4RC0aZf29tazg/s1600/pedro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhprfF-_aEDTPIar4zBylZnPLJbCV5kg3MsgV0RmEV50yg9hA4W9Y9alIFWMvCpG1WLrQIgKemn1Ldf2ix3v3fanXGmWQfm_nRm_JgOHIY7mq2oi4MHDQwXaQyIt-lPbx4RC0aZf29tazg/s320/pedro.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Photo: the hardcover, from its Goodreads page</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Better-written than usual for this type of book, Pedro nonetheless continues a string of multi-millionaires complaining of lack of respect and then throwing their teammates and colleagues under the bus. Mike Napoli, for example, may wake up one morning, read a page of this, and wonder WTF?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">It is well-written and it has a better narrative flow than is usual for the genre. Michael Silverman has created a structure of Pedro's voice, narrative voice (certainly not Pedro's), author voice (same) and then enmeshes direct quotes from others, like you're reading a screenplay of a documentary. It doesn't sound like it works (and, sporadically, it doesn't), but overall it does work and you read on.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">You get the childhood background, but without the grittiness that you think the self-proclaimed poverty would demand. It's smoothed over when maybe it shouldn't have been, but then this isn't really a documentary, it just sounds like one. You get the beginning, with the Dodgers, then the other teams: the Expos, the Red Sox, the Mets and the Phillies. (Did you remember that Pedro's last start was in the 2009 World Series against the Yanks? I did, but it seemed surreal, then and now.) You get the typical beef about the management: the Dodgers and Sox especially.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">And this is the first of two things that made me rate this a three rather than a four: it's hypocritical about two things, so glaring you wonder they weren't amended. The first: Every Sox fan knows Pedro's last game was Game 4 of the 2004 World Series. Immediately he let it be known that he wanted a 3-4 year contract, and the Sox wanted to give him the shortest one possible, a year, or two, at most. That was known before the season ended and for as long as it took for him to get a guaranteed 3-4 year deal with the Mets. And it was also known that his shoulder and arm were frayed. More time on the DL; more injuries; more babying at the end...All of this was known. And it was just as well-known that the Sox were right: Pedro had one good year left for the Mets, and then the rest of that contract he mostly spent on the DL. If the Sox had given him a 3-4 year deal, they were going to eat 2-3 years of it. They said that out loud, and they were right. If you were Sox ownership, do you make that deal? The Mets did, as they candidly said, because they had a newer ballpark and the fan base was dwindling, and they had to bring in a name.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">The hypocritical part is that this book whines about a lack of respect from the Sox about all this--and then shows in following chapters that they were right! He acknowledges he lasted just one more good season (a very good 2005) and then had one injury after another. The 2009 season with Philadelphia was a half-season for him--he was 5-1 and basically started in September. The rest of the year he was the same place as the previous three--on and off (mostly on) the DL. He narrates all this without saying the Sox were right, but clearly shows in his narration that the Sox were right. He calls it a lack of respect that the Sox weren't willing to give him a long guaranteed contract and then eat 75%-80% of it. But of course that's not what businesses do. And the casual fan could see his physical regression in 2003 and 2004. It was obvious. I wouldn't have given him that contract, either. (He's made hundreds of millions from baseball and endorsements, so don't feel bad for him.)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">The other blatant example of hypocrisy is how he states all book long that he was misunderstood, that he was mislabeled, that he didn't throw at batters intentionally, that he wasn't a headhunter--and then, often in the same sentence or paragraph, admits that he hit someone on purpose, and that he often told the player he would do so, and then does it. He threatened players verbally with it all the time, then hit the player--and then says he's misunderstood, that he's not a headhunter. This is so obvious in the book that you shake your head.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">But, again, that's what these books do, right? They complain about money, about disrespect, about how the media screws them, all that same stuff all the time. It makes you yearn for another Ball Four, and to truly appreciate how direct and honest it was. Say what you want about Bouton, but he was well aware of how not a God he was, about how lucky he was to do what he did and to make the money he did, and he had actual thoughts to say, and didn't complain too much about management or anything else. Yes, he was traded for Dooley Womack, but he never says he shouldn't have been.</span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-46948418070200550712017-11-05T14:23:00.000-05:002017-11-05T14:23:13.011-05:00The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Oh. My. God.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">There's really no other way to review it. What can you say? It's impossible for one little boy to have been through all this and to survive this, so I'm compelled to agree with the consensus that this is not autobiography, not even biography, and Kosinski was indeed a fraud for saying so.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">But like most of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, so much of this could be true, especially (again like Frey's book) in character composite, that it feels true, rings true, and--understood as allegory--certainly reads true. No little boy could possibly be beaten this many times, so savagely, or have seen so much brutality and savagery, so many murders and rapes by every type of person...No little boy can live the life of a Hieronymous Bosch painting and survive it, physically or mentally.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">And yet people did. As a mirror to the Holocaust, this rings remarkably and horrifyingly true. And people survived this brutal murder-and-rape life in the Middle Ages, too--Reading this was like reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, picked up and plopped into Eastern Europe, 1939-1945. Really, that's a good comparison: a lot of Bosch, a lot of the Holocaust and a lot of the brutal Middle Ages, all stirred together.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">It doesn't matter to me who wrote this--and it's pretty clear, I guess, that Kosinski didn't. If he did, he wrote it in Polish and it was translated. It doesn't matter. It exists, and the writing is staggeringly uniform. There are maybe twelve lines of dialogue in all its pages. The sentences are simple and detached, with a smattering of social observance thrown in, especially when detailing the trains bringing the Holocaust's victims to the camps. Someone wrote it, and it's important that someone did. This is a book that serious readers should read--and don't feel guilty if you can't make your way through it all. It is brutal. But has someone lived like this? Yes. A great many, sadly. And a great many animals have lived like this, too.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">It is as brutal a look at humanity as you will likely see. And it is not untrue in of itself, even if it was for Kosinski personally. It is unflinching and unsparing. It will make you grateful for your days, for your loved ones, for life itself. You will maybe be more empathetic. This book, like all great literature, could change your outlook of the world, of people. It may, it may not, but it could, and that's rare in literature, in movies, in any segment of real life. For this it should be read and reveled.</span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-18679253313091355772017-11-04T18:56:00.001-04:002017-11-04T18:56:46.114-04:00Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">I haven't read a Dean Koontz book since the 90s, when he wrote about gov't conspiracy crap. Dan Simmons' Flashback reminded me of that stuff, and Flashback was every bit as crappy. I mean, really bad. A shame, because Koontz in the 80s was almost as good as Stephen King, and sometimes better. Koontz's A Bad Place, Phantoms and Whispers, among a couple others, were really good then, and hold up very well now. So it was with some trepidation that I started Odd Thomas; but I did so because it got some really good reviews, because I'd heard good word of mouth, and because I'd seen it at a lot of yard sales, which is a good thing--because it means that people bought it to begin with, rather than just renting it from a library.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">I'm happy to report that Odd Thomas is mostly very good. The narrator is likeable, though perhaps a little too much so, but whatever. The supporting characters are well-drawn and pleasant to deal with. His small town is well-wrought. And of course you love his flame, who Koontz fates with writerly tricks, in a kind of double-twist at the end. He knows you like her; he knows you want her to do well; he knows you expect that she won't; he knows you'll appreciate it when she seems okay. And then...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">I knew it was a series, of course. And, knowing that, I see where Koontz also realizes it's a series, especially towards the end when one of the lovely nurses practically throws herself at him. That's when you know the fate of someone else, too. But it's all very good, if not over-the-top at times (especially with an Elvis who can't stop sobbing hysterically), and overall the book deserves the positive responses it's gotten. I don't know if I'm going to read any of the others in the series, but I guess I will if I run into one at a library or a yard sale, or something. I should mention that I'm a little concerned about Koontz's prodigious output, which makes King seem under-published by comparison. Does he write every word of a book that has his name on it? I don't know. I think he does here, but overall I don't know. The tone and patterns of this book do not match those of the ones I read of his in the 90s, which is a good thing. He could've changed, of course, but writers usually don't. He does still go on and on a little too much. I skimmed a few pages in this one; otherwise it would have gotten five stars. I didn't skim pages that were badly written, though; they just seemed superfluous. He goes on, for example, about a spider in the desert, for about 4-5 pages. The spider never does anything to him, nor he to it...so I skimmed some pages, but that didn't hurt the quality of the book overall.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">You'll like the characters and you'll feel for them, and the overall suspense is gripping. You may wonder, as I did, how three psychopaths could all function unnoticed in a small desert town. From what I know about them, they can't hide too well for too long, especially in a sparse population, without people whispering, or their behavior being noticed. And at high profile, highly public jobs? But that, oddly, didn't detract, either, so that's good. I guess this book works despite a few things, but it works nonetheless, and is therefore highly recommended. I read it all in one day, which also speaks well for it. </span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-51734849873592224932017-10-22T11:17:00.000-04:002017-10-22T11:17:08.353-04:00Yanks Lose ALCS, 3 Games to 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Photos: Jose Altuve's Gem Mint 10 rookie card, from my collection.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yanks lose 4-0 and go home as the Houston Astros move on to the World Series. So despite Judge's 50+ homers, a high-powered offense, and getting past the heavily-favored Indians, the Yanks go home. What. A Damn. Shame.</span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-5551245991125179242017-10-19T23:38:00.000-04:002017-10-19T23:38:06.574-04:00Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Photo: from its Goodreads page</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">More a morality tale / fairy tale than novel (or novella), and a lot more Chizmar than King, but still an okay read that goes by fast. Since it's more of a fairy story, the characterizations are purposely light, the action is more to learn from than to entertain, and it's all supposed to be a slight breeze. To expect more is to be disappointed.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">The ending didn't work for me, as it's more explanation than resolution. Richard Farris (AKA, Randall Flagg) will disappoint, as he seems like someone kinder than we know him to be. Here, he's more like the old man from Hearts in Atlantis than the badass from The Stand and The Dark Tower. He should've been called someone else here, with different initials. He's really a different character. In this way, he's more of a disappointment than is the talky, explanatory ending itself, but the book is so slight that you really won't mind. Like all morality tales, the ending is explained too much and is too completely wrapped up. I would've rather had something extra left over to think about, but that won't happen here. Is it more Gwendy, the box, or just life itself? You'll be told, which is a bummer. Should've been left more open-ended.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">And, lastly, you won't see anything Dark Tower-ish here. Mr. R.F. and the box are just extras stepping out. You won't be able to place them within the Dark Tower's milieu, so don't try. There's no leftover strand, or beam, and those worlds don't influence this one in this book. If you want a standalone book that has tendrils and whispers of The Dark Tower, check out King's The Wind Through the Keyhole, which was quite a bit better, and released to very little fanfare. That one is a Dark Tower rejected section or chapter if I've ever seen one.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">So you'll have to take this book on its own purposely slight merits, and judge them by those. I think it's pretty clear to see where King starts off and Chizmar takes over. This would've been darker, more ponderous and a lot less slight if King had written a bigger chunk of it. My guess is that King started it, maybe the first two or three chapters, and included the kite scene and maybe a hat scene or two, but let Chizmar take it. My guess is he figured The Wind Through the Keyhole was one Dark Tower standalone enough, and he didn't need another one. I'm guessing Chizmar stayed as far away from The Tower as he could. Perhaps he was asked to.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">This one was more of a curiousity for me. I don't consider it part of the King canon and I won't be buying one for my entire First Edition Stephen King book collection. My copy was from the library, where it will return tomorrow. So if you want a quick little book / morality tale that's maybe 20% King, max, give this one a shot. It's not bad, but it's not King. If you have other King books that you need to get to, you're probably better off doing that.</span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-116575758233778602017-10-18T15:30:00.000-04:002017-10-18T15:30:04.570-04:00Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Photo: Hardcover book from its Goodreads page.<br />
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Very long fantasy / morality tale, mostly well-written, with a little more craft than usual, which I don't mean in a bad way. The story pace and structure is similar to <i>Under the Dome</i>, as it's more of a series of things that are happening between lots of different characters, most of them not fantastic or scary. As in both long books, there is an underlying mystery behind them (Why is the dome happening? Is it a test? Why are the cocoons happening? Are they a test?) that probably won't surprise you when it concludes, but the reading pleasure is watching it get there.<br />
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I wasn't particularly swayed by the sudden change of heart of the other major character, if you will, who is the foil/antagonist to the Clint, the prison psychiatrist. It ends the way it does, and that's fine, but this guy's primary character trait just sort of dissipates. It didn't ruin anything for me, but it didn't jettison me towards the ending, either. Which is fine.<br />
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The characters are well drawn and fleshed out, though you wouldn't know one of them was a minority if the book didn't flat out tell you. That may be part of the point of the book, or it may be a fault in character development. You'll be the judge. You'll also have to judge about Evie's character, which is largely and purposely kept in the dark. The authors don't supply too many answers about her, except that she is maybe <i>The Day the Earth Stood Still</i> for the menfolk, I guess.<br />
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The premise will keep you thinking the most, I suppose. It's an interesting premise that nonetheless has many flaws. It's very heavy on the idea that most men suck for many reasons, and that women are primarily their victims. You won't get any argument from me on either point, except to say that I have known my share of unthinking and unfeeling women as well, though of course they by and large do not cause as much danger and damage towards men as men have towards women. (Though I'm thinking right now of a couple who were up there, almost manly in their destructiveness.)<br />
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I'm not sure it's helpful to broadly generalize like this, though of course there's no argument about the fact that, overall, generally, men have treated women like garbage since the first caveman struck a cavewoman over the head with his club and thought that was love. It wasn't, and it isn't, and men have been pretty stupid about it ever since. But, again, I know plenty of women who have been stupid about love, too, amongst them the women who defend men who are stupid about love. We could go back and forth on this forever, which is the problem with overreaching generalizations. It's not helpful to talk overall, generally, about anything. Every man is not an asshole just like not every woman is a victim. More men, of course, are violent assholes than are women, and more women, of course, are victims of violent assholes than are men.<br />
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But it's probably less productive to grossly generalize. It's maybe more productive to single out the assholes amongst the men, rather than insist that all men are assholes. We're not all Harvey Weinstein or O.J. or even much less examples of them. There are some very, very good guys out there who have always treated women well. Probably it's better to single out the major and the minor assholes out there and then simply stay away from them, or give them treatment, etc. This book never presents that as an option, as it paints a broad stroke over all the guys, including the two main characters, who could not be more different in temperament, but who are both painted the same colors anyway.<br />
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The book does end on a realistically melancholic note, as things fall apart because the center could not hold for anyone. You may wonder at the ending, and if the decision made at the end would really be made. That'll have to be up to you, as well. Until then you've got a fantasy / morality tale, with a very large dose of <i>Walking Dead</i> as the prison was under siege. In the end, this one is good, not great, not especially memorable outside of its premise, and a quick read despite its large size.Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-86164811871085992432017-10-07T19:17:00.000-04:002017-10-07T19:17:44.288-04:00Blade Runner 2049<br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">See this movie, which I saw today</span><span style="text-align: start;">. (At noon, cuz I'm cheap. I mean, frugal.) It's a visually stunning, tense, exciting, thought-provoking masterpiece. It's long, almost 3 hours, but it's worth every second. Seeing the original couldn't hurt, but probably isn't essential. Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford are excellent, but maybe the best performances are by the love-longing ladies, especially Ana de Armas, D's lady hologram friend. A must-see if you like movies, especially ones visually mesmerizing. Despite the almost 3-hour length, I'll see this one again.</span></div>
Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-26074430288404094852017-10-02T23:10:00.000-04:002017-10-02T23:10:00.300-04:00Vegas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Prayers?!? God wants you to enact gun control laws. You want signs? How about Sandy Hook and Vegas?</span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-37059891978931427402017-09-30T19:00:00.000-04:002017-09-30T19:00:26.069-04:00The Girl Who Takes An Eye for an Eye -- Lisbeth Salander and Book Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Photo: from the book's pic on my Goodreads review page<br />
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A bit of a letdown after Lagercrantz's excellent previous <i>The Girl in the Spider's Web</i>, his continuation of Stieg Larsson's <i>Millenium</i> series. This one takes a loooooooooong time to get going--more than half the book, I'd say. It's a little dull and plodding; only the faith that it would all mesh explosively at the end kept me going. And that mostly didn't happen, either.<br />
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It's extremely dry writing, more so than the already dry Nordic Noir usually is. I don't know if it's the original writing, or the translation, but I think it's the first, because there's only so much spicing up you can do with original material. It's very straightforward, lots of simple sentences, with no feel for its own drama. It's like a book-length newspaper article. It's interesting, but the reader should figure out the twin twist long before the author finally gets there. And because it's so drawn out, the reader should get the minor twin twist long before the author also gets there. There are no surprises here.<br />
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It's also very bloodless, though the three women of the story--Salander, a psychopathic baddie she meets in prison (and what the hell was Lisabeth doing there?) and a victim also in that prison--do come away extremely black and blue. Salander actually should've gotten a ton of broken bones, but somehow doesn't. And two characters survive a major stabbing, and they both crawl into the forest and survive. While Salander suffers quite a bit here, Blomkvist sleeps around with almost everyone.<br />
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In fact, I would've given this one two stars but for the truly great epilogue--three freakin' pages that save the book and show Salander at her most true form, really being her. By far it's her most honest scene, the Salander we've grown to appreciate and respect. Too bad she's not allowed to be like this at all throughout the book until this point. If you feel like stopping short on this one (and I almost wouldn't blame you), do me and yourself a favor and read the epilogue before you put it down for good. You don't have to read the whole book to fully appreciate it, either.Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-21223059115421861502017-09-24T23:46:00.000-04:002017-09-24T23:46:12.991-04:00The Accidental Tourist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Smooth as silk novel with such believable characters and life-lessons that it seems like a life parable, which I guess it is. Spot-on writing has no genre to fall back on, so no tropes, no easy scenes or action to pass the pages. Just life, and daily living, making the mundane magical and the ordinary extraordinary. This has always been one of my favorite books, though I haven't read it in over 20 years, and it's only gotten better with age. One of the unique things about it is that there is no villian, exactly, except maybe fate and life itself. A writing teacher will tell you that Sarah is the antagonist, and I suppose on paper she is, but really the biggest obstacle for Macon Leary is Macon himself, which is the whole breathy idea of the book: We are our own worst enemies, as is our inability to adapt and move on. Simultaneously impossible and necessary, moving on is the only way to live, even if it makes living more difficult. Would Macon have done so if Sarah hadn't left him to begin with? No. Would it even be necessary but for what happened to their son? Of course not. But you have to ride the wave, or (as the extended metaphor shows near the end) you have to just ride the plane's turbulence and strap yourself in, because what else can you do? You can't prepare to much or worry to much, or live your life not living your life. If you do, you may turn into a man so afraid of the world that he writes travel books about not experiencing anything, about not leaving your hotel room, or trying new restaurants, or doing anything but what you've got to do for business in that city and then going back home. But life isn't like that, and your idea of what home is may change as well. The entire conceit of <i>The Accidental Tourist</i> is one of the best extended metaphors in all of fiction, and all the novel and writing have to do is just follow the wave it makes.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif;">Anyway, you owe it to yourself to read this one. The movie is good, too, but don't let it stop you from reading this. This is a rare book that you can read 20 years apart and still get as much, if not more, out of it now than you did then. Like a classic movie, this book can be experienced over and over again, and savored like a favorite line or a classic meal. I couldn't effusively praise it enough.</span></span>Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-16716932049215683652017-09-18T18:02:00.003-04:002017-09-18T18:02:58.829-04:00RIP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Steven E. Belangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11029874769975843685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3629896210066218248.post-75309809493353762162017-09-10T17:15:00.000-04:002017-09-10T17:15:32.611-04:00IT -- Movie Review<div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_72u" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.38;">
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Extremely good movie, high on creepiness even if it was low on scares. I'm normally not a fan of movies with child actors, but these guys did not disappoint. One of the better young casts, equal, but not better, than Rob Reiner's Stand by Me, based on King's novella, The Body. Good movie, quite a feat if, like me, you're a big fan of the book, so you know what happens. Faithful adaptation of the book with good new, creepy scenes.</div>
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