80. The Snake

The Snake - Mickey Spillane

A quick romp through solving a crime with an over confident lawman.

Mike Hammer is his name. With a name like that would you expect anything but over-confidence? To tell you the truth, that is exactly what I expected when I picked this book up. I did not think it would be outstanding writing or an intricate plot. I expected a "wham bam thank you maam" kind of book. That is exactly what this is.

It was called pulp-fiction back when it was written. I hear Spillane and Hemingway had a few arguments about if these books were worth publishing. Spillane didn't claim to be a great author. In fact, he even said once "I am a commercial writer, not an author."

Some other Spillane quotes:
"Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney."

"Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt."

"If the public likes you, you're good."

"Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am."

"Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book."

"My work may be garbage, but it's good garbage."

 and my favorite:  "I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends."

So, when I read this book from a perspective that Spillane is writing it to make a buck rather than write the best book...then this is outstanding. It makes me want to read "I, The Jury" and "Kiss Me, Deadly". I will find them both and follow Mike Hammer through those ridiculous, never gonna happen, no way in the world scenarios that he kept getting into and out of a million times.  :-)

I couldn't help but think if the old Dragnet TV show. This guy was like that, but cockier.

It was fun. I will give it a rating of good, but it is a different kind of good. It is good because the expectation was not to find another Vonnegut type of writing.

79. Flesh Gothic

Flesh Gothic - Edward Lee


Horor today is definately not what horror was twenty years ago. It used to be scary. It used to get into my head and keep me awake at night. Now, it is more gross than scary. It invokes wretching rather than shivering. It makes me feel nauseous rather than afraid to open a door.
 
I have read a few "modern" horror novels now. Some of the others have been a bit better. This one is supposed to be written by the new leader of the pack. I read the blurbs and thought it may actually be something special.
 
"Edward Lee's writing is fast and mean as a chain saw revved to full-tilt boogie."
"The hardest of the hardcore horror writers."
"A true master of the horror novel."
"The living legend of literary mayhem. Read him if you dare!"
 
I dared! I think Edward Lee just took old ideas that were scary stories, infused them with lots of deviant sexual practices and satanic ritual stuff, and then churned it together to make it much more disgusting and revolting than horrific.
 
Don't waste your time.

78. Amazonia

Amazonia - James Rollins

This book took forever to read. I carried it with me for about a month. I read a few pages here and there. I kept trying to really get into the story, but it just didn"t grab me and not let me put it down. The book was just good enough to keep me coming back and the plot was just good enough to make me wonder what would happen next, but overall it was found lacking.

It starts out great. A man wanders out of the Amazon jungle after being missing for four years. He has regenerated an amputated arm! He is also riddled with numerous aggressive cancers that kill him before he is able to share his story. From that point it is discovered that he is highly contagious and people begin to die throughout the world.
A team is put together to trace his footsteps back into the Amazon in hopes of finding a cause and possibly a cure for what has happened.
So far, so good. It goes slowly bad from there. Nothing drastic, mind you, but it is full of jungle cliché and b-movie silliness.
While traveling the Amazon, what are the typical things encountered by everyone?

Well, there must be the obligatory death by alligator (caiman in this story)...check!

How about the mysterious jungle people and the legends that are meant to keep out all strangers...check!

Oh, and the "outsider" who after some tragic event has been accepted as a member of the "tribe" and is fully trusted by indigenous folks with all their secrets...check!

There needs to be a second group to throw a monkey wrench in the works in the name of corporate greed. Of course the big evil drug corporations will hire the "ends justify the means" evil tracker guy to steal the cure once our heroes find it. And of course this guy will have fallen in love with a sadistic tribal woman who is the world's greatest shrunken-head artist. (Can you feel the ridiculousness yet?)

These things just felt like jungle-story cheese to me. And then there were other things.

How about the group gets attacked by a cross between giant venomous frogs and piranhas. These little critters killed an entire tribe of natives, but just by coincidence the groups "medicine man" happens to have some powdery substance that puts these things to sleep.

So, we escape the piranha-frogs with minimal loses. Whew...but then they are attacked by a flesh-eating swarm of locusts. Once again, the medicine-man uses some ancient natural jungle herb remedy to keep the bad monsters from attacking (though not hurting them) and the group escapes. Once again, the only guys dying are Army Rangers. (Military is expendable when we are writing a book that is supposed to be pro-environmental solutions only. Man made solutions would not help make the jungle itself seem so supernaturally powerful.)

Then we need to get across a swamp. Oh, man, what will we do now? Let's build rafts! The rafts then get attacked by more caimans. But these fellas are not normal. They are ancient. They are well over 100 feet long! Once again...Rangers die.

Then there are the giant black jaguars that look like shadows at night. Please!

Finally we make it to the goal. This is the place where a tribe lives that was supposed to be only a thing of legend. But they are real...and it is totally whacked! A giant tree has captured all manner of creatures for centuries and is keeping them alive in its root system. It is analyzing their DNA and altering it to suit its own purposes. This tree has altered human DNA to enslave the offspring. The tree has created the piranha-frogs, the man eating-locusts, the giant jaguars and who knows what else! GET OUT OF HERE!

I carried this book all these weeks and plodded through it just to read some crack-head junk like that? So, the events of the story were just good enough to keep me interested, though they felt kind of goofy and clichéd. The climax was totally cartoonish in my opinion and wouldn't even make a decent believable Saturday morning monster movie from the 70's.

Overall, it was OK...but barely. Maybe that is why it took me over a week to even try and type this blog entry.

77. Falling Man

Falling Man - Don DeLillo


I did this one on audio because I went on a trip recently. I figured I would have time to listen while flying half way around the world. That didn't happen. I left it in the car. So, it took longer than I expected because I listened to it on my work commute instead.


I chose this book because I have wanted to read Don DeLillo's Underworld for quite a while. It sits on the shelf taunting me. It is a threateningly thick novel. I will get to it some day. In the mean time I figured I would get a taste for the author's style by listening to this one.

Falling Man is centered around a few every day folks living in New York City. The events of the book are centered around the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the effects that experience had on thier lives.

Their are different perspectives throughout the book and the writer jumps from one narrator to another quite often. There is a man who was in the tower, a woman who was in the tower and shares his experience, and his estranged wife and child who deal with it as outsiders trying to understand. There are people that are just friends and acquaintences and then there are random strangers with interjections into conversations.

There is also a perspective from the terrorists themselves going through flight school and wondering when the CIA will knock on their door to arrest them.

All of it comes back to what happened that day and how it is defining who they are today.

The Falling Man? He is a performer who, following the attack, puts on a harness and jumps from bridges and buildings. He poses his body in the way of one of the men who actually jumped from the World Trade Center and was caught on film. Arms back along his body, one leg bent. When it was described I recalled the photograph.

The writing was excellent. I fully understood the characters motivations for the actions they were taking. I understood the mood of each scene as if I was there. DeLillo is very good at doing that.

The only thing I didn't like was the dark subject matter. It brought back a lot of memories. It personalized those memories. It took 2800 some odd deaths and made the reader realize that each of them was an actual human being that interacted with the world. Each of them affected others in much the same way the people in this book did. That was very sad and depressing at times.

Something else that struck me was how everyone that was in the towers during the attack had a common theme in their lives. Not the real people, I mean the characters in this book. It seemed like each of them lost a zest for living. There was no reason for doing anything any more. Go to work? Maybe. What difference does it make? Why not just go to Vegas and play poker for weeks on end? What difference does it make? That was maybe the saddest thing of all. That the people no longer had any spark. They all seemed to be dead, yet still going through the motions of life. I would hate to live like that.

76. Special Topics In Calamity Physics

Special Topics In Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl

This was a very enjoyable book. It had so many references to literature, art, film, etc. that I felt like I was in some kind of college course. It was a lot of fun.

The story was very intricate with well defined characters.

I enjoyed it a lot.

75. The Great Awakening

The Great Awakening, 1720-1760: Religious Revival Rouses Americans' Sense of Individual Liberties - Monroe Stearns

I read this book because I wanted to try and get a feel for the place religion was playing in the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War and the writing of the Constitution. What was society like at that time? What were the norms and what were the views of the fringes? If I can understand that it makes it a lot easier to understand what the Constitution's intent was and therefore, if we are following that intent or have gone of on a tangent of manipulation of that Document.

This book told the stories of a number of itinerant preachers in the colonies at that time. They came from Pennsylvania, New England, Virginia, and others. It was not some localized hysterical event worthy of writing off as a one time thing. This "Great Awakening" happened over four decades with numerous players and participants.

"The free and personal religion strengthened the founders of American colonies to brave the perils of the sea and the wilderness in order to worship God as they chose. The spirit of that early religion, however, drained away as prosperity and ease of life came to the colonies. Rituals replaced the old sense of closeness of God to his people; preaching grew cold and stereotyped."

That was prior to the Great Awakening period.

"Then a new group of ministers began to stir the hearts of those impoverished, poorly educated, politically powerless Americans, restoring to them the comfort of a personal spiritual experience which gave them a new sense of dignity, worth, and above all, joy. This restoration of faith, the Great Awakening, aroused Americans to a recognition of an individual man's capacity to be a free person and to an understanding of how spiritual dictatorship can become political tyranny."

Who were these guys?
Theodorus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747)
Jonathan Edwards (1703-58)    I am a direct descendent! :-)
George Whitefield (1714-70)
Samuel Davies (1723-61)
Gilbert Tennet (1703-64)
James Davenport (1716-57)
Charles Chauncy (1705-87)

Some of these guys, notably Frelinghuysen, Edwards and Whitefield, were, in my opinion, pretty cool. I think some of the others went a step or two too far.

Yes, I do think the religious beliefs of the day had a lot to do with the wording and intent of the founding of our country.

74. Jennifer Government

Jennifer Government - Max Barry

This was an outstanding novel written by an Aussie fellow with some attitude.

What happens when a Capitalist society no longer has the Government keeping it in check? In this story the author calls it Capitalizm. This book is written in a world where big corporations are more like governments themselves. International borders are defined by corporate mergers and alliances more than they are by the borders of today.

People are different in this world also. They take the name of the corporation for which they work as their surname. Hence Jennifer Government. Jennifer actually works for the government. Her daughter, Kate, is not named government. She is named Mattel. Why? Her school is sponsored by Mattel, of course.

There are characters named Hack Nike, John Nike, Buy Matsui, McDonalds, NRA, Burger King, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, and every other company you could think of.

I found it very interesting how the NRA itself becomes a major player in the world as not so much a company, but as a security force. Kind of like BlackWater. The thing is that these guys have fighter jets, naval ships, and forces comparable to modern day military. They are able to get these things because they are allied with Boeing, Sikorsky, or other current government contractors.

The government still exists, but has serious limits to its powers. For instance, before Jennifer is able to investigate the murders of fourteen children as a publicity stunt by the Nike marketing department...she has to go to the victims families to raise the funds needed to do the investigation. There are no taxes and therefore no government funds to use for this purpose, or any other. Needless to say, this puts the ultra-rich corporations at a tremendous advantage.

The corporations have no fear of government at all. They eventually align into two groups of competitors trying to bring in customers. These two groups end up in a full out battle with missles and guns and all that stuff. They all get together in London with the government (President, etc) in London at Parliament. The groups make a declaration that government no longer exists and has no authority over them. Then the groups shoot down the government airplane as it flies back to Washington DC. There essentially is no government.

Well, eventually, after much action and manipulation, some of the corporations realize that anarchy is not what is best for the corporate environment and that they need some government. The world calms down and the story ends.

But, none of that is what the story is about really. It is about Jennifer, her daughter, the Nike Liaison (John) she is hunting down as a criminal, Billy NRA and his adventures, Hack Nike and Buy Matsui trying to work their way up the corporate ladder along with Violet, an unemployed entrepreneur, and Claire, a radical protestor, are sisters. All of them get caught up in a more than they bargained for.

And yes, Jennifer got a barcode tattoo under her left eye. Until the very last few pages I was wondering why and what it meant. It is kind of funny once you find out what it was for. :-)

Jennifer Government was a fascinating story that was fun to read. I liked it a lot. More Max Barry please. Syrup and Company are already on the list. Machine Man should be out soon.

FYI…Max Barry has also designed a website where you can run your own country. It is kind of interesting. I started goofing around with it about a week ago. It is called NationStates and is based on the research he did to write Jennifer Government. Check it out. I created “The Free land of Somnambulistic Peoples”. Max even had the United Nations write him a "cease and desist" letter because NationStates was able to accomplish more than they were. LOL

73. Rules of the Red Rubber Ball

Rules of the Red Rubber Ball: Find and Sustain Your Life's Work - Kevin Carroll

Blah blah blah motivational sports junk.

If you really want to be superman then don't let anyone or anything get in your way.

Just Do It!

Yeah yeah, sure. Whatever dude.

72. Ecotopia

Ecotopia - Ernest Callenbach

This novel is about the creation of a better place. Northern California, Oregon and Washington secede from the United States, close the borders, and create an environmental utopia.

Twenty years later the first American is allowed to enter Ecotopia and report how it is going. The man who enters is a reporter and is sent there on a six week assignment. The culture and the whole way of life in Ecotopia is very different than in America.

The book is written as a series of reports sent back to his company and a series of diary entries about his person life while living in Ecotopia. At first there is a definate bias towards how weird the reporter sees the people and the differences between the two countries. As the book progresses this bias shifts.

Ecotopia is a very envoronmentally friendly place, but it is also steeped in the culture that was California, and probably the west coast, of the 1970s. Think the Berkeley mindset. Very liberal ideas and ways of thinking. Add in a strong environmentalist theme. I thought I knew where the author was going with this book long before that was confirmed.

I think some of the ideas were really good, though not scientifically plausable. Biodegradable plastic? Extruded plastic biodegradable homes? Harvesting the methane from your own cesspool to cool your refridgerator (you better poop a lot)? Almost all cars have been eliminated and people use publicly provided bicycles and magnetic trains. The nuclear family has been done away with and a communal/tribal existance is in effect. There are no guns or war and men release their agression in some sport-like war game. The people are all encouraged to show emotion and crowds gather to watch and essentially cheer for the participants of heated exchanges, all to help each other deal with percieved problems. There is only a 20 hour work week because production of anything at all is not very important.

I am sure you get the idea. I don't need to explain all the peace-love-dove that is obviously the influence for so much of this book.

What kept bothering me while reading it was the same thing over and over. When Ecotopia seceded from the United States, where were the problems? Where is the dissent? It never happened. The author wants us to believe that everything was so wonderful that all the residents of esentially a three state area were just happy as pigs in shit to change their entire way of life. I find that to be totally absurd.

The story was pretty cool. I guess as far as the utopia/dystopia novels go, this world wasn't all that bad. I have no idea how we would ever get there, but to just wake up one day and the world was like that? Well, why not?

It was entertaining, though I doubt that is why the book was written. I am sure it was an environmental political statement through fiction. Whatever. It was still pretty decent to just read it and know that the activism part of the writing wasn't feasable and therefore to be discounted. At least for the present day. Maybe some day. Who knows.

71. Conservatives Without Conscience

Conservatives Without Conscience - John W Dean

This was a very interesting book that explained a lot about some of the problems I have had with conservatism. Mr. Dean explained the different forms of conservatism. I agree with his assesments and his examples of folks that fit each of the different types.

I am definately a traditional conservative and a fiscal conservative.

I am definately not a neo-conservative or an authoritarian conservative.

Social and cultural conservatism is a little harder to hash out. There are issues where I can call myself socially conservative, but I think overall I am far more libertarian in these areas than conservative. I am even leaning towards liberal in some social areas.

But, this book is not about me. It is about the people John Dean says are conservatives but have no conscience. They don't acti like conservatives. They serve their own interests. On that I will agree with him 100%.

This book showed me why, despite my calling myself conservative, I can't stand being associated with some others that call themselves by the same name. I don't like the guys on the following list. I don't like their politics. I don't like thier arrogance. I don't like their condescending ways. I never have, yet still felt they were on the same team I was on. They are not and I am glad this book showed me that.

Guys like Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Jack Abramoff, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (though I liked him as Sec Def during the 1st gulf War), Alexander Haig, Karl Rove, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Pat Buchanan (thought I loved him on CNN's Crossfire) to name a few. I think these kind of conservatives are full of dookie.

These are the kinds of conservatives that will do anything and everything to further their cause. Not the conservative cause, but their own version of what that means. It hurts the country. It causes division and polarization.

So, for twenty years the right has been dominated by guys like these clowns. This is what people think conservatism is. I feel bad about that. Mr. Dean has a great point in this book when he talks about the motivations behind these types of people and how they just want power and control. They escalate problems in DC and then the left retaliates in kind. This goes back and forth until nobody is listening to the other side and there is absolutely no compromise on any issue.

That is not what the founders of our country had in mind nor what was required for them to agree on a new form of government. They were full of compromise and debated many things. They listened to each other and found ways to make things work and reach the goal. That rarely happens today.

I gained a new-found respect for one of my own Senators. Lindsey O. Graham. I agree with him on a lot of things and then he goes of and does something I find just totally out of charachter for the current definition of a conservative. I did not know why he would do this. Now I do. This man is working to better the country by listening and not being an arse on all matters. Now that I know why he is doing the things he is doing I understand his actions much better and have an even greater respect for his reasoning. The guys like John McCain and Colin Powell (One of the really good guys). I understand them better now. I may not agree with all the things these guys do, but I can understand why they are doing it. Well, except that Powell endorsement of Barack Obama.

I thought this book would be just another left wing rant against the right. I was wrong. I gained a respect for John Dean also. The book was very good and explained his thoughts and ideas in an excellent manner. One where I, the supposed side being attacked, did not feel attacked at all. Rather, it felt like some pieces of the puzzle that I knew were missing due to my own inability to look in the right places were found and handed to me. That allowed me to look at myself in a way I was not able to see before.

Thanks Mr. Dean. But, no, I will not vote for you.  :-)