Category Archives: Library

Last Exit In New Jersey

Posted on November 9, 2010 | Comments Off on Last Exit In New Jersey

This is memorable genre fiction, a crime mystery ennobled by a love story between a homicidal heroine and a suicidal hero. It’s marred, mainly, from the middle onward, by a distracting swarm of missing or unnecessary duplicated words.

I quit several times, both for the annoying typos and the confusing plot. I was drawn back for the reason one plunges on in any good story—to find out what happened next.

Most of the puzzle pieces snap into place at the end. And the surprising payoff is well worth the journey. All it needs is a good proofreader (and executing a few tedious cliches) to smooth the ride. The reader deserves it, and so do this intriguing tale’s touching protagonists.

UPDATE on 11/12:  The author, C.E. Grundler, made a crash effort to fix all of the mistakes and sent me the completed copy. Looks good now, so I’ll reiterate (without the typo reservations above) that if you’re looking for a good Indie tale, this is definitely one you should try.

Comments Off on Last Exit In New Jersey

Posted in Library, Scribbles

Tagged , , ,

Harmonizing with the Browns

Posted on November 8, 2010 | Comments Off on Harmonizing with the Browns

Maxine, Jim Ed, and Bonnie Brown were voices on my radio back in the Dark Ages of my teens in the late 1950s—especially their pop hit “Three Bells,” whose words I always thought were gooey sentimental.

But I listened to them anyway for the beautiful harmonies. Which was the secret of their success, of course, the pure Deep South hillbilly music sound that would soon, sure enough, become Rock-n-Roll.

Via Gone South.

Comments Off on Harmonizing with the Browns

Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Scribbles

Tagged , , ,

6th U.S. Cavalry

Posted on November 7, 2010 | Comments Off on 6th U.S. Cavalry

6CavRegtCOAWorking a future post on my knoxville1863 blog I was tickled to find out that Brig. Gen. William P. Sanders, for whom Knoxville’s Fort Sanders was named, was a veteran of the 6th U.S. Cavalry Regiment in the Virginia Peninsula Campaign and at Antietam/Sharpsburg.

I was a lieutenant-platoon commander in the 6th’s descendant unit, the 6th Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Meade, Maryland, in 1968-69.

We were then rumored to be headed to Vietnam to replace the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, though, in fact, most of our troops were combat veteran returnees at a time when a one-year combat tour was all that was required.

Instead, we spent most of our time training for riot control in those days of race riots, though we didn’t have to control any. Instead we guarded President Nixon’s inaugural ceremonies. The unicorn is the 6th’s shoulder patch and coat of arms.

Comments Off on 6th U.S. Cavalry

Posted in Blogosphere, Civil War, Library

Tagged , , , ,

The Baroque Cycle

Posted on November 6, 2010 | Comments Off on The Baroque Cycle

I finally finished Neal Stephenson’s 3,000-page novel (in three books) and I’m still decompressing from the 17th-18th century United Kingdom. Especially the vocabulary, which he handles very well.

I was disappointed with the ending because it didn’t bring us full circle back to the beginning of the first book. I’d have liked to hear more from Enoch Root, the novel’s Methuselah, and Daniel’s young son Godfrey who, as one character says will carry his line far into the future.

Also, while I never doubted that Jack would not be shaft-o on the Treble Tree, a more artful telling of his survival could have been made. Nevertheless, it was a fine journey through the development of Western science and world commerce. I will miss not having Jack and Eliza and the Natural Philosophers to return to day after day after day.

Comments Off on The Baroque Cycle

Posted in Library, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

Tagged , ,

Jack Reacher, emotional incompetent

Posted on November 2, 2010 | Comments Off on Jack Reacher, emotional incompetent

I used to read Jack Reacher thrillers. Now I see I have missed the latest two in a row. I think I overdosed on him back when he was shilling for the Democrats in denouncing the campaign in Iraq.

I’d finally realized that Jack was just another Leftist messenger from New York, a murderous one for the violence-freaks, but in the end a bore with a toothbrush who was so emotionally stunted that he couldn’t abide a serious relationship with anyone.

Comments Off on Jack Reacher, emotional incompetent

Posted in Iraq, Library, Scribbles, The War

NPR objective? Only if you’re a liberal.

Posted on October 31, 2010 | Comments Off on NPR objective? Only if you’re a liberal.

The recent NPR firing of conservative Juan Williams was just fresh icing on a stale cake. PajamasMedia has a good piece of analysis of the tax-supported elitists who pretend to speak the truth.

“Neither Beck nor a single one of his supporters appeared on the [critical-of-Beck] show, an omission that appeared to be motivated more by journalistic laziness and a lack of intellectual curiosity than anything else….Put simply, liberals constitute the one subculture in the United States that consistently and often willfully mistakes its specific and particular preferences for universal truths.”

Continue reading →

Comments Off on NPR objective? Only if you’re a liberal.

Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Scribbles

Tagged ,

The Confederate states rights fantasy

Posted on October 27, 2010 | Comments Off on The Confederate states rights fantasy

While I’m at it, on the subject of Civil War myths, might as well tackle the granddaddy of them all. The notion, first lofted about 1890 or so, that the South seceded from the Union in assertion of its states rights.

There was just enough of that involved in 1860-61 to make later claims of its primacy plausible for the forgetful. Now a new book hangs the Lost Causers with their own documents.

Historians have long preached the need to go to primary documents (sometimes government papers, often eye-witness diaries and letters) to understand history. Moreover, they want us to know that the study of history is an ongoing plunge, as sociologist/historian James W. Loewen wrote in his popular 1996 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong into “arguments, issues and controversy.”

In his new book, The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader, Loewen quotes the original documents the seceding states and their prominent politicians issued in 1860-61 in which they expressly said that protection of slavery was their primary motivation for secession and that they were explicitly opposed to the “states rights” of Northern states to tamper with it by refusing to enforce the federal Fugitive Slave law.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on The Confederate states rights fantasy

Posted in Civil War, Library

Tagged , ,