Review: The Dead Drink First

The Dead Drink First by Dale Maharidge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Audible.com is really setting a new bar in audiobooks with their original content. This story of the author's search for the identity of a man in his father's photograph combines several audio sources (source recordings) and voices (interviews) as the author recounts a moving investigation into one member of the "Greatest Generation" in a way that reflects back some light onto the American experience. Is it an audioplay, audio documentary, audiobook? I don't know, but this continued intersection of quality content and engaging presentation in a post-podcast format is worth paying attention to.

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Review: Cash: The Autobiography

Cash: The Autobiography by Johnny Cash
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In High Fidelity (2000) John Cusack as Rob Gordon says, "But I have to say my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography Cash by Johnny Cash."

I now can see why this quip bears scrutiny. I have read, literally, hundreds of biographies in my life and this is one of the very best. Cash's personality and depth exude from these pages as if he was telling the reader personally his recollections and thoughts around the table in his tour bus "Unit One" between one stop and another. This feels very personal and authentic. Cash brings in history of the South, country music and more in revealing chapters that each read like a topical essay on his Bible spirituality, battles with drug addiction, sense of home and family, love for his wife June Carter Cash and more.

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Review: Bt-Star Wars Album

Bt-Star Wars Album by Ballantine Books
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This picture book is basically in three parts: (1) roots for the film in movie and sci-fi history, (2) a novella-ization of the story, and (3) behind the scenes stories and pics. Only (3) is of real interest and value, I think. Some of (1) isn't convincing as being real inspiration for Lucas and (2) is just unnecessary.

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Review: The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex

The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex by Owen Chase
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although attacks by whales on whalers were not at all common, there were instances, of which Herman Melville was aware. This collection of related pieces leads off with the lion's share of the content, a first-hand account of the sinking of the Nantucket whaler Essex in 1820, after a large sperm whale rammed her 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded theses events in his 1821 narrative where the privation and cannibalism after the attack dwarfs the drama of the violently defensive animal. This leads to additional supporting pieces on attacking whales and cannibalism including the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick. Mocha Dick was rumored to have 20 or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. Mocha Dick was an albino and partially inspired Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, or, the Whale .

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Review: Instant Wind Forecasting

Instant Wind Forecasting by Alan James Watts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A very technical reference. Probably its most useful part for the layman is the central portion where verso is a consist tabular set of details and inferences to make with the recto, full-page photograph of common cloud formations.

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Review: The Chesapeake Today Vol 10 No 4 - All Crime, All the Time: All Crime, All the Time in the Chesapeake Region of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware

The Chesapeake Today Vol 10 No 4 - All Crime, All the Time: All Crime, All the Time in the Chesapeake Region of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware by Kenneth C. Rossignol
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This reads like readings from the police blotter with a curmudgeon's marginalia. Just dry redcitings of crimes. This does not even rise to the level of reportage.

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Review: 1963: The Year of the Revolution: How Youth Changed the World with Music, Art, and Fashion

1963: The Year of the Revolution: How Youth Changed the World with Music, Art, and Fashion by Ariel Leve
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent story of the post-WWII (post rationing and draft) 'youthquake' in London told from the inside view of fashion (Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, etc.) other arts and music. Music is not just artists but journalists and publicists, etc. The music feels much focuses on The Rolling Stones with Richards, Wyman, and Andrew Loog Oldham. All this is told from snippets of interviews arranged topically and chronologically.

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Review: Bluebeard

Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If Vonnegut graded this work, I think he would give it a C, or a B- at best. It's a long walk of a shaggy-dog story for the rather weak payoff to find out what Rabo Karabekian hides in his barn. But, if you are interested in Kurt Vonnegut and especially his Slaughterhouse-Five, this is further ore mined from his reflection upon WW II.

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Review: Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk

Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an excellent anthology history of the L.A. punk scene. Doe not only recalls his own involvement with X, etc. but a cast of other recollections includes (narrated by themselves) Henry Rollins, Jane Wiedlin, El VEz, and more.

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Review: The Ancient World 800 B.C.-A.D. 800, Volume I

The Ancient World 800 B.C.-A.D. 800, Volume I by Richard J. Burke Jr.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is really an anthology of literature from the antiquities. Lengthy excerpts are prefaced by short but effective explanatory introductions.

I: "Ancient Greece" focuses on the philosophical advances that are underpinnings to Western thought and governance. (The subtitle of this collection is "Western Society Institutions and Ideals")
II: "Ancient Rome" follows this theme
III: "The Judaeo-Christian Tradition" ends up focussing on setting the stage for Jesus and the eventual consolidating organization of the Catholic Church.
IV: "The Early Germans" is possibly the shortest section but builds on III and highlighting on how the destroyers of the Roman Empire incubated the Church in Europe.

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Review: Black Widow: The True Story of Giggling Granny Nannie Doss

Black Widow: The True Story of Giggling Granny Nannie Doss by Ryan Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It feels to me like there are two broad avenues of true crime writing: amplified novelisation with imagined dialogue and interior thoughts and then dry reportage like a scrap book of newspaper clippings and police reports. On that continuum, I drift toward the just-the-facts end. With this latest opus from Ryan Green recalling the American serial killer responsible for the deaths of 11 people and referred to as the Giggling Granny, the Lonely Hearts Killer, and the Black Widow, he has, for me, gotten to a happy medium on that continuum satisfying me with a chronological relation of events while adding just enough life to keep it interesting and brisk, too.

Also, very good narration from Steve White.

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Review: Modern Music: A Popular Guide to Greater Musical Enjoyment

Modern Music: A Popular Guide to Greater Musical Enjoyment by John Tasker Howard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A quick brisk read in three acts:

I: "Modern" is a delusion of aspect. Every articulate observer sans time machine is at the end of a chain of events reaching back to antiquity.
II: DIssonance is the eventual object in the evolution of composers' imaginations and listeners' ears.
III: Enjoy and explore experimental and challenging music.

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Review: Sleepers

Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hey, I really like the movie, so I felt I should read the "true story" it is based on. Heck, this doesn't read like any true crime I know of? Where are the nuances, the grays, the inexplicable mysteries and followed leads that prove unrelated? This reads like a "tale", like a novel, like fiction - which apparently many people feel it is.

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Review: My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor

My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor by Keith Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Looking back at 60, Morris does a masterful, humble, and reflective job documenting his P.O.V. of the SoCal hardcore scene: Black Flag, Circle Jerks and more. This form his vantage on the stage and behind scene, as well as tending bar, waiting tables and doing major label scouting. Grounded by diabetes and a load of successes and setbacks, Morris is a primary source of history and a bit of a sage.

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Review: Ten Equations to Explain the Mysteries of Modern: From Information and Chaos Theory to Ghost Particles and Gravitational Waves

Ten Equations to Explain the Mysteries of Modern: From Information and Chaos Theory to Ghost Particles and Gravitational Waves by Santhosh Mathew
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"...There is a poetic feel to the ruminations here exemplified by Chapter 6 on entropy. Its name eschews title case as the rest: “The equation that stole eternity”. This gibes with an awe of the discovered and imagined nature of reality emerging from the semi-philosophical character of discussion here. This tone is set from the onset with Chapter 1 on The Shannon Entropy Equation leading not to data compression or other applications of information theory, but to a musing on the Holographic Universe; reality as a simulation or hologram.

This is not to suggest the author ever becomes untethered, drifting off into fringe theory. Not only well-grounded, there are some salvoes fired into the fringe. Aim is taken at The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism
by Fritjof Capra and against the “outcry of some Hindu nationalists that science is just figuring out what has already been described in the scriptures.” (I am certain this is the only work on mathematics I have read that has a few things to say on the subject of “Hindu nationalists” and their beliefs.)..."

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]

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Review: Enlightened Democracy

Enlightened Democracy by Tara Ross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this in early 2008 and was so impressed by Tara Ross's insightful scholarship that I cancelled an order when someone bought my used copy. I, literally, couldn't part with it! And, Ross, has written others just as engaging. Ross makes the cases that if it was not for this solution to balancing the concerns of small states against the large ones, America may never have happened.

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Review: Killing in the Family: A True Story of Love, Lies and Murder

Killing in the Family: A True Story of Love, Lies and Murder by Stephen Singular
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'd do 3.5 stars if I could do halves, but what set this above most good true crime reads for me is the unfolding confessions over many years makes a compelling and very human tale of this insidious plot of manipulation and murder, the basis for Love, Lies and Murder. Also, I find interesting that like a tragic opera, this devolves into interpersonal relationships and their erosion with little to know forensic analysis. Bonus points for a supporting role of a outlaw biker turned jailhouse snitch turned street preacher.

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Review: THE CHESAPEAKE: A Man Born to Hang, Can Never Drown

THE CHESAPEAKE: A Man Born to Hang, Can Never Drown by Ken Rossignol
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First of all, kudos to narrator Paul J McSorley. I give the narration four stars.

Basically, I think this hodge-podge lacked focus and/or arrangement:

Adventures in prose from around the Chesapeake tidewater region told by an erstwhile and eclectic collection of writers. Ringmaster Ken Rossignol gathered together many of best and brightest of bards, poets, and tale-tellers to give their views, experiences, and fabrications in an entertaining way. Fans of short stories will enjoy...

So, I am a fan of non-fiction, like much of some of the others by compiler Ken Rossignol. However, this blend of fancy and holding-forth with history is an uneven aggregation. To me, much of the essays and tales are like weak shaggy dog stories -- a long walk for a weak payout. I did greatly appreciate the WW II PTO recollections which were cancelled out by kids-these-days curmudgeonly blasts from "The Country Philosopher". I enjoyed the tales of modern oyster thieves (I am assuming that to be non-fiction, but don't know) and checking in with Captain Larry Jarboe and his Wavewalk Adventures in Key Largo.

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Review: Mathematics with Applications in the Management, Natural and Social Sciences

Mathematics with Applications in the Management, Natural and Social Sciences by Margaret L. Lial
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is, in my opinion, the worst mathematics textbook at this level I have ever encountered. Basically, in stretching from Algebra I to Calculus I in less than 900 pages of main text, this tries to do too much. Here is a list of particular issues I have, which I stopped adding to less than half-way through:

- A serious lack of set theory basis, so that solving an equation is no different from solve for a variable. (There is no concept of solution set)
- Intercepts are treated as values, not points
- They encourage by example negative lead coefficients in denominators
- There is a missing introduction of basic functions leading to no clear development of transformations in graphing.
- The integrated My Math Lab material misleads students by not using parentheses in logarithms
- The modeling of exponential growth with P(t) = Pe^(rt) is artlessly handled so that the concept of r relating to percentage growth over unit of time is lost.


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Review: The Red Pony

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a schadenfreude about eight graders finding this on their reading list and after grinning at the pony in the title on the cover grimacing at the internal calamities of knife birth, equine distemper, forcing buzzards off a corpse and more. Well, the theme is one of encountering painful realities especially through loved animals... I most like the final short story, which feels tacked on as it does not include clueless Jody or a pet in distress. "Junius Maltby" is the story of man so enamored with reading that even worse calamities -- including privation and his dying children -- cannot distract him from a good book. Well, at least it looks like his son turns out alright.

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Review: The Stone

The Stone by Hardy Fox
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Written by one of the creative forces behind The Residents (Charles Bobuck being another pseudonym) this reads like a hallucinatory dream, a fever-dream with words and images from The Residents universe merging with Hardy's own life. This is a fantasmagoric counterpoint to This Is for Readers: The Wax and Wane of Charles Bobuck with a similar point of view of looking back on a life lived strangely.

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Review: The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second attempt at really trying to appreciate this novel. I want to because it feels like I should. The jabs at Christianity recall to me Crime and Punishment and the alternative history King Jesus while I like the idea of The Devil going for a romp in Moscow as a stage performer .... and chaos ensues. However, a second act becomes so zany and surreal as to, for me, lack a center and something to maintain my attention. I find the first half witty and even incisize with the second half to border on slapstick .

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