Back Story, by Robert B. Parker

G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 2003. 291 pages



This is a Spenser novel, one of the series of thirty or more, featuring characters well-known to those of us who have read so many of these. Hawk, Susan Silverman, Quirk, Spenser, and yet another Pearl (I don't know what happened to Pearl I, in a novel I didn't read), the dog.

Spenser is a private detective living in Boston. Susan is his love, a respected psychiatrist. Hawk is a "criminal genius," a former covert operative of vague and mysterious roots, an African-American keenly aware of the tension between races in our society who will be reading impenetrable scientific literature in one scene, only to respond with the worst shuck-and-jive language ("sho nuf") in the next.


Spenser is nothing less than a Samurai. He is strong, brave, skilled at warfare beyond belief, and possessed of a powerful sense of right and wrong. People come to him who have been wronged, treated unfairly, by powers that they are too weak to overcome, and Spenser sets out to correct the injustice.

In this novel Spenser is approached by a young woman, Daryl, through the intercession of his adopted son Paul Giacomin. Daryl's mother was killed in a bank robbery in Boston in 1974; this story is placed somewhere in more current times, probably at the beginning of the twenty-first century. (My, it's strange to write that.) It was never discovered who exactly shot her mother to death, there is a cloud of mystery and a hint of cover-up over the crime. This is essential Spenser. He goes to work.

Through the story he unravels the facts of the case, not without risking his life and those of his friends, and killing several of the enemy who try to keep him from the truth. He uncovers a complicated intrigue involving organized crime and the FBI, which I will not explain out of a desire not to spoil the mystery for those who have not yet read this delicious book.

There is a strange and bittersweet ending, a sort of shifting of resolution that I found interesting, even realistic. But make no mistake, this is rich fantasy, pure escape fiction: There are no Spensers walking the face of this planet. No woman is as beautiful or tolerant as Silverman, no friend as powerful, connected and brave as Hawk. No cops (including the FBI) so impotent and frustrated, or at worst corrupt and evil, connected to the mob or mired in cover-ups of their own mistakes. There will be no resolution of this puzzle without Spenser's intervention.

At the end of the battle the Samurai sheaths his sword. The field is littered with dead bodies. The world is still evil, but he has inserted some balance, neutralized some threats. He has done what he set out to do, but we are not sure if Daryl will know the details of who killed her mother. She has, according to the formula, opted out, told Spenser to stop looking, she doesn't want to know any more. But Spenser did not stop once he had begun; he leaves no job unfinished.


This is escape fiction at its best, with a few thought-provoking threads woven through it. Parker has something to say about the hippies and the anti-establishment movement in the seventies, the dope-smoking culture, and the modern hangers-on who live in this past, rolling joints and cursing the Man. Over-simplified it may be, but he makes his case: if you want to change the world, you'd better be ready to get hurt and hurt some others, you'd better have a good plan and the means to execute it. Self-reliance is what Spenser is about: he knows exactly whom he can trust.

Parker is also interested in the discomfort we feel when we are inescapably faced with racial issues. He contrasts Spenser's invulnerable bond with the equally invulnerable Hawk, and their superiority to prejudicial thinking expressed through their black-and-white ribbing, their comedic take on the whole "what color am I" issue, with the stark hatred and rejection between whites and blacks that drives essential elements of this plot.

It is also important to mention that in this novel Spenser meets Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts. Stone is the star of another excellent series by Parker, which has had some success adapted for television -- as did the Spenser series in the past.

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading Robert B. Parker, wait no longer. There is a pile of great reading here, you can't go wrong.

Some other than official Robert B. Parker Web Sites:

Bullets and Beer
A Parker Biography on Kirjasto (Pegasos, at www.kirjasto.sci.fi.)
A Parker Article at bookreporter.com
New York Times Article
Wikipedia Entry (includes more links)

More Project Gutenberg -- Music

This is not news, as it happened at least a few days ago, but it's news to me. Project Gutenberg has, in addition to the things I recently described, sheet music.

I discovered this on Slashdot. There is an article (linked to the title of this post) there that summarizes, and explains, the source of and issues regarding the storage and publishing of public domain musical stores on Gutenberg.

Curious, I went over to the Project and had a look for myself. I was able to download a compressed file of the Second Brandenburg Concerto. When I extracted it I discovered that it consisted of files with .xml filename extensions.

The computer I used is running Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop. Using Synaptic, it took me about three minutes to locate, download, and install a program with which to read the score. The program I installed is called Noteedit and is, of course, free and open source.

Please understand that I don't have the skill (or the orchestra) to make any use of this, and furthermore, that I spent only a few minutes making a rudimentary investigation. I am sure there are other programs that could be used to read (and edit) the score, and there are probably other online repositories of public domain music.

Gutenberg Goodies

Something recently reminded me of Project Gutenberg.

This ambitious (and successful) undertaking set out some years ago to scan and electronically publish every out-of-copyright piece of literature they could get their hands on. From what I understand, they scan old books, magazines, and newspapers, and then use OCR software to put the text into ASCII format. Leagues of volunteer proofreaders check on the OCR and make corrections as necessary before releasing the electronic texts. I did this for a while: volunteered as a proofreader, but fell off the habit. This causes me a twinge of guilt; I may have to go beg for my old job back.

Not too long ago I wanted to see if any of Faulkner's writing had risen into the public domain. Apparently none has, although I did find this version of The Sound and the Fury online. But my quest for Faulkner led me to visit Project Gutenberg, and I couldn't help browsing here and there.

The first goodie I encountered was Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie's classic children's book. I looked at the listing and clicked on a link to read it, and then realized that (typical of me) I hadn't been paying close attention. This was an audio book. Available in several formats, one can download this freely (it's all public domain, and Gutenberg offers their transcriptions for free) and enjoy the excellent reading of this book (and many others) by volunteers who have done a terrific job. I didn't listen to the whole thing, I must admit, but what I heard was great. I hope that those of you who voraciously consume My Reading Life will do some research for me and let me know what you find. Both of you.

Next, I wanted to take a look at Dubliners, by James Joyce, once again. Not too long ago I looked up a copy of "The Dead" (the last story in the collection) for a friend, so I was fairly certain that the book must be in the public domain. It is, and this past weekend I found myself reading the whole thing again, for what must be at least the third time. It seems so obvious to say that Joyce was one hell of a great writer, but he was. His prose is poetry:

In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning. It was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked to the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds.

From "The Sisters," by James Joyce.The stories in Dubliners are:

1. The Sisters
2. An Encounter
3. Araby
   
4. Eveline
5. After The Race
6. Two Gallants
7. The Boarding House
8. A Little Cloud
9. Counterparts
10. Clay
11. A Painful Case
12. Ivy Day in the Committee Room
13. A Mother
14. Grace
15. The Dead

Having finished Dubliners for now, I've immersed myself in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. From that novel comes this beautiful bit:

Without waiting for his father's questions he ran across the road and began to walk at breakneck speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he was walking. Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of sudden-risen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and passed away above him till at last the air was clear and cold again.

The Joyce catalog at Gutenberg also includes Ulysses and Chamber Music. Chamber Music is poetry; I think it could be accurately described as a long poem in 36 parts. I can't say anything about it, I'm very poor at reading or evaluating poetry, I fear I'm a little too stupid for it. Ulysses is one of my great loves, and when I've finished savoring Portrait, I'll probably dive back into Ulysses (1.49MB of ASCII text!).

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins,chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.

Apparently they haven't gotten around to Finnegan's Wake.

Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken

Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them; A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
By Al Franken.
Dutton, New York, 2003. ISBN 0-525-94764-7.
379 pages.

Although this book is a little out of date I'm glad I read it. Franken is, first and foremost, a comedian. But he is no slouch as a journalist, and does a forceful and effective job of pointing out the bluster, mendacity, and just plain bullshit that spews from the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and even good old George W. Bush.

He enumerates and debunks lies from the Bush campaign in 2000, the era up to and immediately after 9/11. He deplores the war in Iraq, even though he personally supported it at first -- as many liberals did, including Senator Clinton. I found his willingness to own up to his own erroneous endorsement of that effort refreshing in a political atmosphere where seldom does anyone admit to a mistake. He believed the WMD explanation, and feared an Iraq with nuclear weapons and Saddam Hussein in command.

The book is entertaining and funny, but I'm not sure how much actual good this type of writing does. I agree that Bob Jones University is a joke and that the facility with which the Bush administration will lie to support its positions is actually funny in a black sort of way -- but I wonder who has read and will read this book. Has it changed anyone's opinion? Would a neo-conservative pick this book up and read it, and evaluate the facts in it, and come to any conclusion; or would he be more likely to discard it after reading the title or the first few words?

I hope that Americans are still open to discourse, but the real climate seems to be more one of extreme polarity and commitment to political ideology that is more like religious faith (and is often mixed up with it) -- not to be questioned. If you are an American liberal or conservative today and someone presents an argument with one of the pillars of your ideology, no matter how well-reasoned or insightful, it seems to me most likely that you will take offense and consider that you have been personally attacked. There are very few of my acquaintances with whom I would be comfortable questioning such core beliefs. Those with whom I would feel comfortable are very close and trusted friends who would understand that any argument I present comes only from a standpoint of philosophical inquiry. Otherwise, I'd be afraid of making an enemy with whom I would have to deal in the future.

Mockery is a time-honored method for dealing with unpopular yet powerful institutions. Satire lets us laugh at the injustice and dishonesty that we see in our government. These tools have existed for centuries, and perhaps as long as they continue to exist no tyrant is safe indefinitely. But I sense that we live today in a climate of increasing fear of that with which we do not agree, and intolerance of those with opposing viewpoints.

Al Franken is an accomplished comedian and comedy writer. He understands the power in a well-timed, effectively-delivered sarcasm. I hope that he and others like him will continue to throw rocks at the monolith that rises in our midst.

For even if you don't agree with Al Franken's politics you must love the existence of an established and successful performer who openly taunts and ridicules the government in power for this is one indication that we still enjoy at least some of the freedoms guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights.

On the last page of his book (before the appendices) he relates a conversation with a Methodist minister on an airplane.

"...'Do you know what God's punishment is for liars?' he asked me.
"Guessing wildly, I tried, 'They're turned into donkeys?'
"'No,' he said. 'God's punishment for liars is that they believe their own lies.'"

I went looking for a website featuring the author and his works, as I usually do when I write these reviews. I discovered that Franken is running for Senate in Minnesota. I have no idea how well or poorly he's doing, but I'll be interested to see how that goes.

Cadillac Jukebox, by James Lee Burke

I've read a number of these Dave Robicheaux mysteries, set in Louisiana, and I've liked them all. This book was no exception. The mood is dark and swampy, some of the characters are as lowlife as they can get, the mystery goes back to the nineteenth century for some of its roots. This is essential, basic, James Lee Burke.

Along with the old history he includes some more recent. There's a character called Clay Mason, steeped in the Hippie culture of the 1960's, who bears a certain similarity to William Burroughs. There's some connection to a location in Mexico that could be Burroughs' ranch there.

Both the Governor-elect, Buford LaRose, and his wife, Karyn, are acquainted with Robicheaux, indeed it seems he has had a vague encounter with the lady in his alcoholic past -- and these people are incredibly corrupt as well as being drug addicts. If this is a reference to anyone real, let me know, I've missed it.

The case centers around a man named Aaron Crown, in prison for killing a major Louisiana civil-rights leader, whom Robicheaux is beginning to believe may be innocent. And there's Mookie Zerrang, recently released from prison, a psycho/sociopath. He may be in town just to kill Robicheaux. Or someone else. Or all of the above.

There's so many characters, and so much plot. What really happened to Aaron Crown, what did he do? And what's Jerry Joe's story, Dave's childhood friend? He was close to the LaRose family, worked on a place in Mexico that they owned, side by side with the young Buford. This is a hell of a story.

Just the names are enough. Mingo Bloomberg. Sabelle Crown.

"If you seriously commit yourself to alcohol, I mean full-bore, the way you take up a new religion, and join that great host of revelers who sing and lock arms as they bid farewell to all innocence in their lives, you quickly learn the rules of behavior in this exclusive fellowship whose dues are the most expensive in the world. You drink down. That means you cannot drink in well-lighted places with ordinary people because the psychological insanity in your face makes you a pariah among them. So you find other drunks whose condition is as bad as your own, or preferably even worse.

"But time passes and you run out of geography and people who are in some cosmetic way less than yourself and bars where the only admission fee is the price of a 6 A.M. short-dog.

"That's when you come to places like Sabelle Crown's at the Underpass in Lafayette."

Cletus Purcel ( a regular character in these novels). Brandy Grissum. Dock Green:

"...an agitated, driven, occasionally vicious, ex-heavy-equipment operator, who claimed to have been kidnapped from a construction site near Hue ... and buried alive ... His face was hard-edged, as though it had been layered from putty that had dried unevenly. It twitched constantly, and his eyes had the lidless intensity of a bird's, focusing frenetically upon you, or the person behind you ..."

Dock Green has Tourette's syndrome, just for good measure.

There is violence, mystery, and the Bayou. All in all, worth your time.

Mount Appetite, by Bill Gaston

Raincoast Books, Vancouver BC, 2002. 221 pages. ISBN 1-55192-451-X.

This is a collection of short stories. Bill Gaston is a writer who lives in British Columbia. He teaches at the University of Victoria. I liked this book from the first few words. His prose is powerful, rhythmic, and effective without being excessive -- he sneaks up on you and clobbers you with a line.

"But when he was tired, like now, he felt closer to the shabby ground. He could feel in his bones how spring still hadn't come. He could smell mildew in the grey rug, which had to be fifteen years old. The floor of this old mobile creaked almost anywhere you put a foot down and the room he worked in was damn ridiculous... So much needed to be better."
--From "Where it Comes From, Where it Goes" page 14.

Desire is the source of all suffering, Gaston reminds me several times in these pages.

"Where it Comes From, Where it Goes."

What is the source, what is the justification, for a man to have the gift of healing? Why did he receive the gift, and what makes it keep working?

"The Angel's Share."

A mysteriously indigent woman traveling by kayak visits a campground group of urban folks on holiday sitting around a fire, drinking and talking.

"The Alcoholist."

A portrait of an intensely sensitive man with a talent for spirits.

"Driving Under the Influence."

A drunk driver finds himself attracted to a female police officer at a roadblock. He is charming, she lets him go. But he's tempted to go back and see her again, that very evening.

"Comedian Tire."

Two brothers who have not been particularly close are drawn together as the elder prematurely nears the end of his life. The younger has a complicated young-family life including a van that isn't running right and a child (and, perhaps, wife) with the flu. Somehow against his better judgement, he takes his van to "the red garage," a less-than-reputable retail auto repair chain store. The end of this story has a similar feeling to the end of "The Bronze Miracle," later in the book. The characters are, through the events in these stories, somehow released from their "normal" striving and find themselves weightless -- perhaps enlightened.

"The Little Drug Addict That Could."

Jack is a government bureaucrat who deals with fisheries. Tyson is his nephew, a problem child now no longer a child who's never been good at keeping a job. He comes to Jack with a surprising request for help resulting in an outcome worthy of an O. Henry story.

"The Hangover."

Three brothers go on a fishing trip. Keith, the "stuffy cellist," wary of their careless, macho behavior, is reluctant to go, but resigns himself to the outing. Horrified by the amount of beer and whiskey they've loaded into this "iffy tin boat," he protects his hands under his life jacket, and dreads the coming drinking and inevitable hangover. He's the only one wearing a life jacket, Phil and Raymond are using theirs for seat cushions.

In this unlikely story of modern Canadian siblings working vainly in middle age to frolic as youth, to change their brother, make him more ordinary; in this story's nine pages are sufficient hints to infer their three lives to date, as well as what is to come.

"He could remember his father once joking -- some joke -- that in a past life someone must have done something horrible to his hands."

"A Forest Path."

Begins with the disclaimer that it is not fiction, and expresses detestation for those who write fiction, for they are writers of lies. Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano, and once resident of Dollarton, a part of North Vancouver, BC, is one of such detested weavers of written misinformation, and the subject of the narrator's ire and spite.

As the story continues, we learn that the narrator was a little boy in Dollarton when Lowry lived there. He and his mother both knew Lowry somewhat, and the narrator gives us a new insight into Lowry's short story of the same name as this one.

Gaston more than once in this collection explores a theme of rebirth, reincarnation, the cycle of death and life, including but not limited to the Buddhist perspective. In this story he relates Lowry's fascination with Death, speculates that he had a hatred of life, and leaves us with the impression that perhaps Lowry's spirit continues on.

I knew nothing of Lowry when I read this story. A little research on the 'net was helpful.

Some information about Malcolm Lowry and Under the Volcano.

"Maria's Older Brother."

Tony is a little different, perhaps a little retarded, a child among children his own age. He loves to play baseball with the other kids but he is the absolute last choice for anyone's team, and only gets to play when no one else is available. When his sister dies, he seems to think that perhaps he will get some dispensation from the usual scorn his peers direct at him.

"The Bronze Miracle."

Having graduated from high school, Jim goes to work in a 7-Eleven store by night, and as a landscaper by day, in order to save money for his dream -- his desire -- to buy a large brick house on an Eastern lake. He is visited ten times by The Bronze Miracle, and is changed.

"The Northern Cod."

Ruth Twirling is a British Columbian marine biologist in Newfoundland, working on a project that is apparently trying to find a way to restore the Cod population in the Atlantic in that region. She has left familiar academic circles to work in this remote and unfamiliar place and as the story begins it seems a quirky choice to have made, but as more about her life is revealed we begin to understand from what she is escaping, and for what she strives.

"Mount Appetite."

Felice is taken from her widower father by the Authorities, because he grows pot, and makes cannabis tea to relieve her from the tortures of mental illness. The story is told in a series of emails from the father to a psychiatrist to whom he is compelled (by the Authorities) to go.

The father's rage at what has been done to him and his daughter grows, builds, explodes in a calm fury of sarcasm, mock-patient explanations of how they have been living with Felice's illness since she was born, and how they have never benefited from or desired any help from doctors, or the government.

"...I feel surrounded by galaxies of insane pettiness. Each galaxy (read: government ministry) is spinning in on itself with its mad, mad, black hole in the middle, sucking in all common sense, and decency, and light. A black hole is the absence of a brain and, even more, a heart. The word "ministry" smacks of horror. It harkens back to when government was a religion, a churchy time when "ministry" meant kindness. That it flipped to its soul-sucking opposite is -- well, Orwell predicted it, didn't he?"
--page 194

Felice's disease, simply explained, is that she cannot decide what to do. For this, her father pities her, but also loves her intensely. She wants the perfect answer every time, she cannot stand to make the wrong decision, thus she is mad.

Some Fall Books from the NY Review, and a Return to Summer via the Seattle Times

One of the stated purposes of this journal was to talk about things that I'm thinking about reading. I seldom remember to include this. Thanks to Dan for a copy of The New York Review of Books, September 27 2007, for the inspiration to make this list.

Inside the front cover is a two-page ad by the University of Chicago Press entitled "Fall Books." Among the books featured, I'm interested in these:

• Marked. Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. By Devah Pager.
  
• Betrayals. The Unpredictability of Human Relations. By Gabriella Turnaturi, Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.
• The Middle Path. Avoiding Environmental Catastrophe. By Eric Lambin.

Dan handed me the magazine opened to an article entitled "Pandora's Click," by Janet Malcolm, a review of an interesting sounding book about email etiquette. This book is entitled Send: The Essential guide to Email for Office and Home. While it decries the gaffes and misunderstandings that can be and are generated all-too-often by the misuse and overuse of email, it ends on a hopeful note: perhaps email will bring back the popularity of written correspondence in the younger generation.

Another book advertised herein is Zuckerman Bound, a Library of America series edition which includes four novels (The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, and The Prague Orgy and an "unproduced television screenplay" (of Prague) by Philip Roth, a writer to whom I'm always meaning to return (return? I'm not sure I've been there. I just looked at his bibliography on Wikipedia and maybe I've never read anything by him. Ah, memory, thou betrayer.) Roth was recently interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air, and he talked about his latest novel, Exit Ghost. Exit Ghost is not included in this collection, but the advertisement says "Here is the perfect companion to ... Roth's latest novel ... which brings Zuckerman's story to a denouement."

And here's an ad for a new book by Annie Dillard, called The Maytrees. She's a formidable writer. The book I remember her for is The Living, a novel about the early days of Whatcom County in Washington State. I'm sure I've bored many people with my raving about that book. Dillard can be very spiritual, even religious, but somehow it doesn't bother me.

And here's an interesting review: "Citizen Gore," by Michael Tomasky, of The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore. And I thought I was the only person who'd noticed that.

Assault on Reason sounds like a good book. Tomasky says that Gore discusses the demise of reason in American discourse, and assigns a large role to the rise of TV, which for the last fifty years has been our main form of communication. He then takes apart the actions of the Bush administration, analyzed in this light, noting that the modern Right has become a political movement disguised as a religious one. Tomasky wonders whether Gore could run for President in 2008, whether he could or would be elected, whether he'd even welcome the chance. Perhaps Al plays a better citizen than politician.

An interesting work of fiction is discussed in "Ice Capades," by Christian Caryl. This is review of Ice, by Vladimir Sorokin, translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell. This book, we are told, is part of a trilogy about a bizarre brotherhood of aliens who draw their power from an ice-like substance that fell from space to Earth in Siberia. Caryl sees it as a commentary on the totalitarian governments of modern history, from the Nazis, through Stalin, Kruschev, and Kim Il Sung. It sounds as though it might be enjoyable, I'm not sure, it could be a little ponderous. At least it's on my list.

I dove into an article about Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was a lot of things, among them an icon of the last half of the twentieth century, of the post-World War II cultural revolution embodied in the Beat movement, the Hippies, the music, writing, and art that has developed in the last sixty years or so -- kind of a spiritual grandfather to all of us born in the fifties. "Howl," his (in)famous long poem of 1956 hit the American culture with a neo-Whitmanesque free verse sledgehammer:

...who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles...

Allen, we hardly knew ye.

News Flash: Seattle Times Starts Fire

It's getting colder and wetter here now, and we've had a few fires in the woodstove. I start my fires with newspaper; we save it in a basket. My father always had a problem when he tried to start a fire with newspaper: he'd stop crumpling the pages because he'd start reading them. I have the same problem. In the midst of some recent crumpling I noticed a page from the 29 June 2007 Seattle Times "Readings" feature, page 44H, with the headline "Terror thriller is frightening in its plausibility." This introduces a review by Nisi Shawl of a book entitled Quantico, by Greg Bear. This sounds like a great read, it's a techno-adventure set in the near future, which allows for a few yet-to-be-invented gadgets:

"Bear does the hard work of extrapolating from current engineering to shiny new tech-toys ... portable ... holograph projectors; sparrow-sized winged surveillance cameras; ID-activated handguns ..."

I'll probably read this book, it sounds like the kind of thing that I like: pure entertainment, lowbrow, no redeeming social value.

The reading of kindling is always a mixed pleasure. On the one hand, I am pleased to find interesting things to read in my old newspapers, but this is tempered by discomfort (I am usually kneeling on the floor, and the room is cold, else I wouldn't be doing this.), and a vague guilt-like emotion about not really reading newspapers. What is it about newspapers? Sometimes I read an entire article and have no idea what I just read, sort of like what happens if I try to read when the TV is on in the same room. It must be me; plenty of people read newspapers and get stuff out of them. This doesn't always happen, I often read columns, letters (I like letters to the Editor in any publication; I'll usually read them first if I pick up a strange magazine, as in a waiting room.), articles, etc. with normal retention.

But so many things elude me, and I find them later in the kindling basket.