Medlem: WillyMammoth

One more thing:

Charles Bowden's "Murder City" is an important book. It's beautifully written, too, so it's well worth any time you spend with it. Moreover, it's cheap. I got mine brand new for $1.95 on abebooks.com, and there's plenty more out there at the same price. Don't miss it.

Deacon

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 9:47 am (EST) Nov 25, 2012

It's kind o' tough, Willy. You see, I've already started my own book blog. I bought a domain and everything. I've got about $150 invested in the thing already. Between reading and writing and posting at LT and on my blog (http://www.deksolomon.net/) I'm kind o' short on time.

Tell you what: Go to http://www.deksolomon.net/ If you see any reviews that you like, you can copy 'em and post 'em on your own site. Just gimme a byline and I'll be happy. I gave up trying to sell reviews many moons ago.

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 8:55 am (EST) Nov 25, 2012

Hi;

Nice to see my book on your list.
Just so you know, there are two giveaways on my blog:

"Gone" by Randy Wayne White
"A Fistful of Collars" by Quinn - about a PI Team of a canine and his human companion.

Mike

http://mikedraperinguilford.blogspot.com

inlägg gjort av mikedraper kl 12:40 pm (EST) Sep 18, 2012

Hi, J

Just finished reading your thought-provoking review of Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451". Excellent! I'm a fan of Bradbury, yet I've never read this story...Years ago I watched a rerun of the film on TV and found the concepts so unsettling that I actually could not get it out of my mind for many, many months! In retrospect, I now see that my way of "coping" was to go on an unprecedented book-buying spree that lasted for years, and even now sometimes am overtaken by the impulse to buy books.

In recalling some of Bradbury's other writing, I 'm struck by his concern about people's fear of knowledge and of anything that varies from what they are accustomed to, in short their obsession with "sameness", which they think will give them "security". There seems to be a societally-conditioned sense of fear of anything that is different, basically because it is an unknown, and therefore the opposite of security, that is, insurmountable danger. Your observations about TV programming and C-sections are right on as examples of "cloaked" fear stimuli. I can imagine, this may sound a little off orbit, yet I have been struck by the underlying, and unspoken, 24/7/365 fear stimuli to prompting people to live their lives primarily to assuage their FEARS: purchasing life insurance (fear of the consequences of your death including a destitute family and a paltry burial); buying a house (fear that you may not be a good parent because you are short-changing your children from leading satisfying, productive lives if they're not brought up in a house); buying the latest electronic gadget (fear of going hungry because you can't find a KC in the middle of nowhere, and fear of individuality by not being the same as the young, sophisticated set to which you aspire); building a bomb shelter (fear of radiation in case of a bomb attack); and, so on.

Psychologists will probably say that fear is an inborn, instinctive trait left over from the days of first humans when weather conditions and cycles of light and dark and cold and warm could impair their ability to survive, that is, they might not be able to gore the boar! I, myself, believe that fear, and submitting to fear, is not inborn nor "natural". It has been, and still is, a purposeful form of manipulation to motivate individuals and groups of individuals to the desires of others without bothersome questioning.

This has been a little soap-standish. I do appreciate your writing and your thoughts. Your writing displays an assertiveness that is much needed.

My best to you, Sinetrig

inlägg gjort av Sinetrig kl 8:13 pm (EST) Jul 31, 2012

Taipan -- the fucking book is like 1,000 pages long or some shit (it's been 40 years since I read it). Clavell spent them all building up a titanic hatred between these two greedy traders. One was supposed to be the protagonist, the other was the bad guy. They hated each other real tough. Every time they saw each other there was almost a fight. By the time you've waded through a thousand pages of that crap, you can't WAIT for the fight to start. So what? Last time we saw them in the book they both had pistols and sabers and they were getting ready to kill each other -- and a typhoon came along and blew them both away -- REALLY! -- and that was the end. I've never been so mad at any writer before or since. If I ever meet Clavell (I hope he's dead and buried someplace deep and dark), I'm gonna set him on fire.

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 2:12 pm (EST) Jul 16, 2012

Just read your review of Karen Maitland. Pretty hot stuff.

If you like stuff a la Canturbury Tales, Try a book called "Silverlock" by a fellow named John Myers Myers. I promise you will love it.

And if you want to tackle another one that will blister you as bad as Karen Maitland, try "Taipan," by James Clavell (same guy who wrote "Shogun"). I got so pissed off at that one I threw every one of Clavell's books out of my house.

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 11:36 pm (EST) Jul 15, 2012

I never tried frying the shrimp. I always make a remoulade sauce and cook the shrimp in that before I dump it all on the pile of grits -- sorta like mashed potatoes and gravy. Mmmmm!

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 11:10 pm (EST) Jul 10, 2012

Is your cornbread salty or sweet? Is it dry or moist?

White grits are impossible to get here. White cornmeal is NEXT to impossible to get. I have to use yellow grits, but I buy them 50 lbs at a time from a farmer out in central Iowa, who grows the corn and grinds the grits himself. They are tasty, even if they are yellow.

I like to make what Emeril calls "Jambalaya Grits," which is yellow grits with peppers & onions & celery & sausage & cheese cooked into them. Sautee the veggies and the meat in a saucepan and, when the veggies are transparent, make the cheese grits in the same pan with them. GREAT with fried eggs and sawmill gravy.

Good sausage is impossible to find here, too, in the pork capital of the world. Iowa has the worlds best pork but Iowans don't know what the F**K to do with it. In the South they use it to make wonderful hams and sausages. Here in Iowa, they use it to make pork. We DO have great pork chops and steaks, but our ham and sausages are a dirty shame.

Once when I was in South Carolina (and one other time in Jacksonville, FL) I got hold of some barbecued chickens in a creamy yellow mustard sauce. It was the best I've ever had but I can't get it up north. You got a recipe for that sauce?

Hope you had a fine holiday. We stayed home up here. It was too flippin' hot to get outside the air conditioning. I got heart disease. . . .

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 11:38 am (EST) Jul 6, 2012

Willy -- long time no hear -- did I do or say something that gave you a rash?

Dijoo try my cornbread recipe?

You live in Carolina: tell me how you make your grits. Yellow? White? With or without meat and eggs and veggies? Hot pepper sauce? Fried? Crispy? Creamy?

I'm serious.

Deacon

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 9:21 pm (EST) Jul 1, 2012

I see you are a "great fan of Noir," and recommend novels by James Sallis. One of them, "Drive" was made into a movie and played in the theaters less than a year ago. It's currently available on Netflix. He is the author of the Lou Griffin series of novels, the first of which is "The Long-Legged Fly." His latest, "Driven," is a sequel to "Drive."

He's been publishing for forty years or so and is a really nice guy. I've been taking novel writing classes from him for a few years.

inlägg gjort av CharlesBoyd kl 9:51 am (EST) Jul 1, 2012

Everybody's a Farmer: September in Iowa

Time was, every farmer’s child grew up knowing that all real wealth comes from the land. He or she knew that every human being is tied to the land, that everybody is a farmer with muddy boots, and that most of the world’s troubles are caused by people who either never knew or have forgotten the fact.

Today’s America is most entirely full of people who know only that money is real. Tell them it ain't so, tell them they're all just farmers, they think you’re crazy or that you’ve insulted them. When occasionally they mention “feet of clay” they speak of their crank religions and not of reality. They are averse to reality and their aversion makes them dangerous. They would rather have blood on their hands than mud on their feet. Small wonder they pick leaders like George W. Bush.

All of that comes to mind today because, here in Iowa, this time in September sees the start of our corn harvest. The Hawkeye State at this moment is a glorious, tawny jungle of ripe, towering grain. A drive to Cedar Rapids yesterday showed that reapers have already opened a number of fields.

Though the weather is sunny and warm, the farmers aren’t working today because there was a heavy rain last night. The ground is muddy and the moisture content of the grain is up from yesterday, so the machinery stands idle.

In a day or two, when the ground and the grain dry down again, the reapers will go back to work. Barring additional rainfall, operations will go full-throttle next week. The shining acres will for a time resemble a vast freeway construction site as giant machines swarm in the fields and fill the air with clouds of fragrant dust. The roads will shake while an army of thundering, heavy-laden trucks race frantically between reapers in the fields and storage facilities in one or another of the small towns that speckle the Iowa prairie.

If that sounds exciting, that’s because it is exciting. You can’t live in rural Iowa, you can’t know this part of the country and not be thrilled by the sweep and the pace of the spectacle that takes place here over the next few weeks. In the famous German community of Amana they’ll soon have their Octoberfest, and any number of other towns will throw shindigs of one sort or another.

For me -- though the beer and the sausage and the celebrations are grand -- the harvest itself is the whole show. When I climb up on a wagon and see golden wealth pour from the reaper’s spout, when I feel the grain run through my fingers, when I wake in the night and the smell of shelled corn wafts through my open window, then I see and touch and smell what we were all put here to make and to do and to be. I know then that I am whole and that it’s been a good year, and for a blessed time I don't care what sort of poisonous filth spews from flannel-mouthed, greed-head wowsers in Washington and Wall Street and Des Moines. The last few farmers in America are still on the land and they will stay on the land because if they are pushed off the land, America will starve to death. The greed-heads ought to be smart enough to know that -- even if they resent or cannot grasp the why of it.

Some yuppie queen a week or two ago thought she had caught me out. Certain I could never describe it, she asked me what shelled corn actually smells like. I told her the simple truth: “It smells like cornbread on the hoof.” The stupid look on her face was priceless. For a second there I felt like Cyrano at the top of his game.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Best Cornbread in the World

Dry Ingredients —

• 1.5 C all purpose flour

• 1.5 C corn meal

• 3/4 C cane sugar

• 3 T baking powder (Karlin’s or Rumford gets the best rise)

Wet Ingredients —

• 3/8 C corn oil

• 3 jumbo eggs

• 3 T honey

• 1 14.5 oz can cream-style corn

• condensed milk

Instructions —

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2) Grease and flour a 9x13 cake pan.

3) Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl — no sifting necessary.

4) Add oil, eggs, honey, and cream-style corn, and stir to mix thoroughly.

5) Still stirring, add UNDILUTED condensed milk — as necessary — to make batter that pours readily but is not TOO runny. This requires a little more or less than one cup of condensed milk.

6) Pour batter into cake pan and bake for 40 minutes, or until toothpick test shows done.

7) Serve hot or cold with real butter.

BUSY PARENTS NOTE! Prep time is ten minutes for this delicious treat. With tall glasses of ice-cold milk and a chunk of fruit for dessert, the stuff makes a perfect, wholesome, high-energy breakfast or lunch for school-age kids. They will gobble it like a herd of ravenous hogs and they will holler for more. So will you. Result guaranteed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 2:20 pm (EST) Jun 19, 2012

All I know about "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is that they made a movie by that name. So I don't know who ate all the lutefisk. What I like about "Early Reviewers" is that I don't usually get anything I didn't ask for -- though I did one time in the past. I reviewed it anyway. But that Member Giveaway thing, I want nothing more to do with that.

We had rain here this evening. It wasn't much. It lasted about three hours. We got some thunder and lightning with it, but nothing that'd make a person hide under the bed. It was nice. We needed it real bad. I don't think the corn crop could have gone another week without a little moisture. We're still desperately short and the next few weeks will tell the tale. The crop looks good today, driving into town for groceries, but at the same time you could see minor changes in color across the fields. It's too fucking DRY here right now. It's been dry since last fall. It quit raining middle of September. We didn't get another drop until snow fell right after Thanksgiving, and we didn't get enough snow over the winter to put any moisture in the ground for this spring. Sometimes I'm real glad I'm not a farmer. It's a crapshoot, every year.

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 2:11 am (EST) Jun 17, 2012

Scandinavian mysteries? Is that like "Who ate all the lutefisk?"

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 10:49 pm (EST) Jun 15, 2012

Deacon Solomon is my pen name. I have another pen name I rarely use. My real name is for my lawyer. I have a checkered past.

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 10:19 pm (EST) Jun 15, 2012

Willymammoth -- you write "My goal is to write a review for everything I read from here-on out, and then work backward to review past reads."

You and I think alike in several ways. We got a lot of the same books, too. Anyway, I have to keep reading stuff I haven't read. It keeps me so busy I don't have time to go back read review all the stuff I read years ago.

I guess the main thing is to keep on reading and writing, isn't it?

Glad to see you here.

Deke Solomon

inlägg gjort av dekesolomon kl 5:35 pm (EST) Jun 15, 2012

Kudos to you for your review of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"! You definitely relayed the "spirit" of the book...the only review I've read that has managed to do that. I really enjoyed your "take" on the book.

Like you, I rarely read Scandinavian mystery stories largely because either they are poorly translated or, perhaps, not truly translatable into English, in the way that the metaphysically imbued German language and the lyrical Spanish language cannot be translated fully into the English language, which has an absence of those roots. As the first of Larsson's trilogy, the writing is not yet practiced; the second book is crafted with more refinement. I have not yet read the third book, but will soon.

One of the aspects I appreciate in his books is his portrayal of women as extremely strong and capable people who have drive, fearlessness and a fluid sense of justice. Considering Larsson's personal activism regarding women's issues globally, it is not surprising that his characters reflect what he sees as possible for all women in all situations. Perhaps he portrays Blomkvist ("ladies man") as a man who shies away from societally sanctioned commitments such as boyfriend-girlfriend, yet, has no qualms about experiencing his own deep emotions regarding specific women, whom he obviously admires(?), because the book is not about the smaller pictures of personal male/female relationships. It's about women balancing the scales that men hold. In fact, the whole story in this first book, as well as in the second book, is a fictional (and visceral) enactment of Justice removing the blindfold that medieval man had once tied around her head to prevent her from seeing the injustices in the world. Now, seeing the imbalances, she begins to wield her sword to balance the scales, person by person.

Your review prompted me to recall my original reading and is leading my thoughts about Larsson's books entirely beyond the realm of mystery fiction.

Thanks,
Stacey

inlägg gjort av Sinetrig kl 7:10 pm (EST) Mar 28, 2012