By my personal star rating system a five star book represents a book I will read again. Stoker's Dracula is ☆☆☆☆☆ by that measurement.
This is the third time I have read Dracula.
I still find Stoker's use of a journal style presentation annoying. I
think the final showdown in the shadows of Castle Dracula is way too
brief. And is anyone really as good a human being as Mina Harker? (At
least she notes that they are lucky to have a wealthy friend or none of
this battle could battle been accomplished.)
But the
horror is still there. The glittering specs of light gathering into
ravenous beauties. The fog moving across the yard to envelope the
bedroom. Renfield fighting to save Mina's soul. The army of rats at the
Master's command. The dead captain at the ship's wheel bring Dracula to
England. The burning red eyes. What's not to like and enjoy?
George W. Parker
Thoughts About Stuff: “Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis." (Whatever advice you give, be brief.) ― Horace, Arte poética
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
The Best Sentence in American Literature?
For me the best sentence in American Literature is:
George W. Parker
“It was an hour before the first
shark hit.” Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
Hemingway has
had his old man, Santiago, battle age, bad luck, and the mightiest
marlin he has ever seen and he has defeated them all. He has proven
to himself and to the world that he is still a man. And we think
Santiago is triumphantly sailing home to claim his success when
Hemingway punches us in the face with this sentence and lets us know
that there is just this one other little thing to deal with. Simply,
adroitly, Hemingway moves the action to a wider plane. He takes what
had been an intimate one on one combat and throws it into a world
war, an us against them action. And in a world war even the victors
suffer. That is a lot to achieve with one sentence.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, Bantam Books
This is a two star book.
Thomas Harris' Red Dragon is best known for introducing Hannibal Lecter. Maybe that is its proper place. The antagonist and protagonist are interesting, “troubled” characters. The book draws you along with anticipation of the next killing cycle until the redemptive influence of a woman's love ruptures the Red Dragon. For all the evident hard work Harris does, ultimately he skates on the ending – split personalities fighting with themselves. Made for TV movies don't even do that, well sometimes.
I do also want to point out a time/space continuum error. The FBI agent in Chicago packages Lecter's ad to the Red Dragon for shipment to Washington and suddenly we find out that in the distant future the agent will show the ad to his children during a tour of FBI Headquarters. That was an uncomfortable time shift. How did that make it into the book?
George Parker
Thomas Harris' Red Dragon is best known for introducing Hannibal Lecter. Maybe that is its proper place. The antagonist and protagonist are interesting, “troubled” characters. The book draws you along with anticipation of the next killing cycle until the redemptive influence of a woman's love ruptures the Red Dragon. For all the evident hard work Harris does, ultimately he skates on the ending – split personalities fighting with themselves. Made for TV movies don't even do that, well sometimes.
I do also want to point out a time/space continuum error. The FBI agent in Chicago packages Lecter's ad to the Red Dragon for shipment to Washington and suddenly we find out that in the distant future the agent will show the ad to his children during a tour of FBI Headquarters. That was an uncomfortable time shift. How did that make it into the book?
George Parker
Thursday, January 31, 2013
The Shadow Factory by James Bamford, published by Doubleday
Following is a book review whose subject deserves attention.
The Shadow Factory by James
Bamford, published by Doubleday
2.5 of 5 stars
If you didn't know the United States
Government is listening to all you voice communications and reading
all your emails and monitoring all the web sites you visit, then
shame on you. Do you think the government didn't watch Arron Burr and
other long before and after? Governments have always watched their
own. Back in the day they use to go to the library and see what you
were reading now it is easier to pull that information off the fiber
optics the telecommunications industry charges you to use.
The Shadow Factory delineates
the external and internal monitoring changes made post 9/11 by the
various US alphabet agencies at the behest of the Bush
administration. It has often been said by supporters of this type of
broad reach surveillance that "If you're not doing anything
wrong, you have nothing to worry about." This is a book review
so I won't argue that point but here is a link that will
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/government-might-know-youre-reading.
In the early parts of The Shadow
Factory Bamford succeeds in presenting a story line that stands
on solid ground and feels like fact. As the book progresses though
the factual feel begins to slip away and we're left with what seems
to be “water cooler talk.” I wish he had been able to maintain
that earlier story strength.
For me the real success Bamford has is
in portraying the poor management and often mismanagement of these
various spy projects/systems. The incestuous moneyed relationships
between government agencies and their contractors that he presents
are enough to make Monsanto and the Department of Agriculture blush.
I recommend that you read the early
sections of The Shadow Factory.
George W. Parker
Friday, December 7, 2012
Something Happened
No, this is not about the Joseph Heller
novel. Although I did read it once upon a time, I don't remember
anything about it. Which, in and of itself, is my review of it.
This is about yesterday. Yesterday was
a Thursday which I believe is the worst day of the week. But
something good happened which proves the vagaries of life. I used
aplomb in a sentence for the first time ever.
Now that may not seem like much of
anything special to you. And maybe it just doesn't take much for me
to have a good Thursday. But it was exciting for me.
Everyone has multiple vocabularies. We
have our reading vocabularies, writing vocabularies, speaking
vocabularies, and subsets like work vocabularies and children's
vocabularies. Yesterday's use of aplomb was exciting as I took it
from my reading vocabulary, added it to my writing vocabulary, and
then added it my speaking vocabulary. Kind of a triple play.
Now that may not still seem like much
of anything special to you. But you need to know that I am a poor
speller, poorest of the poor. Yesterday as I'm writing I snatch
aplomb (It's meaning) out of my reading vocabulary deck and try to
slam it down into my writing list. I couldn't spell it. In place of
the pl I kept trying a b. It wasn't in my speaking vocabulary so I
wasn't pronouncing it out correctly. I probably spent a half hour
searching out that correct spelling before putting aplomb on hold and
moving on with the story.
Last night I was talking with my middle
daughter, who can spell, and asked her how to spell the word. Well,
as I wasn't pronouncing it correctly, she couldn't spell it
correctly. But that conversation put me back in the hunt.
I skimmed through synonyms looking for
it. Words like witty, pithy, reassured, and smooth.
Finally I looked at savoir-faire which led me to
poised and then, eureka, aplomb.
All told I spent at
least an hour actively chasing that word. And when I wasn't chasing
it I was thinking about chasing it.
So I learned two
things yesterday: how to spell aplomb and that I liked
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
the best of all the online dictionaries.
George W. Parker
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
The Pipe
“Read The Pipe.”
I don't remember what I was doing the
other day (not uncommon) but “Read The Pipe.” was my
response to it.
The Pipe is Chapter XXX from
Herman Melville's Moby Dick. It took me a few days to get
around to pulling out my copy of Moby Dick and re-reading that
section. But the need to do so was never out of my mind that entire
time.
I was surprised to find it located in
the first quarter of the book as I think of the last quarter as
holding all the best parts of the story. It is a short section of
about 275 words. I'll quote part of it here to help pad out my word
count.
“Some moments passed, during
which the thick vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant
puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How now," he
soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no
longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be
gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring- aye,
and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and
with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets
were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with
this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild
white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks
like mine. I'll smoke no more-"
He tossed the still lighted pipe
into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves; the same instant the ship
shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab
lurchingly paced the planks.”
Ahab had sought and received solace
from his pipe for probably his entire life. Now he discovered it had
merely become a habit, not a movement of his own volition. Only
conscience Ahab decides what Ahab does. He does not admit to or
submit to any other orders.
I doubt that anything as powerful as
that was going through my mind when the need to re-read The Pipe
jumped into my head. If anything I was probably wishing I had
something to smoke. But I did find it interesting that the need
didn't go away until the deed was done.
George W. Parker
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Texas Secession
Two things you need to know about
Texans:
- Most of us subscribe to the “I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could,” dictum.
- “You can always tell a Texan, but you can't tell him much.”
The 2012 U.S. Census projection, aka
“the Texas count,” is 25,145,561 citizens in the Lone Star State
(Republic). The current count on the secession petition located at
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions (You have to click through a few screens.) is 116,181 names. By my
math (Let me get the calculator out. Sorry, I was educated before no
child was left behind.) that is 0.46 hundredths of 1 percent of the
“states'” population.
Of those 0.46% names on the petition I
wonder how many voted in the November 2012 election? I wonder how
many of those names would have been allowed to vote under the new
Texas voter fraud guidelines that the U.S. Supreme Court put on hold.
(My guess is 102% of them.)
Please do not misunderstand me, I am
proud to live in Texas. I am proud that my children are natural born
citizens of Texas, none were delivered by Cesarean. But if Texas
should secede from the Union I am moving to Austin. Their petition to
secede from the secession is currently at a 0.45 hundredths of 1
percent count.
George W. Parker
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