Professor B. Worm

Think About It

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:50:00 +0000

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

A fine is a tax for doing wrong; a tax is a fine for doing well.

He who laughs last thinks slowest.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

A day without sunshine is, well, night.

The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

The shin bone is a device for finding furniture.

When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

[Thanks to my friend Joyce for passing these on to me.]

Review: Agincourt

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:53:00 +0000

Agincourt, Bernard Cornwell

Harper, Hardcover, 2009
ISBN: 978-0061578915
464 pages

Trade Paper edition available December 29, 2009

On October 25, 1415 King Henry V led 6,000 archers and men-at-arms against a French force of 30,000 at Agincourt—and won. According to Cornwell's notes, only Hastings, Waterloo, Trafalgar, and Crécy rival Agincourt in renown. It is a gore-fest even by Cornwell's standards, and I don't recommend it for those with sensitive constitutions.

Unlike many of the English-French sweep-and-plunder skirmishes during the Hundred Years War, Henry's purpose was to "rightfully" regain the crown of France. Despite the odds against him, Henry never faltered in his belief that he would win because God told him so. From page 395:

"Henry of England was filled by a God-given joy. Never, in all his life, had he felt closer to God, and he almost pitied the men who came to be killed for they were being killed by God."

That quote bothered me because how many millions of people have died over the ages because of the same belief?

Cornwell, as usual, uses a fictional character for intrigue, to carry the story, and to have access to the bigwigs for strategy and whatnot. In Agincourt it is Nick Hook, a master archer. Anyone who has read the Grail Quest series will notice a lot of duplication about archers in this book and will be reminded of Cornwell's excellent description of the battle of Crécy.

The battle of Agincourt (Azincourt in French), does not take place until the last quarter of the book. In addition to the story's set-up and some dawdling by Cornwell, the majority of the book is about the siege of Harfleur in Normandy. Expecting a swift victory over the small walled city, the French fought brilliantly for over two weeks—decimating many of Henry's force with cannon, tunnels, and dysentery. To me, the siege of Harfleur was as interesting as the title battle.

Overall, this stand-alone book is a Cornwell festival and will please fans of historic battles and strategy.

[A belated thank you to Harper Books for the advance finished copy]

* * * * *

COMING January 19, 2010:

The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell

Harper Books, Hardcover
ISBN 978-0060888749
352 pages

This is the fifth book in the Saxon Chronicles series.

Happy Birthday to Martha

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0000

"Maxine"

Today is Martha's birthday.

She is fifty-six, but she still looks like the girl I married thirty-five years ago.

She disagrees.

"Do you think I look like Maxine?" she asked, and I'm pretty sure she was serious.

"Of course not," I said. And I was serious. She smiled.

But you know me and my hoof-in-mouth disease. "You've got the crabby part down cold, though," I added, one of those truths that is best left unsaid.

Smile disappeared. And she's been crabby ever since.

That 55-gallon drum of "Oil of Gulag" vanishing cream I ordered from Jimmy B. hasn't arrived yet.

Perhaps duct tape would work better for hoof-in-mouth.

But no worries.

Tonight, when I sneak up on her in bed and give my birthday girl one of my excellent back rubs, she'll start purring.

And then tell me to go screw myself.

Wimmin, Baseball, & Foot Fungus

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:55:00 +0000

Scribble, scribble, scribble . . .

Wimmin, Baseball, & Foot Fungus

This is Susie, my very first girlfriend. Even at the tender age of three, older women were attracted to my boyish good looks and devil-may-care attitude. Susie was a mature woman of four and a sucker for a little kid in a sloppy uniform. Never mind that I couldn’t hit the side of an elephant with a bat—it was the uniform and rakish tilt to my cap that made her swoon.

You know, it’s eerie about the baseball thing. When Susie grew up, she married a real ballplayer. When I grew up, I fell down a whole flight of steps at the ballpark in my frenzied haste to catch up to the beer guy.

And then there was the day Susie and I played a spring training exhibition game behind the outfield bushes in our shared back yard. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” she said, and I was . . . game.

We were innocents, of course, but somehow we knew that one does not push one’s pants down in public to satisfy one’s curiosity. We weren’t too intelligent, though, because it never occurred to either of us to hide from the lady who lived in the house behind the bushes we were hiding behind.

As luck would have it (and of course we had none), the lady who lived in the house behind the bushes we were hiding behind was the neighborhood snoop and town crier. Within minutes, everyone within fourteen blocks knew about the two village idiots. If we’d had a neighborhood newspaper, Susie’s and my mugs would have been on Page 1, above the fold, with this headline in 36-point bold type:

BOY, 3, SHOWS HIS TO GIRL, 4, WHO IN TURN SHOWS HERS TO BOY, 3!

Justice was swift in the world of small people in 1951. Arrest, booking, arraignment, trial (with no defense counsel), automatic verdict of “guilty” (with no chance of appeal), and automatic sentencing to death row (with no chance of appeal) were all carried out by Judge Mom in less than fifteen seconds.

Death was equally swift. My pants weren’t up for more than ten minutes before they were right back down again so Mom could spank my little fanny. The irony of exposing myself because I exposed myself was entirely lost on me, but I remember thinking that, at the rate I was going, the elastic band in my brand-new baseball pants wasn’t going to last even half a season: up, down, up, down . . .

But even though the whole sordid and tawdry affair with Susie was traumatic, I learned two valuable lessons from it:

1. Never play any game more dangerous than solitaire with a woman—and make damn sure it isn’t strip solitaire.

2. Never go behind any bush, shrub, hedge, evergreen or nevergreen, tumbleweed or standingstillweed, potted plant or sober plant with a woman, even if she is your wife and she is screaming at you.

“Hey Charlie, c’mere and look at this! I think I found the source of your disgusting toe fungus! HEEEEY, CHARLIE!”

“I hear you, I hear you, but where the hell are you?”

“Back here, behind the bushes.”

“AARGH!”

One interesting fact, however, is worth mentioning. You know the bushes Susie and I were hiding behind, the ones where the circus could have been in full swing and we would never have known it? They were the dreaded pukeberry bush, the same ones my wife found in our yard and the reason I’ve had this disgusting toe fungus for nigh on sixty years.

Try Not to Look UP!

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:11:00 +0000

With no disrespect to the famed Black Watch of Scotland and its illustrious history since 1681, I present this Candid Camera-style clip of a Scotsman sans his underwear.

(TIP: Lower the volume control before playing the clip—it is quite loud.)

Review: Dolan's Cadillac (Audiobook)

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:45:00 +0000

Dolan's Cadillac and Other Stories, Stephen King

Simon & Schuster Audio; Unabridged edition, 2009
ISBN: 978-0743598200
Number of Discs: 5
Running Time: Approx. 5 hours

Just in time for Halloween! Oh. Wait a minute. Halloween was the other day. Well then, just in time for next Halloween!

In 1994, King published a book of short stories titled Nightmares & Dreamscapes. 912 pages of short stories, including a non-fiction piece about his son's baseball team (Steve is a big fan of the sport). The entire book was never released on audio cassette; Highbridge Audio claimed an unabridged collection, but it was really just a few unabridged selections from the book.

In July, Simon & Schuster changed that with the release of six audiobooks on CD. And they did it up right: each story is read by a famous person, mostly actors, who give the stories their actorly best. To me, the readings were similar to recording the soundtrack for an animated film: lively, different "voices" for different characters, and just plain fun.

Dolan's Cadillac is the first in the series, and this is the lineup (a bow to baseball):

1. King reads his Introduction.

2. A school teacher discovers her students are not what they seem in Suffer the Little Children, read by Whoopi Goldberg.

3. In Crouch End, read by Tim Curry, a woman fears that supernatural events may have led to her husband's disappearance. (Curry is excellent!)

4. In Rainy Season, read by Yeardley Smith, a young couple is forced into the ultimate battle of Man vs. Nature when torrential rain turns deadly.

5. A widowed husband spends seven years plotting revenge for his wife's murder in Dolan's Cadillac, a long story read by Rob Lowe.

I like S&S's modular approach to this big book of King's tales. The CDs are packaged nicely in a fold-out similar to some DVD sets. Each module retails for $10.19 (US) at Amazon, or they can be dowloaded from Audible.com if you're a member. If you like King, like short stories, and commute, one of these sets may strike your fancy.

The following links take you to the other five sets (with a major reader) for your perusal: Chattery Teeth (Kathy Bates), Sorry, Right Number (a full cast), It Grows On You (Grace Slick), The End of the Whole Mess (Matthew Broderick), and The House on Maple Street (Robert B. Parker).

* * * * *

Story lines (numbers 2-5) are from Amazon.com product information for Dolan's Cadillac.

[A note to WC: I know you don't "do" King, so don't waste a perfectly good comment to tell me you don't "do" King.]

Happy Halloweenie!

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:06:00 +0000

Sex

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:04:00 +0000

Okay, it's time for another one of my silly scribblings.

Sex

I don’t want to talk about it.

Now there’s a brilliant essay for you. Seven words. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Period. It reminds me of an essay I did in grammar school titled, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.”

“My family and I went to the mountains for two weeks. We stayed in this crummy log cabin with about a million spiders, and Dad kept yelling at me not to scream and throw his good shoes at the walls. The bathroom was in this old house outdoors, and Dad kept yelling at me because I wouldn’t go in there and sit down. I didn’t do my business for three whole days. Mom yelled at me too when she caught me whizzing on some lady’s flowers. We came home ten days early because Mom and Dad were tired of yelling and I really had to take a dump. We had fun, but I just don’t want to talk about it.”

The reason I don’t talk about sex is because I don’t talk about sex. I could care less about other people’s sex lives. The same goes for celebrities and pseudo-celebrities (although I thought the Monica and Bill thing was amusing). The same goes for gays and lesbians. What people do in private is their business—not mine.

So whether my sex life is between Martha and me or just between me, it’s none of your business. If I am straight, bi-sexual, gay, or any combination of the three, it’s none of your business. If I’m a cross-dresser or get dressed in the crosswalk, it’s definitely none of your business.

I will tell you one thing, though. I didn’t marry a good Catholic girl.

A GOOD CATHOLIC GIRL

“Okay, Charlie, I’ve taken both my oral and rectal temperature—”

“—I hope you took the oral temp first—”

“I’ve counted backward fourteen days, counted forward fourteen days, computed the mean, median, and mode, checked the Xs on the calendar, and I’ve been watching the moon on the Weather Channel. Everything is favorable, which means we can have sex within the next twelve minutes.”

“Gee, honey, you didn’t have to go through all that for a simple quickie. You sound like Mission Control.”

“A QUICKIE! Do you think I’m having sex with you for FUN? This is for making a little Mary or a Benedict XVI."

"Great. We can call him Bennie. Or ExVeeEye. Or better yet, 16. 16 Callahan—I like it."

"Now turn off all the lights before I take off my clothes—and don’t you dare try to peek at me either, you filthy pervert.”

This just in! A memo from Martha:

“Thank you for keeping your big trap shut for once and respecting my privacy and womanly dignity. You’re right: the story about you trying to put a conundrum on in the dark is nobody’s damn business."

Review: The Hunger Games

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:08:00 +0000

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

Scholastic Press, 2008
ISBN 978-0439023481
384 pages

Reading Level: Young Adult

I am not going to wait until the end of my scholarly review to tell you what I think of this book: it’s great, and to mangle a tired old cliché, nearly unputdownable. Collins has written a non-stop sci-fi tale that is light on sci-fi, stars a sixteen-year-old female protagonist, and stresses personal moral beliefs without preaching.

The place is Panem, site of the former United States, and consists of twelve districts and the Capitol. The time is the near future. Collins does not employ the five basic requisites of journalism—who, what, when, where, and why—because they aren’t relevant to the story.

What is relevant is the total subjugation of the people in the districts by the Capitol. There was a thirteenth district, but because the people dared to protest the meager distribution of “food”, the Capitol, in a show of Sci-Fi wizardry, obliterated the district and every human being living in it.

The Hunger Games. Held once a year, they are the ultimate tribute to the power, greatness, and largesse of the Capitol. Chosen by lottery, each district sends two teenagers as its representatives to the Games; twenty-four to start, one to win both personal fame and extra rations for his or her district.

The other twenty-three? They are all dead, either at the hands of the other contestants or by the Capitol’s tech- nological ability to alter the playing field environment.

Amazon and reviewers have revealed way too much of the story, which I believe should be the reader’s privilege. Katniss, however, the sixteen-year-old rep from District 12, bears mentioning. She is a strong-willed girl who refuses to give up her mind and soul to the monsters who run Panem. She is determined to retain her humanness, and she will do anything to keep it—including killing if necessary.

But isn’t that a dichotomy? How, exactly, does Katniss reconcile the notion of killing in order to retain her humanity?

I’m sorry to say this, but we the readers, don’t know. This is Book One of a trilogy, so I will have to read the second one: Catching Fire, published on September 1, 2009.

I'm glad that Collins chose a female as protagonist, making this more than a "boys' book." School Library Journal recommends The Hunger Games for Grades 7 and up—despite the graphic violence—but what do I know about twelve- and thirteen-year-old kids nowadays? Or what their parents allow them to read?

Rather, I give it two pinkie fingers up for adults.

15 Books

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:30:00 +0000

I just finished telling y’all that I’m a compulsive maker of lists, and here I go again. This list is not compulsive, however; it is requestive from Peter Sandico, my creative book blogging buddy in Manila.

A few days ago, he challenged readers to list, in his comments section, fifteen books (in no more than fifteen minutes) “That will stick with them forever.” I like that wording: not favorites because, by definition, only one book can be a favorite.

I didn’t time me because I have no idea where my watch is (I’m watching out for it, though), so I cheated on the time factor. And I don’t know if this is cheating or not, but three of my selections include multiple volumes; listing just one book of a trilogy seems really dopey to me. If I'm a cheater then so be it—this is my blog and I’ll do what I want with it. [large raspberry]

On to the list. These books will stay with me forever because they either affected me emotionally or were just fantastic reads (in no particular order):

1. I Know This Much is True, Wally Lamb

2. The Snopes Trilogy, William Faulkner (3 vols., duh)

3. The Journeyer, Gary Jennings

4. The World According to Garp, John Irving

5. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

6. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

7. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

8. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

9. A Song of Fire and Ice, George R.R. Martin (4 vols.)

10. The Source, James Michener

11. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

12. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

13. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

14. The Dark Tower, Stephen King (7 vols.)

15. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham

A bonus book from childhood, one that has stayed with me all my life:

16. The Little Engine That Could, Watty Piper ("I think I can, I think I can, I know I can.")

[Feel free to steal!]

Listing to Starboard (or is it Port?)

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:28:00 +0000

I am a compulsive maker of lists. I make a list for everything, including a master list that lists all my other lists. I’ve made a million lists over the years, most of them on cocktail napkins (both wet and dry), on the back of junk mail envelopes, and in the margins of the newspaper. A ton of my lists have been washed and dried, which makes for a very clean and softened list but alas, also a very blank one.

Even if I have nothing in particular to do, I make a list:

TODAY’S THINGS TO DO LIST

1. Nothing in particular.
2. If something in particular comes up, I'll let me know.

* * * * *

With hindsight and regret, there is a list I never made—or ever thought of making. It is a list (best kept in a wirering notebook), of the good books I’ve read during my lifetime.

What made me think about it was a discussion of Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase on LibraryThing. “I’ve read that!” I thought, and in fact I’ve read it twice, back about the time it came out in 1964 or so. But do you think I could remember anything about it? The story, the characters, maybe a quote or two? No, on all counts. All I could do was read the discussion, keep my yap shut, and feel the frustration.

The same thing has happened with Steinbeck, Chaim Potok, The Catcher in the Rye, and On the Road. It isn’t that my memory is shot; rather, it’s a matter of reading too many books too long ago and not remembering anything but the title and author.

How nice it would have been, then, to start a book list, a book journal, when I was in high school—in conjunction with (or instead of) making lists of dates in history and the abbreviations of the elements in chemistry. The high school lists are long gone, but I sure wish I had some notes on Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There and Pinball.

Perhaps I'll be a bit smarter in my next life when I come back as a library cat named Louie.

* * * * *

Poor Martha and her grocery lists. She makes one every week, and every week when she goes shopping, the list is on the kitchen table right where she left it. Not occasionally or once in a while, but every single week. We even have a routine when she gets home:

“You, uh, forgot your shopping list,” I tell her.

“I know, but I remembered almost everything on it.”

[This part varies]
“Did you remember the double-chocolate triple-fudge brownie with quadruple-dark chocolate sauce on top ice cream? And the hot fudge for it?”

[This part doesn't vary]
“Nope. Those are the two I forgot. I did get a nice strawberry rhubarb pie, though.”

The reason she “forgot” is because the ice cream was for ME and the pie was for HER. To prove it, listen to this:

“You know I can’t eat strawberry-rhubarb pie—it lies on my chest all night,” I say.

“Well no one is forcing you to eat it. Don’t worry; it’ll get eaten before it turns green."

It would be easy to get angry, but I don’t. She’s the one who spends her time and energy shopping, schlepping the bags around, and putting the groceries up—all because I can’t do it any more. Martha does her best, and I find her list- forgetfulness kind of endearing, something that’s unique about her.

But damn, I sure miss my family-size bowl of chocolate crash cart before I put on my jammies . . .

An Excellent Award

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:07:00 +0000

I received this award from Wandering Coyote of Way-Out-West Cowpat, British Columbia (not to be confused with North Cowpat, Ontario). I considered giving her a big (((hug))), but then I reconsidered. “WC is liable to slap the shit out of me,” I thought, and I imagined her saying something like this:

“We may be friends, asshole, but nobody said anything about touching.”

The reason I imagined her saying something like that is because she says something like that all the time. WC is the real deal, what you see is what you get, she says what she means, and she means what she says.

Please know, Bloggerites, that I’m not blowing my horn—hell, I don’t even own a kazoo. But I don’t take an award lightly, either. It is a symbolic thank you, and for that I’m grateful. Delighted. Even tickled pink.

You can sure as hell bet, though, that it won’t be WC doing the tickling.

Peckerhead

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0000

When I read a piece today titled "Home Improvement" by Robert the Skeptic, I just had to blow the dust off this old chestnut. I'm in no way, shape, or form accusing Robert of being a Peckerhead but, then again, take a gander at the photo on his banner.

Peckerhead

Pound. Pound pound pound. Eyeball a thirty-nine inch straight line across the wall. It looks right just about HERE. Pound. Pound pound pound. Screw the screw into one wall anchor, and then screw the other screw into the other wall anchor. Hang the bulletin board. Step back and look at my handiwork. Shit. Either the left side is too low or the right side is too high. I’ll lower the right side an estimated two and three-eighths inches so it’s equally low with the left side.

Eyeball an estimated two and three-eighths inches down the wall. It looks right just about HERE. Pound. Pound pound pound. Screw the screw into the wall anchor. Hang the bulletin board on the left screw and . . . it’s still crooked as hell. Several tries and several exposed wall anchors later . . .

I call it the Peckerhead Method of Home Repair, Assembly, and General Whatnot. The Peckerhead Method involves no thinking, no planning, and no questions asked. Just plunge right in, pecker first, and to hell with the instructions.

Peckerheadism (from the Latin skullus bonerus, or head of the pecker) is unique to the male of the species for an obvious reason. The female of the species reacts to peckerheadism with extreme peckishness and often responds by henpecking. Some (without naming her name) become selectively frigid:

“The henhouse is CLOSED, buster, until you FIX those big holes you made in my good fucking wall!”

* * * * * *

We didn’t have shop in grammar school, so I learned all the basics of peckerheading by watching Dad. I learned how to be impatient and always in a big goddam hurry. I learned how to use the wrong tools. I learned how to use vulgarities, expletives, and dirty words. I learned to forget to unplug it before taking it apart.

But most of all, I learned to never follow the instructions.

One of my boyhood pastimes was putting model airplane kits together. The jet fighter models always had a little plastic pilot, and it was crucial—crucial—to glue him into his seat before assembling the fuselage; otherwise, there was no way to get him into the cockpit.

I had the largest collection of lonely little plastic pilots in the universe. Mom wanted to have my head examined because I kept grumbling about “little men” and “my desk drawer is full of them”.

“Chuckie needs to have his head examined,” Mom told Dad. That was rich. Here was the man who took all twenty or thirty tubes out of the television set, put them in a grocery bag, hauled them down to the repair shop to test them, hauled them back home, and didn’t have a clue how twenty or thirty tubes went back into the television set.

“Fuckers all look alike,” I heard him mumbling from somewhere inside the TV cabinet. So do light bulbs I wanted to add, but that would have been an overt allusion to his red-line personal wattage on the peck-o-meter; when Dad was in peckerhead mode, he was in no mood for either wisdom or levity.

* * * * *

Intelligence. Reason. Logic. Common sense. I’m lucky to possess these cerebral gifts all in one thin brain. With just a tad bit more luck, I might have been Charlie Einstein instead of Charlie Callahan.

So why oh why can’t I repair, assemble, or generally whatnot like a normal person? Why oh why do I not think, plan, or ask questions before plunging, pecker first, into a project? Most of all, why oh why is my desk drawer of life overflowing with little plastic pilots?

Because I am my father’s son, and the peckerhead never falls far from the tree.

Because peckerism is in my genes, all tangled up in the fabric of my DNA.

Because, in the end, I just pecker along the best I can.

[Ladies, please monitor your blood pressure when responding to this essay!]

50 Things I've Never Had

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:10:00 +0000

This is not a meme because there is only one of me-singular, not plural-therefore, it is simply a me. I wonder who came up with that stupid term in the firstfirst placeplace.

50 Things I've Never Had

1. A dream where nothing happens. Mine are all Spielberg/Lucas blockbusters with THX surround scream.

2. Pistachio ice cream.

3. A bunny.

4. Bunny slippers.

5. A heavy metal record album. Mine are all made of light-weight vinyl.

6. A rap album made out of anything.

7. Sex on top of the refrigerator. I’m afraid of heights.

8. A riding lawn mower.

9. A lawn on which to ride a riding lawn mower.

10. Road kill.

11. Garden kill from the riding lawn mower I don’t have.

12. Ringworm.

13. Crop circles.

14. The vapors.

15. PMS.

16. A broken bone.

17. Remedial English. I only know American.

18. An infant of my own.

19. A child of my own.

20. A teenager of my own that I wish belonged to someone else.

21. Tuba lessons.

22. A personally autographed bible.

23. Labor pains.

24. A job that didn’t give me a pain.

25. Breast implants.

26. A firearm.

27. My arm on fire.

28. Just one potato chip.

29. Just one beer.

30. Cocktail hour.

31. Distemper.

32. Rabies.

33. Chest hair.

34. Farah Fawcett’s hair.

35. An Afro.

36. The heartbreak of psoriasis.

37. Capri pants.

38. A military mind.

39. A bureaucratic mind.

40. A clusterfuck (see numbers 39 and 40 in triplicate).

41. Anything designer. I don't do status or free advertising.

42. Anything made of Spandex.

43. An ability to sing.

44. An ability to dance.

45. An ability to sing while dancing, or to dance while singing.

46. Erectile dysfunction.

47. In-laws who like me.

48. A tattoo (because I was never a drunken sailor on shore leave in the South Seas.)

49. A life-long friend.

50. A hero.

[Feel free to steal!]

UPDATE: Other lists to check out!

Wandering Coyote

Barbara Zombie

A Compulsive Liar

Stinkypaw

Volly

Review: Inspector Imanishi Investigates

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:26:00 +0000

This is my entry in the Challenge, sponsored by Bellezza (the link will take you to the other entrants and their reviews). Since I am a mystery fan, I chose a police procedural so I could compare it to the rest of the genre. It is not classic "literature," but I learned much about Japan—which is, of course, the purpose of the Challenge.

* * * * *

Inspector Imanishi Investigates, Seicho Matsumoto; translated by Beth Cary

SOHO Crime, Trade Paper, 2003
ISBN 978-1569470190
313 pages

First Sentence: "The first train on the Keihin-Tohoku Line was scheduled to leave Kamata Station at 4:08 A.M."

Before departure, the crew inspected the train for safety and anything untoward. They found untoward: a dead body under one of the cars. The police arrive, and on page 2, the autopsy report presents the findings: male, middle-fifties, death by strangulation and post-death, a beating of the face with a rock or hammer.

The victim had been drinking, so the police canvassed the bars around Kamata Station for possible witnesses. The workers at Torys bar, nearby Kamata Station, remembered seeing the victim with a younger male companion. They all agreed on one thing: the victim spoke with an accent of the Tohoku region, a dialect with thick zu-zu sounds, and he repeated the word “Kameda” several times. It must be a person’s name, the police decided, only to find out that there were thousands of Kamedas in the northern prefectures (similar to provinces). Identifying the body, as well as the murderer, was not going to be easy.

I will stop describing the story line because everything I have written so far happens in the first 13-page chapter. By comparison, a U.S. or U.K. police procedural might easily take half the book to get this far. I found this method of wrapping up the preliminaries in a few pages more than refreshing.

There were still 300 pages left in the book, however, so what took up the space? Already declared a dead case in the first chapter, enter Tokyo police Inspector Imanishi Eitaro (surname first, given name second) to solve it.

Anyone who is familiar with Magdalen Nabb’s excellent series featuring Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Italian Carabinieri will immediately relate to Imanishi. Both men cannot leave an unsolved crime go unsolved. Their lives revolve around the case, they dig incessantly for the tiniest shred of a clue, and they never cease . . . thinking.

While there were plenty of twists, turns, and especially dead ends for Imanishi, he had an advantage over Guarnaccia: coincidence. The first one is in my story description about finding witnesses close to Kamata Station—which the police do. There were subsequent murders in the book; one victim lived in the apartment building next to Imanishi, while another rented a room from his sister. While waiting at a small train depot in Akita Prefecture, Imanishi meets four young intellectuals known as the Nouveau group, who play a large part throughout the book.

While I found this a little annoying, it did not ruin my enthusiasm for the book. Keeping track of names, prefectures, cities, towns, and railway stations was a challenge, so I kept some notes and printed a map of Japan.

Written in 1961, Seicho is as fresh and relevant today as he was then. The translation by Beth Cary is skillful, avoiding the use of Western slang and euphemisms.

Best of all, though, was the modus operandi of the killer, so unique that I have never read anything even close to it. I recommend this book to anyone who likes a well-written, complex mystery, a lot of sleuthing, and a very likeable protagonist.

Please Read!

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:55:00 +0000

Dear Blogites,

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have fallen behind on your blogs as well as the comments you have made on mine.

Specifically, I am having some tests done for Dr. Lung, my lung doctor.

Specifically, I tripped over my oxygen line, causing me to stub my toe (the one next to my big toe on my right clod), causing the toenail to come 9/10s off, causing Surgeon General Martha to cut off the other 1/10 which hurt like hell, causing me to limp around with my toe wrapped up in gauze.

Specifically, I will be having another tooth extraction this afternoon in 3 hours, 5 minutes, and 18 seconds. But who's counting.

Since I appear to be a glutton for pain, and taking the specifics into consideration, I believe I will rest this weekend in my burlap jammies.

"Do not despair, Tribe of Blogites, for I shall returneth on the seventh day (or the eighth day, which will be Monday), and catcheth up on all things Bloggerly." (1T 1:23) (First Book of Testicles, Chapter 1, Verse 23)

If you need something to read, I suggest my review of Nora Roberts.

UPDATE, 5:15 P.M.

Not one extraction, but two. The second one was a bitch. Now I am on dry socket watch—or maybe the nice dentist said watch your socks dry.

"Do not complaineth, moaneth, nor whineth—elst thee shall be named Wussy." (1T 1:24)

Weird Kid

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:07:00 +0000

It's time to lighten things up again, and what's better than a piece I wrote about me? Both of these "incidents" are true.

WEIRD KID

Yes, that’s me in the photograph, Fatty Arbuckle, plopped on my fat ass. I think mommy had to sew two diapers together to get one XXL to fit me.

It was my second birthday party (June 2, 1949), but mommy wasn’t there because she was sick: two days prior, the stork brought my new sister, Pootsie. I was pissed about missing the stork but I forgot all about it, and mommy, and Pootsie, when I saw the XXL cake in front of me . . .

ROLLER COASTER

Before I learned to walk, I learned to playpen. It was a prison made of wood bars. On rollers. On a linoleum floor. Dumb mommy, smart baby. Somehow, baby managed to stick his fat legs through the prison bars and take himself for a roll. Without a rolling license. Oh, he couldn’t roll to New Jersey or anywhere neat like that, but his one-room world provided lots of places to explore. Like the sideboard where dumb mommy stored the . . . toilet paper!

Baby didn’t know toilet paper from a snow shovel, but who cared. Toilet paper was FUN! While baby was rolling like mad around the room the toilet paper was rolling off the roll, rolling off the roll, when one was empty grab another and roll it off the roll! It was a toilet paper extravaganza, and before long the whole place was forty-two inches deep in it! Baby was in TP heaven until dumb mommy walked in and screamed. That scared baby and he took a dump in his XXL diaper. No worries, though. There was plenty of toilet paper to wipe baby’s fat butt.

THE BATH

“ARE YOU TAKING YOUR BATH UP THERE?” Mom screamed from downstairs.

“YEAH MOM, CAN’TCHA HEAR THE WATER RUNNING? I screamed back, turning both faucets to “on” in the tub—but without the stopper in the drain.

We did a shitload of screaming at my house, didn't we.

To this very day, I don’t understand why I made life triply hard on myself. I went to more trouble not taking a bath than if I’d just taken the damn thing in the first place. I ran a tubful of non-existent water, I wet ten towels and the bathmat so it looked like I had dried off, I soaked the soap in the sink so it would get all slippery and shrink, I dunked my head under the faucet to get my hair wet, I sang all the arias I knew from The Barber of Seville at the top of my lungs and, to prove I was a slob, I squirted shampoo all over the bathtub tiles.

All that work, plus I actually used a washcloth so I would pass behind-the-ears-and-neck inspection.

And all along, I thought Mom was the dummy.

Book News & Snooze

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:12:00 +0000

Boy, am I feeling smug. My prognostication that The Lost Symbol would be a piece of crap is just that. I’ve just returned from Amazon.com, where 843 peeps have written reviews and 590 of them, or 70%, have given it 3 or less stars out of a possible 5. The book is selling, of course, to those readers who enjoy mediocrity. That's their decision, so enough said.

* * * * *

What book has replaced Dan Brown as the #1 seller on both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble? Yes, folks, it’s Sarah Palin and her book Going Rogue, An American Life, a 432 page "memoir" set for publication on November 17.

432 pages of this nutcase?

Surely Palin must have a collaborator, I thought, but neither Amazon nor B&N lists one. But then I found this in an AP story on a site called Blerp:

Palin herself has said that "Going Rogue" will give her a chance to express herself "unfiltered," a bold brand for a public figure who has likened herself to a pit bull with lipstick and once alleged that Obama was "palling around with terrorists." Palin's collaborator, Lynn Vincent, has her own history of attacking the left. She is the co-author of "Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party." [Bold is mine]

If I thought this was going to be the comedy book of the year, I might read it. But Palin is waaaay out right: Rush Limbaugh, the quintessence of truth and objectivity, is hoping she sells 5 million copies. No, folks, I’ll be passing on this one: the minute I read “Church and State” in the same sentence, I would throw it at one of Martha’s good walls.

* * * * *

Want to see something really neat? Pop over here for a minute, but then come right back here.

See, I told you. I haven't read much of him since he retired, but I will be reading this one. I just hope its 1088 pages live up to the cover and some of his older stuff.

* * * * *

Before Dennis Lehane had a huge success with Mystic River, both book and movie, he wrote five PI novels featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. The locale was Boston, Lehane’s hometown, which he knows as well as Pete Hamill knows New York. Kenzie and Gennaro were a likeable team, smart-alecky (some of their scenes were hilarious), but they never scrimped on the job at hand. The stories were gritty and violent in a part of Boston known to be gritty and violent: Dorchester. The fans of the series, including me, loved them.

And then the series stopped. With the publication of Mystic River, Lehane said he was done with the duo. Forever. “There’s no way I’ll write another one,” I remember him saying quite forcefully in a magazine interview. The fans of the series, including me, were shocked.

Ten or so years later, Lehane has reconsidered: he is busy at work on a new Kenzie and Gennaro tale, but he won’t give any details. “A man can change his mind,” I remember him saying, but I can’t remember where I read it. His fans, including me, are delighted.

A Drink Before the War won a Shamus Prize for first novel. Others in the series (in order) include Darkness Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Prayers for Rain.

Death to the School Library

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:46:00 +0000

Last December, I wrote a rant about Amazon.com and its e-reader, the Kindle. To quote me, I said, “. . . there is no fucking way I will ever give up real books for an e-reader . . .” I admit that's a rather strongly worded quote, but I like Bloggerville to know exactly where I stand on an issue.

Well, at least one person disagrees with me: James Tracy, the headmaster of Cushing Academy, a snooty prep school for rich kids west of Boston. I picked up this story from The Boston Globe, written by David Abel on September 4, 2009.

“This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks—the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.

“Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a ‘learning center.’ In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.

“And to replace those old pulpy devices that have transmitted information since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, they have spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony. Administrators plan to distribute the readers, which they’re stocking with digital material, to students looking to spend more time with literature."

I am aghast. 3 large TVs for what, cluster reads? 18 e-readers for several hundred students? Wait until some scholar spills his or her cappuccino on the Library Kindle: William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice will be making her choice much sooner than expected.

The real tragedy, of course, is encouraging young people to read—and not just the blockbusters like Harry Potter and The Twilight Saga. Without rows of bookshelves (called stacks in the article) and real books to browse, how will a student know that Sophie’s Choice (or any other book) even exists?

The purpose of a prep school is to teach, to prepare the rich kids for the rich universities like Harvard and Radcliffe. Classes in polo and croquet are fine, but not at the expense of English and literature.

"Jemmel Billingslea, an 18-year-old senior, thought about the prospect of a school without books. It didn't bother him.

"'It's a little strange,' he said. 'But this is the future.'"

This isn't my future, Bubba.

The Quality Control Manager

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:15:00 +0000

(Click photo to enlarge)

He's not really the Quality Control Manager.

Our house is like China—we have no quality control.

I just gave him the title to boost his doggy ego.

He's been fascinated with the dishwasher since the day he moved in.

His real title is Superintendant of Pre-Wash Operations.

You have to keep an eye on the Superintendant, though.

He steals forks, especially if there's cake on 'em.

Singing for Salvation

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:45:00 +0000

After a heavy-duty post, I believe something a bit lighter is in order. Plus, it gives me some time to write my next book review, a contemporary Japanese murder mystery.

This is a true story except . . . well, you'll find out.

* * * * *

SINGING FOR SALVATION

When my little sister and I were in grammar school, either Mom or Dad taught us George M. Cohan’s song “Harrigan” using our name, Callahan, in place of the name, er, Harrigan.

And wouldn’t you know it, one of the Snoop Sisters at school found out about our personal family song (to this day I suspect it was my blabbermouth little sister). If sharp pointers and flying erasers weren’t bad enough, then forcing me to sing “Callahan” to the tune of “Harrigan” in front of the whole class was the ultimate humiliation, degradation, and penance for my massive amount of sins.

I mean, I couldn’t carry a tune in an iPod. I made Lurch sound like Josh Groban. If old George M. had heard me sing, he would have spit up in his Guinness before rolling over in his grave.

Luckily, my blabbermouth sister was a pretty good singer when she wasn’t blabbing. She took the spotlight off me, plus she was something to hang onto when I felt like toppling over from performance anxiety. She would belt out “CALLAHAN!!!” like a pint-size Ethel Merman, while I stood there shaking and squeaking like Spanky’s pal Alfalfa (not to mention that I looked like him too).

Whenever we had a visitor at school, which was usually one of the parish priests who had nothing better to do than bug the piss out of everyone, Cathy and I would have to do our big (and only) number:

C-A-Double L-A, H-A-N spells Callahan!
Proud of all the Irish blood that's in me,
Divil a man can say a word agin me!
C-A-Double L-A, H-A-N you see!
It's a name
that no shame
has ever been connected with,
CALLAHAN, that's ME!

One time, we had to sing for the bishop. Not just your ordinary, garden-variety bishop mind you, but Bishop Fulton J. Sheen himself.

You remember him, the fellow in the 1950s who had eyes that could peer straight into your soul and see every filthy corner of it. I have no idea how he did it, but whenever he was staring at you out of the television set his piercing eyes followed you all over the room. You could lie under the carpet, hang out the window by your toes, or swing back and forth on the ceiling light fixture: It didn’t make a damn bit of difference where you tried to hide because he could . . . see . . . you.

This guy was so good that he even scared the crap out of the Protestants.

When the Bishop came to visit our humble St. Agony’s Parish, one of the Snoop Sisters made us sing the stupid song for him. Twice. He stared at us the whole time, just like he did on television, and I had my normal Bishop Fulton J. Sheen reaction: I wet my pants.

But then, when we were finished, he smiled and said we were very good. Well, he told Cathy she was very good, and he gave her a nice holy card of some beheaded saint with her head lying in a wicker basket, bloody-stump-first. “It’s an omen,” I thought bleakly.

About a week later, though, I got a package in the mail. It was a brand-new box of Sunday collection envelopes with my name, “Charles Harrigan”, printed on each one of them, along with this note:

“Please use these instead of your voice and we will all be thankful.”

(I made the last two paragraphs up because I think they’re endearingly and heartwarmingly Catholic.)

* * * * *

For those who would like to sing along, here's the tune and words. It is mandatory, however, that the name "Callahan" be substitued for "Harrigan." This is the best recording I could find, so you'll also have to turn your speakers UP. It's worth it, though, just so you'll know what I went through. [Thanks to Kim Ayres for the suggestion—the man is always thinking.]

Review: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:35:00 +0000

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne

David Flickling Books, Trade Paper, 2008
ISBN 978-0385751896
240 pages

Reading Level: Young Adult

First Sentence:

"One afternoon, when Bruno came home from school, he was surprised to find Maria, the family's maid — who always kept her head bowed and never looked up from the carpet — standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he'd hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else's business."

Bruno is astonished when his family leaves their elegant five-story mansion in Berlin and moves far away to a much smaller home literally in the middle of nowhere. It is all because of Father’s new job: just the week before, the Fury (and the pretty blonde lady named Eva) had dinner at the mansion, where the Fury promoted Father to Commandant of Out-With.

“Fury,” for the uninformed, means the Fuhrer, and “Out-With” means Auschwitz. Puns that I did not find the least bit funny, but Bruno (Boyne) uses them throughout the book. “Fuhrer,” “Auschwitz,” and “Holocaust” are never mentioned; Hitler is used once when Father and Bruno, standing side-by-side, perform a perfect heel thumping “Heil” salute.

In a praise blurb, New York magazine says, “A book that tells a very bad story, gently.” Gently is an understatement; without prior knowledge of Auschwitz, the other concentration camps, the horror, and the German psychopaths who ran them, the reader will learn nothing of the Holocaust in this book.

When Bruno eventually finds the boy in the striped pajamas while exploring along the camp fence (and on page 106 of 216), he is delighted. Shmuel is also nine and they share the same birth date, but there the sameness ends; Bruno is on one side of the fence, Shmuel on the other.

It is because of the fence that Bruno asks to crawl under it so they can play.

“I don’t know why you’re so anxious to come across here anyway,” said Shmuel. “It’s not very nice.”

“You haven’t tried living in my house,” said Bruno. “For one thing, it doesn’t have five floors, only three. How can anyone live in so small a space as that?” He’d forgotten Shmuel’s story about the eleven people all living in the same room together before they had come to Out-With . . .”

It is dialog like this, which permeates the book, that made me intensely dislike Bruno, the protagonist. Boyne, in the Author’s Note, puts it this way: “I believed that the only respectful way for me to deal with this subject [the Holocaust] was through the eyes of a child, and particularly through the eyes of a rather naïve child who couldn’t possibly understand the terrible things that were taking place around him.”

If the protagonist cannot possibly understand these terrible things, then why write the book at all?

So who is the audience for this book? That is another tough question. Amazon and B&N classify it as Young Adult, and the book cover concurs with "teens." Also on the cover is a blurb by the publisher: “If you start this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Though this isn’t a book for nine-year-olds.)" Boyne, in an interview with the publisher, muddies the water even further: “I think of it as a book. I don’t think of it as a children’s book or an adult’s book. I’m not entirely sure I know what the difference is between a children’s book and an adults’ book.”

I do not take negative reviews lightly, and they are never a snap decision. I gave this book a lot of thought over several days, a lot of time writing and rewriting and, in the final analysis, I recommend it to no one: it is a book about a self-possessed boy and a disgrace to the Holocaust.

Charlie Lloyd Webber's Katz!

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:52:00 +0000

CHARLIE LLOYD WEBBER'S KATZ!

Fact: There are no seeing-eye cats.

Fact: There are no bomb-sniffing cats.

Fact: There are no drug-sniffing cats.

Fact: There are no rubble-sniffing rescue cats.

Fact: There are no K-9 attack cats.

Fact: There are no St. Bernard cats with itty-bitty brandy barrels tied around their itty-bitty necks.

Question: What good are cats, except for singing and dancing their little hearts out on Broadway?

[Just funnin', folks.]

The Hospital Diaries

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:42:00 +0000

Yesterday, I received this in an e-mail:

I've had two heart attacks and a triple bypass, accompanied by type II diabetes (genetic predisposition to create too much cholesterol as opposed to bad diet), have a slough of allergies and now have arthritis in both hips from 26 years of sitting torqued forward improperly on a chair, facing a monitor. Upper neck bones are shot too. So the former athlete (speed swimmer, breast stroke) is reduced to a woman of middling years who has to roll over onto her knees and push up from the floor and is trapped in bathtubs if there is no grab bar.

But I'm young between my ears, as are you, so our disabilities are annoyances in our lives, they aren't the definition of who we are.

It's that fighting spirit that attracted me to your posts and then to your blog. . . . But most of all,having a blisteringly good sense of humour makes ALL of it worthwhile.

She and I claim it is our ancestral Celtic blood—hers is Scottish, mine is Irish—that bestowed us with humor. Without it, I think our ships would be adrift in the water. With that in mind, here is a true story I wrote after hospitalization over Christmas, 2005.

THE HOSPITAL DIARIES

PART ONE: THE CODE

No siren, no flashing lights, stop at every traffic signal and sit there even if it’s green, and keep blathering at the cargo even if he’s in no mood to blather. And then, when they finally arrive at the hospital, they carefully unload the cargo and punch in the door code so they can hurry him into the emergency room.

“The code isn’t working,” the ambulance guy standing at my feet said, pushing numbers on a keypad that would, in theory, open the emergency room doors if the numbers were correct.

“Do you know the code?” he asked, looking at the unopened doors with a mixture of frustration, longing, and stupidity—and like me, wishing that we could get inside the hospital. He was talking to the other ambulance guy standing behind the cargo (whom the cargo didn’t know was there), so the cargo assumed he was being addressed.

“Nope, haven’t got a clue,” I said from the gurney, no more in the mood for puzzles and ciphers and enigmas than I was for blather. I wasn’t feeling well, you see, but in a blast of oxygen-induced brilliance, it suddenly came to me.

“Try the da Vinci Code,” I suggested.

PART TWO: THE CHAIR

“Mr. Callahan, I’m here to take some blood BANG!”
“Uh, watch out there, fella, there’s a big fucking chair right behind the door!”
“Oh. Sorry.”

“Time to take your vitals, Mr. C., stick out your BANG!”
“Uh, watch out there, lady, there’s a big fucking chair right behind the door!”
“Oh. Sorry.”

“Charles, we just got your sputum tests back from the BANG!”
“Uh, watch out there, Doc, there’s a big fucking chair right behind the door!”
“Oh. Sorry.”

“I have lots of nummy drugs for you, Mr. Calla BANG!”
“Uh, watch out there, nurse . . .”

Intelligent, caring, wonderful people all, but ten thousand idiots when it comes to MOVING a big fucking chair from right behind the door to the other side of the bed . . .

PART THREE: THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT

“OOOOH, my goodness, where did you get that TREE??? It is so BEE-UTE-A-FULL!!!”

It wasn’t a tree, actually, but rather a floral designer’s ceramic implementation of an imaginary visual concept of “a partridge in a pear tree”—meaning it was rather odd-looking.

But Victoria, the round, Russian, infinitely ebullient day nurse who kept correcting my English, loved it. I mean, she really loved it.

“It was a present from a co-worker,” Martha told her, “and I brought it to Charlie to cheer him up—he’s still bitching about the ‘no siren and flashing lights in the fucking ambulance’ thing, you know.”
“OOOOH, but it is so BEE-UTE-A-FULL!!!”

So Martha did a nice thing. She went home and got the bird’s box, a big red bow, and a gift card. She wrote “For Victoria” on it.

“You are KID-DINK!!! This is for ME??? OOOOH, it is so BEE-UTE-A-FULL!!!”

There were big Russian hugs all around, a few happy tears, a nice warm feeling in all of our tummies and, on December 24, it was a wonderful Christmas.

But I'm young between my ears, as are you, so our disabilities are annoyances in our lives, they aren't the definition of who we are.

A Screaming Meme for BBAW

callahanc1@cox.net (Charlie) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:04:00 +0000

I seldom, if never, do a meme. But Harvee, the nice lady at Book Bird Dog who has turned me on to several good books, asked me to do this one to wrap up the BBAW.

Do you snack while you read? If so, your favorite reading snack?

No. Never. I tried crackers in bed one time, but by morning I was lying on a piecrust ready for the oven. Truthfully, I don’t want anything greasy or gooey gumming up the pages. Refer to my post The Incidental Reader for more information on this subject.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read? How do you keep your place while reading a book?

I make a very light pencil "star" next to a quote I want to remember, but once I’ve transferred the quote to a review or a notebook I erase the mark. I saw my mother-in-law’s bible one time and nearly every single sentence was underlined. “You ought to save yourself some time and underline just the sentences you don't want,” I told her. She was not amused.

As far as keeping my place, I have about 10,000 bookmarks. If I don’t have one handy, however, anything will do—like the prescription the doctor gave me and took over a week to find in a book I’d set aside.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?

I lean heavily toward fiction—about 85%. I prefer the art of storytelling. Some non-fiction is storytelling too, like Marley & Me and memoirs, and that's the kind of non-fiction I prefer.

Hard copy or audio books?

Definitely hard copy. I tend to confuse character names on audio, and by the time I remember who the character is, the disc is way ahead of me.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

I can put a book down at any point, usually due to falling asleep or dropping it. I put a book down in a puddle one time (by accident) and I was heartbroken, so it was off to B&N for a fresh, dry copy. That was when I learned that I cannot walk and read at the same time.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?

I could lie and say yes, of course I do, but the answer is no. The only reason I would buy a Kindle would be to have the entire Oxford English Dictionary—but I don’t have the $1,000.

What are you currently reading?

The Boy In the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, Sourcery by Terry Pratchett, and Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto (for the Japanese Challenge 3). A book for every mood, and a mood for every book.

What is the last book you bought?

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. I’m really starting to like YA (Young Adult) fiction, and a lot of it is much better than the popular fiction being "manufactured" for adults.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?

I usually have three or four in the works at any one time. If a book really grabs me I may read it exclusively (The Book Thief comes to mind), but I usually switch back and forth.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?

I read in the evenings at the kitchen table, and around 9 p.m. I move to the bed and read until my wife yells, “Turn out the light and go to sleep!” I could tell her to go somewhere else to sleep, but that would not be conducive to my physical health. If I’m up until 2 or 3 a.m., then I revert to my kitchen chair.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alone books?

Both. I prefer fantasy series (George R.R. Martin every five or ten years) and mysteries that require knowledge from earlier books (John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series is one), but the majority of books I read stand all by themselves.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?

Not including the authors and books I’ve already mentioned, I recommend James Lee Burke, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Denise Mina quite often. It usually depends on whom I’m talking to and what their interests are. If someone loves whales, I don't recommend Moby Dick.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)

Organize? That’s for corporate types. The closest I get to organization is keeping an author’s books together—all Dickens in one place, all Cornwell in another place, etc. Any other kind of organizing is too much work. Disorganization affords me the pleasure of bitching when I can’t instantly put my finger on a book, or I realize that I never owned a copy in the first place.

So there you have it, biblioholics. And I had fun, Harvee, even if I digressed here and there.