Love’s an empty town /
With only the clown around /
Tears of joy greet you.
Haiku to you Thursday: “Tears of joy”
Love’s an empty town /
With only the clown around /
Tears of joy greet you.
Filed under 2020, Haiku to You Thursday, Poetry by David E. Booker
Monday morning writing joke: “Writer from Memph-is”
There once was a writer from Memph-is
Whose poetry was all full of guess-is
About the nature of sex.
Was it a blessing or a hex?
And if all things were bigger in Tex-is.
Book review: “Lullaby Town” by Robert Crais
Lullaby Town by Robert Crais
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s often fun to drop in near the beginning of a new series, and such is the case with private detective novel Lullaby Town by Robert Crais. The early 1990s seems in some ways a distant time now. No smart phones. Not even any cell phones. At least none mentioned in this novel. No ubiquitous laptop computers and the best ones were dummy terminals tied to mainframes.
Anyway, Hollywood’s erratic but supposedly brilliant action / adventure director Peter Alan Nelson hires private detective Elvis Cole to find his ex-wife and young son who disappeared almost a decade ago. As Elvis searches the country to find these two, he finds other trouble as well. Peter’s wife has established herself in a small town in Connecticut. Unfortunately, despite working her way up at a local bank to a respectable position, she also has some unwanted, and quite nasty, mob connections. Extricating the ex and keeping the erratic (and emotionally immature) director from interfering make for more than simple search and find assignment for Elvis and his taciturn partner, Joe Pike. An entertaining and fun read — including Elvis’s snarky remarks about other fictional private eyes. Definitely a 4 star and maybe a 4.5 star book.
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Filed under 2020, book review
Haiku to you Thursday: “Light ways”
Past present /
beauty in the light /
raging from long ago.
Filed under 2020, Haiku to You Thursday, Poetry by David E. Booker
Book review: Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I rarely give a book five stars, because that would mean it is perfect. While this book is not perfect, it deserves its high rating because of the focus, the breath, and the aim of the book. Part social history. part commentary. This review of American exceptionalism (in both senses of the word) is based around the concept of what Andersen refers to as the Fantasy Industrial Complex, and how for both good and ill, that complex has shaped America, and how, at present, it is undoing America. The style of the book is readable. It is far from a “dry tome.” It goes back as far as the Puritans and comes up to the present and the election of the Fools Gold president currently occupying the Oval Office. A book worth your time.
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Filed under 2020, book review
Monday morning writing joke: “Writer from Sandusky”
There once was a writer from Sandusky /
Who was tall and a little bit husky. /
He wrote every day. /
He was a poet they say. /
And his clothes wore a wee bit crusty.
