Razzmatazz - Christopher Moore

   2022; 390 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the series “The Tales of Sammy Two-Toes”.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Pulp Fiction; American Historical Fiction; Fantasy; Humor.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    It’s 1947 in San Francisco and folks in Chinatown are on edge.  Two women in the gay-club area have been killed, in separate attacks.  One was bludgeoned and dumped in the bay, the other was offed via an ice pick to the head.

 

    The San Francisco Police Department is of little or no help; they’re more interested in discouraging their fine citizens from frequently these disreputable clubs.  If murders are occurring at those places, well, just stay away.

 

    So a bartender there, Sammy “Two Toes” Tiffin, takes it upon himself to investigate the slayings, even though he doesn’t know the first thing about being a detective.  But one of his customers, an alcoholic geezer nicknamed Fitz, is an ex-cop, and Sammy is counting on getting some sage advice from him.

 

    And happily, the Chinese dragon that resides in Sammy’s head has also volunteered to help.

 

What’s To Like...

    Razzmatazz is the sequel to Christopher Moore’s 2020 novel Noir.  I wasn’t aware it was part of a series, and I haven’t read the first book.  Based on the above intro, you’d think this means Razzmatazz will be a murder-mystery, and it is, but having a dragon and an extraterrestrial as supporting characters introduces fantasy and mythological slants to the tale.  Then throw in lots of the author’s trademark wacky humor, and you end up with what for me read like a fine piece of pulp fiction.

 

    The book is written in both the first-person POV (usually Sammy’s, but occasionally the dragon’s or a friend of Sammy’s named Stilton), and the third-person (mostly the narrator, but at times other characters).  This switching around of the viewpoint might sound like it'd make things confusing, but it works smoothly.

 

    There are secondary plot threads that keep things moving at a brisk pace.  The dragon wants a statue retrieved, a maroon Packard keeps showing up, and no one knows what happened to the former police chief, but they're pretty sure Sammy had something to do with it. The setting is the greater San Francisco area, and takes place in two times – the “present-day” 1947, and the “flashback” 1906.  Yes, that’s the year the earthquake hit.  I liked the “feel” of the Bay Area depicted in those two eras, especially the focus given to how the Chinese and the gay sectors fared.

 

    I enjoyed the smattering of Chinese vocabulary woven into the story, including gwai-lo and jook.  I was bummed that I didn’t recall them from when I took Mandarin in college, but it turns out Cantonese expressions are used here.  The Chinese transliterations of place names was also neat; among them were: The Glorious Location of Various Weeds, Flowery Arbor Mountain Booth, and Tall House of Happy Snake and Noodle.

 

    Be sure to read the author’s Trigger Warning at the beginning of the book, as well as his Afterword at the book’s end, the latter being where Christopher Moore tells what led him to insert into the story a visit by 30 hookers to a place called The Sonoma Hospital for Feeble Minded Children for a Christmas celebration.  Moore also reveals which details in the book are factual and which he made up.  The police-enforced “Three Article Rule” was hilarious to me until I found out it was real.  Wiki it.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Jamoke (n., slang) : an ordinary, unimpressive, or inept person.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 1,310 ratings and 82 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.11*/5, based on 3,526 ratings and 484 reviews.

 

Things That Sound Dirty, But Aren’t…

    “Flapjacks and willies, slam ‘em in the screen door!”

 

Excerpts...

    “He lost his statue forty-one years ago and all of a sudden it’s worth two grand to get it back?”

    “No.  Getting his business back is worth two grand.  The dragon is for another guy, the Squid Kid.”

    “Moo Shoes, do not try to run that phonus bolognus inscrutable Eastern mystic game on me.  You are highly scrutable.  I can scrute both you mugs five out of six days a week.”  (loc. 843)

 

    “Sit,” said the big guy.  “Wait.”

    So we sat.  We waited.  A half hour went by.  An hour.  We saw not a soul.

    “Were we supposed to take a number?” Moo asked.

    I peeked into the other rooms.  No one.  I said, “A guy who used to come in the bar told me once that if you go in someplace and they don’t pay any attention to you, then start stealing stuff.  They’ll either start paying attention or you’ll have something for your time.”

    “Wise.  What business was that guy in?”

    “Thief, I think.”  (loc. 4102)

 

Kindle Details…

    Razzmatazz presently costs $14.99 at Amazon.  The other book in the series, Noir, will run you $14.49.  Christopher Moore has about 15 other e-books to offer, most of them in the price range of $10.99-$14.99.

 

“That broad could hear an ant fart in a hurricane.”  (loc. 1627)

    I’ve been a Christopher Moore fan for decades, so finding things to gripe about in Razzmatazz is difficult.  If you’re new to his works, be aware that an abundance of cusswords is the norm for him.  Here, I noted 35 of them in the first 10% of the text, more than half of which were f-bombs.  There were also a couple of rolls-in-the-hay and one of the characters is obsessed with carrying out a rather extreme form of birth control.

 

    Also, it must be said that this is not a whodunit.  Yes, Sammy does eventually suss out who’s killing the gays, but this comes in the last chapter as a “great reveal”, and is not due to dogged sleuthing.

 

    Some reviewers were disappointed that Razzmatazz was not up to the level of zaniness found in earlier Christopher Moore efforts.  They have a point, but I think a pulp fiction novel is inherently darker and less snarky than a humorous satire, and personally, I was impressed that Moore could switch so seamlessly to a new genre.

 

    Overall, Razzmatazz was both an enlightening and entertaining read for me, shining the spotlight upon a time and place that I’m not all that familiar with.  So if you’re looking for “Moore of the same” (pun intended) type of humor this author is renowned for, you might give this book a pass.  But if you want to see him expanding his literary horizons, which shows just how skilled of a writer he is, you’ll find a pleasant surprise.

 

    8½ Stars.  One closing teaser.  Uncle Ho can talk to, and listen to, animals.  Particularly to pigs and rats, whose advice can be quite useful.  He can also hear what dragons have to say, a talent which just might get him killed.  I love stories with talking animals.

What If? 2 - Randall Munroe

   2022; 334 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the “What If?” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Humorous Science; Physics; XKCD; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    A few questions that might cross your mind some night when it’s 3 AM in the morning and you can’t sleep:

 

    01. What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?

 

    06. How many pigeons would it require in order to lift the average person and a launch chair to the height of Australia’s Q1 skyscraper?

 

    38.  Could a person eat a whole cloud?

 

    56. What if you decided to walk from Austin, Texas, to New York City, but every step you take takes you back 30 days?

 

    64. What if all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops?

 

    What?  You say you’d love to know the answers to these, but don’t want to suffer from insomnia while trying to figure them out?  Then pick up Randall Munroe’s new book, What If? 2.

 

What’s To Like...

    What If? 2 is the long-awaited sequel to Randall Munroe’s fantastic 2014 best-seller What If?.  I’ve read it, loved it, and it is reviewed here.  Randall Munroe is also the creator of the comic strip XKCD, which caters to the geek audience, of which I am a part.

 

    What If? 2 contains discussions of 64 mind-boggling questions like those shown above, plus five sections of “Short Answers” and three sections labeled “Weird and Worrying”.  There’s also a list, aptly titled “Things You Should Not Do”, that gets periodically updated throughout the book based on some of the questions, which advises you not to do things such as: pump ammonia into your abdomen, eat meat from rabid animals, and perform your own laser eye surgery.  There are numerous as well [citation needed] inserts; they are hilarious.

 

    ANAICT, the questions come from letters written by fans to the author, and he even lists the inquirers at the start of each discussion.  His answers to the 64 main questions average about 5 pages each, but each one contains several witty drawings in “XKCD style”, so the five pages are actually quick reads.

 

    I loved the innovative ways the author used to give valid answers to the absurdly-conceived questions.  For instance, how would you approach a problem such as “If house dust comprises up to 80 percent dead skin, how many people worth of skin does a person consume in a lifetime?” (Question 45).  Randall Munroe doesn’t pretend that he already knows the answers to such queries, and frequently mentions the experts he consulted.

 

    As anticipated, What If? 2 is also a trivia buff’s delight.  It was fun to see our summers here in Phoenix get duly cited for their incredible heat.  I smiled because I’d already read about the importance of Lagrange Points, but I admit I’d never heard of the “glass beaches of Vladisvostok”.  Google-image them, the photos are amazing.

 

    FWIW, I read What If? 2 in segments of 15-30 minutes, which is also how I read books of poetry.  I’m sure it’s possible to read all 334 pages in one sitting, but if I did that, the questions-&-answers would all start to blur together after a while. 

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 2,189 ratings and 146 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.40*/5, based on 6,714 ratings and 816 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    The 39,000 McDonald’s restaurants worldwide sell something like 18 billion hamburger patties per year, for an average of 1,250 burgers per restaurant per day.  Those 1,250 burgers contain about 600,000 calories, which means that each T.rex only needs about 80 hamburgers per day to survive, and one McDonald’s could support more than a dozen tyrannosaurs on hamburgers alone.

    If you live in New York and you see a T.rex, don’t worry.  You don’t have to choose a friend to sacrifice; just order 80 burgers instead.

    And then if the T.rex goes for your friend, anyway, hey, you have 80 burgers.  (pg. 39)

 

    The average kid produces about half a liter of saliva per day, according to the paper “Estimation of the Total Saliva Produced Per Day in Five-Year-Old Children,” which I like to imagine was mailed to the Archives of Oral Biology in a slightly sticky, dripping envelope.

    A 5-year-old probably produces proportionally less saliva than a larger adult.  On the other hand, I’m not comfortable betting that anyone produces more drool than a little kid, so let’s be conservative and use the paper’s figure.  (…)

    At the rate of 500 ml per day from the paper, it would take you about a year to fill a typical bathtub.  (pg. 263)

 

In other words, your aquarium could be destroyed by whale farts.  (pg. 148)

    I didn’t find many nits to pick with What If? 2.  As expected, there's no cussing in it, let alone any “adult situations” either implied or explicit.

 

    About the worst I can think of is that, if you aren’t science-oriented, some of the calculations used to determine the answers in the book may seem a bit “physics-y”.  I’m a chemist by trade, but if you saw my GPAs for the high school and college physics classes I took (especially the ones that incorporated calculus into the lessons), you’d understand why I am a bit thin-skinned when it comes to reading bunches of discussions involving physics.

 

    To be fair, Randall Munroe usually warns the reader when a calculation he uses is complicated and asks us to just trust the answer.  That may sound like a dose of risky blind faith, but rest assured, there will be readers of this book who are physics majors, who will double-check the calculations used, and will be ecstatically vociferous if they catch a flaw.

 

    What If? 2 was an enlightening and entertaining read for me, from the beginning through the end.  You’ll learn a lot, and have a fun time while doing so.  This may motivate me to read Randall Munroe’s companion book How To, in the not-too-distant future.

 

    9½ Stars.  For the record, Question 64 listed above comes from the first line of a nursery song that can be found multiple times on YouTube, including one version by Barney the Dinosaur.  I’d never heard of it.  I must be getting old.

Up The Down Staircase - Bel Kaufman

   1965; 370 pages.   New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Humor; Schools & Teaching; Epistolary Literature.  Laurels : 64 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Today’s the big day!  Sylvia Barrett starts her new job in her new career!

    Okay, so it’s as a substitute teacher at Calvin Coolidge High School, which is not the most prestigious educational institute in town.  That would be Willowdale Academy.  But hey, this is Sylvia’s chance to get her foot in the door, and maybe that will eventually lead to an opportunity to teach at Willowdale.

    It's an exciting moment for Sylvia.  She will be teaching several classes of English and shepherding a homeroom class.  She dearly wants to make an impact on the teenage lives in both of those situations.  She can hardly wait to see their faces light up when they’re introduced to Shakespeare's plays or Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”.

    Best yet, she’ll have the other teachers, the principal, and the school’s entire key support staff to assist her in this new chapter of her life.  It all starts now, the first day of the fall semester.  I wonder what the class’s first words will be?

    “Hi, teach!”

    “Looka her!  She’s a teacher?”

    “Who she?”

What’s To Like...

    Up The Down Staircase came out in 1965, and was a “wildest-dreams-come-true” experience for Bel Kaufman.  She was 50+ years old, this was her debut novel (originally written as a short story), and it became an instant and long-lasting New York Times bestseller.

    The story is written in epistolary format – the text consists of various written communications such as official memos from the school’s administration to teachers, unofficial memos between Sylvia and fellow teachers, student homework essays on English Lit books, notes from students put in the suggestion box Sylvia installs, and snippets of dialogue between her and her students, primarily those in her homeroom class.  I like this format, see here for another book I read in this style.

    The book is based on the author’s personal teaching career experiences, albeit fictionalized to increase the humor value.  The storyline highlights Sylvia’s attempts to connect with her students, most notably Joe Ferone and Eddie Williams, and with mixed results.  There is some mild romantic tension between Sylvia and an attractive-but-dorky fellow English teacher, a mysterious custodian who Sylvia never meets but for whom lots of students request passes to see, and a professional quandary when she contemplates applying for a position at the more upscale Willowdale Academy next semester.

    I liked the character developments of both the students and the adults.  The students include a class comedian (hey, that was me!), an apple-polisher, an overweight girl jealous of Sylvia’s looks, a woman-hater, a girl with a hormonal overdrive, a lone and bitter black student, and a Puerto Rican student searching for his identity.  The school officials include an older, wiser, and trusted confidante, an idealistic but utterly clueless principal, his polar-opposite assistant (aware, but cynical), and a number of fellow teachers, embittered by experiences with “the system”.

    The book brought back memories of high school days.  We too had a mandatory Shakespeare play to read each year, and my teachers presented it with an equal lack of enthusiasm.  Sylvia’s students get assigned 100-word essays, mine were 200-worders, including one memorably called “The Mining Industry in Siberia” that was assigned to me as punishment for some class shenanigan.  OTOH, when Sylvia’s explains the meaning of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” I was thoroughly thrilled; I hated it and had zero comprehension of it when we read it in high school English.

    For me the most entertaining parts were the replies put in Sylvia's suggestion box by the students, often anonymously, and their mini-essays for homework assignments such as “What I Got Out of English Class so far”.  But be forewarned, if you’re a grammar nazi, you’ll grit your teeth at the spelling, syntax, and punctuation errors.  There’s also some more-serious insight into topics such as racial integration and the uneasy trust issues between students and school officials.

    The ending was kind of a “lump-in-the-throat” thing for me.  It’s not particularly surprising, but makes up for that by being heartwarming, which I think is apt for this type of story.  Lots of issues remain unresolved, but that too is okay – major personal and cultural issues are rarely solved in a single semester.  Timewise, the story covers only the fall term, and it screams for a sequel to cover the spring semester, but alas, this is a one-and-done novel.

Excerpts...

    “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket.  You’ll soon learn the language.  “Let it be a challenge to you” means you’re stuck with it; “interpersonal relationships” is a fight between kids; “ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline” means call the cops; “Language Arts Dept.” is the English office; “literature based on child’s reading level and experiential background” means that’s all they’ve got in the Book Room; “non-academic-minded” is a delinquent; and “It has come to my attention” means you’re in trouble.  (loc. 600, and is a decoding of key phrases in "Intraschool Communications" that Sylvia is struggling to comprehend.)

    Correct the following for Fri.

1. Rowing on the lake the moon was romantic.

    Correction – While rowing on the lake the moon was romantic?

    Or – Rowing on the lake, the moon was romantic?

2. Looking out of the window was a tree.

    Correction – Looking out of the window a tree appeared in view.

3. I found a pencil loitering in the hall.

    Correction – A pencil loitering in the hall was found by me.  (loc. 3247; homework notes jotted down by a student)

Kindle Details…

    Up The Down Staircase goes for $5.99 at Amazon.  Bel Kaufman subsequently published three more books: a romance, a collection of her essays, and an anthology of short stories by her.  None of these are presently available at Amazon in e-book format.

What do I do about a kid who calls me “Hi, teach?”  (…)  Why not answer Hi, pupe?  (loc. 592)

    The quibbles are minor.  There’s a bunch of acronyms – SS, PPP, PRC, CC, etc. – repeatedly used in the school memos.  Bel Kaufman tells you what they mean the first time, then expects you (and Sylvia) to remember what they stand for thereafter.  Keep notes.

    Some reviewers were critical of the shallow way the integration issue was handled, but Up The Down Staircase is meant to be a lighthearted tale, and frankly, in my high school in 1964 there was no sense of activism about it.  I’m actually pleasantly surprised Bel Kaufman gave it some ink in the book.  Ditto for the use of the word “Negro”, which is obsolete nowadays, but was politically correct back then.

    There is a smattering of cussing, including the F-word (once spelled correctly, once not), which IMO is realistic for high school student dialogue.  In the book's Foreword, Bel Kaufman discusses the efforts by the publisher to get her to "soften" the words used in these instances, which ones she acquiesced to, and which ones she didn't.  That section is somewhat lengthy, but gives some keen insight into pressures that publishing houses can put on fledgling authors.

    8 Stars.  Up The Down Staircase is a fast, easy read; ideal if you have a book review due tomorrow and you haven’t even started reading anything.  It took the reading world by storm in 1965, and was made into a hit movie a couple years later.  Bel Kaufman lived to the ripe old age of 103, born in 1911, died in 2014.  Amazingly, her (second) husband, five years her junior, was still alive when she passed away.  It would be great to have their combined longevity genes.

Skinny Legs And All - Tom Robbins

   1990; 422 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Satire; Contemporary Fiction; Humorous American Literature.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Everybody’s either on the move or about to be.

    The newlyweds Boomer Petway and Ellen Cherry Charles, are traveling from Seattle to New York City, because the art scene is better in NYC, and Ellen is an aspiring painter.  The Airstream motor home they’re driving is a turkey.  Really.  Well, a mechanical one, welded together by Boomer, but nevertheless looking like something from a giant’s Thanksgiving dinner table.

    The mystically enchanted duo of Painted Stick and Conch Shell have lain dormant for centuries, but they’re about to be revived by the utterance of the magic word.  No, not abracadabra, but “Jezebel!” They’re stuck in a cave in the Pacific Northwest right now, but their ultimate goal will be Phoenicia, in what is present-day Lebanon.  Good luck, you two.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

    Can o’ Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock are about to be awakened alongside Painted Stick and Conch Shell, and will use their newfound mobility to tag along with their benefactors.  The lack of innate enchantment may prove to be a handicap.

    Spike Cohen and Roland Abu Hadee (aka “Isaac and Ishmael”) are about to open a restaurant across the street from the United Nations. They intend to prove that a business partnership between a Jew and an Arab can not only survive, but even flourish.  Good luck, guys.  You’re gonna need it.

    The televangelist, Reverend Buddy Winkler, is tired of God fiddle-farting around when it comes to Armageddon and building the Third Temple in Jerusalem.  He intends to help the Almighty by kick-starting the End of Days.

    Their paths will all converge near St. Paul’s Cathedral, but it should be noted: none of them has “skinny legs and all”.

What’s To Like...

    Tom Robbins uses Skinny Legs and All to present his theory that our views of the world are shrouded by illusions stemming from various sources.  He focuses on seven areas – Race, Politics (the desire to have power over others), Marriage, Art (its inherent pretentiousness), Religion (dogma and tradition overwhelm brotherhood), Money (the false security of it), and Lust.  Since these are blinding our eyes to what is real, the author likens them to Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils”.  Straightforward expounding on this would probably be tedious to most readers, so Robbins wraps them up in a tale where our protagonist, Ellen Cherry, gradually starts seeing through these veils.

    As with any Tom Robbins novel, the writing is sublimely superb.  Every sentence, no matter how unimportant, seems to be a work of literary art.  There are similes aplenty, and Robbins has always been a wizard at using them.  One random example: “Looking at you in your kimono, it felt like some backyard chef was sprinkling meat tenderizer on my heart.”  Wowza.  The storyline is divided into seven sections, each addressing one of the seven veils.  The character development is also fantastic; any writer can build a personality for some person in his novel, but try doing that for a can of baked beans.

    Religion gets a extended analysis here, especially the three  major Western ones – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  The Old Testament is common to all three, and Tom Robbins gives a new take on their collective origins, suggesting that it “borrows” much from (earlier) pagan religions featuring Astarte/Ishtar and other deities.  The Crusades is seen from the Moslem point-of-view, and modern-day televangelism is viewed in all its hypocritical zeal.

    I very much enjoyed the "animate inanimate" objects.  In addition to the five already mentioned, you’ll also be privy to the thoughts from a glob of goo, a drawer of panties, and a vibrator that spouts off inane-sounding Zen aphorisms.

    Skinny Legs And All is awash in fascinating trivia references.  I had to look up David Hockney and Pouilly-Fumé.  Donald Trump gets cited twice, which is a bit eerie since the book was written in 1990.  Bonnie Raitt makes a cameo appearance, so do Monet’s water lilies.  And the recorded voice of the operator cutting in on Ellen Cherry’s pay phone conversation, to request that she deposit more coins to continue talking, brought back nostalgic memories for me.

    The ending is a mixed affair.  On one hand, the Boomer/Ellen relationship thread is resolved, at least for the moment.  OTOH, the fate of a lot of the other characters seemed to be left in limbo.  A street performer named Turn Around Norman just fades into oblivion, after having played a prominent role in the tale.  And the god/gods/goddesses “Pale” (Wiki he/she/them) must surely still have plans for Conch Shell and Painted Stick.  Yet I don't believe Tom Robbins ever penned a sequel to this.

Kewlest New Word ...

Odalisque (n.) : a female slave or concubine in a harem.

Others: Pouf (n., slang)

Excerpts...

    What was a can of beans but a pawn in the game of consumption?  From field to factory, from market to household, from cook pot to lunch plate, the destiny of a can of beans was as sealed as it was simple.  Ultimate destination: rust heap and sewage pond.  Yet, he/she had managed to escape the norm, to taste a freedom unimagined by others of his/her “lowly” station.  Moreover, were the lives of most humans any better?  When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers.  When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs.  In between, they were just pushed around.  (pg. 110

    Spike Cohen alone seemed to remember how dangerous the I-&-I could be.  From his post behind the cash register, he kept one eye on the street, as if the street were a crocodile-skin shoe that might at any moment revert to its original state of being.  When, around the corner of First Avenue, a truck backfired, thin electrical noises came out of his windpipe.

    Spike’s jitters were for naught.  Except for the fact that they ran out of chick-peas, the evening produced scant catastrophe.  The next evening was positively humdrum.  And the one after that was as bereft of disorder as a Heidelburg symposium on anal retention.  In truth, the entire winter passed as peacefully and leisurely as a python digesting a Valium addict.  (pg. 261)

Back around Seattle (…) trees were so thick, so robust and tall, that they oozed green gas, sported mossy mustaches, and yelled “Timber, yourself!” at lumberjacks.  (pg. 11)

     There's a lot of cussing, a couple of rolls in the hay, and a slew of sexual references, but this is true of any Tom Robbins novel.   For me, the storyline started rather slowly, but things picked once the inanimate objects started speaking.  Still, there were times when the plot progression seemed to slow to a crawl.

    I think one’s enjoyment of Skinny Legs And All depends on whether you want the story to be plotline-driven or thought-provoking.  If you want the former, you may be disappointed; if you want the latter, you’ll be blown away.  I wanted both, naturally, and Tom Robbins’ writing mastery trumps any quibbles I may have had about the storytelling.

    8 Stars.  Skinny Legs And All was almost as good as my favorite Tom Robbins book, Still Life With Woodpecker (reviewed here).  It gave me a lot to think about concerning the illusions of our world, and …HEY!!  Did that can of beans sitting on the kitchen counter just say something?!

Veins - Drew

   2011; 147 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Humor, Coming-of-Age Fiction.  Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

    It’s the beginning of his freshman year in high school, and he just wants to be called by a cool nickname. 

    His first name is Michael and for some reason he doesn’t like the sound of both Michael and Mike.  His initials are M.R., but that’s not any better.  What he’d really like people to call him is Dude, which is very cool.  But fat chance of any other students, especially upperclassmen, calling a freshman that.

    But sometimes Fate can be a fickle thing.  When the school pictures are taken in that freshman year, there’s something in his portrait that really sticks out.  Everybody notices it.  His veins.

    So that’s the nickname that everyone now calls him by.  Veins.  Even his high school teachers start to call him that, so he’s stuck with it.  For a short time, it gets replaced by Tinkles, but that’s even worse, and there’s a story behind that.  Oh well.  What’s the worst that can happen?

    Well, somebody can write a book about you, and use “Veins” as the title.

What’s To Like...

    The author of Veins is the single-named “Drew”, who is perhaps better known as the guy who creates the two fabulous cartoon strips, Married To The Sea and Toothpaste For Dinner.  If you’ve never heard of these, google them and get a taste of Drew’s wacky sense of humor, which manifests itself in this book..

    The book is written in the first-person POV (Veins’), and recounts our protagonist’s high school travails, plus the years following his dropping out of school, where he is introduced to the world of mind-numbingly menial and low-paying jobs. 

    I liked the book’s structure. There are 93 "chapters", but they’re really vignettes, each covering some sad episode in Veins’ life.  The book is only 147 pages long, which means these incidents average out to being 1-2 pages in length.  This is an incredibly fast and easy read, so if you need to read something and do a book report on it by tomorrow, and you haven't even started, Veins is your saving grace.

    The story is mostly set in the 1980’s, and abounds in cultural references to that era, such as snap bracelets, Ponderosa cafeterias, and Renaissance festivals.  I could relate to taking the SAT tests and the “career placement” tests, and I’m sad that my high school had no chess club back then.  Both Veins and I stole forks from restaurants, sweated through employment drug tests, and thrilled to the mishaps of amateurs setting off fireworks inexpertly.

    There are some R-rated portions of the book, including Veins’ first and second sexual encounters, both of which freaked him out.  Veins also likes to smoke pot, and all I can say is, judging from his highs, the stuff he smoked must’ve been considerably more powerful than what we had in the early 70’s.

    The book closes with the high point (low point, actually) in Veins’ life at the time, which we shall simply call “the Wendy’s incident”.  You can read all about it in the book.

Excerpts...

    We started moving the chess around and he kept telling me “You can’t do that” when it was my turn.  But that’s not how I look at life.  Everyone has their own chess, and they can move their own color how they want.

    The teacher came over after the other guy was complaining, and he touched my shoulder and said “Veins, each one can only move a certain way.”  I told him it sounded like Russia to me, because in communism they tell you what your job is, and that’s all you can do.  (loc. 65)

   I started to get tired after about 10 minutes, and I didn’t see anyone.  I took a rest on a log and started looking at the hiking magazine.  I didn’t realize until I tried to hike, but hiking is just walking, except they try to sell you expensive shoes, and a walking stick, and a hiking hat.  That’s like if you said swimming was called Watering, and you made people buy an inner tube that was $150, and you made them subscribe to Watering Monthly, and told them the best oceans to go in.  (loc. 945)

Kindle Details...

    Veins presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  It is not part of a series.  Drew offers two other e-books, one for each of his comic strips, Married to the Sea and Toothpaste for Dinner.  The former is priced at $14.99; the latter goes for $2.99.  Being a one-name author really mucks up the Amazon search engine.

 Sandpaper is like life.  If it wasn’t rough, it wouldn’t be worth anything.  (loc. 338)

    My main quibble with Veins is the protagonist himself.  He’s self-centered, obnoxious, and a master at rationalizing that nothing is ever his fault.  He reminds me a lot of John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, reviewed here.  But Ignatius had a modicum of charm about him; Veins doesn’t.

    Also, while the storyline is entertaining throughout (which tells you a lot about Drew’s writing talents), there’s no character growth.  Veins is a clueless ne’er-do-well loser when the book starts, and he hasn’t changed one bit by the book’s end.

    Still, I enjoyed reading Veins, if only because it reminded me that my high school days, which were filled with teenage angst.  I was heartened by the fact that, overall, my experiences were noticeably less traumatic than what Veins went through.

    5½ Stars.  One piece of trivia to close this review.  I suspect that the complete title/author combination here, Veins/Drew, has got to be the shortest entry in Amazon’s vast library of e-books.  Nine letters.  If there's a shorter one, I can't think of it.

What If? - Randall Munroe

   2014; 321 pages.  New Author? : Yes.    Genre : Non-Fiction; Science; XKCD; Reference; Science Humor.  Overall Rating : 10*/10.

    Even when I was a kid, I had a scientific mind.  I remember one question in particular that I read or heard somewhere:  What would happen if every person in China jumped up and down simultaneously?

   It sat in the backwaters of my mind for weeks.  I finally concluded that the answer is “nothing”, which is more or less correct, but for which my reasoning was quite wrong.  My conclusion was that it was simply impossible to synchronize every last Chinese citizen to leap into the air and come down at the same time, so the question is meaningless.  Hey, I was just a kid, but I still admire my logic. 

    Well, that question is addressed in Randall Munroe’s book, What If?, but he’s an adult with a degree in physics from Christopher Newport University, so you can expect that he investigates it much more thoroughly than I did.  Indeed, he ramps the whole concept up a notch or two, by rewording it as “What if you could gather everyone on Earth into one location and somehow have them simultaneously jump up and down at the same time?”

    That’s just one of 50+ absurd questions that is addressed here, in this case it's found in Everybody Jump (chapter 9).  Randall Munroe’s answer doesn’t exactly agree with mine, but his investigation runs a lot deeper.  So if you find yourself losing sleep over scientific conundrums like this (as a child, the author mused on: “which are there more of in the world – soft things or hard things?”) then you owe it to yourself to read this book.

What’s To Like...

    There are 69 chapters in What If?, which is an average of about 4½ pages per chapter.  57 of those chapters deal with individual, bizarre, tech-oriented questions submitted on Randall Munroe’s blog with his active encouragement.  The other 12 chapters interspersed throughout the book are titled “Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Box”, and contain questions that were too outrageous for even Munroe to respond to.

    Each chapter is a treat for anyone who’s an XKCD fan or has even a drop of geek blood in his veins.  My favorites, besides the aforementioned Chinese jumping poser, were:

01.  Global Windstorm.  What if the world suddenly stopped turning?

02.  Relativistic Baseball.  What if a pitcher threw a baseball at 90% of the speed of light?

05.  New York-style Time Machine.  What if we could time-travel, forward and back, from a spot in New York City?

09.  A Mole of Moles.  Because celebrating Mole Day (October 23) is something geeks like me do.

26.  Glass Half Empty.  What if “empty” meant “a perfect vacuum”?

28.  Alien Astronomers.  Are alien astronomers watching their skies for ET's too?

48.  Drain the Oceans.  What if we siphoned off the water in the oceans and shipped it off-planet?

53.  Random Sneeze Call.  What are the odds that answering the phone with, “God Bless You” is eerily timely?

59.  Facebook of the Dead.  What happens when most of the Facebook users are dead people?

    All of the answers are written with Randall Munroe’s XKCD wit and technical expertise, and each one also contains several of his stick-figure cartoons to amuse you and make the book a really quick read.  There’s an abundance of Discworld-esque footnotes; these are hilarious and function smoothly.  The Disclaimer and Intro are also worth reading.  And if you want a still deeper (and more serious) answer to any of the questions, there are Acknowledgements and References sections in the back.

    The book is a trivia buff’s delight.  I never knew that Helsinki has a natural underground level, but it’s an ideal place to be if you want to survive the world stopping spinning.  Other eye-openers:

    a. a Supersonic Omnidimensional Jet.

    b. Wookiepedia.

    c. SAT tests now have a writing section.  (who knew?!)

    d. how to make an underground shooting star.

    e. The Richter scale does not have limits of 0-10.

    f. The nine good things that would happen if the sun suddenly “went out”.

    g. Pangea had a predecessor; it was called Rodinia.

    h.  The Wow Signal.

Excerpts...

    There are a lot of problems with the concept of a single random soul mate.  As Tim Minchin put it in his song “If I Didn’t Have You”:

    Your love is one in a million;

    You couldn’t buy it at any price.

    But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other loves,

    Statistically, some of them would be equally nice.  (loc. 395)

    A magnitude 9 earthquake already measurably alters the rotation of the Earth; the two magnitude 9+ earthquakes this century both altered the length of the day by a tiny fraction of a second.

    A magnitude 15 earthquake would involve the release of almost 10³³ joules of energy, which is roughly the gravitational binding energy of the Earth.  To put it another way, the Death Star caused a magnitude 15 earthquake on Alderan.  (loc. 3712)

Kindle Details...

    What If? sells for $11.99, which is an average price for a science reference e-book.  This is presently Randall Munroe’s only science-oriented offering.   Its sequel, How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, is due to be published in September if this year.  Several other of his books, including one focusing on his comic strip, XKCD, are available, but only in printed versions.

If I had to bet on which one of us would still be around in a million years – primates, computers, or ants – I know who I’d pick.  (loc. 1356)

    If you still aren’t thoroughly sold on the merits of What If?, here’s a couple of trivia question that are posed in the book.  Answers are in the “Comments”.

    a. What is the rainiest place in the US?  (Useless hint: I’ve been there)

    b. Of the 28 people killed by lightning in 2012, how many were standing under a tree at the time?

    c. Which state has the most planes fly over it, meaning those planes don’t take off or land there?  (And consider how you’d even research this question.)

    d. Which state has the most planes fly under it, meaning those planes are flying in airspace directly on the opposite side of the globe.

    10 Stars.  I thoroughly enjoyed every page of What If?, and can’t wait for the sequel to come out.  Subtract ½ star  if you have no interest in sciency matters, but you’ll still enjoy this book for its laugh-out-loud XKCD humor.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss

   2004; 209 pages.  Full Title : Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach To Punctuation.  New Author? : Yes.    Genre : Non-Fiction; Punctuation; Reference; Humor.  Laurels : Winner: “Book of the Year” – British Book Award 2004; New York Times #1 Bestseller for three straight weeks (May 30 thru June 13) in 2004.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

    Are you a punctuation stickler?  Does it grate your nerves when people mess up using its/it’s?  If you saw the sign: “Come inside for CD’S, VIDEO’S, DVD’S and BOOK’S!” would you have the desire to run screaming into the store, telling the proprietor to correct that atrocity immediately?!

    Do you yearn to know the eight different uses of the apostrophe, the six uses of the comma (plus a couple of situations where they’re optional), and the ten (count ‘em, ten!) various uses of the hyphen?

    Do you worry that the semicolon is heading toward extinction?  Do you have an opinion about the Oxford comma?  What about double possessives (“a friend of the couple’s”)?  Are you aware that brackets come in no less than four different forms?

    If your answers to one or all of these questions is “Yes!  Damn right!”, then Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a must-read for you.  Prepare to be excited! Motivated!  And join with others of us in shouting the slogan coined by the author of the book :

    Sticklers unite!  You have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion (and arguably you didn’t have a lot of that to begin with).

What’s To Like...

    Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ sole subject is punctuation.  Normally, this is an yawn-inducing topic, but Lynne Truss keeps you entertained with fascinating anecdotal history, eyebrow-raising trivia, and dry, British wit that will have you chortling.

    But don’t be lulled into a false sense of hilarity; this book will also answer any questions you may have about proper punctuation.  I was particularly keen on this because commas have always been daunting to me.  When do you use them?  Where do you place them?  Are there “gray areas” where their use is a matter of opinion.  This book answered all my questions.

    The anecdotes are great.  You’ll learn about the Jameson Raid telegram and its disastrous consequences due to ambiguous punctuation.  You’ll discover that the Bible in its original form has no punctuation marks, leaving some critical passages open to Catholic-vs-Protestant interpretation.  And I’m eager to get my membership in the Apostrophe Protection Society, which really exists.

    I liked the book’s structure.  A whole chapter on the apostrophe, followed by a whole chapter on commas.  Then one detailing the finer points of colons and semicolons; followed by one on a bunch of the “lesser” bits of punctuation: exclamation points, question marks, italics, quotation marks, the dash, brackets, “sic”, and the esoteric ellipsis (three dots).  After a short chapter about hyphens, the book closes with the author’s  “where do we go from here?” speculation.  Yes, emoticons get some ink, but it was the interrobang that really caught my eye.

    It should be mentioned that, like grammar, the rules for proper punctuation change with time.  And that the British rules for punctuation are sometimes different than the American rules.  Lynne Truss points out these variances along the way, but Eats, Shoots & Leaves is written, and punctuated, in English, not American.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Solecism (n.) : a grammatical mistake in speech or writing.

Others :  Loudhailer (n.); Naff-all (adj.).

Excerpts...

    The stops point out, with truth, the time of pause

    A sentence doth require at ev’ry clause.

    At ev’ry comma, stop while one you count;

    At semicolon, two is the amount;

    A colon doth require the time of three;

    The period four, as learned men agree.  (loc. 1100)

    (T)here will always be a problem about getting rid of the hyphen: if it’s not extra-marital sex (with a hyphen), it is perhaps extra marital sex, which is quite a different bunch of coconuts.  Phrases abound that cry out for hyphens.  Those much-invoked examples of the little used car, the superfluous hair remover, the pickled herring merchant, the slow moving traffic and the two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would all be lost without it.  (loc. 1568)

Kindle Details...

    Eats, Shoots & Leaves sells for $11.99, although I snagged it when it was discounted for a short time.  Lynne Truss has three other reference books; they are in the $10.99-$14.99 range.  She also has written several humor-fiction novels, and they are more modestly priced in the $0.99-$3.99 range.

 “Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation.”  (loc. 521)

    The quibbles are minor.  My main gripe is that the book is very short.  There are only  209 pages, and the first 24% of the book is consumed by a Forward, a Publisher’s Note, and Preface, and an Introduction.  Also, the “reference” links didn’t work and worse yet, didn’t give you an option to get back to your original page.

    But that’s about it for the quibbles.  The bottom line is, I was looking for a book that would amuse me to no end, teach me the right and wrong usages of punctuation, and most importantly, tell me where I have options.  Eats, Shoots & Leaves did all of this, and more.

    9½ Stars.  I remember Borders Bookstores promoting the heck out of Eats, Shoots & Leaves when it first came out.   For quite a few months, that cute, homicidal panda on the book cover would beckon to you as you stood in line waiting for the next available cashier.  I regret now that I didn’t give in to that bit of enticement.  <Sighs>  RIP, Borders: b. 1971, d. 2011.