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Post by EdoBosnar on Jul 28, 2024 12:20:58 GMT -5
(...) At a McDonalds. Look...there's never been a McDonalds in Hollister, Idaho. And there never will be. The population of Hollister in 1974 would have been about 30. And no...I didn't drop a zero there. Hell, I'm like 99% sure there was only one McDonalds in Twin in '74 and I think it was toward the north end of Blue Lakes. But I could be wrong since I never set foot in one until I was in college (I wasn't paying). Now, is any of this important? Not really. But it absolutely took me out of the story. (...) Stuff like that often takes me out of a stories as well. On the topic of McDonald's in particular, people now - even people around our age but who grew up in major metropolitan areas - don't realize that McDonald's was simply not as ubiquitous back in the 1970s and at least first half of the 1980s as it is now. Where I grew up in Oregon, the first McDonald's only appeared in the nearby (5 m away) small city - Woodburn, OR, with a population near 20 thousand back then and adjacent to Interstate 5 - in 1980 or so. And at the time, for example, there were hardly any locations in the capital, Salem (I can only specifically recall one, although I'm sure there was at least one more).
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 28, 2024 12:42:34 GMT -5
(...) At a McDonalds. Look...there's never been a McDonalds in Hollister, Idaho. And there never will be. The population of Hollister in 1974 would have been about 30. And no...I didn't drop a zero there. Hell, I'm like 99% sure there was only one McDonalds in Twin in '74 and I think it was toward the north end of Blue Lakes. But I could be wrong since I never set foot in one until I was in college (I wasn't paying). Now, is any of this important? Not really. But it absolutely took me out of the story. (...) Stuff like that often takes me out of a stories as well. On the topic of McDonald's in particular, people now - even people around our age but who grew up in major metropolitan areas - don't realize that McDonald's was simply not as ubiquitous back in the 1970s and at least first half of the 1980s as it is now. Where I grew up in Oregon, the first McDonald's only appeared in the nearby (5 m away) small city - Woodburn, OR, with a population near 20 thousand back then and adjacent to Interstate 5 - in 1980 or so. And at the time, for example, there were hardly any locations in the capital, Salem (I can only specifically recall one, although I'm sure there was at least one more). Yeah, there were no national chains in my town when I was a little kid. Pizza Hut came in maybe late grade school or early junior high...so say '78 or '79. By the time I was in high school I think there was a Burger King, a McDonalds and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. But I mostly didn't eat at any of them. There were far better local burger and pizza places. I think we did run to Pizza Hut now and then for lunch in very late junior high and in high school (after we had drivers licenses). Because the personal pan pizzas were pretty cheap and they weren't super good about getting them to us in ten minutes so they were frequently free. Once they stopped doing that we were back to the local burger joint or one of the local convenience stores if we left school for lunch. As I said, I never set foot in a McDonalds until I went to one with a buddy in college.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 28, 2024 16:09:05 GMT -5
Don't get me wrong, I liked this book. I liked Von Doviak's earlier book "Charlesgate Confidential" as well. I like this one better, but I don't love it. It's a good neo-noir with some decent underlying humor. But if you happened to live in Southern Idaho in the 70s parts of it can be damn jarring. I think it may be possible you have just defined a group of one there (people living in Southern Idaho in the 70s that like Hard Case Crime novels)
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 2, 2024 7:06:55 GMT -5
Harriet the SpyLouise Fitzhugh, 1964 This apparently beloved children’s classic passed me by when I was the right age to read it – and I don’t even recall that any of my elementary school chums had read it (nor do I think our school library even had it on the shelves). So when I saw that the English-language section of a local library had it, I decided to check it out and rectify this gap in my kids’ lit reading. And … it’s pretty interesting, but nothing more. To those who may not be familiar, the basic story centers around an 11 year-old girl named Harriet, who lives with her upper middle-class parents in a townhouse in Manhattan. The household also consists, initially, of Harriet’s nanny, ‘Ole’ Golly, as well as a cook. Harriet always carries around a notebook in which she meticulously logs all of her daily experiences, which includes her ‘spying’ activities – she basically eavesdrops on a number of households in her neighborhood, mostly peeping through windows, although in one case she sneaks into wealthy middle-aged woman’s house several times to be able to see what she does in her bedroom all day (!) Things eventually take a turn for the worse for Harriet when a) her nanny, who is the only adult to do any actual parenting in Harriet’s life, gets married and quits her job, and b) Harriet’s classmates get a hold of her notebook and read some of the none-too-flattering things she’s written about most of them. Based on the reviews I’ve read at sites like Amazon and Goo Dreads, I see that people seem to either love or hate this book. I suppose I fall more into the latter category, in that my impressions were largely negative. Even so, I did appreciate many aspects of the story, like the way it portrayed oblivious upper middle-class parents, which is rather subversive. It’s also a very frank and unvarnished portrayal of the way children perceive and interact with the world. And I liked the illustrations, which were also done by Fitzhugh. However, I just found Harriet’s ‘spying,’ which was downright stalkerish behavior, and the fact that it’s never really addressed, rather troubling.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 2, 2024 9:08:46 GMT -5
Harriet the SpyLouise Fitzhugh, 1964 Based on the reviews I’ve read at sites like Amazon and Goo Dreads, I see that people seem to either love or hate this book. I suppose I fall more into the category, in that my impressions were largely negative. Even so, I did appreciate many aspects of the story, the way it portrayed oblivious upper middle-class parents, which is rather subversive. It’s also a very frank and unvarnished portrayal of the way children perceive and interact with the world. And I liked the illustrations, which were also done by Fitzhugh. However, I just found Harriet’s ‘spying,’ which was downright stalkerish behavior, and the fact that it’s never really addressed, rather troubling. I never read it back in the day either, though I read precious little children's lit. Nor did I read it with my boys. Finding nuanced reviews on any website is pretty rare, though I do think that Goo Dreads is better than Amazin'.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 2, 2024 11:11:05 GMT -5
Fletch And The Widow Bradley by Gregory McDonald
Fletch has really goofed. Assigned to do a small business piece he includes current quotes from a man who has been dead for two years. The newspaper is embarrassed and Fletch ends up fired. Of course Fletch can't let this mystery go, because he took the quotes from memos provided to him by an officer of the company. So Fletch criss-crosses the country (and Mexico) trying to figure out why a dead man is writing memos and maybe get his job back as a reporter. And Fletch finances this with a large amount of money that he found in a wallet. He's been trying to track down the owner, but has been very unsuccessful. Wait...how can Fletch be fired when he hasn't been a reporter for the last couple books? Well this is a prequel. So there's that. The mystery was probably a fairly big deal in 1980, and maybe it wasn't as self-evident then as it is now. But I figured it out maybe 1/3 of the way through the book. The secondary mystery of the wallet is really just a McGuffin. This was okay. I liked it maybe a bit better than Fletch's Fortune. But McDonald just hasn't been able to recapture the magic of that first novel.
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Post by berkley on Aug 2, 2024 11:46:14 GMT -5
Harriet the SpyLouise Fitzhugh, 1964 Based on the reviews I’ve read at sites like Amazon and Goo Dreads, I see that people seem to either love or hate this book. I suppose I fall more into the category, in that my impressions were largely negative. Even so, I did appreciate many aspects of the story, the way it portrayed oblivious upper middle-class parents, which is rather subversive. It’s also a very frank and unvarnished portrayal of the way children perceive and interact with the world. And I liked the illustrations, which were also done by Fitzhugh. However, I just found Harriet’s ‘spying,’ which was downright stalkerish behavior, and the fact that it’s never really addressed, rather troubling. I never read it back in the day either, though I read precious little children's lit. Nor did I read it with my boys. Finding nuanced reviews on any website is pretty rare, though I do think that Goo Dreads is better than Amazin'. We had a copy of this in our house when I was growing up and I think I may have started but not finished it, or perhaps it just didn't leave a strong impression. In any case, not one of my childhood favourites.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 3, 2024 10:39:18 GMT -5
The Greatest Summer in Baseball History by John Rosengren
This was a decent book with a deceptive title. the book isn't really about 1973 or how baseball changed, but rather followed a few of the storylines of 1973... Hank Aaron pursuit of the home run record.... George Steinbrenner's first year as owner.... Orlando Cepeda as the first full time DH (though will little discussion of how it changed the game past the obvious), The crazy exploits of the As and Reggie Jackson, and the Mets season.. both their improbable pennant run and the sad last year of Willie Mays' career.
I would have assumed the author was a New Yorker if the book said he was from Minnesota.. the book was extremely focused on New York. The stuff about The As was nothing that isn't better described in other places.... same with the trials Hank Aaron faced.
The other striking thing was that for a book that seems to be a re-release/re-packaging, there were ALOT of typos.
The stuff about Orlando Cepeda was pretty neat, and I didn't really know all that much about Steinbrenner's pre-baseball life, so those parts were good.
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Post by jtrw2024 on Aug 3, 2024 11:26:35 GMT -5
Fletch And The Widow Bradley by Gregory McDonald
Fletch has really goofed. Assigned to do a small business piece he includes current quotes from a man who has been dead for two years. The newspaper is embarrassed and Fletch ends up fired. Of course Fletch can't let this mystery go, because he took the quotes from memos provided to him by an officer of the company. So Fletch criss-crosses the country (and Mexico) trying to figure out why a dead man is writing memos and maybe get his job back as a reporter. And Fletch finances this with a large amount of money that he found in a wallet. He's been trying to track down the owner, but has been very unsuccessful. Wait...how can Fletch be fired when he hasn't been a reporter for the last couple books? Well this is a prequel. So there's that. The mystery was probably a fairly big deal in 1980, and maybe it wasn't as self-evident then as it is now. But I figured it out maybe 1/3 of the way through the book. The secondary mystery of the wallet is really just a McGuffin. This was okay. I liked it maybe a bit better than Fletch's Fortune. But McDonald just hasn't been able to recapture the magic of that first novel. I stumbled onto the Fletch books completely by accident in the mid-90s. I was at my local library looking for a movie to check out, and keyed Fletch into the computer catalogue to see if they had it since it had always been a favourite, but was pleasantly surprised when the books, which I was never aware of, came up as part of the search results. They had, I think, about 3 volumes collecting the books which I read over the summer. I enjoyed them and have always wanted to revisit them since, but usually find myself distracted with other things. I'll have to correct that one of these days. Hopefully sooner rather than later
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 6, 2024 7:48:36 GMT -5
FuturelandWalter Mosley, 2001 As the sub-title in the image above indicates, i.e., “nine stories of an imminent future,” this is a short story collection (although the penultimate one is a novella); however, they are thematically and sometimes even narratively connected (i.e., characters from one story often make cameo appearances in others) and the book is best read as a single unit, like a sort of disjointed novel. The chronological setting of the stories ranges from the late 2020s to the mid-2050s, and the future envisioned by Mosley is pretty bleak, with a few tech monopolies dominating not only the world economy but politics as well, since even small countries can be purchased by corporations. Writing in 2001, when the internet was still in a pretty nascent stage, Mosley made some pretty accurate, or at least close-to-home, predictions, such as corporations insisting on “on-site, controlled labor force,” despite the promise of work-at-home possibilities that were apparent even back then. Also, the use of surveillance technology to monitor every second of an employee’s workday, so that even a minor pause to glance out a window (insofar as the workplace has one) can lead to pay getting docked. There was also this one: “The Supreme Court had validated the constitutionality of citizenship suspension in 2022.” So that hasn’t happened, yet, but given the Court’s current composition this may not be far off. Another situation that had unsettling echoes due to the recent ‘controversy’ at the Olympics in Paris involved a woman boxer who becomes world heavyweight champion – fighting men – as it is noted that she “was so proficient that many said she was actually a man trying to make it by pretending to be a woman.” In that story, “The Greatest,” said boxer agreed to appear on an X-rated late night talkshow and took off her clothes and insisted on a lingering close up shot of her privates so there would be no doubt. The final two stories, the novella “En Masse” and “The Nig in Me,” which is a sort of devastating epilogue, also deal with the theme of pandemics and a genetically-modified virus that targets people of a specific ‘racial’ make-up. Again, troubling and often disturbingly topical stuff...
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 6, 2024 15:43:34 GMT -5
Rack Toys: Cheap, Crazed Playthings by Brian Heiler
Rack toys. Those cheap impulse items that were pegged at the local drug store, dime store, grocery store, usually consisting of water guns, parachute toys, balsa wood planes, and assorted plastic junk. And an awful lot of them were slapped with some then contemporary cartoon, TV, movie or other pop culture phenomenon which very well may have had nothing at all to do with that plastic junk. They were, by and large, designed to keep kids quiet for a couple of hours before they almost inevitably fell apart. Brian Heiler, who started the Mego Museum website and the Podstallions podcast has brought together a fairly substantial cross-section of these cheap toys into what is essentially a nerd art book. And it crosses the borders of nerd-dom. There's superhero stuff. There's Planet of the Apes, monsters, Star Trek, etc. I'm familiar with Heiler. I wouldn't say by any means that I know him, but I've interacted with him from time to time through Podstallions and The Mego Museum. He really is an expert on toys of the 70s and 80s. So this is a super fun nostalgic trip for those of us who grew up at that time. I'll also say that I personally never got a lot of rack toys. That money was, to me, better served buying comic books and, later, used paperbacks. Which isn't to say I didn't have some...and want more. I would say if there's a failing in the book it's that it's pretty heavily boy-centered. There are certainly girl toys here (hey...it was the 70s and 80s). But overall it's weighted to stuff that was aimed at boys. But if you were a kid who grew up in the 70s and into the 80s, this is a super fun art book.
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Aug 6, 2024 16:40:22 GMT -5
Latest read, finally getting somewhere with my prose reading again... Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale, the second in the Hap and Leonard series. I enjoyed this, and it was a nice change of pace from a lot of the stuff I had been reading, but I think I enjoyed the first book in the series more. I'll continue with the series after a bit, I need to get book 3 from the library but I have a few other books borrowed I want to finish first. If I had to point to the one thing why I enjoyed this one less than the first is that the plot revolved around a ritual serial killer (or killers) and that's just a not a trope I usually enjoy reading about (or watching). So I liked the writing, I like the characters, I just wasn't into the core of the plot this time around as much as I was in Savage Season. I am hoping future volumes revolve around different types of crimes rather than circling the serial killer trope again. -M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 6, 2024 16:52:22 GMT -5
Latest read, finally getting somewhere with my prose reading again... Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale, the second in the Hap and Leonard series. I enjoyed this, and it was a nice change of pace form a lot of the stuff I had been reading, but I think I enjoyed the first book in the series more. I'll continue with the series after a bit, I need to get book 3 from the library but I have a few other books borrowed I want to finish first. If I had to point to the one thing why I enjoyed this one less than the first is that the plot revolved around a ritual serial killer (or killers) and that's just a not a trope I usually enjoy reading about (or watching). So I liked the writing, I like the characters, I just wasn't into the core of the plot this time around as much as I was in Savage Season1. I am hoping future volumes revolve around different types of crimes rather than circling the serial killer trope again. -M I'm a big fan of the series and think the first three books are absolute gold. For me there's not a particularly weak entry until Honky Tonk Samurai, which is #9. I've got the new installment on tap...probably some time in November.
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Post by supercat on Aug 6, 2024 17:07:03 GMT -5
Rack Toys: Cheap, Crazed Playthings by Brian Heiler
Rack toys. Those cheap impulse items that were pegged at the local drug store, dime store, grocery store, usually consisting of water guns, parachute toys, balsa wood planes, and assorted plastic junk. And an awful lot of them were slapped with some then contemporary cartoon, TV, movie or other pop culture phenomenon which very well may have had nothing at all to do with that plastic junk. They were, by and large, designed to keep kids quiet for a couple of hours before they almost inevitably fell apart. Brian Heiler, who started the Mego Museum website and the Podstallions podcast has brought together a fairly substantial cross-section of these cheap toys into what is essentially a nerd art book. And it crosses the borders of nerd-dom. There's superhero stuff. There's Planet of the Apes, monsters, Star Trek, etc. I'm familiar with Heiler. I wouldn't say by any means that I know him, but I've interacted with him from time to time through Podstallions and The Mego Museum. He really is an expert on toys of the 70s and 80s. So this is a super fun nostalgic trip for those of us who grew up at that time. I'll also say that I personally never got a lot of rack toys. That money was, to me, better served buying comic books and, later, used paperbacks. Which isn't to say I didn't have some...and want more. I would say if there's a failing in the book it's that it's pretty heavily boy-centered. There are certainly girl toys here (hey...it was the 70s and 80s). But overall it's weighted to stuff that was aimed at boys. But if you were a kid who grew up in the 70s and into the 80s, this is a super fun art book. I've read it as well, it was a holiday gift last year, and it definitely brings the nostalgia. I definitely had my fair share of this stuff as a kid and fit right in that age group. What it reminded me of a bit was that, yeah, it was largely junk at face value, but as a kid it was more what your imagination brought that made it fun. And in era without the Internet (heck, we didn't even have a VCR or Atari system until I was a little older), the imagination was a powerful thing. Kids actually "played", that was the joy of toys cheap or otherwise. That said, of course looking back at some of this stuff it is pretty funny the way they tried to brand stuff as you mentioned. Definitely a little "off the beaten path" theme here and a fun book indeed.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 6, 2024 17:20:42 GMT -5
Rack Toys: Cheap, Crazed Playthings by Brian Heiler
Rack toys. Those cheap impulse items that were pegged at the local drug store, dime store, grocery store, usually consisting of water guns, parachute toys, balsa wood planes, and assorted plastic junk. And an awful lot of them were slapped with some then contemporary cartoon, TV, movie or other pop culture phenomenon which very well may have had nothing at all to do with that plastic junk. They were, by and large, designed to keep kids quiet for a couple of hours before they almost inevitably fell apart. Brian Heiler, who started the Mego Museum website and the Podstallions podcast has brought together a fairly substantial cross-section of these cheap toys into what is essentially a nerd art book. And it crosses the borders of nerd-dom. There's superhero stuff. There's Planet of the Apes, monsters, Star Trek, etc. I'm familiar with Heiler. I wouldn't say by any means that I know him, but I've interacted with him from time to time through Podstallions and The Mego Museum. He really is an expert on toys of the 70s and 80s. So this is a super fun nostalgic trip for those of us who grew up at that time. I'll also say that I personally never got a lot of rack toys. That money was, to me, better served buying comic books and, later, used paperbacks. Which isn't to say I didn't have some...and want more. I would say if there's a failing in the book it's that it's pretty heavily boy-centered. There are certainly girl toys here (hey...it was the 70s and 80s). But overall it's weighted to stuff that was aimed at boys. But if you were a kid who grew up in the 70s and into the 80s, this is a super fun art book. I've read it as well, it was a holiday gift last year, and it definitely brings the nostalgia. I definitely had my fair share of this stuff as a kid and fit right in that age group. What it reminded me of a bit was that, yeah, it was largely junk at face value, but as a kid it was more what your imagination brought that made it fun. And in era without the Internet (heck, we didn't even have a VCR or Atari system until I was a little older), the imagination was a powerful thing. Kids actually "played", that was the joy of toys cheap or otherwise. That said, of course looking back at some of this stuff it is pretty funny the way they tried to brand stuff as you mentioned. Definitely a little "off the beaten path" theme here and a fun book indeed. I only knew one person who had an Atari and we were in junior high before he got that. I personally didn’t have a VCR until after I was married I’d guess it was at least 1992 or ‘93. So I played a lot with toys but it just wasn’t, by and large the cheap rack toys that were featured here. I definitely had some, I remember a Star Trek phaser that shot the little flat plastic discs. But if I was spending money it was going to funnybooks. But definitely a fun nostalgic read. And some of the stuff they put out was just hilarious.
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