The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a combination thriller/detective novel that doesn’t quite hit on either count. The title character, a biologist, fits the trendy “unreliable narrator” mold since he is awkward, insecure, and generally clueless about pop culture and personal relationships. He uses his scientific knowledge and computerized data analysis tools to determine that a “bear” that allegedly killed his ex-student near where he is doing field work was really a man.

The story line is rather frustrating because he cannot get anyone to believe him and he does various reckless and illogical things to chase the killer himself. I wasn’t impressed with the ending, either the character’s actions or the “solution” to the mystery. Despite that, it was interesting enough to serve as an airplane read and I got it free from Prime, so I can give it three stars.

View all my reviews

Here’s another newsworthy gem from our media reporters. The California fires are truly apopalyptic.

I suppose the apocalypse could cause apoplexy.

I haven’t been very active on this blog lately because I’m in Austin, Texas helping my daughter and her husband with their new baby. I learned a lot about Austin I didn’t know, like it gets very hot for long stretches without cooling off at night and it has real heavy lightning and thunderstorms with downpours in the summer. The humidity is very high almost always. Not like California, at least not the Bay Area. I’ve still managed to squeeze in a few morning runs. I had planned on doing some geocaching, but it’s just  not in the cards.

I see a lot of Biden signs and several houses with bright blue lights (with the Biden signs), apparently a mark of a Democratic voter. I have seen no sign of pro-Trump support, although I’m sure there is some here. This is not what I expected.

The beef here is better than California beef. The produce is about the same. The Chinese food here is terrible, I’ve been told, but I haven’t sampled any. I don’t have anything profound to say. I’m just posting to let my massive online following know why I’m not posting more.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book follows U.S. Ambassador William Dodd and his family, especially his daughter Martha, through his term in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis. Dodd was a Midwestern professor of history, unlike the wealthy, flamboyant subordinates in the embassy who were products of Ivy League schools and long dynasties. He was thus often at odds with the clubby “boys” who saw him as a cheapskate who embarrassed the U.S. with his mild-mannered and penurious ways. Others saw him as heroic, one of the few who saw Hitler for what he was and who sounded the early alarm. Hitler’s rise is eerily similar to that of Donald Trump, with the cult of personality, the bigotry against minorities and other ways. I learned a lot about Hitler and Germany than I hadn’t known.

At least as much time in the book was spent on Martha, a free-spirited, lustful literati who had multiple affairs with prominent men including Nazis and a Soviet spy. Her memoir and other writings provide must of the grist for this mill.

Stylistically the author made some odd choices. He has a penchant for exaggeration and dramatization that detracts from his credibility. Many of his descriptions are belied by photographs. For example, reading his descriptions Goring comes across as absolutely enormous, but in photos, and statistically, he’s just a large, overweight man, not all that huge. Similarly, he makes out many of the men and women, including Martha, to be either extremely beautiful or handsome, yet photos of them make them seem rather ordinary. Other descriptions were excessive, such as cerulean skies, bordering on purple prose that might be appropriate in a romance novel but not a historical non-fiction work. Some, perhaps most, of this probably comes from his reliance on Martha’s writings. She comes across as a flighty romantic.

View all my reviews

My wife sent me these news bloopers while I’m out of town. I’ll paste her email in without change.

The local news guy just said that Uber was being asked to reclassify their drivers as passengers.

Earlier today on the radio, a person was being described as being a thorn in the back of another person.

And some very tired emergency services spokesperson said that CPU was performed but the victim died.

The Other Wife by Claire McGowan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven’t had a lot of luck with Amazon Prime free reads, but this one was an exception. It wasn’t so much a mystery as a suspense story, although a dead body is hinted at early on. The format was somewhat original. Every chapter was headed with the name of a female narrator: Suzi, Elle, Nora, etc. for a total of maybe six or seven, rotating in no particular order. The thrust, if you’ll excuse the word, of the story line is pretty much that men are lying controlling SOB’s who use women merely to … uh … thrust with. Not all of them, of course. It’s a regular good girls vs. bad guys story, only the girls aren’t all that good themselves.

It takes place mostly in a remote often snowbound area of England. The author keeps the action and suspense going throughout. There’s no arcane UK police procedural argot to master. As mysteries go, it’s a bit of fluff, but it kept me entertained on my plane to Texas to visit my new granddaughter, so it did its job quite satisfactorily. Bang on. Pip pip. Cheerio and all that.

View all my reviews

We all make mistakes, but some of them are Freudian. I cadged this from the New Zealand Herald.

Donald Trump has done it again, stumbling over another commonplace name in a speech during a campaign event.

This time, it was the southeast Asian country of Thailand that proved a problem for the US President, who pronounced it “Thigh-land”.

“Shifting production to Thigh-land,” Trump said during the speech at a washing machine factory in Ohio, before correcting himself. “Thailand and Vietnam, two places that… I like their leaders very much.”

Twitter users didn’t hold back in mocking Trump, leaping on the opportunity to post a series of gags and memes after video of the gaffe went viral.

Thighland is my favorite country after Assganistan. https://t.co/6shV0lkltA
— Alexis Boucher (@alexis_b82) August 6, 2020

thighland and hondurass are nice but I’m more into titaly
— kilgore trout, new tone haver (@KT_So_It_Goes) August 6, 2020

A little afternoon trivia: The chief executive of Thighland is the Lord of the Thighs, not the prime minister. https://t.co/OW9iyfOqDx
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) August 6, 2020

Thighland is just off the coast of Crotchatia.
— (((Josh Malina))) (@JoshMalina) August 6, 2020

Thighland sounds both incorrect and delicious.
— Troy Johnson (@_troyjohnson) August 6, 2020

“shifting production to Thighland” is how I refer to leg day https://t.co/b2ESMz0hMI
— Drew Goins (@drewlgoins) August 6, 2020

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you’re a fan of history, you’ll probably enjoy this account of the first white Americans to cross the Appalachians and form settlements in the Ohio Valley. I’m not such a fan. McCullough writes well, and there were many anecdotes I enjoyed, such as the disastrous campaign by General St. Clair, the visits by Aaron Burr and John Quincy Adams. However, the bulk of the book is merely describing the day-to-day life of the settlers. Person A cuts down trees to plant corn, person B plants a fruit tree, a fire burns a cabin, someone drowns, and so on. I’ve read very similar stuff doing my own genealogy and found it boring then.

I feel McCullough displays too much pride and enthusiasm for these European-Americans forcing their way onto Indian lands and subduing and eventually expelling the natives, whom he often calls savages (or quotes those who do). He calls it a heroic story (see subtitle). Heroic or tragic depends on one’s biases. My own ancestors were among these very first “pioneers.” I am neither proud nor ashamed of them. I might have done the same things in their shoes. Some good people fought hard to keep slavery out of the newly opened territory, but many others kept slaves and threatened the abolitionists. All in all it’s worth a solid three stars.

View all my reviews

I’ve been posting updates on this blog from time to time on the latest defendants to be convicted and sentenced in the college entrance cheating scandal known as Varsity Blues. Sentenced just last month was Karen Littlefair, described by the L.A. Times as a Newport Beach socialite who “who has hosted fundraisers for high-profile Republican politicians.” She got five months in prison, fines, and community service.

Now that we know from Mary Trump’s book that Donald Trump paid Joe Shapiro to take his SAT so that he could get into Wharton, I see some pardons coming. It’s clear that Trump doesn’t see anything wrong with paying a smart person to take a test for him and he has also shown that he is happy to pardon some pretty low-life criminals (Blagojevich [Dem], and Roger Stone [Rep.]) and favors rich people especially, I can’t see any reason for him not to pardon his imitators once the election is over. Win or lose, he has no more incentive to even pretend to be law-abiding or honest. These criminals are all rich and all have shown a willingness to use their money to bribe people for illegal favors, so I suspect Donald or his kids will be getting some big paydays from this presidential power. He’s already used it to benefit himself, buying Stone’s silence.

I always wondered how Trump, who talks and writes (tweets) like a drunken dyslexic third-grader, got into Wharton. He could only get into Fordham at first, a decent, but second tier, private school known as a pay-to-play second choice on the east coast, much like USC out here in California. Wharton, however, part of the Ivy League Penn, is much more demanding. As soon as we heard Michael Cohen’s sworn testimony that he was directed by Trump to threaten the universities and the ETS with lawsuits if they revealed his SAT scores or grades, I knew his admission had been fishy. Now we know the details. I’m sure that if we saw the initial scores he had when admitted to Fordham and the one from Shapiro for the second time around, the disparity would have been so great it would have been clear there had been fraud.

Maybe I’m wrong. After all, he is a stable genius. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. As for the pardons, of course I’m only speculating, but if it happens, I’ll enjoy the I-told-you-so-moment.

The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court by Richard J Lazarus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the best book I’ve read this year, but then I’m a lawyer who even had a case go to the U.S. Supreme Court. (I won). The tiniest details from big strategy to word-by-word drafting of briefs and petitions are all set forth here. It’s fascinating to anyone who cares about the role of the Supreme Court, the internal politics of any large public interest group (in this case the “Carbon Dioxide Warriors”), presidential betrayal (by both parties), the personalities of the best and most influential lawyers in the country.

The book chronicles how those environmentalists seeking EPA regulation of greenhouse gases met and overcame obstacles at every step, winning a stunning Supreme Court victory. The environmentalists (“petitioners” in legal jargon) consisted of dozens of interest groups including various states, environmental groups like the Sierra Club, and some green industry companies. Their opponents were the EPA itself (forced by presidential or vice-presidential pressure), automotive and oil industry interest groups and others.

The book is well-written and easily understood by laymen. It’s not about climate science. That’s well-settled, despite interest groups or individuals who don’t want to admit it. It’s about what it takes to win a case in the Supreme Court. There’s also just the right amount of biography about the many lawyers who are a part of the story. Make no mistake: the skill and experience of a lawyer is critical to winning a major case and there are many top notch lawyers in this one. Unfortunately, they didn’t always see eye-to-eye and some friendships were broken by the disagreements.

You might not think the verbiage of a legal brief is likely to be interesting reading, but you’d be wrong. One small example that delighted me was when the final draft of the petitioners’ brief was circulated to the dozens of interested parties, a last minute change was made to a quote from The Three Musketeers. The original sentence in the brief quoted Cardinal Richelieu speaking in an arrogant and clearly unlawful fashion as a comparison to the EPA’s conduct. One of the reviewers allowed that the quote could remain, but insisted it needed to be attributed to Dumas, the author of the book, rather than Richelieu, the character, so as to avoid offending the Supreme Court justices who were Catholic. Six of the current justices are now Catholic, by the way, and the other three are Jewish. Whatever happened to WASPs being in power? Anyway, a single word change could make a difference. I remember how I agonized over every sentence when I wrote my appellate brief. For me, this was a fascinating read.

View all my reviews

I hear misogynistic lyrics in songs sometimes and I wonder if the women singers themselves promote a submissive attitude among women and girls, especially toward domineering or even cruel men.  I don’t listen to modern pop music. My idea of rock music ended about 1968. I do know that many rap songs refer to women in demeaning or even obscene ways and even suggest violence, but I believe this theme existed long before rap, although in a milder form.

Take for example:
Johnny Get Angry by Joanie Sommers.  Sample lyrics:
Give me the biggest lecture I ever had
I want a brave man, I want a cave man
…Let me know that you’re the boss

A Fool in Love by Tina Turner
You know you love him, you can’t understand
Why he treats you like he do when he’s such a good man

(Walk) Back to Your Arms – Tami Neilson
No matter what you say or do or
What kinda hell you gonna put me through
I’m gonna walk … Back to Your Arms

Chain of Fools – Aretha Franklin
You got me where you want me
I ain’t nothin’ but your fool
Ya treated me mean
Oh you treated me cruel

These are but a sample. Why do women promote this attitude? The first one was written by men, but the female singers were authors of the latter two. I believe it’s unfair for women to put all the blame on men for this mindset. Of course, men are guilty of it, too. For example:

Under My Thumb by the Rolling Stones
That’ll be the Day by Buddy Holly
I Got a Woman by Ray Charles

You can look up the lyrics to these yourself, or just listen to the songs to see what I mean. Except for Johnny Get Angry they’re all on my playlist. I can enjoy them as music without subscribing to the lyrics.

Gone by Midnight by Candice Fox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ted is a disgraced ex-cop once accused wrongfully of pedophilia, now working as a private eye in a tough, out-of-the-way town in Australia’s northeast coast. When a boy goes missing at a hotel, he is hired by the boy’s mother to find him. His assistant Amanda is a bizarre, near clairvoyant pistol of an ex-con who despises children. Of course she ends up having to babysit Ted’s li’l darling who is visiting while his ex-wife goes on a lark.

The mystery is well-done and kept me guessing. Ted sounds like every other ex-cop private eye populating mystery novels, but sometimes formulas just work. There is a subplot involving Amanda and a vindictive female cop to add some tension. The overall plot and characters are somewhat too cookie cutter (“derivative” if you’re an artsy-fartsy reviewer) but the writing is rather better than the story line, full of those things you studied in English but never quite remembered like metaphors, similes, and the like. Quite clever ones, too.

The setting is on the rough side, and so is the voice and accent of the reader for the audiobook, yet he was an excellent voice actor and perfect for the story. The roughness camouflaged the sophistication of the style, if not the plot. The ending was all too predictable and unsatisfying in my view, at least once the mystery was solved, but all in all I enjoyed the book. It is #3 in a series, so you might want to start with one of the earlier books.

View all my reviews

Most of you know by now that I write the Cliff Knowles Mysteries and that they can be downloaded free from my Cliff Knowles website. I recently checked the logs and found that they have been downloaded more than 13,000 times since last April when I first made them free. Here’s a graph of how many downloads there have been. The books are in chronological order.

I think the reason Cold Case doesn’t have so many is because it was published only six months ago, well after I first publicized the fact all the Cliff Knowles books are freely available. I think a lot of people downloaded them all at that time. So if you didn’t get the word, feel free to add Cold Case to your collection now. I hope to have another one out before the end of the year.

The graph does not include sales or free promotional downloads from Amazon. Also, The Cryptic Crossword Caper is a cozy mystery and not part of the Cliff Knowles series.

Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History by Denise Gess
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This serious, scholarly, non-fiction book recounts the story of the deadliest forest fire in recorded human history. The first two-thirds of the books describes the significant community members and their lifestyle in the late 1800s. The Wisconsin town thrived on lumbering and a huge woodenware factory which provided jobs and brought income to the area. At the same time, immigrants from northern Europe were arriving in droves and clearing land by burning. This set of factors, combined with a long drought, created the perfect conditions for the fire. This early part of the book holds some historical interest, but the meat of the book lies in the detail of the fire and its aftermath. The authors chronicle the destruction and death in brutally vivid prose, rather more than is necessary. After reading a few accounts of people exploding while running from the flames, of children smothered under their dead mothers’ bodies, and so forth, I skipped to the aftermath portion. Although it was historical in size and scope, the story is little different from what we hear on the news every year here in Northern California. While there is nothing really wrong with the writing or scholarship, unless you are a student of fires, this book is not particularly entertaining or engaging.

View all my reviews

It seems hard to find upbeat things to post about these days, so I decided to focus on the movies. Today’s graph combines my love of movies with my interest in playing with data and a tad of social awareness about ageism and sexism in Hollywood. The graph show the ages of the winners of the Best Actress and Best Actor throughout Oscar history. The disparity between men and women is obvious. I’ve added labels identifying some of the notable highs and lows. Click on the image to enlarge.

Best Actor/Actress age at time of winning

Best Friends Forever by Margot Hunt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story centers around Alice, a somewhat meek math-teacher-cum-stay-at-home-mom, and her best friend (hence the title) Kat, a fabulously wealthy, hard-drinking, outrageous socialite. The first two-thirds of the book are almost entirely anecdotes of Kat convincing or browbeating Alice into drinking bouts, luxurious holidays, etc. There are some stretches of exposition here and there giving some background on other characters, especially the husbands of both and a few other relatives, but after the first four or five chapters you can pretty much skip liberally and not miss much, although there is a murder and an investigation begins somewhere around Chapter 18. At Chapter 23, one of the two gets arrested for murder. My inner self exclaimed “Finally! Something actually happened”). In other words, it was boring up to that point.

I can squeeze out a three star rating primarily because the prose was readable and kept me interested enough to finish it, but my final reaction was one of disappointment largely because the author’s earlier work For Better and Worse was excellent, so I expected more. The ending of this one wasn’t something I foresaw, but it wasn’t something that surprised me, either. Since none of the characters was likeable, it seemed quite possible the author could pick anyone to be the murderer. The gratuitous information at the end about other deaths besides the central one in the story left a sour taste in my mouth, too. TMI.

View all my reviews

Back in April I posted a pair of maps showing the increase in California Covid-19 cases over a one-week period on a county-by-county basis. I chose to use death statistics rather than case statistics because of the confusion and politics surrounding raw numbers and testing. Today I’m again using deaths, not cases, for the same reason, but this current map is of deaths per county on a per capita basis since I believe that is more useful than total deaths. The data is from the New York Times, which is updated daily, as of June 30, 2020. Click on the map to enlarge.

COVID DEATHS PER 100,000 RESIDENTS

I’m sick of all the swearing in movies, books, and even television these days. Why not get the point across in a less offensive way? Here’s a great article I found on learning-mind.com. You really should click the link and read it there because they probably depend on ad revenue. I don’t. But if you’re too lazy, here it is:

10 Shakespearean Insults to Use Instead of Modern Swear Words

1. “Villain, I have done thy mother” -Titus Andronicus

Yes, you heard that right. We tend to think that ‘mum’ jokes are a modern phenomenon. It turn’s out we are all just copying the bard. Somehow, hearing it in such an oldy-worldy phrase makes it both more insulting and more cultured. Who knew?

2. “I do desire that we may be better strangers.” -As You Like It

Ouch, that is one sick burn. You can just imagine the confusion on your enemies face when you let that one fly. They will be mortally offended, but they can hardly complain to HR.

3. “You have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.” -Much Ado About Nothing

What a descriptive insult. We all know people like that, of course, they go around with a face like thunder and give you a look that could freeze hell over, but I’ve never heard it put quite so poetically. I half wish I come across someone in a foul mood today just so I can use it!

4. “Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon” -Timon of Athens

Wow, imagine saying someone was too dirty to spit on. That’s one cutting insult and not a single swear word required. Shakespeare, you were one sassy dude!

5. “The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril” -The Merry Wives of Windsor

So there’s a person at work that seems not to know what a shower is and you have to sit next to them at a meeting. You’ve hinted before, but they just don’t get it.

Well, Shakespeare’s got your back. Try this phrase on them and see if you can finally encourage them to take a bath.

6. “Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows” -Troilus and Cressida

Ever wanted to call someone drunk and stupid with one neat phrase? Well, I doubt you could put it more eloquently than this. A handy one to remember on Saturday night’s out.

7. “I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands” -Timon of Athens

Another one for Saturday night at the bar. If you ever need to get out of a physical fight, Shakespeare has given you the perfect excuse.

Wit over brute force often wins the day – but I don’t guarantee it so erm.. watch you back after you’ve said this one.

8. “I am sick when I do look on thee” -A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Wow, that is one hefty Shakespearean insult. Yet once again it sounds so much more cultured than a modern phrase.

You can leave the reason for your bout of nausea to your enemies’ imagination, which I think makes it even more effective. They’ll be dwelling on that for the rest of the day.

9. “Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee” -All’s Well That Ends Well

So, not only do you think this person deserves a slap, you also think they deserve a slap from everyone they meet.

Yep, we all know someone we feel like that about, certain politicians and celebrities spring to mind. It’s harsh but true.

10. “More of your conversation would infect my brain.” -The Comedy of Errors

Well, this is one excellent way to get out of a pointless argument with someone you disagree with on just about every subject.

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book begins with two cracking good chapters. There’s a thrilling account of a horrific fatal accident involving a runaway balloon carrying a child. The pacing is good and writing elegant. You can put yourself in the position of the narrator (who is another in the trend of unreliable narrators). After that the story line takes a totally bizarre turn and devolves into pretentious drivel for the rest of the book. There is no ending to speak of; it just stops. I guess the average of 1 part 5-star and 4 parts 1-star is around 2 stars, so I’ll settle on that.

View all my reviews

Since this blog is about words and their usage … and misuse, here is yet another oddly appropriate typo seen on a local news crawler this morning.

North Korea Destorys Empty Liaison Office With South

In fact, they removed all the “storys”. Note: the website actually had it spelled right. I had to edit the headline for this graphic, but I swear the TV crawler had it exactly as shown.