Eternal Spring- Man’s 10,000 Years of History at Florida’s Silver Springs by Richard A. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third or fourth book I’ve read of Richard Martin’s. It’s been years since I’ve read his work, but this is clearly head and shoulders above the other books.

This book is superior to so many histories in it’s layout, writing, organization and even images. Martin clearly lays out the early the vast history of the area that includes Silver Springs State Park. At the time of the books publication, 1966, the park area was still privately owned and not part of the state park system as occurred October 1st, 2013.

There is a lenthy list of fish & plants to be found. Much about indians and development of a multi-level attraction.

I will quibble with the amount of writing that is outside the purview of the subject. Martin leaves the tracks at times as he chronicles indians all over Florida, seemingly just because he’s listing indians. Instead fleshing out more in the lives of the indians in the area would have been more germane.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 8 out of 10 points.

View all my reviews

Murder Fantastical by Patricia Moyes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I do like this Tibbetts series and this one was as much fun as the last I read.

The mystery starts off very slowly. There’s meandering all over, in and out, up and down, ad around the Manciple family. The family is interesting, just, to me, not that interesting. All of the meandering leads to very well defined characters. Especially impressive due to a very large cast.

The settings are well illustrated. The locations are few and two major settings are particularly well told.

Bottom line: I recommend this book: 6 out of 10 points.

View all my reviews

This serpentine has been coiled in the engine of my car until last evening when it decided to escape. To say the least, I’m grounded for awhile.

Night Ferry to Death by Patricia Moyes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my first mystery by Moyes I’ve read and I liked it a lot. I’ve garnered other Moyes novels and will be dipping into them soon for more of the Tibbetts.

This is a fine mystery with lots of procedural efforts to find the bad guy. The writing is solid with no excess. I was surprised that even a clue I noticed wasn’t mentioned to convict the guilty. That is also meaning I knew who it was within the first 25 pages, which was disappointing. Though so much else happened, that I was perplexed as to what entirely was going on.

My only trouble is the heavy violence wrought by the cause of the mystery. Didn’t seem to fit.

Still a great mystery and well well worth reading.

Bottom line: I recommend it. 9 of 10 points.

View all my reviews

Just finished a little less than 2 hour Cartoon Hunker Down session and knocked out cartoons for Swampy’s Florida, editorial cartoons and a pencil drawing for a children’s book. More to come this weekend.

Golden Goose by Ellery Queen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this book! Definitely one of my favorite books of all time! It’s also outstanding in writing, plotting and full of fun!

This is presented as a mystery that would better be described as a Faulkner-esque study of odd characters in an odd town that happens to have a mystery involved. And it’s a great mystery! Especially the end!

The characters are outstanding. Each with their individual voice and extremely well defined. The writer(s) did a fantastic job with the setting. I do wonder if this was written by the duo known as Ellery Queen or was someone else. This book has a far lighter and better written than other Queen books.

This is just a terrific and fun book!

Bottom line: A must read. 10 of 10.

View all my reviews

Die Laughing by Steve Allen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Steve Allen, but this series continues to be clunky. This is one of the few of the Allen mysteries I hadn’t read and thought I’d read one of the last in the series. Unfortunately, the series ended when Allen suddenly died. The concept is great in that Allen and his wife, Jayne, who died this past April, are the sleuths out to solve mysteries they stumble into.

The plot is fun involving a comedian that has died, or has he? Allen clearly has fun leading readers in one direction and then the next. Hollywood and it’s luxurious lifestyle is the backdrop and is well described and commented on by Allen.

The trouble with the book is it’s length. This book could easily have been whittled to 150 or 200 pages. A lot of Allen’s writing, as I wrote, is fun. It’s just not stellar to warrant the excess.

A really good writer of fiction could have streamlined this. But, Allen is writing as Allen does in all his fiction & non-fiction. Lots of sidelines, funny jokes and commentary. Worked well in his non-fiction, but is like large speed bumps to readers.

However, this is a fun book with good characters and the fun of following Allen, Jayne and their limo around.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 5 out of 10 points.

View all my reviews

The Worlds of Robert E. Sherwood: Mirror to His Times, 1896-1939 by John Mason Brown
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Worlds of Robert E. Sherwood: Mirror to His Times, 1896-1939 is an odd book that is crafted by the author to do his best to reflect the authors politics. It’s far too over written by an author whose favorite literary device is the comma.

The book does do the job of presenting Sherwood’s life. It’s just in such detail it can be confusing as to whose life you’re reading as the book wanders off into to pages of others lives. There are further details rolled out involving events, weather and various other happenings. I love details. I just with this writer was good at presenting them.

What the writer is bound and determined to present are his liberal political leanings and to dress Sherwood in them in a straight jacket. Because I came into the book already knowing quite a bit about Sherwood I knew this presentation was off balance. Along the way I found I had to separate Sherwood from the writers opinion of him. The book tees off with Sherwood making a presentation that tells of his early days involving war and the like. The author takes that to be a strong stand of pacifism and adds his view of Sherwood’s view.

The book is fraught with the author’s opinion of what is happening, instead of basing the narrative of Sherwood’s documented life. He waaaaay over does this by making lengthy lists that is obviously the author’s opinion than fact.

Certainly an author’s view has to be basis for a biography. In this instance the view was the foundation and the effort was to build a life around it.

Adding to this is how this book is assembled for publications. Why did the author draw a line at 1939 for Sherwood’s life? It’s not half way. There’s not much more before Sherwood’s death in ’55. The book is already nearly 400 pages. Why not wrap it up? Or split into two books.

Best idea would’ve been to severely edit this book.

The book is full of good Sherwood information, but poorly realized into a book.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 3 out of 10 points.

View all my reviews

Southways by Erskine Caldwell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a collection of stories by Caldwell set in his favorite setting – the South. Though well written, every single one of these 3 to 5 page stories is very depressing. If you’re having a tough time in life – Do not read this book!

Each story has different characters, but most have a similar theme of relationship troubles. All of the characters are very poor or worse. That lends itself to how similar most of the characters are. To a point I have to wonder why Caldwell didn’t just use the same name to many.

The main problem I have with these stories is that all trail off with no true ending. I realize that is a certain style. Just after 5 of these stories, it gets irritating and found I didn’t really care about any of the stories.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 4 out of 10 points.

View all my reviews

The Most of Everything: The Story of Miami Beach by Harold Mehling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was soaring to ten stars until the last couple of chapters diverted into an emotional wandering into the author’s view of prejudice of the Jewish community.

This book rockets off with humor and a great storytelling style as it unfolds the history of northeastern Dade County. Lots of flourishing prose of development pros and cons, results and dreams of the future. Mobsters, millionaires, drunks and writers are all covered in an entertaining and informed way that can only leave a reader satisfied. I with more books took this tact in history writing.

Then things go awry as author Mehling takes two chapters to detail his feelings about Jewish prejudice with no reference of any other prejudices in the area, such as to blacks, the poor or anyone else. Some of what he writes are neat anecdotes. But otherwise, he presents a slim case as to what was going on at the time and detailed specifics as he does throughout the rest of the book. He seems to be emotionally driven enough and certainly capable of writing a separate book that might have covered the subject of Jews in South Florida. As someone who has worked involving history of Jews in Florida, a volume like that would have been welcome.

Despite his uneven chapters of prejudice, the rest of the book is dynamte. So…

I recommend this book. 7 out of 10 points.

View all my reviews