You Can’t Get There from Here by Ogden Nash
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ogden Nash was so much fun with his verse! This collection is an excellent collection of a joy in verse mostly lost today. These are later works by Nash with wonderful illustrations by Maurice Sendak.

Favorites in this collection are: ‘The Pizza’, ‘A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor’, ‘And how Keen was the vision of Sir Launfal?’ and ‘How to Marry a Husband’.

Bottom line: i recommend this book: 10 out of 10 points.

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Here’s my inked doggie for the Jane Gang Unleashed!

The Jane Gang Unleashed sounds like just another of the multitude of vicious gangs that roam all parts of #Florida looking to destroy us all.
In this case the Jane Gang Unleashed is a trio of musicians who play folk music. The leader of the Gang is a pup named Jane.
Thus the illustration of a strumming canine above.
You can hear and learn more about the Jane Gang Unleashed here:
https://www.reverbnation.com/JaneGangUnleashed

Heart of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

* Just to note: Due to illness and a hafty workload, I’ve fallen behind my goal of 100 books in 2018. So, I’m reading through a series of Mountain Man books to catch up.*

The book that preceded this one, ‘Guns of the Mountain Man, was just terrible. A bulk of the book were pages and pages of previous books framed as a flashback. Here the formula continues to a lesser extent.

I don’t know what was happening in the Johnstone Clan stable at the time of the publication of this book. Was Johnstone fighting illness now and unfinished books were filled with other content to beef them up? Was Johnstone thinking such reflection necessary? But why at 25 books into the series such a dramatic change of course? There had been reflection in past books occasionally, but not at the rate of ‘Guns’ and then this one, ‘Heart of the Mountain Man’.

Instead of Smoke’s wife being kidnapped, this time it’s the sheriff’s with not unexpected results ensuing. One plus is references to various characters that populate the town and area usually not mentioned much after their initial appearance. The writing is fine. The characters always good. The settings lacking.

The title stinks and cover art useless. I get the tradition of the one word followed by ‘of the Mountain Man’, but I’m dumbfounded why better words are hardly ever used at this point. That and just any ol’ tin type form hundred plus years ago is tacked on the cover. I know this changes later, but, unfortunately not much for the better.

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

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* Just to note: Due to illness and a hafty workload, I’ve fallen behind my goal of 100 books in 2018. So, I’m reading through a series of Mountain Man books to catch up.*

Guns of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don’t know what was happening within the Johnstone Clan stables in the late ’90s, when this book was published. Perhaps they were grappling with the few series of books they were chugging out at the time or this is when William Johnstone began getting ill, ultimately leading to his death in 2003. Whatever was occurring, this book should never have seen the light of day. As with Mountain Man books just previous to this one, the book stinks.

The worse of this book is re-re-re-re-revisiting the story of Smoke stopping the “tree”ing of a town. As the Johnstone Clan has proven later in the 2000s, as the Johnstone seemingly-nearly-endless series began, there are a ton of other stories to create beyond the treeing of a town. Again, i believe something was going wrong at the time with the Johnstones and these books were pumped out to fulfill contracts.

Next worse, is the horrible & lazy act of filling about 3/7ths of the book with content of other books. As a writer myself, I know it would be easier to write in fluffy filler, than researching sections of older books and cut and paste into the newer. I believe this gets back to problems in the Johnstone stable where multiple people were assembling these books and adding earlier sections of books to fluff out a short story written by someone else, all the while fighting deadlines for their contracts. I’d hate to think the filler was intentional. Filler cheats the reader and is wrong.

Next is the story. No surprises. Nothing new. In fact, an old location is used and a shorter version of the original story with the location is presented. More cheating the reader.

Characters are very good, as, I believe, is the hallmark of the Johnstone Clan series. A huge boo-boo is made involving one main character who’s dialogue is written one way in the actually story, but written differently in section cut in from another book.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 2 out of 10 points.

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Being away from Facebook more than usual during April, I’ve missed much! One is cartoonist John Sanford’s newist challenge – APEril! Drawing our swinging simian pals during the entire month. Thanks to seeing cartoonist Stacy Curtis APEril post this last day, I got clued in and here’s my chimp!

I did this, per chance, last week as a warm up at Lollicup before working on the River Rats comic.

Burglars Can’t Be Choosers by Lawrence Block
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I do like Block’s writing very much, but as I wade further into his work, the plotting and core stories are proving the lack of an ability to construct a cogent story.

This was the first of a series involving a burglar who finds himself in larger stories than his choice of occupation. This first story is a surprise to start off with as I ended the book and looked back on a convoluted tale with tacked on characters. It all made sense when I read the postscript by author Block in the 1994 edition of the book, basically, explaining the ending came from a person he lodged with in his travels. Sounds like emotion got the better of reason and produced a ridiculous solution to a crime that no part of law enforcement could prosecute.

His characters are, again, top notch. They seem for real, despite many used just for window dressing.

Nevertheless, Blocks writing make the silly trip worthwhile again. I shall continue with his books for that reason only.

Bottom line:
I don’t recommend this book (Unless you want to read Block’s writing). 5 out of 10 points.

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