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<![CDATA[Dave added 'Rain Gods: A Novel']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77937421
to: Rain Gods: A Novel (Hardcover)byJames Lee Burke bookshelves: crime-fiction
Not your regular James Lee Burke character but an aging town sheriff with more in common with King Lear than a mythic Wyatt Earp. Burke's protagonists are usually pursued by demons -- often gathered up in past imperialist wars -- and with Sheriff Hackberry Holland the dead hand of the Korean War rests on his mind as a nightmare of regret.
Despite the very busy plot, this novel is about the mind of a man who knows that life is finite and often, in the choices we are forced to make, the nemesis with which we struggle is so often a mirror of what rests within ourselves. So in his pursuit of mass murderer and elusive apocalyptic madman, Preacher Jack, Holland has to stretch his measure if only to keep up with the slaughter with a few notches of his own.
It can be bloody hell in Texas, even today -- but when Burke addresses the criminal intersection between people smugglers, drug dealers and pimps; his novels function as tragedies -- or, to be more precise, near tragedies -- as despite the murder and mayhem some one has to live through it all so there can be a sequel.
That Holland or another Burke hero will survive may be a given, but en route it's all about the getting of wisdom and Burke's novels are meditations on the human existence formatted by competing moralities and coarse pragmatisms played out at the point of a gun.
Evil makes sense in Burke's world. All deeds are sensible. What may seem like a god idea at the time is really about making a living the best any character knows how. There is judgment that separates good from evil, and punishes accordingly. the price for victory is always too high. But at least, in the end, things can get back to normal.
That we fight these fights in a world of stunning beauty, of sunsets and lightning storms, is mere ambiance not the gods making a ruling on our petty squabbles at the point of a gun.
In that sense 21st Century James Lee Burke has moved on from Shakespeare.
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<![CDATA[new comment from Dave]]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76631411
Bill's review of
The Long Fall byWalter Mosley
You're right. I finished it. Same all the way through./
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'The Long Fall']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75647030
to: The Long Fall (Hardcover)byWalter Mosley bookshelves: crime-fiction
I don't know whats' got into Walter Mosley. This is a convoluted tale which tries to introduce a new gumshoe character whose first person POV leaves me a bit cold.The plot lost me much more than Chandler's The Big Sleep and whats' more, after a time I didn't care so much how the story ended, I just wanted to finish with the book so I could say I've read it.
Leonid McGill is a very long way from the interactions that enriched the adventures of Easey Rollins. It's as though Mosley has taken a creative turn and seeks to administer heavy doses of didacticism with a character whose arrogance is supposedly the new cool.
It's like trying to renovate Shaft for the 21st century....
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'Crusader's Cross: A Dave Robicheaux Novel']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75647009
to: Crusader's Cross: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (Hardcover)byJames Lee Burke bookshelves: crime-fiction
Another James Lee Burke novel that enthralls me. Although he can do it with his other series, when Burke is story telling us about the investigations and tribulations of Dave Robicheaux, the land of swamps and meandering watercourses encloses each story in a startling lyricism. I love it. Every now and then I stop and reread a description or a POV and marvel at the ways and means Burke uses to spin a story.
And it's not so much about plot either. These are all southern tragedies worthy of Faulkner or Tennessee Williams where the journey is the most important part of the mix. It's all one very long story with episodes which are layered like rings in a tree trunk -- age registering the maturity that only experience can bring.
My trag3edy is that one day I will run out of Burke novels to read....
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'Harvest of the Suburbs: An Environmental History of Growing Food in Australian Cities']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72960691
Harvest of the Suburbs: An Environmental History of Growing Food in Australian Cities (Paperback)
byAndrea Gaynor bookshelves: gardening,
history
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/67434559
to: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (Kindle Edition)byDon Tapscott bookshelves: technology-and-web
If you have any familiarity with Web2.0 platforms maybe you should write your own book so that the hyperbole packaged by Dan Tapscott is bought back down to earth.
This is a fantastical journey that promises you that the Web 2.0 universe is the very best thing since sliced bread and it will tell you that over and over again by dint of high profile corporate examples.
Here there is little about the access and democracy quotient offered by these new platforms. Theres' very little about me and you. It's all about making a killing, of being first and of getting ahead -- of becoming Web 2.0 savvy... or miss the bus.
<small>For instance:Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.
An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.
So Wikinomics is a sort of open sesame for Web start ups and with all its fanfare misses the essential processes that strengthen the utility of these new online tools. While it is true than any book written about online collaboration is going to be out of date the day it is published, there has to be something ironic about the fact that a hard copy book is deployed to proclaim the delights of the web.
The whole point of Web 2.0 technologies is the doing and the everyday engagements -- but Tapscott's approach isn't very hands on. Instead it's a sort of banana oil salesman approach as though you can only cross the one threshold offered by the doorway described in Wikinomics.
For your actual web options, especially the potential dynamics of collective projects, you'll have to delve further by studying the more cogent and philosophical discusions of the more academic and engaged Web 2.0 commentators.
Web 2.0 warrants the tools of science and sociology for its relevance to humanity to be logged, not people, like Tapscott, who can only see corporate make overs written in the clouds.
You could even start that investigation on Wikipedia by checking out its Web2.0 entry.
More substance t be had there than in Tapscott's 320 hard copy pages....
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'Making Digital Videos']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72960754
to: Making Digital Videos (CyberRookies Series) (Cyberrookies Series)byBen Long bookshelves: video-production
Long has written a book that is just right. In very clear language he has explained the essential DIY of digital video production without writing one page of obscure text.
This is digital video for would be-s and beginners who want to be treated as half smart. It nonetheless doesn't serve very well as a reference book as the information is parred down to essentials. The accompanying CD and tutorials on the disc aren't very useful either -- in fact, given that the book is about digital media, the video quality on the CD is abysmal and the resources on offer shallow and extraneous.
But if you are beginning your video journey with a committed seriousness, and ambition, this is the book you need to read.
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73481833
The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production (Kindle Edition)
byAnthony Q. Artis bookshelves: video-production
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'Culture and Thought']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73481788
Culture and Thought (Hardcover)
byMichael Cole bookshelves: neurology,
to-read
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<![CDATA[Dave added 'Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70458541
Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know (Paperback)
byJennifer Van Sijll bookshelves: video-production
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