Episode #300: My Bookcase {3}-Curiously Odd Non-Fiction

Flashback Monday of sorts: just to give everyone an idea on how long I've been blogging, this is a pic of my daughter that I had used in my photo blog back in the late 2000's. She is now 24 1/2 and a university freshman pursuing a dual PhD/Masters (already has a BA) in neuroscience; the two stores in the background filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and were (mostly) liquidated.

As I've mentioned previously, non-fiction is my preferred genre to read. It started with the Guinness Book of World Records, but quickly spidered off into other sub-genres under that umbrella, including one of my perennial faves: true crime.

Now I know that sounds weird, but true crime really became my go-to non-fiction genre for most of my adult life. Whenever I had a problem in finding something to read, I could always depend on true crime coming through for me.

Fast forward a few decades. Having exhausted most of what I have chosen to read about in true crime, I moved on to other topics under the queasy literary umbrella that is death that happened to strike my fancy. One of the odder topics that had struck my fancy was how people passed away performing/pursuing certain outdoor activities (aka The Darwin Awards), of which one, visiting a national park, is the subject of this post.

~~~~~~~

I had first heard about this particular book while I was watching a documentary about North America a few years ago, so I decided to check it out. As the subtitle suggests, it contains all kinds of Darwin Awards activity (along with some that were decidedly not Darwin Awards eligible) that has happened since Yellowstone was first opened back in 1872.

The one thing that stood out to me was not the fact they had records of untimely deaths dating back to 1872, nor the fact that the book was written by (at the time of publication) a member of the NPS, but the fact that this book is an updated second edition, circa 2014, with the first edition being published in 1995.

It kind of boggles the mind that a second (and apparently final) edition had to be produced in order to bring this darker side of Yellowstone to completion (as of 2014).

Not to weird anyone out any further than they already are by reading this post, but I found this book to be quite the engaging read. While some of the events are distasteful to read, Lee managed to weave in the history of Yellowstone quite effectively throughout his narrative. Essentially, you're not just reading a book about smart people doing stupid things, or nature doing stupid things to smart people (with tragic results), but you're also reading a thoroughly researched history of Yellowstone too.

If your secret guilty pleasure is reading stories about people who nominate themselves for a Darwin Award, this book is for you. It's well written, highly enjoyable tome that treats the profoundly stupid, the simply careless and the those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with equal gravitas, thus letting the reader judge for themselves the merit of each and every story.

I sincerely hope that this latest installment of my personal bookcase has met or exceeded your expectations this week.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #299: The Music Of Our Youth Influences The Music Of Our Today

I was feeling just a tad zany today, thus the main protagonist from one of the very few (like you can count the amount on one hand) live action movies that I've chosen to pay money and watch as an adult. This was an actual gift I had bought for my wife while we were dating.

The music that I grew up with as a child has had a moderate influence on what I have decided to listen to today as a "mature" adult (I'm 60, so you can take that "mature" descriptor with a grain of Himalayan sea salt), although it took me quite few decades to realize that.

Back in the 70's, I grew up listening to what my parents listened to: my mother enjoyed 50's rock/doo-wop and I think some 60's & early 70's pop; while my father enjoyed 60's folk and 70's/early 80's country.

As the 70's morphed into the 80's my music tastes didn't really change much nor did they follow what my schoolmates liked (e.g. the classic rock/new wave bands that were originally fresh and popular in the late 70's/early 80's). For all intents and purposes, they basically stagnated, and stayed that way until the mid 90's when I was introduced to the wonders of college radio.

College radio allowed me the ability to not only reconcile the music of my youth with music of the present that was still under the same genre umbrella (e.g. folk and classic country), but also allowed me to explore other genres that I had given short shrift to previously.

I want to focus a little bit on the aforementioned genres that I grew up on and hopefully show how they've influenced what I listen to today.

1} The folk music that I'd grown up listening to boiled down to three groups: the heavily commercialized/influential Peter, Paul and Mary; the commercially successful trio that had four members The Kingston Trio (If you can find it on c.d. check out their live recording from Lake Tahoe (called "Once Upon A Time") when they were at their height of popularity; and the commercially successful/influential Australian quartet The Seekers (the original incarnation from the mid 60's).

These three groups gave me my first real exposure to acoustic music. Prior to them, the only other  real exposure I had to acoustic music was via Hee-Haw and The Waltons. It took me forever and a day to appreciate the power that acoustic music could bring to a given song. To be honest, early folk music allowed me to appreciate the lyrics of a given song, especially if it was a topical song. An appreciation that still sticks with me some 45 years later (never really liked the MTV show "Unplugged" because it sounded too artificial/too forced when artists tried to turn their well known hits into acoustic songs w/o putting in the necessary work to make them fit the format).

Over the decades, that early appreciation of acoustic music made me take a second look at other related genres like the singer-songwriter, classical guitar and even a deeper look into the folk music genre (but bypassing today's folk/pop trend that seems to be all the rage these days.

2} The country music that I had listened to growing up would be considered "classic country" by today's metrics: Kenny Rogers, Marty Robbins, The Statler Brothers and ye olden stars from The Grand Old Opry to name just few. I also grew up listening to just a smattering of Johnny Cash, as my father really wasn't in to him.

If you fast forward to the early 2000's, I started hearing more Johnny Cash on college radio, which really intrigued me. Turns out he had a renaissance of sorts where he was starting to cover popular rock and pop songs, (all courtesy of producer Rick Rubin), as well as performing duets with some as well. During that fertile time period, he released six c.d.'s on Lost Highway Records, of which the first five are really good, and I highly recommend checking those out.

Just like that early appreciation of acoustic music changed my outlook, so did listening to classic country. In addition to rediscovering Johnny Cash, listening to college radio allowed me to explore other genres under the country umbrella like Americana, bluegrass and alt country. What it did not do was modify my very dime outlook on country-pop, but I managed to dip my toes in a small wading pool wave by selectively exploring certain artists in the country-pop genre that I could actually listen to w/o being turned off.

In general, what I had listened to growing up has come full circle. While I now listen to the same kind of music that both of my children listen to (shock I know), I will also search out and listen to the music of my youth, because sometimes listening to the music of past often makes you appreciate the music of the present. Especially the stuff that doesn't quite make it to commercial radio in its currently decaying format.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #298: A Smattering Of Ideas & A Plethora Of Verbiage

As the title of the blog post suggests, we have a smattering of ideas to play with. Why? Because our tired brain (allergies that morphed into a good old fashioned chest cold) couldn't quite come up with one solid idea in which to latch upon. A plethora of verbiage? Well...duh. I are a writer, are I not? Writers are known for pumping out all forms of grammar onto the digital page in the vain hopes that they will magically reassemble into semi-coherant sentences.

Caught this little birdie tripping across the hood of my car the other day.

So I thought that since I have multiple ideas for blog posts, today's post will lightly touch up on those ideas, which in turn, we hope, become a meaty post. So to quote John Cleese, let us begin at the beginning.

#1: I decided to start another novel. 

I'm pretty sure everyone is saying, "well, duh. that's what writers are supposed to do." And you would be correct in every sense of the word. However, at this particular juncture, I was/am quite happy churning out short stories, as I was taking a much needed break from novel writing (I had just finished my five volume fantasy series earlier this year, and I don't intend to seriously start diving into it until about this time next year). 

But one of the short stories I had written started calling out to me. Like, "I want to be a novel!" So I said, "why not?" And because I absolutely love a challenge, the story in question fits more like a chapter of a novel than an actual beginning of a novel. So the challenge for me has been to build a novel that comfortably surrounds that story, plus a few actual plot lines to make it gel. Oh and, need to rewrite the story to make it fit a particular time period. Oh and, decide how much fantasy it needs to be infused with. Fun, fun, fun!

#2: I joined another writer's group.

I did quite a bit of searching on Facebook this past summer for another writer's group (to refresh: I got suspended/blackballed/gaslighted from my previous writer's group for posting a link to a blog post that I had previously cleared with one of the admins), which required me to really study/parse out the group rules for each potential group. Suffice to say, there were a few who had rules that in good conscience I could not follow, so they were dropped from consideration.

The one that I did join had rules that I could comfortably live with, and I was able to get clarification on a few of the rules posted. I also found out that every single post made in the group had to be approved by the creator of the group (group has a five to six digit membership).

One of the curious aspects of this group was its complete loathing of anything associated with AI writing. Posting AI covers were verboten (except for show and tell when people were trying to explain a vision for a cover) as well as AI created snippets. Overall this group has been an eye-opener for me, with all the good information/writing tips that I've been able to acquire from other successful writers. I think this one is going to help me in the long run.

3#: My bookcase.

I have a warped sense of humor. I grew up in the 70's & 80's, where humor was raw, offensive and no one had zero f's to give if other people where offended. So naturally I would be on the lookout for books and audio that would cater to my particular taste in humor (e.g. Steve Martin & Cheech and Chong for audio, say Bloom County for the written word).

I found this fascinating book at my local B & N some 15 years ago, because bad humor has always been my thing. James Napoli is a well known writer, comedy performer and filmmaker who has eight other books in the same warped humor vein as this one.

Sarcasm is great to listen to, and even funnier to read about, and this book covers general sarcasm from Alpha to Zed. The cool thing about this book, is that the sarcasm for the topics involved still rings true 15 years later.

Examples: 

Canada-free healthcare, low crime, birthplace of William Shatner. two out three ain't bad.

Dress-something that does not, I said not, make you look fat.

Health-a type of insurance plan that covers everything but the rare condition you managed to come down with.

Haircut-something a man would notice his girlfriend had gotten only if she came home bald.

If you like the kind of humor that was popular in the 2010's, he can be found on Amazon, which seems to be still active and in print.

And that, is that, although that is not this, nor is this that or the other thing. Either way, was this trip really necessary and I don't think I'll be making that left turn at Albuquerque again anytime soon. I think my best bet would be to run to the hills, or yell, "Run Lola Run!"

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #297: The Family Bookcase {3}

Before we get into the meaty part of the blog post, a little rant is in order. To refresh, back in the day, I had Yahoo! as my main e-mail provider. That didn't last very long as I eventually moved over to Hotmail and Gmail as my two main e-mail providers, leaving Yahoo! to collect all kinds of junk mail (this turned out to be a smart move as Yahoo! was hacked some 12 years ago, in what turned out to be the largest data breech in history).

Anywho, I'm getting very disappointed with the quality and the amount of spam that I have been receiving at my Yahoo! addys. I feel so neglected and unwanted because I no longer have any decent micro fiction stories to read any more.

Now, the meaty part.

I have two more book choices I want to pontificate on, with one of them actually being my wife's. She's the epitome of a non-reader as she averages about one book read every seven years, shorter if something piques her curiosity. Maybe. Anyways, she was prompted to buy this book because she got hooked into the original version of the BBC series that was shown on PBS back in the day.

Now personally, I'm not quite sure how I found my way to the James Herriot book series. I distinctly remember reading the entire massive four book hardcover series (which after doing a bit of research for this post, was a compilation of his other books) that I had borrowed from my public library. I also remember listening to the books on tape versions that were read by the lead actor of the BBC series Christopher Timothy, so I'm guessing I made it to the book series that way. And of course, I watched the BBC series on PBS back in the 80's and 90's.

For the uninitiated, James Herriot was the pen name of English vet James White (who had good biography written by his son some several years after his death) and his adventures working as both a big animal and little animal vet in Yorkshire, England.

If you enjoy animal stories, as well as stories about the veterinary trade and life living in rural England, I highly recommend this wonderful author, his book series and the original version of the BBC series that ran in the 80's/90's (I can't speak of the reboot, as I did not have the opportunity to watch it), because if a writer can get my very non-book reading wife interested in reading, imagine what they can do for a member of your family.

~~~~~

With this particular book, the back story is usually the same as how other books are acquired in this house: I have no idea. 

And to be brutally honest, I have no idea how this book caught my eye, beyond the cover catching my attention. There wasn't much of a back cover blurb beyond a few blurbs by three well known publishers of the day (1982), and I don't believe that I had developed my book choosing routine yet.

Curious fact about this book, the copy that you see is actually part of the second run of the mass-market version, and the third version (as of 1982) overall. I did a bit of research for this book as well, just to satisfy my curiosity and the first author listed was/is quite prolific and well known in the sci-fi genre.

Looking back on this novel, which is set in a futuristic version of  California (that we desperately wish was still around) that suffered through the upheavals of a global war, the use of RPG's (for the uninitiated, role playing games, e.g. Magic the Gathering or D&D) as the main setting for a very interesting murder mystery was something I don't believe I read previously.

I didn't do too much of a dive for this post beyond checking for the catalyst of this story, the murder itself (which is actually quite ingenious for its time and I've only seen used one before in a Keanu Reeves/Dan Aykroyd movie), as I wanted to make sure that I wasn't misremembering a key part of this book. The book itself is quite yellowed with age, so I didn't want to risk losing pages from opening the book too wide.

I found this book to be interesting enough for me to consume quickly (how quickly I cannot say, other than there was a very long stretch of time where I consumed books in the same manner that frat boys would consume beer in a week). I don't remember what my opinion of the book was back then either, but it did manage to stick in memory just enough over the decades that some 35+ years later I'm able to write about with a good deal of clarity.

What I can say with confidence was that I truly enjoyed this book, especially one that clocked in over 400 pages. I'm quite particular when it comes to reading sci-fi and the various sub-genres that fall under that umbrella, where I lean more towards stand-alones than series. I do like series, but when they go on for far too long (Robert Jordan soured me on fantasy series in more ways than you can possibly imagine) is where I have a tendency to say "no mas".

With that being said, I hope you enjoy this latest chapter of my family bookcase. I highly recommend both books, as well as both authors, as they seem to have enough of a back catalog to keep you occupied for quite a while.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved