Tag Archives: stand-alone

When Is Enough, Enough by Laurie Ashner and Mitch Meyerson (1996) – BR00029 (2004) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
October 27 2004

Plot or Premise

The premise of this book is that there are many people who never feel satisfied, nor take the time to feel satisfied, and are always looking forward to the next obstacle, next project, next item on their to-do list — and whatever they have done, or accomplished, is never enough.

What I Liked

There is a lot to like in this book. Some highlights:

  • Never-enough thinkers act compulsively…unsure about what they really want, they stay in constant motion. (p.2)
  • Having been taught not to depend on other people, you take more than your share of the blame for what goes wrong in your relationships, at work, and in your family. (p.4)
  • Realize that if you could “just do it”, you would have done it. (p.5)
  • There’s a saying in Twelve Step programs: Your best thinking got you here. (p.9)
  • When we suppress our painful feelings, we lose our happy feelings too. (p.32)
  • You get an illusion of security from having all of these untapped talents. (p.47)
  • Depression indicates that the self-system has had to retreat to a lower level of functioning in the face of its inability to meet higher goals. Depression also serves as a communication, a message to the world at large that the self-system can no longer be counted upon, that it has ceased to function to some significant degree, that one has lost hope, and that help must come from the outside. In other words, the self says, “enough is enough”, and retreats away not only from the feelings that are most troublesome, but all feelings in general. It’s a concept that goes far toward explaining why depressed people often feel, “What’s the use?” (p.67)
  • You have an emotional thermostat turned high to nuances, a sensitivity to a lot of surplus information other people filter out and disregard. This sensitivity is your strength at times. But it has an enormous cost. (p.84)
  • We meet the right person when we become the right person. (p.144)
  • There’s an interesting fact about blaming oneself which explains why so many people are so willing to take it on. If one is at fault, then one can always do better. As long as one is responsible, one always has hope. (p.208)

What I Didn’t Like

Some of the approach gets a bit repetitive in trying to emphasize or illustrate certain points.

The Bottom Line

An excellent self-help resource.

The Collected Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer (1998) – BR00027 (2003) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
July 27 2003

Plot or Premise

This book is an amazing collection of 36 shortstories from a master storyteller combining romance, history, danger, twists, international intrigue, and domestic angst.

What I Liked

The collection is a really nice mix, particularly some of the ones with twist endings. Here is an overview of each of the stories and the ratings for each.

  • NEVER STOP ON THE MOTORWAY: Woman driver is chased by a van down the motorway, with the context backlit by recent rapes and murders. Fantastic twist. 5.00
  • OLD LOVE: Two competitors, one boy, one girl compete against each other in everything including who loves the other more and are inseparable throughout life. 4.50
  • SHOESHINE BOY: Mountbatten (sic) pays a visit to St. George’s where a drastically underfunded Governor rolls out the red carpet. 4.50
  • CHEAP AT HALF THE PRICE: Mrs. Rosenheim wants a bauble from the jewelry store but has to play hustle to get the men in her life to commit to buying it. 4.00
  • BROKEN ROUTINE: A man whose routine is unflappable is somewhat disturbed by a brash youth on the train who wants to read his paper and smoke his cigarettes. Nice twist. 4.50
  • AN EYE FOR AN EYE: A woman has an alibi for the death of her husband: she was not only in the hospital (although the time is shaky) but also blind…or is she? 4.00
  • THE LUNCHEON: A up and coming man takes an attractive (married) woman to lunch to try and get business favours. Unfortunately, lunch is expensive and he has no budget. 3.50
  • THE COUP: Two business rivals are stranded in Nigeria during a coup, and they end up resolving their differences and being the real coup. 3.50
  • THE PERFECT MURDER: A man commits an accidental murder of his mistress after finding out she was also stepping out with another man and manages to frame the man for the murder. A cute twist at the end. 4.00
  • YOU’LL NEVER LEARN TO REGRET IT: David is dying of AIDS and leaving everything to Pat. They trick the insurance company despite his condition and collect handsomely on David’s death. But insurance companies are sometimes trickier than one might think, as are their brokers. 3.75
  • THE FIRST MIRACLE: A cute twist on an old tale has a historical figure running errands around the birth of Christ. 3.50
  • THE LOOPHOLE: Two friends get into a heated argument at the club and not only engage in slander but also physical fighting, leading to a legal battle and an eventual settlement, yet the two remain friends. 4.00
  • THE HUNGARIAN PROFESSOR: An Englishman visits Hungary for the Olympics and meets a Professor who knows all about England and wants to practice his English and talk about all the sites in London. 4.25
  • THE STEAL: A tightly-budgeted couple takes a vacation and is forced to endure the overblown ramblings of an obnoxiously rich couple, up to and including the purchase of an oriental rug. 4.75
  • CHRISTINA ROSENTHAL: A strange story of a Jewish marathon runner and the gentile woman he fell in love with, and the strange stories of their love over time. 4.25
  • COLONEL BULLFROG: A Colonel becomes a POW in Asia shortly before the end of WWII and the strange relationship that develops between the captive and the captors. 4.00
  • DO NOT PASS GO: A political refugee resettles in America, but during a return flight to the area of his birth, his plane is forced to land in Iraq, where there is a bounty on his head. 3.50
  • CHUNNEL VISION: A strange tale of a man about to be dumped by his latest fling, where the woman runs up expensive charges at a restaurant where the man explains to an old friend a detailed plot of an upcoming novel. The old friend, also a novelist, is horrified as the plot is the plot of his latest best-seller, and the man doesn’t know. 4.00
  • DOUGIE MORTIMER’S RIGHT ARM: A story of rowers and the mysterious cast of the arm of one of the first rowers which keeps disappearing from the rower’s club. 3.75
  • CLEAN SWEEP IGNATIUS: A Nigerian Minister of Finance wants to cut out the heart of corruption and flys to Switzerland to get the names of the citizens in his country who have Swiss bank accounts. 4.00
  • NOT FOR SALE: An up-and-coming artist gets swept off her feet by a gallery owner who wines and dines her to finish some stunning paintings for her first showing, with initially tragic results. 4.00
  • ONE-NIGHT STAND: Two male friends are inseparable until they meet a woman that impresses both of them, despite each being already married, and they both pursue her with reckless abandon, cutting each other off in each attempt until one finally succeeds. Neat feminist twist. 4.50
  • A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS: An art hustler likes to borrow paintings and then return them, while at the same time picking up the nearest available wife for a turn around the studio. Burned twice, a gallery owner plots an act of terminal revenge. 4.00
  • CHECKMATE: An elaborate plan to trick a woman into bed revolves around a game of “strip”-chess. But the plan goes too well for a while, and then a final twist to set things right. 4.00
  • THE CENTURY: A sports tale of an elaborate cricket match of Herculean competition between two giants at Oxford and Cambridge. 3.50
  • JUST GOOD FRIENDS: A strange bar tale leading to a new companion for a recently-bruised male ego. 4.00
  • HENRY’S HICCUP: A rich man tries to hold on to his comfortable life despite the impact of the Great War in Europe. After the war, he’s disappointed to find privilege doesn’t return to the owner. 4.00
  • A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE: An upright (and uptight) businessman tries to export his business values to Mexico when he tries to get a construction contract. 4.50
  • TRIAL AND ERROR: More of a short novella than a short story, this is the tale of a man convicted of murder who hires the straightest arrow at Scotland Yard to find the corpse which he thinks is still walking around very much alive, and that his wife was in on the frame. 4.50
  • THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN: A publisher visits a club in NYC and grabs hold of a story of a backgammon championship from the 1930s and how a non-player apparently beat the world champion despite numerous setbacks that week. 4.50
  • À LA CARTE: A boy wants to follow his father’s footsteps working at a car factory, but his father makes him work for a year in London to see if he can find something more upwardly mobile, and he does: chef! 4.00
  • THE CHINESE STATUE: A man travels to China as a diplomat and is given a statue of some value by a peasant, and has to try and find a way to repay the debt. 4.50
  • THE WINE TASTER: A wine taster is challenged to a duel of palates by an unscrupulous rich upstart. 4.00
  • TIMEO DANAOS…: A bank branch manager with pretensions to grandeur takes his wife on a Mediterranean cruise, and she wants to buy a new dinner service. 4.00
  • NOT THE REAL THING: A strange combination of foreign governments, an engineer who helps rebuild their basic services, a woman with two suitors who marries the engineer, and the desire of the engineer to show up his now important former rival (despite the fact that the engineer won the girl). All in all, a story worthy of medals (a subplot of the story). 4.50
  • ONE MAN’S MEAT…: A story told in two parts. The first part is the intro — a man sees a beautiful woman entering a theatre, and finagles a seat next to her. Then, he asks her to dinner and the story diverges into four possible endings.
    • RARE: Everything goes perfectly, all too well in fact, and the ending is a depressing twist. 4.00
    • BURNT: The woman’s husband turns up, so the night is a bust and goes downhill from there. 4.25
    • OVERDONE: Everything goes horrible between the two, and the woman is basically a shrew and the meal feels like a battle scene. 4.00
    • À POINT: An amazing combination of optimism and lightheartedness that outshines the other three endings by far. 5.00

What I Didn’t Like

That there weren’t even more stories or that some of the really good ones weren’t longer!

The Bottom Line

An excellent collection.

Field of Thirteen by Dick Francis (1998) – BR00018 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 4 2001

Plot or Premise

A collection of thirteen short stories, eight of which were published previously in various magazines.

What I Liked

  • Dead on Red – A contract killer kills a jockey for another jockey, but the results are not quite what the surviving jockey had desired. (4.00/5.00)
  • Song for Mona – A snobbish daughter is ashamed of her mother’s life and history while others find her charming and praise her. (4.00/5.00)
  • Collision Course – An editor loses his job and runs into snobs who won’t let him park his boat at their restaurant while he has dinner with three publishers. Turns out the owner is a up-and-comer who needs to win an upcoming race in order to attract horses to his farm. An interesting battle develops. (4.00/5.00)
  • Carrot for a Chestnut – Fixing a race by doping the horse with a doctored carrot. With a great twist at the end. (3.50/5.00)
  • Blind Chance – A man has a perfect way to know the outcomes of photo-finish races, and to make money on it. Until disaster strikes. (4.00/5.00)
  • Corkscrew – An honest man is charged with a crime and his lawyer swindles his parents out of the bail money. He doesn’t count on the road to justice being long and windy. (3.75/5.00)
  • The Day of the Losers — Money from an old robbery is the glue that holds this story together as the police attempt to fix a race in order to catch a crook. There are twists all around at the end. (3.50/5.00)
  • Haig’s Death – All the people who have their fates resting on the outcome of a race are all affected when the decision falls to the judge, whose fate has already been decided. Multiple storylines all lead to a combined finish. (3.50/5.00)

What I Didn’t Like

  • Raid at Kingdom Hill – A bomb scare at the racetrack, and money goes missing during the chaos. (2.00/5.00)
  • Bright White Star – The theft of a horse from an auction and a wandering tramp who is displaced from his home on the land…includes a great set-up/intro though — “Write us a story,” they said. I asked, “What about?” “About three thousand words,” they replied. (2.00/5.00)
  • Nightmare – A horse thief is running from his past where his father was killed during a theft. (2.50/5.00)
  • The Gift – A down-and-out alcoholic journalist finds the horseracing story of the century, but may be too drunk to write it. (2.00/5.00)
  • Spring Fever – A woman falls in love with her jockey and is taken advantage of, at first. (2.50/5.00)

The Bottom Line

An average Francis collection.

The Black Shore by Greg Cox (1997) – BR00011 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Janeway and her crew are in desperate need of shore leave…and they receive an invitation from an uncharted planet to visit and enjoy the paradise nature of the lands. All is not necessarily as it seems, including the citizens’ treatment of their pets, the Neffaler, which seem surprisingly intelligent, almost sentient.

What I Liked

Good descriptive prose, with lots of little sub-stories — Kes’ pre-occupation and disturbing telepathic forces, Paris’ involvement with the daughter of the leader, and Torres’ desire to find the source of some dilithium signatures.

What I Didn’t Like

The sub-stories don’t come together as well as they could, so the overall story is long and rather confusing at times. Many of the characters seem “off” from their TV version, perhaps reflecting the author’s preoccupation with the characters’ lives early in the series’ history. Lots of descriptions are heavy on the visual, which would be impressive if it was a TV episode rather than a book, but it doesn’t work as well here. The ending is rather fragmented, focusing on three different groups’ actions at the same time.

The Bottom Line

Would have worked better as an episode than a book.

By the Rivers of Babylon by Nelson DeMille (1978) – BR00014 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Peace in the Middle East is almost assured and two Concordes fly to New York with delegates for final negotiations. Terrorists try to derail the peace conference by planting bombs on board and taking the passengers hostage. After one plane is destroyed, killing all on board, the second plane is forced to land near Babylon. At the last minute, the hostages manage to escape to the top of a small hill from which they attempt to defend against the terrorists through several days of sorties, knowing that the military probably doesn’t know where they are and therefore can’t swoop in and rescue them.

What I Liked

Long before there was Clancy, there was DeMille. This book takes the international realm and stands it on its ear — there are (excruciating) details of the relations between the characters on both sides of the peace conference who are forced to work together to fight the terrorists. In addition, the battle tactics are first-rate, the writing is almost perfect, and the story is superb as the “hostages” fight in small groups with every weapon they have — gas bombs from the plane’s fuel tanks, sounds from a war movie blasted over speakers to simulate larger weaponry, etc.

What I Didn’t Like

There are a LOT of characters at the start of this book and it is hard to keep track of them all. Up until the end, there are too many small sub-plots — some are good, and necessary to flesh out the experience, but not all of them. There are fewer characters by the end though and it helps speed up the plotting. However, the ending is a little over-the-top, resembling a scene from a Die Hard movie more than keeping with the slightly more realistic tone of the rest of the book. As well, there is a meeting between the hostage-leaders and the terrorist-leader that is absolutely surreal. The likelihood of both parties treating it like a military battle with truces, etc., is virtually nil but it was at least interesting to read.

The Bottom Line

DeMille is the master of the game.