PJH Studios

Category: Books

All things books, fiction, nonfiction, sci-fi, thriller, horror, comics, literary

  • Chet and Bernie

    Spencer Quinn put a nifty twist on the detective whodunnit by making his narrator a dog, Chet. Chet’s voice is colorful, simple and direct, keenly detailing the sights, smells and sounds. There’s also an innocence, too, in his character when observing human nature, unsure of human emotion and motive.

    In Dog on It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery, Bernie takes a case for a wealthy divorcee whose daughter has been kidnapped. The setup may be simple, but Quinn constructs a plot with enough characters and motivations that the story is more than just about kidnapping. Comments on the housing crisis come through as Bernie finds more about the father, a real estate developer. While Bernie consists of the usual detective tropes–loner, ex-military, poor financial decision maker, brash attitude, Chet is what makes the pair unique in how they pair up. Bernie states that he and Chet are a team.

    The team continue working cases in Thereby Hangs a Tail: A Chet and Bernie Mystery when a wealthy dog owner and her dog are snatched before a premiere dog show. The dog show plotline seems a send up of celebrity culture, a farce with animals and their over eager owners, whom seem like caricatures. The supporting cast of bad guys and red herrings aren’t really as developed this time, and Chet’s narration seems more ADHD. Sure, dogs may become distracted, but when telling the story a colorful tangent may entertain, but this isn’t done in moderation. I found myself skipping large sections and didn’t fight the twist particularly revealing.

  • Andrew Shaylor’s Hells Angels Motorcycle Club

    Andrew Shaylor a United Kingdom based photographer released a book entitled, Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. It attempts to document the life of the club beyond its image as rough, gritty bikers. Given access to meeting rooms, Hells Angels events and pictures of members’ bikes, it humanizes the group as a bunch of guys, hanging out and riding motorcycles.

    Most members are over 30 and appearances are world weary. Shaylor comments that the group prefers new members have life experience before joining, and for a lot, it shows. Leathered faces, deep creases and graying hair. Toothy grins and countless tattoos.

    The tattoos. The death head varies from chapter to chapter and can only be worn by a member in good standing. Many get the death head, in some form, tattooed on their body–signifying their commitment for life.

    Interspersed between the portraits, Shaylor showcases life as a member. These shots mostly come across as snapshots or vacation photos. Hells Angels life is just as candid as a drunken frat party, too. At the end, and it seems random and I’m not sure if they add context, but Shaylor included portraits of members’ families–wives, sons, daughters, girlfriends. I suppose, they’re normal too.

    The subjects all reside in the UK. If you expected the more famous California Sonny Barger Hells Angels, you’d be disappointed. But would those portraits be any different?

  • Three Cups of Tea

    If you’re going to come away with anything from Three Cups of Tea, the story of Greg Mortenson’s mission to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, let it be the value of perseverance. To consistently focus on accomplishing something, despite the obstacles of lack of money, knowledge or cultural understanding, great things can happen if one learns from mistakes and continues to go forward. This theme even is displayed by those he is trying to help, as the conservative mullahs of the region see that Mortenson isn’t in their land to convert them or over take them, but to sincerely help children, specifically girls.

    The story starts slow, after Mortenson’s failed attempt to climb K2 and stumbles into a poor region without schools. We learn he is the son of a Lutheran missionary who grew up in Africa and is out of place when he returns to California. After coming back to the states, making a promise to return to Pakistan, Mortenson begins to raise money. He gains some traction from within the mountaineering world and receive a donation from Jan Hoerni, a wealthy scientist and climber, for his first school. The attempt to build the first school is fraught with errors, mostly with Mortenson expecting to return, buy supplies and build a school. The culture of Pakistan slows him down. And first a bridge must be built. Nearly two years later, the school does get built, but only after navigating his own ignorance and that of the Muslims in the region.

    As Three Cups of Tea progresses, it bounces back and forth between Mortenson’s inability to generate funds as quick as he’d like and his three to four month sabbaticals in the mountains of Central Asia. A cast of supportive and not so supportive characters carry the story along. From the kidnappers in the remote province of Waziristan to village elders such as Hajj Ali in Asia or his eventual wife and board members stateside, each is portrayed in a respectful depth. Eventually, Mortenson’s cause explodes after September 11th. (He happened to be in Afghanistan during the attacks.) He’s vilified for wanting people to understand what it will take to make the region a safer place. The Pentagon calls him in for a presentation, to which he sees why progress won’t be made in a Rumsfeld led Pentagon. Finally, after a Parade magazine feature, he receive an outpouring of support.

    The book is an inspiring piece to the adage that one person can make a difference. At times it’s slow and over written in sentimental prose, but it gives a picture that perseverance to foster understanding and education is fundamentally important to peace.

  • Locke & Key – Welcome to Lovecraft

    The story of Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft starts with a seemingly random act of violence–two deranged kids show up at a family’s home and kill the father. This initial act is told haltingly between the incident, the funeral and the arrival to the family’s new home in Lovecraft, Massachusetts.

    It seems heavy handed, but of course creepy things are going to ensue in Lovecraft, MA, where the family unsettles and encounters the mysteries of the house. The youngest, Bodie, discovers by accident that he can walk out a door and die, float free as a spirit, return to his body and un-die. He also befriends a ghost at the bottom of the outhouse well. Meanwhile, the middle sibling, Kinsey takes to school and finds a spot on the girls track team. Ty, the oldest, broods quietly. The latter two siblings refuse to believe Bodie and unknowingly cross paths with harbingers of future plot points.

    The story unfolds, following the surviving deranged killer across country as he seeks a powerful key for a spirit that seems to be guiding him. This book sets up the premise of the house with keys that open doors to places or states of being. The art is well done by Gabriel Rodriguez, and the story is solid, penned by Joe Hill (aka son of Steven King). It’s violent, bloody and people say ‘fuck’ a lot.

    After one collection, it’s hard to say how well developed the characters are, for example, we see more of the killer and what makes him crack than we do of the mother. Bodie seems to be the kid no one listens to, Kinsey’s the self aware girl that feels out of place and Ty is the misunderstood jock who ultimately does right. Again, it’s a solid story with enough of a premise that could go a long way, so it will be interesting to see if the characters develop being their archetypes.

  • Scott Pilgrim – The Movie

    Scott Pilgrim – The Movie is a fun, hilarious adventure, action, nerd fest. Colorful visuals and engaging action sequences support a well directed cast as Scott Pilgrim must defeat seven evil exes. Indeed, Michael Cera plays the same character he always plays, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona steals the movie with a great performance. Purists will decry that the plot differs from the books and lacks the emotional core Brian O’Malley conveyed in the original plot, but the core of the story–an apathetic, mooch of a loser, learning to love others and respecting himself–is still there.

  • Batwoman – Elegy

    Batwoman: Elegy tells two stories. The first is of Batwoman taking on a villainess named Alice who has plans to gas Gotham City with chemical weapons. The second story tells of how Kate Kane took up the mantle of Batwoman. In the first, the action occurs quickly and ends half way through the book after Alice’s failed attempt to unleash the weapons, but strands of the Alice plot line interweave into the second story as we find out who Alice might be. Told in a series of flash backs, Kate Kane grew up a military brat with a twin sister, Beth. Her father received a promotion to be stationed over seas. There, she, her mother and sister are kidnapped, and the bloody rescue only saves Kate. Later, upon nearing graduation from West Point, we find that she’s a lesbian after refusing to lie under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Determined to serve, she becomes a vigilante, supported by her father’s military connections and her own variation of the Batman symbol to show “whose side” she’s on.

    The story by Greg Rucka tells an origin in an interesting way, but as interesting as Kate’s origin is, it feels like one long denouement. Perhaps it could have been woven better with the Alice story. J.H. Williams III’s art actively moves around the page, but at times it seems too frenetic with overzealous layouts. However, Batwoman/Kate Kane are drawn realistically, unlike some comically drawn, female super heroines.

  • Extreme Photography

    Extreme Photography: The Hottest, Coldest, Fastest, Slowest, Nearest, Farthest, Brightest, Darkest, Largest, Smallest, Weirdest Images in the Universe… shows the physical and technological limits of photography. From volcanoes, Antarctic exhibitions, outer space, thermal, infrared, x-ray, MRI, examples are given as to the potential of the application, its practicality and a little bit of how-to thrown into the mix.

  • The Passage

    Essentially, The Passage is a worthy literary attempt at a post-apocalyptic vampire zombie novel.  The premise is solid–mysterious virus developed by the military is tested on random subjects, and then something goes wrong, and the the vampire zombies lay waste to anything with warm blood.  Told over the span of a 100 years, Justin Cronin introduces a sprawling cast of characters, some superfluous and forgettable and others quirky and memorable, and heftily takes his literary license on a gleeful Mad Max joy ride through a barren Western United states. There are numerous subplots that divert the story without fulfilling ends or turn into tangents for Cronin to verbosely develop a character to advance a theme he’d like to fit in.  Themes of love, hope, redemption, social class, consumerism, military industrial complex, faith vs. science and even a dark twist alluding to Jesus and the 12 disciples, blend together like a bloated science fiction western.   At times you’re left wondering what the point is, and others are engaging scenes of suspense.

    This is the beginning of a trilogy and it’s hard to envision the other two books requiring wordy flair.  Hopefully, Cronin gets an editor to continue his zombie vampire saga.

  • Dennis Hopper – Bucharest Nights

    Eccentric and edgy Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper avidly collected art, and photography was a lifelong active hobby. In 2005, he published Bucharest Nights, a collection of “digital paintings” at night with a digital camera. The majority of the images are ghostly and ethereal. Stark figures in golden tones against a black backdrop, light trails down a street, neon glows from a casino. A few are stunning but for the most part the book contains good pictures that work better on a whole as a body of work. The random photos of naked women taken with film, jarringly contrasts the preceding 30 or so pictures as if you were listening to soft trance music and someone turned on a buzz saw.

  • Finite and Infinite Games

    James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility philosophically explores the premise of life as a series of games and infinite games.  Finite games have an end and rules may not change, whereas infinite games are never ending and the rules must change. Directly, think of Super Mario versus World of Warcraft.  With the Mario games, there’s a set of rules (stomp the mushrooms, fireball the goombas, save the princess, don’t die), but with Warcraft, there’s an entire world with a constantly changing set of rules and dynamics of play.

    Understanding that, there are several other tenets:

    • Finite players play within boundaries, infinite players play with boundaries
    • Finite players are serious, infinite players are playful
    • A finite player seeks to be powerful, an infinite player plays with strength
    • A finite player consumes time, an infinite player generates time
    • A finite player aims for eternal life, an infinite player aims for eternal birth

    Zen koans aside, it’s interesting to distinguish that from a finite standpoint, resources are scarce and must be consumed, but with an endless, infinite perspective, resources are plentiful and can be created. Carse discusses resource issues briefly, however, he mainly applies logic to his thesis to different areas of life–learning (training vs. education), sex (body vs. spirit), family (choosing vs. having), stories (plot vs. themes).

    Finite and Infinite Games is a good book for anyone looking for perspective, but it’s not an easy read in the sense that it’s tediously and brutally logical.  Perhaps that’s what’s needed to fully explain infinite concepts in a finite span of pages.