Bowling Books

I'm a professional computer scientist specialising in artificial intelligence. Charles Bowling comes across as well-educated and a clear and deep thinker in his tour through the history and philosophy of rational thought. Unfortunately, his style of writing takes some getting used to and he is far from good at explaining his original ideas, with the end result that I find the descriptions sufficiently inpenetrable that I can't work out if he's a genius or a crank. He may have had some fantastic ideas but, without having many spare hours to try to figure out what he's trying to say, it's hard to tell. If you come to his work without previous familiarity or some other assistance, I wish you luck, and if anyone can figure out how valuable his contribution is then please let us know!

I'm a professional computer scientist specialising in artificial intelligence. Charles Bowling comes across as well-educated and a clear and deep thinker in his tour through the history and philosophy of rational thought. Unfortunately, his style of writing takes some getting used to and he is far from good at explaining his original ideas, with the end result that I find the descriptions sufficiently inpenetrable that I can't work out if he's a genius or a crank. He may have had some fantastic ideas but, without having many spare hours to try to figure out what he's trying to say, it's hard to tell. If you come to his work without previous familiarity or some other assistance, I wish you luck, and if anyone can figure out how valuable his contribution is then please let us know!

I think a good book is one you want to read twice. I have read all of Raymond Chandler at least five times. On that scale I wouldn't read this book at all.
This is a long hard slog through moral dilemmas, paradoxes, masks, symbols, meanings that no-one else sees and everything that made you hate English in High School. It was probably aimed at others in the Raymond Chandler trade and for all I know may be excellent in that company.
Wolfe sometimes lapses from professional detachment to attack Marlowe for not marrying Anne Riordan, making mistakes, not liking children, being self-destructive, not making a good income, having a bad attitude and not trying to achieve wholeness. One of my favorite sentences "the great fat solid Pacific trudging in to shore like a scrub-woman going home" is dismissed as simply evidence of Marlowe's malice and irritability.
I did get one thing from this book. I had never noticed that in The Little Sister "the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad" in Ch. 12 is followed by the appearance of Joseph P Toad in Ch 13. Maybe Chandler was getting us ready. Still, it's a pretty hard-won nugget.

Somewhere between the harshness of Frank McShane's biography and the apologetics of Tom Hiney's later work lies the true essence of Raymond Chandler. Wolfe's "Something Darker Than Night: The Case of Raymond Chandler" seeks to fill that gap, and -- I believe -- largely succeeds.

Wolfe's approach to Chandler is to dissect his writings, which he does with all the analytical skills and precision of an English teacher (at the time of this book, Wolfe was associate professor of English at University of Missouri - St. Louis). Doing this, and unlike most other Chandler scholars, he refuses to take a single word or phrase at face value.

He additionally resists the fairly common assumption that Chandler and Phillip Marlowe were "one and the same," or that Marlowe was at all times merely an alter-ego or "projection" of Chandler. As a result of both factors, both writer and creation emerge into the light as more fully rounded individuals.

Wolfe does occasionally fall astray: In discussing "The Long Goodbye," for example, he notes that Marlowe, having relocated to a small house on Yucca Avenue, has "taken part in the 50s 'white flight to the suburbs'." In this -- which he subsequently conceded in correspondence -- Wolfe is victimized by an ignorance of Los Angeles history and demographics of that era. Likewise, in his otherwise excellent synopsis of "Double Indemnity" he neglects to distinguish between the original screenplay and the finished film version, a failing which can cause more than a moment's confusion for the reader who has seen the movie.

Such flaws are minor considerations.

Wolfe's study is refreshingly devoid of "personal agenda:" he neither excoriates nor excuses Chandler's personal failings. The result -- and Wolfe's great contribution -- is a volume which (whether or not you agree with all of his conclusions) will deepen your understanding of Chandler (and Marlowe) without dampening your enjoyment of either.

Este libro es lo mismo de siempre, este libro es para todo tipo de boleador, te da algunas tecnicas para jugar bien. Solo te da eso.....

Este es uno de los mejores libros de Bolos que he leido. este libro me ayudo con mi promedio en un 25% yo le recomiendo este libro a todo boleador que esta comenzando a jugar....

I expected this book to be a collection of reproduced newspapers and magazine clippings relating to Hitler from 1923 until he invaded Poland. One would expect this would be the content, considering the title of the book. Well, forget it. It's merely one long, dreary essay on how Hitler was treated in magazines, with some scanty examples thrown in here and there. Zalampas is hardly a Hitler scholar and omits many salient articles on Hitler's early career, especially ones from the "Literary Digest," the first American magazine to feature Hitler, as early as 1921. I don't really know the point of this exercise, it's not interesting, enlightening, or remotely intriguing.

This book is a collection of articles that examine gift-giving behavior- a field that has only recently been researched in the last decade. The book explores the motive's for gift giving process of selecting and presenting. It focuses on Christmas and Wedding gifts, and briefly covers gender roles, the cultural differences of gift exchange, and self-gifts. One section of the book is devoted to the role of ethnicity in gift giving. I found this book to be helpful and informative, but mainly a stepping stone for further research on gift-giving behavior.

Copyright 1994, 94 pages. Cross "Ripley's Believe Or Not..." with a trip to the National Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum and you get this book. Lightly illustrated by Paul Coker. This book is the same size as "101 Uses For A Dead Cat", 5.5 inches tall and 8.25 inches long. Like Ripley's, some stories are gems but many are not. Most stories are several paragraphs long. Chapter 1 tales include hitting the 7-10 pins only on the 1st ball (1945); and 7,8,9,10 (1972) and 1,2,5,9 only on the 1st ball (1960). Other highlights are; don't slam your ball on the sidewalk because it can bounce back up and hit you in the chin,(1962) and if your principal reads the newspaper, you shouldn't win $1000 bowling a 300 during morning school hours (1993). The best story is "Mr. 900" which gives some detail to Glen Allison's July 1, 1982, 3 game 900 series which I knew little about apart from the fact he did it. I didn't know that when Pete Weber 1991 crystal trophy crashed to the floor, it was supposed to be glued to the wooden base which Pete still had in his hand. Bowling Hustlers, (M/F); doctored balls, (several soaker ball stories); and doctored lanes are covered. Near 300 games are covered. On your last ball, knocking down 9 pins and the top half of the 10th pin does not get you an ABC sanctioned 300 game, (1905). If you find Brunswick's (1915) missing Mineralite ball No. 391914, you've probably hit the jackpot...

~House & Senate In 1790S: Petitioning, Lobbying, & Institutional Development~ is an interesting anthology of essays on the institutional development of the U.S. Congress, both the Senate and House of Representatives. The opening essay by John Kaminski lays the groundwork for understanding the constitutional framework behind the Congress. Collectively, the scholars tend to see lobbying as a nineteenth-century phenomenon, though they make it clear that these characters were there from the beginning. Being a strict constructionist myself, I was amazed at the efforts of some Americans to impugn the Constitution of strict enumerated powers almost from the inception of the United States in the 1790s. This book communicates a reality that lobbyists for unconstitutional appropriations and subsidies began flocking to Congress in much the same way flies are attracted to dung.

It features an essay on the Chisholm v. Georgia decision, and how it begged the question about individual rights and whether the federal government would serve a role in upholding them. The Chisholm decision ultimately provoked the 11th Amendment, and enshrined sovereign immunity into the fabric of the Constitution. The problem was there was no positive rights granted in the U.S. Bill of Rights. It was a negative.

Another essay captures the dynamics of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in remarkable detail.

The closing essays focus on institutional development of the House and Senate, including the ascendancy of political parties, and congressional caucuses.

The book suffers from some structural defects, and an indicipherable snobbish sort of scholarship that detracts from its value. If understanding the First Congress is your priority, then it's probably better just to get Lance Banning's anthology entitled _Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle_ which features pertinent primary source documents from the 1790s related to institutional developments and party struggles in the First Congress.

The book has a cool cover though. A crude portrayal of a fight on the floor of Congress between Vermont Representative Matthew Lyon, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and Federalist Roger Griswold of Connecticut. Griswold bludgeoned Republican Lyon in the head with a cane. It's good to see that politicians stood their ground in the good ole days, rather than embrace that wimpish bipartisanship in an, "I love you, you love me," Barney the dinosaur chorus. We need more such gridlock today, that way Congress won't get anything done, and we will probably be better off for its non-action. If 'con-' is the opposite of 'pro-' than is 'congress' the opposite of 'progress?'

The book provides basic insight and information needed to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Based on a first hand climbing experience the reader is taken through a day by day experience of the 7 day Lemosho Route (Barafu route for Kibo ascend). The author is a novice climber and describes the challenges most climbers will face in detail. It is an easy and quick read especially if you skip the prayers throughout the chapters. I enjoyed the read but I would not recommend using this book in preparation for your trek however, this book provides enough information for anyone trying to decide whether to do the climb or not.

Might have been a groundbreaker in its day, but it's totally disposable now. In fact, we've seen this formula done over and over again. Who needs another book with a chapter on Miss Marple, another chapter on Poirot, then one on Tommy and Tuppence, et cetera, always concentrating on how loveable these characters are? Yuck. There's even a chapter called "Christie's Prestigious Policemen," which delves into a topic no one wants to know about at all, and talk about graceless, how about the use of the word "prestigious"? Couldn't they have thought of another adjective? Maybe it wasn't high in their minds, in 1982, when this book was printed. If you get a copy with a dust jacket, you'll see a truly frightful looking book, with a line drawing of a hand--presumably Dame Agatha's--holding an old fashioned fountain pen hovering over an invisible piece of paper. Ghastly, looks like my baby sister did it.

The trouble with Christie scholarship is that it's largely all about trivia. One chapter stands above the morass of "Mrs. Oliver created a Finn Detective, a parallel to Hercule Poirot but Finnish." This is the survey chapter called "The Puzzle-Game" which rather smartly observes, categorizes and condenses some of Christie's narrative inventions--her tricks, if you will. Patricia Maida and Nicholas Spornick list the murderer's gambits as follows: the "Hidden Impersonation"--essentially you think there are 2 characters but actually there are only one. The "frame Up," in which an innocent character gets blamed for the villain's misdeeds. The "Red Herring" (a la THE CLOCKS) which isn't so fabulous if you ask me. Most of all we associate Christie with "The Cover Up Victim" in which I, a killer, fake an attack on my own life to make police and Poirot think I'm innocent. Christie fans are therefore always suspicious of anyone who survives an attack--which itself has thrown me into the soup more than once, for there are actually innocent people who haven't faked their own murders. Did you ever see SCREAM? Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven had a field day spoofing Christie's use of the "Cover Up Victim" device. Maida and Spornick also examine Christie's incredibly sophisticated use of point of view to confound, to reassure, to disturb, and to subvert. If only the rest of the book had been as good as "The Puzzle-Game," this might have been a keeper. As it is I hesitate to recommend it even to completists.

What Carr sets out to accomplish and what he achieves are two different things. He tells us he is attempting to defend poor Southern "rednecks," but he gets lost even in attempting to define the group he's singled out. In other words, he fails to define the group accurately. He's vague. His defense of the groups is as ambiguous as his defense. This book promises a lot but delivers little. I'm not any clearer on the subject now than before reading the book.