books – Page 3 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 3, 2024

Joybirds (DOG EAR)

nother local bookstore closes, this time, Joybird Books, less than a mile from my house. Loved that shop. Popped in from time to time but the owner felt sorry for selling me so many books and ended up loaning them to me. Also, the store was set up as a community center, so there was room for kids to color and play, for people to sit, to enjoy themselves. My wife and I went to Zen sittings on Sunday nights there. Another victim of the failure of Americans to read, and the encroachment of Amazon into every aspect of small […]

December 26, 2024

Best of 2024 (DOG EAR)

nother year passes. I had a very eventual year – earned an award from the Model Railroad association. Was involved with seventy model train operation sessions. Kept up with my writing commitments. Caught Covid (light version) and RSV (not so light, but ducked the associated Pneumonia). Went through two hurricanes. Usual stuff. And I read a lot of books. So the following list is not a New Yorker list or anything like that. It’s the books I’ve read and enjoyed. These are just the top selections from my own readings, managing (roughly) a book a week (or more) – I’ve […]

June 12, 2025

Bugs (DOG EAR)

ound out that our 1949 bungalow has termites. Not bad, but worrying. We’re not going to just tent and gas (that only is good for a few years). Rather, we’re going to treat, which means injecting shit into the baseboards to keep them at bay. Also, they’ll climb under the house and put poison barriers around all the supports. Fine and good, right? However, to get AT the baseboards, they need to get TO the baseboards. The problem there is that we read a lot of books and have bought a lot of DVDs (yes, I know, old school, right?). […]

July 3, 2025

Dump (DOG EAR)

o you may not have noticed (or cared) that I have not been writing up any DOG EAR pieces for the last few weeks. I’ve been very busy with three distinct crises. One of them was termites; we had evidence that they’d swarmed in our garage and so we had to get barriers (i.e. poisons) injected into all our baseboards. This meant that all furniture along the walls had to be moved. And we have a lot of books. Shelves and stacks of them. For this, we’d ordered a pod placed out on our driveway to put all the books […]

January 1, 2026

The Best of 2025 (DOG EAR)

ime again for my review of books I really enjoyed for 2025. Of course, these aren’t all published this year – there is no statue of limitations on books you might discover. For example, The War of the Wenuses was a random discovered off a YouTube video which was published some century and a quarter ago. It was a lampoon of War of the Worlds and really made me laugh. However, most of you (not being addicts of the original) would not understand the lampooning that takes place in it – since it was right on the edge of getting the nomination, I […]

February 5, 2026

Sharing is Caring, you bastards (DOG EAR)

‘m a little grumpy about this one. It will probably show. See, I’m coming to realize that nobody gives a floppy fuck about books (and movies) you really care about. People are too busy and too self-involved to really honor (or even consider) any recommendations you might offer. This came to me at Christmas at a family gathering. The night before, I’d just finished a short anime series, Odd Taxi. It came from a YouTube video by a Anime expert who listed the ten most overlooked animes, this being one of them. It’s got childish art (everyone in modern Tokyo are […]