Welder's Handbook by Richard Finch

HPBooks Welder’s Handbook: A Guide to Plasma Cutting, Oxyacetylene, ARC, MIG and TIG Welding

Even for me, reading a book on welding is a little off-character. The most skilled thing I do with my hands is garden. Reading about welding may be against my character, but character is exactly why I read the book. I’m a writer. My latest novel opens in the vault of a bank just as the thieves are ready to exit with their loot. To delay discovery of their crime, they weld the vault door shut. Like a good writer, I do my research.

How does one weld? What does one use? How does one cut through criss-crossed steel bars in reinforced concrete to get into the safe in the first place? This book answered many of my questions, but not all.

My limited knowledge had led me to believe welding was always done with tanks of gas and a big protective mask. I was surprised to discover gas welding is only one of the many methods. Even after reading this book I don’t really understand the difference or the technicalities of ARC, MIG and TIG welding. For my writing project, I decided to stick with gas welding. It seems to be the most portable of the methods.

Gas welding, the book says, is done with a tank of oxygen and a tank of acetylene: oxyacetylene. I admit, after the basics, I became confused. Finch shares charts and details about metal types and thicknesses and how they will or will not match up with different types of filler rods. There’s welding, cutting, brazing, jigging and fitting as well as heat forming. I suppose this book would be fantastic for someone with welding experience, but having never laid eyes or hands of actual welding equipment, I’m still lost.

The good news is that I learned enough not to accidentally allow my characters to make a mistake that could get themselves injured or killed while they handle the equipment. That reminds me, I need to rewrite that first chapter to remove some errors. I wasn’t so educated the first time around. J

Heat Wave by Richard Castle

Heat Wave: The First Book of the Nikki Heat Series

I confess. I’m a binge reader. When I’ve got a good book in my hands, I stay glued to it until it’s done. That’s how I read Heat Wave. After crawling out of bed on a beautiful Saturday morning, I settled in on the couch and read the first installment of Richard Castle’s Nikki Heat series. It may have taken me until halfway through the book to realize that the shadow of Detective Heat on the cover is unclothed, but I didn’t miss much else.

I paid special attention to the sizzling romance between Heat and journalist Jameson Rook. The relationship between Rook and Heat shares a similar friction to that of the relationship between Detective Kate Beckett and crime novelist Richard Castle from the TV show, Castle, as it should. The Richard Castle books, written by a ghost writer, are fashioned as the work of the fictional author in Castle, who shadows a homicide detective to get ideas for his novels. Like the Richard Castle in the TV show, the Jameson Rook of the Heat novels, ends up assisting with the investigations.

The plot of Heat Wave is simple, but not simplistic. A man is found dead after falling from a balcony. The NYPD determines it is a murder. The man has a trophy wife, a mountain of debt and a vast art collection. These three things wind up connecting to point Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook towards the murderer. Naturally, guns are drawn, people get defensive, romance sparks, and more people wind up dead before it’s all over. In true Richard Castle style, the reader is never quite sure ‘who’ or ‘why’ until the very end, but when the details come together the story is clear and satisfying. The meringue on the pie is the fiery attitude of Nikki Heat. Heat plows through every barrier, including an attempt on her life, and manages to come out of it all with the killer and a witty line. When the killer considers pointing his gun at Heat, she counters with, “Go ahead . . . I need a new blouse anyway.”  What a great piece of dialogue. I confess; I’ve always loved a witty line. 

Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die: Musings from the Road, by Willie Nelson

Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die: Musings from the Road, by Willie Nelson

What a title. In reading the book I discovered that Roll Me Up And Smoke Me is the name of a song. I’m not sure about the saneness of this first half of the title, but the second part, Musings from the Road, makes a lot of sense. It’s like a quick biography written through the eyes of Willie Nelson himself, and through the eyes of his family. Willie Nelson’s life can be defined by the road, where he has spent a good deal of his life. The story of his life is the road.

The whole book is a concoction of song lyrics, awful jokes, memories written out by his family and friends, and Willie’s personal memories, as well as his opinions on many subjects like wars for oil, guns, the environment, and marijuana.

Every Willie Nelson fan knows about his history with pot. At one point in the book, Willie describes how he decided to quit smoking regular cigarettes because the smoke was bad for his lungs. Apparently he emptied a cigarette carton, rolled a bunch of joints and filled up the carton. Whenever he reached for a cigarette, he had a joint instead.

On page 114, before he quotes the lyrics to the song for which the book is titled, he shares his opinion on the legalization of marijuana: “If you make pot legal, and tax it and regulate it like alcohol and tobacco, you will stop the dealing on the borders and save thousands of lives!” I guess I can understand his point, but in my opinion pot’s not good for anybody. Willie says it’s natural, but in opposition, a lot of things are natural but that doesn’t mean they’re good for consumption. Besides, getting marijuana out of the picture for smuggling won’t stop the smuggling of other things.

Then there are his ideas on religion. He talks about karma, reincarnation and God like they go hand in hand. I don’t see eye to eye. Karma is bull and reincarnation is a fairy tale. That’s just the way I feel.

I may not agree with all of Willie Nelson’s ideologies, but I will say he’s one hell of a singer, a songwriter and a dedicated artist. I admire him for these things. 

Frozen Heat, by Richard Castle (aka a ghost writer)

Frozen Heat (Richard Castle)

Last Fall, while watching my weekly dose of The Voice on CTV, I discovered the network also brought in another great American show which was shown directly afterwards. I started watching ABC’s Castle on a regular basis and quickly fell in love with Richard Castle, the quirky crime novelist shadowing and assisting the homicide branch of the NYPD. Every case and every episode includes one or more than one of Castle’s imaginative and off-kilter hypotheses as to who committed or how the murder was committed. Like a real writer, anything is a possibility to him.

It’s hard for me to explain how thrilled I was to discover that ABC had hired a ghost-writer to transforms some of the works attributed to the fictional character Richard Castle into actual books published under his name. When I started reading Frozen Heat yesterday, I was not disappointed. The ghost-writer has managed to capture perfectly the voice of Richard Castle as I see him portrayed by actor Nathan Fillion in the TV show.

In this particular novel, characters Jameson Rook, a journalist, and Nikki Heat, a homicide cop, investigate the case of a woman found dead in a suitcase in the back of a freezer truck. Early on, connections between this murder and the murder of Nikki Heat’s mother, ten years earlier surface. Before they know it Rook and Heat, who are incidentally embroiled in romance, follow a lead which takes them from New York to Paris. Heat must dig into her mother’s past, while dodging attempts on her life and figuring out her relationship with Rook.

In the TV show, Richard Castle shadows detective Beckett and her team under the explanation that he is collecting ideas and doing research for his writing. It is explained that the character of Nikki Heat is based off of Becket and Rook is meant to be a version of Richard Castle himself. Knowing the plot line of the show and the plots of the various episodes adds even more credibility to this book. Events and characters are very reminiscent of the TV show. The reader can almost believe that Richard Castle is real, and that he really has been observing Beckett and the other NYPD officers to gain inspiration for his novels.

I’d say that enjoyment of this book is conditional. If you don’t know Castle, you won’t get all that there is to get about Frozen Heat, Jameson Rook and Nikki Heat. Go ahead and give the show a watch and then pick up one of the books in the Nikki Heat series. You won’t regret the hours you spend. 

An Epic Life:Willie Nelson

An Epic Life: Willie Nelson ( A biography by Joe Nick Patoski, published in 2008)

I’m always game for a good biography. This one stretches for about 500 pages, but it’s worth every word. Patoski must have poured months and months of work into the volume which contains extensive detail and numerous quotes from direct interviews. As a country music fan, I find the life of Willie Nelson and his interactions with other greats like Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings as gripping as any thriller novel I've read. This book brings to life the songs I've grown to love over the last few years, and introduces me to songs I've yet to hear.

The world that Patoski reconstructs is so distant from my time and my life that I can’t help but see it as some grand, incredibly strange and chaotic fantastic land, where people play their music like it’s their life, and live their lives like they've got nothing to lose. When I see how hard Willie Nelson worked to get where he is, all those years he spent struggling to get to the top and to get creative freedom, it makes me ashamed of how lazy I can get when it comes to my writing.

I’m awestruck by the way Willie Nelson has lived and still lives. He’s not afraid to hit the road, to go where he wants to go, or to do what he wants. Although I may not agree with his excessive use marijuana, or his numerous marriages, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he is anti-war, and an advocate for peace. Around the time that country star Toby Keith wrote his fiery and highly offensive “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue,” which supported America’s so called right to kick everybody’s ass, Willie wrote, “What Happened to Peace on Earth?” a song pleasantly reminiscent of the peace anthems of the 60’s and 70’s.

I also found myself in awe of how many albums he’s recorded and how often he to hit the studio. I admire his dedication to music in its pure form. For Willie Nelson, it’s not about loud drums and guitars.  He doesn't record fluff songs to make it to the top. It’s about his voice, the bare beauty of just a few instruments, and the story.

With so many shallow songs on the radio these days, I can appreciate the music of Willie Nelson. Reading this book brought the ideals of music closer and made them clearer to me. I have loved Willie’s music, but now I respect him as a dedicated artist. With the recent passing of George Jones, I've begun to wonder if I will ever get the chance to see the greats, like Willie Nelson, before they play their final songs. It’s something to think about. As Eric Church says in one of his songs, “we've still got a lot of boot left to fill.”  

Zane Grey (Desert of Wheat and Light of Western Stars)

Zane Grey (Desert of Wheat and The Light of Western Stars)

He’s one the greatest western writers ever, but over two years ago when I first tried reading his books, I didn’t get it. “This is junk,” I said, and I cast Zane Grey’s work aside. I loved westerns. I was well on my way in collecting the 50+ Louis L’Amour books I now own.  I’d even read the famous “Stage Coach” from which the 1939 John Wayne movie was based on.

Two years ago I found Zane Grey’s writing to be too detailed. Why was he describing the squirrels along the path? Why does it matter what the mountains looked like? I never finished that first Zane Grey, but there must have been something I liked, or at least something that got stuck in my head.

A month ago, wandering through the floors of the Dana Porter library at the University of Waterloo, I stopped in front of a shelf with a dozen or so Zane Grey novels on it. Term had nearly ended. I hadn’t read a book apart from my course work in months and I was starved for a good story.  I read them quickly, critiquing what I found to be the weaknesses in his writing. My main trouble was disbelief. Yeah right, I found myself saying a lot.

The plots are very romanticized. Take The Light of Western Stars, for example. A woman gets off a train at midnight in a western town. She’s a well known socialite from the east. She meets her brother and ends up using her wealth to buy land, run a ranch and improve the lives of the people she employs. Of course, like in all Zane Grey’s, there is romance. She falls in love.

In Desert of Wheat, a woman falls in love at first sight, but it’s not that simple. She must deal with a world war, and a labour union which tries to kill her father and burn everybody’s crops. She must bear everything that could possibly happen to a person, it seems. She relies heavily on what she refers to as “woman’s intuition.”

Despite the unbelievable plots, and overly detailed writing, something exists which keeps me glued to these books. Maybe it’s the way every character is in love with the land? Maybe it’s because of the absurdity of some of the plots? It could be the rambling writing style, or the skill Grey had of gathering the reader’s pathos. Maybe it’s because I now understand what Zane Grey was trying to do. He was trying to entertain by showcasing the lands and times he loved. Who cares if the plot is absurd? That absurdity is what makes them such a joy to read.