The SoapBoxers

I don’t watch much mainstream (i.e. non-sports) TV, so you’re not going to see a lot of TV shows reviewed in this blog. Two of the few shows that rank as appointment viewing are Monk and Psych, detective shows on the USA Network. They are on cable, and they get stuck in a lousy time slot (Friday nights), so you might be overlooking them. I personally enjoy Monk a bit more, but my wife is more of a fan of Psych – but both are really good.

Tony Shalhoub – whom you may remember as cab driver Antonio Scarpacci on the 90s TV show Wings – stars as former detective Adrian Monk. Monk was formerly was the San Francisco police department, but had to leave the department because of medical reasons – obsessive compulsive disorder and a wide variety of phobias. His late wife Trudy was able to keep things in check, but after her death, he became a bit of a basket case.

Monk’s OCD creates many humorous moments on the show. One of my all time favorites was when he felt the need to pour some coffee from one pot into another – so that each pot would have an equal amount. Of course, one pot was regular and one was decaf …

Monk is aided by his trusty assistant. Without her, he would be unable to accomplish anything in life. In the course of the show, he has actually gone through two assistants – Sharona (Bitty Schramm) and his current assistant, Natalie (Traylor Howard – you may know her from “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place”).

In between aiding Monk with every aspect of his life – including providing a disinfectant wipe every time Monk is forced to touch something “icky” – Natalie (who never gets any credit, of course) helps Monk ride to the rescue of the SFPD, helping them crack the trickiest cases (mostly murders)

Suspects tend to treat Monk with the same lack of respect that Columbo received – until the very end, when Monk explains, “here’s what happened.”

The show has a strong cast. My favorite supporting character is Lt. Randy Disher (Jason Gray-Standford), a well meaning but essentially incompetent cop who is somehow the captain’s right hand man (sort of). Sadly, Stanley Kamel, who played Monk’s psychiatrist, died in 2008. Since Monk needs a psychiatrist, Hector Elizondo was brought on board to play Monk’s new shrink. He does a good job in the role, but Kamel was irreplaceable.

Monk also lines up a strong group of guest stars – including Sarah Silverman, Andy Richter, John Turturro, and Wings co-stars Tim Daly and Steven Weber, to name a few.

Shawn Spencer (played by James Roday) and his childhood pal Gus (Dule Hill) run a psychic business. Most of their revenue comes from working on cases for the Santa Barbara police department. Shawn uses his psychic abilities to solve the crimes.

The only problem is that Shawn is not actually psychic. He is simply blessed with exceptional observation and logic skills (thanks in large part to childhood lessons taught to him by his cop father, played by Corbin Bernsen). However, since the Santa Barbara PD would apparently prefer to consult with a psychic rather than someone who is just smart, Shawn and Gus con everyone into think that Shawn is indeed psychic.

A cool feature of the show occurs when Shawn has a psychic revelation – you get some quick close-ups (and a cool sound effect) of the clues Shawn is using for his “revelation”.

Shawn also has a tendency to make life difficult for himself by annoying the chief (and others). He ends up in a lot of crazy situations – almost always of his own doing.

This review comes to you just in time for the season finales on February 20, but you should be able to catch reruns on USA. These shows are definitely DVR worthy, if you’re not home on Friday nights.

Monk Season 1	Monk Season 2	Monk Season 3
Monk Season 4	Monk Season 5	Monk Season 6
Monk Season 7

Psych Seasons 1 & 2

Psych Season 3

The Casebook of Forensic Detection and Murder Two: The Second Casebook of Forensic Detection by Colin Evans

I have an interest in true crime (murder in particular, especially serial killers) and my bookshelf has a very interesting assortment of crime books. These two books by Evans are among the best.

The casebook of forensic detection set breaks cases, types of evidence, techniques, and famous criminalists (only in Murder 2) into bite sized sections of just a handful of pages.

The two books have a slightly different layout. The first book is broken down into the various types of forensic evidence (or foresenic techniques), such as ballistics, toxicology, trade evidence, serology (blood), and time of death. Evans introduces each section with a short introduction to the topic. The book spends a few pages on the subject, including how it has evolved through history.

At this point, the book really gets into the meat of the subject and discusses several cases dealing with this type of evidence (or technique). Some cases are famous (Ted Bundy, the Nightstalker, John Wayne Gacy, the Lindbergh kidnapping) while some are relatively obscure (including one old case that occurred in a state park that I used to visit frequently). Some have even inspired scenes in movies (that wood chipper murder in the movie Fargo? Not an original idea). Evans only takes a few pages to tell each story, and packs quite a punch, hitting all the high points in each case. It’s basically written in Bathroom Reader style – you can the book, flip it open to a random spot, read for ten minutes, and feel fulfilled.

Although Murder Two is really a continuation of the original, Evans altered the structure of the book Instead of organizing the book by topic, as with the original, it alphabetizes everything – the type of evidence, name of defendant, and criminalist. As a result, the pages for arson are followed by a case for a defendant with the last name Atwood, because his name is next alphabetically. I guess this allows Evans some flexibility in choosing cases (able to choose cases involving two sorts of evidence without having to choose which section is the best fit), but I really like the layout of the first book better. This is by far the biggest flaw in the book – which means that these books are extremely good.

Murder Two includes brief bios of famous (or less famous, but well respected) criminalists throughout history. While specific criminalists were mentioned in the first book, it did not include the bios.

Evans has chosen good cases, and tells the stories well. The original casebook has long since been a favored choice for my bedtime reading. The second book seems to come up just a wee bit short of the standard set by the first, but that’s largely because Evans did a good job picking the cases for the first book – essentially cherry picking the best ones, with the result that the cases in the second book are of a slightly lesser quality.

Colin Evans The Casebook of Forensic Detection

Colin Evans The Second Casebook of Forensic Detection

The book begins with our hero being attacked. He fights back and kills his attacker in self defense. While looking through the attacker’s possessions, he stumbles upon what he eventually comes to realize is an invitation to a serial killers club. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like – serial killers gathering to break bread and share stories. Doug joins the club and eventually goes over to the dark side and becomes a killer himself..

If you’re looking for the next great mystery novel – with strong characters and a dynamic plot – this isn’t it. Nor does Povey attempt to go down that route. This is entertainment, not art. Povey crafts a book that takes an amusing look at serial killers. The plot weaves off onto tangents – a byproduct of the main character’s lack of orientation. The characters are strangely weak – reminiscent of a whiny high school clique. This is a side of serial killers that you don’t often see on TV. Some Amazon reviewers have suggested that the flimsy characters are a flaw with the book. I don’t think this is true – I think they were written this way for effect.

Doug’s decision making process is one of the more interesting aspects to this book. To say that it is flawed in a huge understatement. He has a tendency to make life changing decision with very little thought or preparation. He also has a very broad definition of “normal behavior”, as he glosses over some pretty weird stuff during the narration of the book. In the prologue, he talks about his success in finding the job he was born to do – cleaning up the muck of zoo animals.

This book probably plays a bit more to those of you who are a bit “odd” (or, if you prefer, “eccentric”). If you have a more rigid sense of humor, you might find the humor very sophomoric. If you’re the sort of person who cracks up uncontrollably at Monty Python, you’ll probably enjoy this. All in all, this book was $6 well spent (bargain bin at Barnes & Noble).

Update: I’ve shared this book with several friends since I wrote the initial review. Half of them love it, half of them think it’s pretty dumb – which basically mirrors the split reviews of the book you see on Amazon. Why roll roll the dice and give it a chance?

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Last update June 9, 2009

Editor’s note:  This was originally just a review of Librivox.  However, I noticed that people seem to be stumbling aross this article in an effort to answer two questions

• Who are the best readers on Librivox?
• What are the best books on Librivox?

I’m going to a make an effort to answer those question in the first part of this article.  If you simply want to read the original review of librivox, please scroll down!

Question 1:  Who are the best readers on Librivox?

This is really subjective, but I’ll make an effort to answer the question in the coming weeks.  This will be a substantial undertaking, as it will be necessary to sample the readings of the more prolific readers on Librivox.

For starters, I’ll recommend the readers from “Journey to the Interior of the Earth”

• Vinny Bove
• Mark Bradford
• Hugh McGuire
• Kristin Luoma
• Mur Lafferty
• Paul S. Jenkins
• Alex Foster
• Kristen McQuillen
• Michael Crowl
• Brad Bush
• Lana Taylor
• Kara Shallenberg

Certainly some of those readers are better than others, this this is a good starting point.  I will attempt to work my way through all of the more prolific readers at Librivox and select the best of the best.  I will update this article as I move forward on this task – I will update the date at the top and make a note as to my progress.

Note – you can used the advanced search to search by reader.

Question 2: What are the best books on Librivox?

Librivox contains a great selection of books in the public domain.  At one point, I had a list of books I intended to listen to, but it seems that I have misplaced this list.  I’ll compile a more complete list, but here are a couple to get you started:

• Journey to the Interior of the Earth (Verne)
• The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)

I will update both of these sections regularly over the next few weeks.

Original review of Librivox

This is supposed to be a book review post, but I’m going off on a slight tangent. I would like to point out a wonderful site – www.librivox.org

If the name looks a bit strange, dust off your Latin.

Librivox has organized volunteers to record their readings of classic literature. Since these works are in the public domain, there are no copyright issues. Librivox contains a library of 2000 books, and this is growing daily. There is absolutely, positively, NO CHARGE to download the audio books! In fact, there isn’t even a place to down, nor are there the invasive ads you see on many free sites. Compare this to the price you pay for audio books of popular contemporary books. I’m in my car for 90-120 minutes every day, so I have become a frequent audio book listener.

The books can be downloaded in MP3 or ogg vorbis format and you can get them via podcast. Personally, I download the MP3s and have iTunes burn them to CD.

When I first became aware of Librivox, my first concern was the quality of the reading. Would the readers have a horrible, monotone reading style? I have listened to one complete book (Journey to the Center of the Earth, one of my all time favorites) and sampled a few others. Really, considering that these are unpaid volunteers, the quality of the reading is quite good. Librivox does have a decent amount of structure in how they organize their projects, utilizing “book coordinators” to make sure things flow smoothly.

Overall, I really had to nitpick to find anything I didn’t like. At the start of every MP3 file (which could be a single chapter or several chapters) there is a notice telling the reader that the file is from librivox, identifying the reader, and releasing copyright (Librivox does not acquire a copyright to the actual recording). At first, this was a minor distraction the continuity, but it quickly became a non-issue.

The other minor issue was the fact that a book often has several different readers. Once again, these folks are volunteers, so it’s not surprising that a single person can’t undertake the recording of a 500 page book. You might actually like the variety of having the different voices.

If you want to catch up on the classics, this is a great way to do it. Not only do these folks have a great idea, but they have also done a good job of executing it. Kudos to Librivox.

A literary icon of our generation has passed away. The great writer Michael Crichton ended his battle with cancer at the age of 66 on November 4.

Crichton is best known for his masterpiece, Jurassic Park. As a bit of a dinophile, this became one of my favorite books. Over the years, I read many other Crichton books – Congo, Sphere, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, and Next among them. Crichton also wrote Twister and created the television show ER. I await the final Crichton novel, now scheduled for release on May 4, 2009.

Thank you for everything, Michael, and enjoy your eternal reward. You deserve it.