]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]>
Millard Kaufman, who is in his 90s, is a pretty good writer. He obviously loves language and has a vocabulary to boot, and his sense of humor is – for a man of an older generation – well-anchored in the modern era. But his first novel is not what I would call great.
One gets the impression that if he had started writing fiction earlier, he might have churned out something pretty incredible by now. Bowl of Cherries is not it. However, I would still recommend it as an entertaining and quick read worth the regular chuckles. The only thing missing is a decent ending.
The novel follows Judd Breslau, a tortured teenage genius, as he looks for professional and romantic satisfaction, and the answer to the mystery of his father's disappearance. Sounds a little heavy, but Kaufman treats his protagonist's travails with incisive levity and the book is never meant to be serious.
A typical line: "It took all of a minute before I nodded in approbation at the invincibility of her logic. But not without a certain queasy disturbance attending the acknowledgment that she had so easily skewered the meat of my argument."
Definitely worth thumbing through. ]]>
"What makes a place a free-market paradise is not the absence of government; it is the capture of government by business interests."
This line by Thomas Frank effectively summarizes his latest missive, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, a scathing indictment of conservative ideology and the modern conservative movement. It is one of the most illuminating political books I've ever read.
Frank's research is exhaustive – from conservatism's birth in the cradle of industry to its modern makeover – and his conclusion is clear: at its root conservatism is not about social, religious, immigration or gun issues; it is about business doing away with taxes, regulation and government. All else is secondary.
As Frank sees it, conservatism's sole objective is sabotage of the government – that is, "win-win sabotage, a charming addition to win-win incompetence and win-win corruption."
The Wrecking Crew is a must read for any liberal self-doubters, and a must purchase for the on-the-fence friend or the undecided voter down the street. After reading this book it becomes clear that unless you make millions in the market or own a multinational corporation, you have no reason to claim yourself a conservative. ]]>
After Nov. 4, The Uprising is somewhat out of date, but it still contains enough interesting anecdotes to make it worth reading for anyone following the nation's shifting political winds.
Sirota covers various populist movements on both the left and the right – from anti-tax efforts in Montana to anti-war groups in Washington to anti-immigration militias in California – all of them aimed at taking down The Establishment. But you won't find any objectivity here. Sirota's blatant bias undermines his solid reporting, though he does allow enough of his subjects to speak for themselves that his spin is not nearly as unforgivable as that of Fox News'.
Because Uprising was published in early 2008, Sirota no doubt wants to rewrite many portions of this book – mostly regarding all the developments in what was arguably one of this country's most interesting campaign cycles. Still, the movements he describes will no doubt continue to be forces in years to come, and learning about them and the real changes they are making is inspiring for any political junkie.
The most revealing chapter for me was about a white-collar, high-tech union in Washington state that is out to dispel the "Fantastic Four" myths about America's 21st century workforce: the Marlboro Man Fable, the Legend of Job Security, the Great Labor Shortage Lie and the Great Education Myth. For anyone who thinks the answer to creating jobs in America is simply preventing outsourcing and educating our kids, this chapter is a must read. There is also a great chapter on shareholder activism and its efforts to change ExxonMobile's environmental policy.
Sirota's voice is folksy, often-irreverent and easy-to-read, and his research is illuminating, if not exhaustive. Uprising is not the best political book of the year, but it might prove to be its most relevant. ]]>
I couldn't finish this book. I'm not saying it was horrible, it just never grabbed my attention and at 500+ pages I didn't have the patience to hang. The prose was nothing special, the plot meandering and the paragraph breaks few and far between.
If you're interested in exploring a semi-fictional, philosophical, sexual and bohemian world of modern Latin poets, perhaps this is the book for you. Personally, not enough happened to keep me reading and no passages made me gasp.
There is a buzz these days around Bolano, who died a few years ago, but I'm not sure what it's all about. ]]>
Geof
took the never-ending book quiz.
| questions answered: | 2 |
| correct: | 2 (100.0%) |
| skipped: | 0 |
| best streak: | 2 |
| questions added: | 0 |
]]>
]]>