Steven M. Moore's Blog, page 194
October 23, 2012
Irish Stew #16…
Item: Are you in overload yet? After three debates and still one more to go, I am. (I’m writing this on Monday, before the last debate. Of course, it’ll be all over—as far as debates go—by the time this appears.) Overload’s hard for a political junky to admit, but this 2012 election season has been stressful. Maybe it’s because there’s so much on the line? Both candidates have said that this election is about two different visions for America. It’s true.
While Mr. Obama’s is far from perfect,...
October 18, 2012
Review of Tim Young’s Poisoned Soil…
(Tim Young, Poisoned Soil, Harmony Publishing, 2012, ASIN B009EAV6VY)
Tim Young’s novel Poisoned Soil reminds me of some of Baldacci’s home-spun Appalachian thrillers. It’s a story about greed, guilt, desperate people, and ethnic justice. It’s a simple story that deals with complex issues.
The prose also seems to be an all-American version of magical realism, that Garcia Marquez / Isabel Allende technique of making reality magical and magic real. (Toni Morrison is another American author using...
October 17, 2012
Interview with author Tim Young…
[Today’s interview is with new fiction writer Tim Young, author of the recently released Poisoned Soil, which I’ll review in this blog tomorrow. (If you can’t wait, you’ll also find the review at Bookpleasures.) I think you’ll find Tim to be an interesting fellow. He certainly shows there’s life beyond the Dilbert cube. Read on.]
1) Why, how, and when did you start writing? I only began writing a couple of years ago when I wrote the personal memoir The Accidental Farmers. It tells the story of...
October 16, 2012
Who should NOT vote for Romney?
The recent stories about CEOs telling employees to NOT vote for Obama is a nostalgic reminder of the 2008 election when similar shenanigans occurred. Of course, it’s more than just a suggestion. These corporate bigwigs are threatening their employees with demotions or non-promotions, loss of benefits, or lay-offs. It’s the other side of the coin of paying people to vote for a candidate, common in Third World countries. I’ll let you decide which is worse. In any case, the coal mine company’s C...
October 15, 2012
Irish Stew #15…
[Note to readers of this blog: Due to the date of the presidential debate this week, I might not have an op-ed ready for Thursday. We’ll see. There will be one tomorrow to lead into the debate and, either Thursday or Friday, I will post a book review. Good reading!]
Item: Dynasties…. I hate’em. They’re generally associated with royalty, or greed, or privilege, or money…or all of the above. Two irksome examples are political and sports dynasties. Of course, the potential for a Romney dynasty is...
October 12, 2012
News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #34…
#193: Review of Malena. Some readers might have noticed that I added Edgardo David Holzman to my list of up-and-coming authors for his Malena (see last Monday’s review). If Edgardo never writes another book, this one still puts him high on the list of historical novelists. I happen to love Argentina and its people but hate its juntas. This is my common perception of most of Latin America. Nevertheless, first and foremost, Edgardo wrote a good story—that’s what it’s all about.
I’ve also added S...
October 11, 2012
Romney’s foreign policy, or, how to destroy Earth…for dummies….
I’ve written about Romney’s insomnia-ending pronouncements on foreign policy before (“Now he’s the foreign policy expert?”)—they’re less detailed than his domestic policy and he knows it. Apparently, he still sees an opening in reference to the death of the Libyan ambassador, among other things. The Obama administration was conjecturing that al Qaeda or other terrorists were involved from day one, although they also talked about the possibility that it was associated with that horrible, stupi...
October 9, 2012
Did I do a bad thing?
OK, I apologize. This is supposed to be a family-oriented blog containing my op-ed articles and comments on writing and the publishing business. I lowered myself to the level of Jack Welch, former GE CEO. You probably know that he tweeted about his belief that Obama and his “Chicago gang” cooked the books on the labor stats, reacting negatively to the jump from 8.2% to 7.8% on the unemployment rate.
My apology is for hinting that the tremendous rise in gas prices is a conspiracy by Big Oil to...
October 8, 2012
Review of Edgardo David Holzman’s Malena…
(Edgardo David Holzman, Malena, Nortia Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9842252-7-9)
Malena (1941) is the name of a tango with lyrics by Homero Manzi (Homero Nicolás Manzione Prestara) and music by Lucio Demare (this duo wrote two other tangos I like, namely Negra Maria from 1942 and Tal Vez Será Su Voz from 1943). Malena is also the name of a character in Edgardo David Holzman’s fictional portrayal of some of Latin America’s darkest days—the Dirty War in Argentina from 1976 to 1983. This novel uncover...
October 5, 2012
Irish Stew #14…
Item: “Liar, liar, pants on fire….” Last night’s debate was a pathetic display of how low we have come in fielding viable and interesting presidential candidates. Mr. Romney won as the biggest liar in recent history. Mr. Obama won as the most tired, boring, and uninterested.
While I never cared too much about how a candidate performs in a debate—most candidates are bad actors on a debate stage, including Reagan and Schwarzenegger—I’d like to have at least 20% of the time I spend watching these...
