Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 51

"The Arsenal of Democracy" by A. J. Baime

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 10 - KRLA 870 AM Los AngelesThe subtitle of this World War II history recaps the story: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm America at War. At its heart, it’s a father-son feud – between Nazi sympathizer and professed pacifist Henry Ford and his future-minded son Edsel. Against his father’s judgment, in 1941 Edsel answered FDR’s appeal for mass production of warplanes. Starting from bare farmland, the Ford company built the enormous Willow Run plant. Applying Henry’s assembly-line methods, it was capable of turning out one 60,000-pound bomber every day. Edsel thought it was perfectly reasonable to build one bomber every hour. The plant was operational in less than two years, when the Germans had been cranking out thousands of aircraft for more than a decade. That’s how fast and effectively American ingenuity met the challenge. It’s both inspiring and sobering, as we recognize that sometimes Big Government is called upon to do big things. Author A. J. Baime is an editor at Playboy magazine. This engaging story is proof that he’s more than a pretty face. For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My humorous novel Mr. Ballpoint is about a father and son who fought the wacky Pen Wars of 1945. You can find readings from the book in my BoychikLit.com podcasts.
Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

"Elizabeth the First Wife" by Lian Dolan

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 9 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles
The genre I call boychik lit is centered on men. Chick lit – like Sex and the City – is relationship games for women. Sometimes I read chick lit to see what our better halves are thinking. Elizabeth the First Wife is about Elizabeth Lancaster, a Shakespeare scholar from Pasadena, who is recently divorced from a famous Hollywood boy-toy. He barges back into her life to ask her to coach him in a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he hopes will help him shake his reputation as an empty-headed hunk. As they prepare to do the show at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, real-life lovers chase each other ridiculously around the maypole of both serious and casual relationships. Men, you might read Elizabeth the First Wife to find out what they think, but if you think you’ll get a clue, think again.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My new novel Christmas Karma is also set in Pasadena, and I think women as well as men will find it funny.
Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

"The Woody" by Peter Lefcourt

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 8 - KRLA 870 AM Los AngelesI hold author Peter Lecourt in high regard as a skilled practitioner of what I call boychik lit, or male-centered comic fiction. The Woody is a wacky satire about boneheaded liaisons in Washington politics, featuring an unlucky Congressman who gets caught with his pants down. The appearance of this book in the late 1990s coincided with the early Clinton scandals, although it's just possible the events that inspired it had more to do with the embarrassments of Gary Hart's earlier presidential campaign. As Jackie Mason said, "That guy was on top of everything!"
It's stunning to think how innocent those days now seem by comparison. But as a lesson in electoral politics along with hysterical examples of how politicians screw things up, you can’t beat The Woody.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. If you like political satire, try my novel Farnsworth’s Revenge. And you can catch these audio book reviews on BoychikLit.com.
Cross-posted to Goodreads.com.
Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

"My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson" by Sidney Rosen

My Voice Will Go with You is a nonfiction collection of essays.
Psychiatrist Milton Erickson is regarded as the father of neurolinguistic programming. This book is a collection of very short stories he told clients who were in a trance state as a means of reprogramming their thinking about a problem they brought to him. Erickson believed that stories heard and then forgotten have the most power over future actions. That's because, once the conscious, censoring mind has ceased analyzing the experience, the persistent memory of the story can percolate in the unconscious. The book illustrates vividly the power of a story to transform thinking and behavior--immediately. The accompanying commentary by author Sidney Rosen tells why each story is effective in changing behavior.
My Voice Will Go with You. I sincerely hope it does.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My new humorous novel Christmas Karma will be released in paperback and Kindle on November 8th, and you can find these audio clips on BoychikLit.com.

Read more in my review of this book on Goodreads.com.
Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

Holiday Book Release "Christmas Karma" Promotion

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Goodreads Book Giveaway Christmas Karma by Gerald Everett Jones Giveaway ends October 20, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

"Shakespeare" by Bill Bryson

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 6 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson is a nonfiction survey of what few facts are known about the famous playwright.
Shakespeare's vocabulary included about 20,000 words. You probably know about 50,000. But – get this -- when Shakespeare couldn't find an appropriate word, he just made one up.
In fact, he gave about 800 words to us. Among these are: abstemious, assassination, barefaced, excellent, zany, and countless others, including countless.
Shakespeare's familiar turns of a phrase included: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, be in a pickle, the milk of human kindness, salad days, and foregone conclusion.
Turns out, the two biggest influences on our language have been The King James Bible, a brand-new book in Shakespeare’s day, and his plays.
Hey, read anything by Bill Bryson. He knows a thing or two.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. You’ll find many humorous turns of phrase in my novel Mr. Ballpoint, and you can catch these audio clips on BoychikLit.com.
Read more about Bryson's Shakespeare.

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

"Right Ho, Jeeves" by P. G. Wodehouse

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 5 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles


Set in the Roaring 'Twenties, Right Ho, Jeeves by the British humorist P.G. Wodehouse is a collection of stories about a young wealthy gentleman, Bertie Wooster, and his manservant Jeeves. Bertie is well-meaning, but lazy and not particularly bright. He freely admits Jeeves is the brainy one. Bertie always makes a mess of getting a chum out of romantic or money trouble, and Jeeves always comes up with a some cockeyed scheme that saves the day.
Just after World War I, the male population of Europe had been decimated by the war. Bertie’s comic fear of his dowager aunt reflected the reality that much of England’s  private wealth was then in the hands of older women. Young men like him who had been infants during the war were so appalled by the state of the world that they coped by acting like bratty little boys who refused to grow up.So – avoid responsibility, romantic entanglements, and financial conundrums. Fear marriage and anyone in uniform. Pursue amusement, particularly if a practical joke will end in what Bertie’s chums call a "good wheeze." Fraternize with like-minded adult males who, despite their elevated social standing, aspire to remain boys. Encourage food fights, but only with dinner rolls so as not to create a mess for which responsibility would have to be assumed. Coordinate rugby scrums in the clubroom, but only if fragile crockery has first been cleared. Solving real-world problems (such as romantic entanglements) by way of practical jokes and stratagems might not work but it's always worth a good try.Our world – like his – is anything but silly these days. But sometimes what Bertie called a “good wheeze” is just the thing to put a chap right.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. You’ll find some silliness in my novel Mr. Ballpoint, and you can listen to these audio reviews on www.boychiklit.com.
Read my longer review of Right Ho, Jeeves here and on Goodreads.com.
Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

"Sweet Tooth" by Ian McEwan

Boychik Lit Book Reviews = No. 4 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles
 
Sweet Tooth by Ian MacEwan is a British spy novel about and narrated by a female operative. She’s a bright, Cambridge math wiz recruited by the secret service to mislead an aspiring novelist into becoming an anti-Communist propaganda tool. It’s not about murder or mayhem so much as violence to the truth – the dirty business of government-sponsored disinformation. No big surprise, she falls in love with him and they begin an affair. Problem is, she can never bring herself to tell him that he’s her joe and she’s playing him for a fool. But it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that eventually this plot gets pulled inside out, when we learn the novelist has been spying on her all along. In the end, it’s all about betrayal – as all good spy novels are – about the lies we tell to get what we want while protecting ourselves. I think you’ll enjoy Sweet Tooth , but you might not ever look at your sweetheart quite the same way again.

For Boychik Lit, I'm Gerald Everett Jones. Pick up my new humorous novel Mr. Ballpoint, and follow my rants on BoychikLit.com.

Cross-posted to Goodreads.com

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

Gerald talks with Chris Poublon on WCAP radio Midday Cafe

Host Jack Baldwin was under the weather that day, so producer Chris Poublon interviewed me on the air for a full 20-minute segment. Chris had received an advance review copy of Mr. Ballpoint, and I believe him when he said he read it and was thoroughly entertained. We talked about the Pen Wars and about why there aren't more father-son comedies. I was also able to describe how one of  huckster Milton Reynolds' promotions backfired when he inscribed hundreds of pens with "I Swiped This Pen from Harry S. Truman."

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 2 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles Three years ago, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes won Britain’s top literary prize. You will either be fascinated by this book, or it just might infuriate you.
Main character Tony Webster is middle-aged and reflecting back on his life. Just when he thinks he has it all sorted, he has to cope with troublesome consequences from choices he made as a young man. He has to face the possibility that he may have been responsible for his best friend’s death, and he may be the father of an illegitimate child.
The two people who know the facts are gone. The third isn’t talking, and her diary, which could have revealed everything, is probably lost.
Barnes shows us how Tony rewrites history so as to make himself the hero of his own story. Or, at the very least, justify his actions. And, so do all of us. Families, communities, and nations continually adjust the favorable light on their actions over time.
Why might you be infuriated? Because, bravely I think for an author, Barnes provides only the sense of an ending.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. Read my hilarious new novel Mr.Ballpoint, and follow my rants at www.boychiklit.com.


Full Review (cross-posted on Goodreads.com)Spoiler Alert!In terms of overt clues and Adrian's equation, Adrian had an affair (perhaps not so brief, near the end of his life) with Veronica's mother Sarah, who bore the child, also named Adrian, who was later sent (after Sarah's death?) to a caregiver facility.
I think what nags at Tony at the end is that there are other possibilities that could fit the evidence better. Unless Veronica spills it, or Adrian's diary is not burnt after all, Tony can never know for sure. In all scenarios he's guilty, in some achingly more than in others.
The child could have been Veronica's by Adrian or by Tony. The memory of the trip to the river seems to imply a night of unprotected, romantic sex. Sarah might have cared for the baby when Veronica couldn't, or wouldn't. Veronica's pregnancy would have been when she and Adrian were newlyweds. He might have died thinking the baby was his. Or sure that it wasn't. Or not sure at all and tormented by it.
Tony says the child (seen now as a young man) looks like the presumed father, his old friend Adrian. But did Tony look like Adrian? Is Tony looking into a mirror and denying the familiarity he sees? Is Tony's remarking on the resemblance a clue to throw us off the track?
The child could have been Sarah's by Tony. This strange possibility best explains: 1) Sarah's bequest, 2) Veronica's rage, and 3) Sarah's enigmatic parting gesture to Tony, implying a secret they shared (that she'd seduced him during the visit). The fact that Adrian has repressed the memory of the sex act (but not the washing up after) would seem totally implausible, except in the context of this book which is all about how our minds rewrite history to suit our opinion of ourselves.
It's a mind twister, and credit Barnes for giving plenty of clues but being brave enough to perplex his readers by providing only the sense of an ending.  Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv