Russell Atkinson's Blog, page 2
September 26, 2025
Music playlist changes
Hello music lovers. Here are the additions and removals from my playlists. I’ve reduced the number of piano solos quite a bit, added a classical piece, a calypso rock number, a gospel song, and some original folk recordings.
Additions
Bushland Boogie (ABC Kids)
Fall in California (JillSuttie)
Gotta Lot Of Rhythm In My Soul (Dixie Aces)
Honky Tonk Blues (Stacey Earl)
Hungarian Dance No 5 (Johannes Brahms)
Rock Around The Clock (Calypso Steelband)
Rockaria (Electric Light Orchestra)
Skin Deep (Jill Suttie)
Songs Stay Sung (Zoe Mulford with Windborne)
This Old World (Goldia Haynes)
Removed songs (but not deleted, just rotated out of current playlists)
Barrelhouse Woman
Boy from NYC
Down the road a piece
Feel it Still
Jelly Roll
Jimtown Blues
Joe Louis Rag
Memphis Blues
Slow Blues with Stride
Alexanders Ragtime Band
Aunt Hagar’s Blues
Bloominton Breakdown
Death Ray Boogie
Dream Rag
Feel it Still – already done
Just Strollin’
Nordeast Rag
Stompin’ One for Sonny
The Davis Street Blues
Cold Mountain Shout
Down the road a piece
It’s Right Here for you
Little Brothers Little Boogie
Mac’s Boogie
Sammy Price Boogie
Sun Flower Slow Drag
The 31 Blues
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September 24, 2025
A Certain Idea of America by Peggy Noonan
A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings by Peggy Noonan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, is a conservative Republican, but not a MAGA one. If the GOP was still where she is, I would probably still be a Republican. But it isn’t, and I’m not, and Noonan recognizes Trump for what he is. She doesn’t mince words about either party or politicians of any stripe, in fact. She’s very good at criticizing people. This is a collection of those criticisms and other musings, all of which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in her regular column there.
She writes well enough and I agree with much, maybe most, of what she says in the book. But there are some significant problems with it. It is highly repetitive. It is preachy. It is out of chronological order, so in some cases she has declared some things to be certain that turn out not to occur later. At times she seems prescient and other times foolish. I read this for my book club. It got boring so fast that I wouldn’t have read past the first third had I not felt obligated to complete it. As a reading experience Noonan is better absorbed in weekly or monthly articles, not all crammed together like this.
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September 18, 2025
The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry
The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It’s hard to rate a book highly when it is so unpleasant to read. This was billed as a psychological thriller and murder mystery, but it’s better characterized as a horror story. No one who reads this will ever want to take in a foster child or adopt. The writing isn’t bad and there is enough suspense to keep the reader engaged, but it’s a long trip to a disturbing climax.
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September 11, 2025
Book and Dagger by Elyse Graham
Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The book tells about how intellectuals, largely professors in the humanities, but librarians and other bookish types contributed to the intelligence success of the Allies during WWII. There are many exciting or fascinating stories, such as the raid on the Telemark heavy water plant in Norway and Operation Mincemeat. For someone new to the subject the book will be a treat. Unfortunately, this is well-trodden ground and there is very little I haven’t heard or read about often many times in books, movies and TV. I only read this because it was a selection by my book club. While I enjoyed the book in places, it felt like a slog at times since I knew so much of it. I realized the author was trying to put a new slant on it by focusing on the egghead angle, and I’m glad to see them get their due, but I think she was pushing it a little too far. There were places where she said, perhaps rightly, perhaps not, that such and such a triumph was due to the intelligence work of these scholars. In a sense it might be true since every step by every single participant was probably necessary to reach success, that a bit like saying the tailor who made Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves beat Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manilla because he couldn’t have won without those gloves. For us jaded intel types, there’s not much new here.
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August 30, 2025
I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin
I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Abbott is a nerdy, pasty-faced, 20+ year-old living at home with his dad, spending his days playing video games and occasionally working as a Lyft driver. Ether is a wacky young woman in green sunglasses who calls for a ride. She persuades him to log out of Lyft and agree to drive her across the country (from California to Washington DC) for a six-figure sum. The catch is that they have to take a large black box that is sealed shut and leave phones and computers behind so as not to be tracked. The adventure begins there, but Abbott’s online clique get suspicious and also concerned at his absence. Soon various Twitch and Reddit threads start up speculating what happened to him. Some visual evidence is found showing him in his father’s car driving with Ether. The speculating goes crazy with conspiracy theories. A radiation warning symbol is spotted by one commenter on the box. Then online it becomes a plot to explode a dirty bomb at the capitol to wipe out the Supreme Court. Another person claims it’s a dead body in the trunk, and yet another, an alien. As wacky as it becomes, the story is written with wit and humor. It’s a hard trick to be funny and keep up suspense and action but the author pulls it off beautifully. I’ll definitely be looking for more books by this author.
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August 28, 2025
The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I thought I had checked out a crime/detective novel only to find it was a fantasy novel – a teenage girl’s fantasy. A gorgeous teenage boy comes waltzing into a diner in Podunk, America to recruit the teen heroine to be a “natural” sleuth for the FBI in Washington working on serial killer cold cases and she accepts, because of course she did. As a retired FBI agent I found the whole setup beyond ludicrous. The author has done not one iota of research about the FBI’s jurisdiction or practices and clearly did not intend for the story to be even slightly plausible. It’s been over 20 years since I retired, and who knows what god-awful things Kash Patel has done to the FBI, but I’m quite sure it still isn’t sending teen heartthrobs around the country to recruit psychics for help solving a non-existent backlog of cold serial killer cases that the FBI has no jurisdiction over. Obviously I didn’t get very far in the book. And by the way, Ms. Barnes, the word you meant was incredulity, not incredulousness. You need to retake bonehead English.
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August 24, 2025
Current playlist favorites
I just read that a fellow has published the Spotify playlists of a bunch of politicians and celebrities. These were not hacked. It turns out the playlists people create there are public by default. I don’t use Spotify, but I make my playlists public on this blog from time to time. Rather than list the hundreds of songs in my playlists, I thought I would list my favorite performers. These are in order of the number of different recordings in my current playlists. I have hundreds more on my hard drive or phone so it’s really only a sample of my current preferences.
Ethan LeinwandMary FlowerCarl Sonny LeylandLudwig BoeckmannRostyEubie BlakeDoc WatsonChet AtkinsEulalieRagtime Jitterbug BandBob CrosbyEtta BakerJoan BaezSister Rosetta TharpeTime PoolsAlbert AmmonsAlison KrausHenri HerbertLisa BialesMike DowlingDr. JohnThe Broken Circle Breakdown bandThe post Current playlist favorites appeared first on OnWords.
August 20, 2025
An Immense World by Ed Yong
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The subtitle accurately describes the content of the book. It is crammed full of interesting facts about animals, especially about how their senses differ from humans and from other species. I read this because it was assigned reading for a book club. The assignment was only for about half the book, but I read nearly all of it because it was so interesting. I consider myself something of a science fan/nerd, but not so much in the biological sciences. So I was surprised that almost everything in the book was new to me, which, of course made it much more interesting than I expected.
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August 19, 2025
W3W Trump-Putin Alaska meeting
It’s time for another What3Words on the News post. Search W3W in this blog to learn how it works if you don’t already know.
As you know, President Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska a few days ago to try to make a deal ending the war in Ukraine. He chose an appropriate site. Only a few miles from the air force base where it took place, W3W assigned the combo Trump.failed.ally.
To get into a little more detail, the building where it took place was the Arctic Warrior Event Center. It’s a large building with quite a few assigned word combos. Even so, several seem surprisingly apropos. To see how Putin succeeded in stringing Trump along look no further than delay.string.refuse and rival.hangs.effort, which are both in the building. Lastly, Putin beats.leader.anyway.
Trump’s performance may have been anticipated by these spots within the building: wooden.legal.ruler, fails.divisions.liability, and random.lost.played.
Once again What3words has proven to been clairvoyant in assigning word combos to future world events. Bravo!
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August 12, 2025
Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang
Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Julie Chan is an identical twin who became separated from her twin Chloe at a young age when her parents were killed. Julie ended up with an aunt who was nasty, miserly and dishonest. Chloe was adopted by a wealthy white family on the east coast and become a successful online influencer. The girls become almost complete strangers until by an unlikely set of circumstances Julie appears at Chloe’s apartment to find to her dead. Of course Julie is mistaken for Chloe and takes over Chloe’s persona. The basic premise is an old one going back at least as far as Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. A quick google search turned up at least a half dozen twin/doppelganger switcheroo books, movies or TV shows on the first page. I have no objection to using a common trope if the author would do something new with it. Unfortunately, Zhang doesn’t.
The basic plot is a very predictable “grass is greener” fantasy for the most part. Julie falls in with a bunch of vapid, vain Internet influencers, all of whom seem to be fabulously wealthy, especially the queen of them all, Bella Marie. Thus follows hundreds of pages of descriptions of vulgar wealth and obsession with followers and likes on various platforms. Of course there are those who discern that Julie isn’t Chloe and that leads to complications. The ending is … well, let’s just say unsatisfying. The book was boring for anyone like me who has no interest in makeup, social media followers, jewelry, etc. But most of all, the book was disappointing because none of the characters was in the least bit appealing. They range from shallow and greedy to absolutely despicable.
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