Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

John wrote: "I enjoyed Chapter Three on Buddy Guy, someone I am not all that familiar with musically. The great part about this piece was the discussion about all the past blues greats. Guy lived a life immerse..."

John, the hardship of his life ... a hardship that lasted into the period when the blues had been popularized ... really surprised me. I was glad that he overcame it both professionally and personally.

It is great ... I am not sure I had heard it before.

One of my favorite albums for years has been Vol. 8 of the Tatum Group Masterpieces. It is Art Tatum playing with Ben Webster, red Callender, and Bill Douglass. I have all of the Tatum Group Masterpieces (and all of the Tatum Solo Masterpieces, too) but have probably played this one album three times as many times as any of the others. Ben Webster could be one mean son of a bitch if you crossed him, but his playing on these ballads is as sweet as it gets.

Ch. 8 - Large fires had been close to Fort McMurray in recent years. In 2011, the Richardson Fire had burned 2,600 sq. Miles of Forest to the north. But the surrounding forests hadn’t seen a major fire for 80 years. Any tree in the boreal forest is likely to burn about once a century. Some trees like black spruce won’t drop their seeds unless they are in the presence of fire. The boreal forest depends on fire for renewal. May is the worst month for fires in Alberta.

On May 3, the fire burst forth like a nuclear explosion. When it becomes a crown fire, Shan whole trees burst into flames, it is unstoppable. Rank 6 fires can jump major rivers. Analogous to a Cat 5 hurricane.

Ch. 7 - There are record high temperatures (mid 80s) and record low relative humidity (15 percent). And threatening winds. Real concerns that the fire will enter the city.

Bernie Schmitte recalls the Chisholm fire of 2001. A call came from Washington, D.C. on May 23, 2001 asking if Canada had detonated a nuclear device.

A possible city fire was now a threat. These have been rare: Toronto in 1904, San Francisco in 1906, Oakland in 1991. The people of Fort McMurray were warned to act normally but be prepared to react quickly.

Ron wrote: "Finally found the YA version of


Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted fo..

I've read the traditional version, but I had always wanted to read the YA version since I found out they did a YA one. After this version, I'll probably reread the original at some point."</i>

I think that this is a brilliant approach. I read Neil deGrasse Tyson's [book:Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, then bought his Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry for my older granddaughter and enjoyed it myself. I haven't gone back tot he original ... but that is not a bad idea.

Ron,

I'll probably never read that series by Robert Jordan ... but I do enjoy reading some fiction series ... and await almost breathlessly the next addition to that series.

Such organization! It's admirable!

Patrick wrote: " I like the part when Kim Philby is asked to find and identify…himself. Reminiscent of the movies No Way Out and The Big Clock...."

In Baer's The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia, it is a senior Division Director who is the prime suspect and he is put in charge of the investigation at one point. Unreal ... but it happened.

Patrick wrote: " I still retain a fondness for (minor league) baseball and golf, and I like reading sports history as social history .."

I used to go to a lot more baseball games, both the Nationals and the Orioles and minor league games ... but reading about sports as social history is mainly how I approach it also. I also appreciate the quality of sports journalism ... and one aspect that people rarely talk about. That is sports writing as criticism ... so much criticism has seen a disappearance in incomes, or at least good incomes associated with that writing. Surprisingly, some of it is coming back now, especially through Substack. The music critic Ted Gioia had a few good poostings about that. This one might be the best: https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgioi...

But back to the concept of sports writing as criticism. When it's done right, it explains what is worth watching/following and why what is good is good.

Patrick wrote: "Serendipitously, just a few days before the Canadian wildfires hit the US news big-time, I started reading The Chinchaga Firestorm: When the Moon and Sun Turned Blue. That occurred ..."

A shorter comment ... in a thread on Facebook, a person living in California whined about the coverage given to the Canadian wildfires. Her most annoying comment was that she lived in California the Canadian wildfires didn't measure up to California widfires. I think it was good that all ignored her self-proclaimed ignorance.

Lance wrote: "After finishing a basketball book, When the Game Was War: The NBA's Greatest Season, I am switching sports to figure skating - now starting Nathan Chen’s memoir [book:One Jump at a ..."

When I was young, I watched every sports broadcast I could, including figure skating and even bowling. These days, I watch virtually no sports--a little baseball and a few NFL games- but still read about it a good bit.

Patrick wrote: "One key takeaway from Guy Burgess: The Spy Who Knew Everyone is that if hadn’t been Burgess et al, it could easily have been others, because everything in Britain was based on the o..."

The constitutional protections given to individuals sometimes make it really hard for counterintelligence officers to build a case that will stand up in court. That was true in the UK with the Cambridge Five, where none were prosecuted for spying. And more recently it was true in the case of a suspected mole in the CIA, where Robert Baer recounted investigations that spanned years in The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia.

Patrick wrote: "Serendipitously, just a few days before the Canadian wildfires hit the US news big-time, I started reading The Chinchaga Firestorm: When the Moon and Sun Turned Blue. That occurred ..."

Patrick, I'm halfway through the John Valliant's Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. IThe book is about the 2016 Fort McMurray fire. It's an amazing book with the unexpected feature of giving the reader a history of the Alberta tar/oil sands and the Fort McMurray complex set up to do the processing of the bitumen.

What really makes the book special for me is how once you get into this wildfire, it's truly visceral. I can only remember two other books that gripped me like this. One was Michael Herr's Dispatches, which plunged you right into the combat of the Vietnam War and the other Bill Buford's Among the Thugs about this experience running with a soccer "firm" fighting other fans and the police.

And the Vailliant book has this to say about the Chinchaga Fore of 1950:

"Virtually unknown and, at the time, unseen by all but a handful of people, is the Chinchaga Fire of 1950, the largest fire ever recorded in North America. Igniting on the border of British Columbia and Alberta in June of that year, it burned eastward across northern Alberta for more than four months, impacting approximately 4 million acres, or 6,400 square miles, of forest (roughly, the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island, or three times the size of Prince Edward Island). The fire generated a smoke plume so large it came to be known as the Great Smoke Pall of 1950. Rising forty thousand feet into the stratosphere, the plume’s colossal umbra lowered average temperatures by several degrees, caused birds to roost at midday, and created weird visual effects as it circled the Northern Hemisphere, including widespread reports of lavender suns and blue moons. Prior to the Chinchaga Fire, the last time such effects had been reported on this scale was following the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883."

Vaillant, John. Fire Weather (p. 16). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

John, I finished the chapter also. Yeah, the best voice. And Chuck Rainey's comments were amazing. (Have you ever watched the film on the Wrecking Crew ... sort of essential to understand the LA sound.)

Her personal story of survival is really amazing. and she was so used by her father and others for their own ends. The way she wanted to be paid in cash was exactly the same as how Chuck Berry wanted to be paid ... in cash and up front ... or no performance. And it was understandable after they had witnessed what happened to others. But it also led to the following:

"Elliott and his representatives also encountered a quality of chaos that often surrounds Franklin’s business affairs. Lawyers and agents came and went. Franklin, who is the wariest of personalities, deflected and delayed, even as some of her closest friends encouraged her to settle the deal and enjoy the inevitable attention that would come with Amazing Grace. “Aretha gets offended when she thinks you think you’re getting over on her,” Tavis Smiley told me. “It’s hard to know why that line gets blurred from time to time, between making people respect you and self-sabotage. But don’t ever underestimate the power of the personal. ‘Respect’ is not just a song to Aretha. It’s the mantra for her life. “Aretha authorizes her own reality, and sometimes it’s hard to juxtapose that reality to the reality,”

Remnick, David. Holding the Note (p. 62). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. "

John, I bought the Ammons book. I knew of him but have read very few of his poems. And while I try not to post a second poem of the day, I just stole this one from Mark Edmundson's Facebook postings today.

Happy Fourth of July from Walt.
I Hear America Singing
BY WALT WHITMAN

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Scribd just gets better and better.

B&N is now doing so well that instead of dying the biggest threat is that it may become very attractive as an acquisition. Accordingly I think that Nppk books are pretty safe.

Ron, I just bought the Dauber book on American Comics. I'm excited to read it.

Ron, no permission needed to start this thread! Generally speaking. I'm happy if people start threads but not create folders ... except in the Buddy Reads folder, where I'll handle the threads also.

My first choice for books that I'm going to read remains Amazon Kindle books. I go way back with ebooks, to Microsoft Reader ... when that disappeared. your Ebooks were gone ... although Microsoft did refund some money.

Amazon is likely to be the Last Man Standing when other E-Readers go ... after that I would bet on Kobo and then the Nook. I do like the ease of checking out books from the local library and reading them on my Paperwhite. Our local library is great for popular fiction (although with long waits sometimes). It's not so good for nonfiction.


But I do support B&N and one local independent book store when it comes to buying books for gifts or for my granddaughters.