Sunday, March 13, 2005
50 book challenge:
7 Dude where's my country? Michael Moore.
8 Cause of Death Patrica Cornwell
9 Paris Underground Etta Shibber 1944
Moore's book is a rant, an art form perfected online, adapted here to book form.
It's alternatively informative and annoying. Some good stats, some fun conspiracy theory, soem worthwhile social criticism. Call me a snob, but I'm more used to dry exposition. Here he's shooting for a mass audience,and uses gimmicks to try to hold their attention. Like the chapter where he compares republicans to hamburgers, or the current chapter is written from the point of view of god. Yes, Moore, here, is playing God - who does he think he is, a doctor? So i'm a bit offput, but still reading, because in between the invective he has some interesting facts and theories.
e.g. - the patriot act is an acronym. the success of moore's books and movies has a lot to do with how easy a target he has. if somebody say in 1984 had written this stuff about what the bush administration would be like, it would have been dismissed as farce.
This book was a gift from my tenant/client/friend Joell Palmer. Joell's main claim to fame is his case Edmonds v Indianapolis, that ended the drug roadblocks.
Cause of Death was a mystery novel by a woman author with a women protagonist, a genre i tend to like. Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngao Marsh, er, that woman who wrote about Dagliesh... I was thinking, but haven't doublechecked, that this is the woman who may have solved the Jack the Ripper mystery. It starts off well as a police procedural from the POV of a medical examiner. Cheryl Tiegs, Crossing Jordon, Quincy, it's been done well before. Holmes was apparently modeled on a medical examiner.
But about halfway through the book I lost suspension of disbelief. Too many neonazis, nuclear submarines, dirty cops, terrorists, hackers... Add a giant lizard, and you'd be able to say it's been done better in Cryptonomicon. Written in 96, the author seemed to know a lot about running a morgue but pretty much nothing about hacking or neonazi cults. What I liked was it was a book I could and did read in a day, while my computer defragged, unlike the Kennedy book that took me all February. There's a place for escapist literature, and this was. But I can't recommend it.
I got this book in a box of books that were thrown away by the thift store that got them when they were thrown away by the jail. Our local privately run jail has some good books, but, from what I hear, a prison guard instead of a librarian, a completely inadequate law library, and is almost never open to the inmates, so the good books there go to waste, and get thrown away after a few years of no one checking them out. While the women's prison a mile a way is woefully short of books.
Sigh.
9 Paris Underground Etta Shibber 1944
Now here's a book with nazis and submarines and intrigue, that works. But it has the advantage of being non-fiction. Just started it.
7 Dude where's my country? Michael Moore.
8 Cause of Death Patrica Cornwell
9 Paris Underground Etta Shibber 1944
Moore's book is a rant, an art form perfected online, adapted here to book form.
It's alternatively informative and annoying. Some good stats, some fun conspiracy theory, soem worthwhile social criticism. Call me a snob, but I'm more used to dry exposition. Here he's shooting for a mass audience,and uses gimmicks to try to hold their attention. Like the chapter where he compares republicans to hamburgers, or the current chapter is written from the point of view of god. Yes, Moore, here, is playing God - who does he think he is, a doctor? So i'm a bit offput, but still reading, because in between the invective he has some interesting facts and theories.
e.g. - the patriot act is an acronym. the success of moore's books and movies has a lot to do with how easy a target he has. if somebody say in 1984 had written this stuff about what the bush administration would be like, it would have been dismissed as farce.
This book was a gift from my tenant/client/friend Joell Palmer. Joell's main claim to fame is his case Edmonds v Indianapolis, that ended the drug roadblocks.
Cause of Death was a mystery novel by a woman author with a women protagonist, a genre i tend to like. Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngao Marsh, er, that woman who wrote about Dagliesh... I was thinking, but haven't doublechecked, that this is the woman who may have solved the Jack the Ripper mystery. It starts off well as a police procedural from the POV of a medical examiner. Cheryl Tiegs, Crossing Jordon, Quincy, it's been done well before. Holmes was apparently modeled on a medical examiner.
But about halfway through the book I lost suspension of disbelief. Too many neonazis, nuclear submarines, dirty cops, terrorists, hackers... Add a giant lizard, and you'd be able to say it's been done better in Cryptonomicon. Written in 96, the author seemed to know a lot about running a morgue but pretty much nothing about hacking or neonazi cults. What I liked was it was a book I could and did read in a day, while my computer defragged, unlike the Kennedy book that took me all February. There's a place for escapist literature, and this was. But I can't recommend it.
I got this book in a box of books that were thrown away by the thift store that got them when they were thrown away by the jail. Our local privately run jail has some good books, but, from what I hear, a prison guard instead of a librarian, a completely inadequate law library, and is almost never open to the inmates, so the good books there go to waste, and get thrown away after a few years of no one checking them out. While the women's prison a mile a way is woefully short of books.
Sigh.
9 Paris Underground Etta Shibber 1944
Now here's a book with nazis and submarines and intrigue, that works. But it has the advantage of being non-fiction. Just started it.
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