Thursday, March 22, 2007
What I'm reading:
I bought some books to take with me for a study that I didn't get into,and got sick while traveling to screen for, so I've been reading them, or trying to.
I think I'm likely to be back on track for 50 books in 2007, since the medical studies I'll be doing will leave lots of time to read.
I had heard great things about A Confederacy of Dunces. The author wrote one book, killed himself,and his mother took the book to a publisher, who thought it was wonderful. I found it awful. The main character is selfish in the not good way, stupid in a pedantic way, oafish,and has misadventures set in New Orleans. This is all considered a comic riot, only I found it hateful or sad or something like that. It is bleak like Bleak House if not quite as long. I gave up a few hundred pages into it.
A book I made the mistake of finishing was John LeCarre, the Honorable Schoolboy.
It's about british espionage in Hong Kong circa 1974. The characters communicate in oblique injokes and very british idiom, so I often couldn't understand what they were saying. I'm someone who generally likes British novels, Christie or Wodehouse or Maugham or Sayers or my internet friends who write stories about their boyhood boarding school lives. And I'd liked LeCarre's the Taylor of Panama, in which things actually happen, to believable characters. But I couldn't get into this one at all.
I don't know if it's my own rotten mood, (I've been both ill and having a bout of depression related to financial stresses), or whether he improved greatly as a writer in between the two books, or that this one just wasn't my cup of tea.
Spy guy novels in the Clancy line are not my usual genre.
Anyway, currently I'm reading and enjoying All's Fair, by James Carville and Mary Matalin. It has a great gimmick - lovers working opposite sides of a presidential campaign, the 92 Bush-Clinton-Perot race. She's somewhat likeable, him a bit less so.
Unlike all the Kennedy and LBJ campaign books I've read, I remember this one. I was a very small player in that election, but a player, so it's interesting to read the war room stories and the air force one gossip, very topical since we have the current incarnations of Bush and Clinton. On the other hand, it's not a must read.
It's a not a thrilling page turner. It's not especially good either as a romance or as a campaign journal. I'm not learning a lot, don't care deeply about the players, and we already know how it will turn out. Carville is frank about being a hired gun and a spin doctor, which could be a great set up for fun stories, but there's not much new here. Matalin is sincere as a reformed hippie, a genuine person among a bunch of stuffed shirts who are righteous compared to their corrupt opponent, but self-righteous so we don't really care. Unlimited Access by Gary Aldrich was a much better book about the culture clash between these two camps. Aldrich was an FBI agent assigned to do security clearances for the incoming Clinton gang, and has a story with drama and humor. I'd like to see it as a movie with Dan Acroyd playing the Joe Friday character, as he did in Dragnet and Exit to Eden. All's Fair misses the drama and the humor.
The tension between the Clintons and the Bushes is a bit like the tension between LBJ and the Kennedys. LBJ was a crook, crass and tacky, a drunk, powermad, egomaniacal.
The Kennedys were something worse. The Clintons are crooks, crass, tacky, from a culture of drug use, powermad and egomanical. The Bushes are something worse, smug and self-righteous, holier than thou.
It brings to mind the campaign for the corrupt Governor Edwards of Louisiana, who was running against David Duke. The bumper stickers said, "vote for the crook - it's important!" It seems, at this early date, that the Democrats will pick Hillary, or somneone else just as bad, instead of running a credible mainstream candidate.
That leaves a window of opportunity for the GOP to settle on the worst they can find.
I don't yet know who that would be - McCain perhaps.
They no longer let me vote - I'm unwilling to display a voting license.
Meanwhile, I don't see anythone worth voting voting for. Ron Paul, who I respect, is in the race, but I doubt he will last long past New Hampshire.
That concludes today's cynical rant and book report.
I bought some books to take with me for a study that I didn't get into,and got sick while traveling to screen for, so I've been reading them, or trying to.
I think I'm likely to be back on track for 50 books in 2007, since the medical studies I'll be doing will leave lots of time to read.
I had heard great things about A Confederacy of Dunces. The author wrote one book, killed himself,and his mother took the book to a publisher, who thought it was wonderful. I found it awful. The main character is selfish in the not good way, stupid in a pedantic way, oafish,and has misadventures set in New Orleans. This is all considered a comic riot, only I found it hateful or sad or something like that. It is bleak like Bleak House if not quite as long. I gave up a few hundred pages into it.
A book I made the mistake of finishing was John LeCarre, the Honorable Schoolboy.
It's about british espionage in Hong Kong circa 1974. The characters communicate in oblique injokes and very british idiom, so I often couldn't understand what they were saying. I'm someone who generally likes British novels, Christie or Wodehouse or Maugham or Sayers or my internet friends who write stories about their boyhood boarding school lives. And I'd liked LeCarre's the Taylor of Panama, in which things actually happen, to believable characters. But I couldn't get into this one at all.
I don't know if it's my own rotten mood, (I've been both ill and having a bout of depression related to financial stresses), or whether he improved greatly as a writer in between the two books, or that this one just wasn't my cup of tea.
Spy guy novels in the Clancy line are not my usual genre.
Anyway, currently I'm reading and enjoying All's Fair, by James Carville and Mary Matalin. It has a great gimmick - lovers working opposite sides of a presidential campaign, the 92 Bush-Clinton-Perot race. She's somewhat likeable, him a bit less so.
Unlike all the Kennedy and LBJ campaign books I've read, I remember this one. I was a very small player in that election, but a player, so it's interesting to read the war room stories and the air force one gossip, very topical since we have the current incarnations of Bush and Clinton. On the other hand, it's not a must read.
It's a not a thrilling page turner. It's not especially good either as a romance or as a campaign journal. I'm not learning a lot, don't care deeply about the players, and we already know how it will turn out. Carville is frank about being a hired gun and a spin doctor, which could be a great set up for fun stories, but there's not much new here. Matalin is sincere as a reformed hippie, a genuine person among a bunch of stuffed shirts who are righteous compared to their corrupt opponent, but self-righteous so we don't really care. Unlimited Access by Gary Aldrich was a much better book about the culture clash between these two camps. Aldrich was an FBI agent assigned to do security clearances for the incoming Clinton gang, and has a story with drama and humor. I'd like to see it as a movie with Dan Acroyd playing the Joe Friday character, as he did in Dragnet and Exit to Eden. All's Fair misses the drama and the humor.
The tension between the Clintons and the Bushes is a bit like the tension between LBJ and the Kennedys. LBJ was a crook, crass and tacky, a drunk, powermad, egomaniacal.
The Kennedys were something worse. The Clintons are crooks, crass, tacky, from a culture of drug use, powermad and egomanical. The Bushes are something worse, smug and self-righteous, holier than thou.
It brings to mind the campaign for the corrupt Governor Edwards of Louisiana, who was running against David Duke. The bumper stickers said, "vote for the crook - it's important!" It seems, at this early date, that the Democrats will pick Hillary, or somneone else just as bad, instead of running a credible mainstream candidate.
That leaves a window of opportunity for the GOP to settle on the worst they can find.
I don't yet know who that would be - McCain perhaps.
They no longer let me vote - I'm unwilling to display a voting license.
Meanwhile, I don't see anythone worth voting voting for. Ron Paul, who I respect, is in the race, but I doubt he will last long past New Hampshire.
That concludes today's cynical rant and book report.
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