BOOKS THREAD

[slappy4428]

I'm about finished with Brave New World. I thought I'd read it before, but I was wrong. I still can't believe it was actually written in 1932.

Try "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis...


I'm about to start rereading my favorite trilogy from my college years: all by John Powers -- Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up, Last Catholic in America, and The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice Cream God...
If you were a Catholic Male growing up in the 60s, 70s and 80s in a large city, this was you.

Will it shock me as much as the end of Brave New World?

No, but it will strike you as familiar with current events with the current administration...

 

[luckyducky]

I read Mike Magnuson's "Heft on Wheels: Field Guide to Doing a 180" a couple weeks ago. I love to read but hadn't finished a book in at least six months. Breezed through this one in one day of cross-country travel. It's Magnuson's story of going from fatty to a fit bike racer and all the stuff he dealt with as part of it. Hard to put down and, thankfully, super inspiring to make me kick my own ass.

 

[User 7467]

Sacred Games ... arrived in the mail today. Book clubs rock. Has anybody read on of these?

It was a little long, but for the most part I didn't notice -- except when I was carrying this fat hardcover book around on the subway!

I got Sacred Games to read as a book club selection (not my choice). At hardback 900 pages, I have a mental block to overcome simply to open it... and commit to it, I suppose. Does this sound familiar?

The thing is big. No doubt about it. Right now, it's on my end table. I've been using it to prop up my laptop. Hell, if it had legs, it could be an end table. I also got Dianetics. That's another 500-600 pages of reading. I'm definitely going to need a week's worth of steady commitment to even put a dent in one of these suckers.

Five months later ... 900 pages finished!
The book was amazing... a modern epic set in Bombay/Mumbai, pitting a self-made gangster and a middling police detective.
Now on to "Lush Life" ....

 

[Birdscribe]

I just finished "1920: The Year Of Six Presidents" by David Pietrusza. My initial reaction is that Pietrusza took a forgotten election and found all of the drama that came with having 6 presidents on the national stage (TR, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, FDR). He did a nice job showing how Hoover was the Colin Powell of 1920 and how impetious, haughty and petty Wilson was. While the book was a good read, I never really thought it found the right narrative to tie all of the loose ends together. It read more like a series of well-done viginettes than an overarching story.

Up next is 15 Stars about Eisenhower, MacArthur and Marshall.

I know I said "Rome 1960" was next on the word parade, but I picked up "15 Stars" in the Oakland Mall while killing time on my way to the airport today.

Started reading it on the plane home. A bit slow right now. I didn't realize that the author is pushing 80. Impressive.

 

[PopeDirkBenedict]

Birdscribe,

That's my biggest complaint about 15 Stars. It throws the reader into the middle of some very tepid action without a ton of context. I think there could be a very good book written about the three that only focuses on their post WWII lives/paths.

 

[pressboxramblings07]

Currently reading:

I'm only a couple of chapters in right now, but he's got some powerful, powerful stuff to tell about the situation in Darfur. His writing is often all over the place with different stories he's played part in, but overall, it's pretty gripping.

I'll keep in touch.

 

[friend of the friendless]

Sirs, Madames,

Reading Denis Johnson's Angels. I liked Jesus' Son but Already Dead, well, I pitched it after 100 semi-coherent pages (self-proclaimed "California Gothic). I figured I want to work up to Tree of Smoke.

YD&OHS, etc

 

[Huggy]

Sirs, Madames,

Reading Denis Johnson's Angels. I liked Jesus' Son but Already Dead, well, I pitched it after 100 semi-coherent pages (self-proclaimed "California Gothic). I figured I want to work up to Tree of Smoke.

YD&OHS, etc

I'm catching up with the four-part short story (maybe it's a novella) he's writing for Playboy (part three just came out) called Nobody Move. Not bad stuff.

 

[JayFarrar]

Reading A.J. Jacobs's My year of living biblically for the book club.

Apparently we can now only read books written by Esquire writers for book club now.

Anyway, I'm a chapter in and it has been really good so far. I like it.

 

[PopeDirkBenedict]

I am reading "Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas" by Bruce Allen Murphy. The book is about as balanced of a portrait of Douglas as can probably be written. Douglas was an amazingly accomplished liar; he is on par with LBJ in his ability to make up details about his past out of whole cloth. When a publisher rejected a rambling travelogue that Douglas wanted to publish (because he always near broke), Douglas re-wrote it to include stories about overcoming a battle of childhood polio. The book was a huge success and nearly every subsequent profile of him included the childhood polio early on in the story. The problem was that Douglas never suffered from anything worse than colic as a child. Murphy also points out that Douglas' opinions veered heavily to the right when it looked like he might be FDR's running mate in 44 or the nominee in 48.

But Murphy is also willing to look at the good Douglas did on the court as well. Well worth the read, even if the bad is much more interesting than the good.

 

[finishthehat]

Anyone know of a good nuts-and-bolts presidential-campaign post-mortem book?

My teenager is getting into that stuff, and would like to know, for example, what it actually means when reporters say someone's Iowa campaign was/is "disorganized."

He's a teen, so obviously I'm looking for something pretty readable and not too highly technical. Also not too biographical, in terms of the candidates, which eliminates that Richard Ben Cramer book of a while back.

Anyway, if anyone has any tips, I'd appreciate it. Non-Clinton a plus.

 

[Birdscribe]

Anyone know of a good nuts-and-bolts presidential-campaign post-mortem book?

My teenager is getting into that stuff, and would like to know, for example, what it actually means when reporters say someone's Iowa campaign was/is "disorganized."

He's a teen, so obviously I'm looking for something pretty readable and not too highly technical. Also not too biographical, in terms of the candidates, which eliminates that Richard Ben Cramer book of a while back.

Anyway, if anyone has any tips, I'd appreciate it. Non-Clinton a plus.

Start him with Theodore White's seminal "The Making of the President, 1960". It all began there.

Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus" still has legs because of all the great stories that came out of that.

 

[Gold]

Anyone know of a good nuts-and-bolts presidential-campaign post-mortem book?

My teenager is getting into that stuff, and would like to know, for example, what it actually means when reporters say someone's Iowa campaign was/is "disorganized."

He's a teen, so obviously I'm looking for something pretty readable and not too highly technical. Also not too biographical, in terms of the candidates, which eliminates that Richard Ben Cramer book of a while back.

Anyway, if anyone has any tips, I'd appreciate it. Non-Clinton a plus.

Start him with Theodore Wright's seminal "The Making of the President, 1960". It all began there.

Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus" still has legs because of all the great stories that came out of that.

I would agree with birdscribe's suggestion on Theodore White's book about the 1960 election, but I think White's books got weaker as time went on.

I think it was Richard Reeves who wrote a book about the 1976 Democratic convestion that was pretty good.

I believe Jeffrey Toobin wrote a book about the 2000 Florida recount that was very insightful, and that is worth reading.

Another book is Marathon, which descirbed events from 1972 to 1976 - I think Jules Witcover wrote that book.

 

[Birdscribe]

Anyone know of a good nuts-and-bolts presidential-campaign post-mortem book?

My teenager is getting into that stuff, and would like to know, for example, what it actually means when reporters say someone's Iowa campaign was/is "disorganized."

He's a teen, so obviously I'm looking for something pretty readable and not too highly technical. Also not too biographical, in terms of the candidates, which eliminates that Richard Ben Cramer book of a while back.

Anyway, if anyone has any tips, I'd appreciate it. Non-Clinton a plus.

Start him with Theodore White's seminal "The Making of the President, 1960". It all began there.

Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus" still has legs because of all the great stories that came out of that.

I would agree with birdscribe's suggestion on Theodore White's book about the 1960 election, but I think White's books got weaker as time went on.

I think it was Richard Reeves who wrote a book about the 1976 Democratic convestion that was pretty good.

I believe Jeffrey Toobin wrote a book about the 2000 Florida recount that was very insightful, and that is worth reading.

Another book is Marathon, which descirbed events from 1972 to 1976 - I think Jules Witcover wrote that book.

 

[finishthehat]

Thanks for all those. I've read them and enjoyed them, but the 1960 and 1976 races might be too "ancient history" for him.

Witcover and Germond used to do one of these after every cycle. I think, like White's, they got formulaic after a while.

But he does like JFK, so I might have him give the 1960 book a shot.

 

[PopeDirkBenedict]

Hmmm....one of the best campaign books I have read is Ambling Into History by Frank Bruni. I am not sure it is exactly what your son is looking for in terms of nuts and bolts, but it does a very good job of showing an inside peak of the Bush 2000 campaign.

I am not sure your son will find exactly what he is looking for simply because pure campaign books are hard to find for recent campaigns. The closest thing I can recall to the type of article/book your son is looking for is that USNWR did a very good article in the summer of 2004 about how John Kerry came back on Dean et al in IA/NH.

 

[Gold]

The Newsweek article about Kerry campaign immediately after the election might be something recent which would provide some insight.

Another book about politics which is good was by Ed Rollins which was written around 1996. I can't remember the title right away.

 

[finishthehat]

The Newsweek article about Kerry campaign immediately after the election might be something recent which would provide some insight.

Another book about politics which is good was by Ed Rollins which was written around 1996. I can't remember the title right away.

Thanks -- now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure Newsweek turned that into a quickie book, one that's probably available for .02 cents online somewhere.

 

[terrier]

Joe McGinniss, "The Selling of the President 1968". Great insight into the arrival of TV advertising as a major weapon in the Nixon campaign, largely inspired by a young Roger Ailes.
If you can find the original cover, even better: An even by Nixon standards unflattering shot of him on a pack of cigarettes. My father was reading it on a family vacation when I was a kid, and that image creeped the hell out of me.

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

Cut to the chase and make him read The Prince.