You want an open thread? Here’s your stinking open thread…
What’s on your reading list? I am reading Norman Mailer’s The Spooky Art. I just reread Hitler’s Willing Executioners. I need a good piece of fiction to help me fall asleep at night.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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How was Hitler’s Willing Executioners? That and Leopold’s Ghost have been on my list for a while but I haven’t gotten to them yet.
If you like Mailer, and want to read a novel about James Angleton and the Kennedy assassination – check out “Harlot’s Ghost” – a thinly veiled history of the CIA.
GW says he has a ‘eck a lec tic’ reading list. He recently read 3 Shakespeares. He didn’t mention if they were pop-up books.
Shakespeare reading comes in Pop-Up books Now???
What a wonder modern technology!!;c}
Geesh, you’d think you people had never heard of Classics Illustrated.
Robert Redford on Saving the Arctic Refuge
{The link takes you to the YouTube Video}
Nearly fifty thousand people have already watched and forwarded Robert
Redford’s video message about the Arctic Refuge since we first put it online
last Thursday, making it one of this week’s most popular videos on the Internet.
From NRDC Action Fund – The Bush Administration wants to let oil companies destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the sake of one penny per gallon at the pump. Watch Robert Redford’s video about America’s greatest birthing ground for wolves, caribou and polar bears. Then, speak out in defense of the Arctic Refuge by going to NRDC Action Fund and sending a message to your two U.S. senators.
Leo Damrosch’s biography, Rousseau, Restless Genius.
If you want good fiction to go to bed by have you thought of Patrick O’Brian’s Napoleanic seafaring stories starring Capt. Aubrey and Dr. Maturin? Master and Commander being the “movied” one in the series.
Powerful books that had a strong impact on me this summer are Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (fiction) and Azar Nafisi’s memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran. These two give a gender balanced perspective on life under Islamo-repressive regimes in Afghanistan and Iran, respectively. Neither is “easy” reading because of the emotional price the reader must pay in the face of the authors’ revelations of the harsh brutality and barbarity in each.
Just finished The Kite Runner. I loved it!!
Oh God, wasnt it great? My son had to read it last year for tenth grade english and he kept telling me, mom you have to read this. I didnt read it till this past July. I think I cried about eight times and found my self in shock another ten. I’d have to put the book down at times to digest what I had just read, and I’d badger my son, what happens next??No! Dont’ tell me! But could you believe that actually happen to him, it’s just AWFUL!
What a powerful heartbreaking excellently written book.
I liked it too.
Perhaps one of the tests of great fiction is how much one empathizes with the characters. Boy did I! But it wasn’t an “easy” read.
Sometimes too sad. Was crying often. The betrayal of friendship; the relationship with his father; the horror of the Afghan thug who had been the childhood bully.
What did you think of (what I call) the nearly exclusive “masculinism” of the novel? Have you looked on the Internet and seen the unfavorable reviews written by certain Moslem “critics”?
They’re making a movie of it, btw.
I believe it is on the 8th or 9th of Sept on Lifetime or TNT cannot remember right now.
The Senator
While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by a
truck and dies.
His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “Before you settle in, it seems there
is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see,
so
we’re not sure what to do with you.”
“No problem, just let me in,” says the man.
“Well, I’d like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we’ll do is
have
you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to
spend eternity.”
>
“Really, I’ve made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,” says the senator.
“I’m sorry, but we have our rules.”
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down,
down,
down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green
golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse. Standing in front of it are
all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.
Everyone is very happy and in evening dress They run to greet him, shake
his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at
the expense of the people.
They play a friendly game of golf; and then dine on lobster, caviar and
champagne.
Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good
time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that
before he realizes it, it is time to go.
Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises…
The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St. Peter
is waiting for him.
“Now it’s time to visit heaven.”
So, 24 hours pass with the Senator joining a group of contented souls
moving
from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time.
Before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
“Well, then, you’ve spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose
your eternity.”
>The Senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: “Well, I would never
have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would
be better off in hell.”
So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to
hell.
Now the doors of the elevator open and he’s in the middle of a barren land
covered with waste and garbage.
He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting
it in black bags as more trash falls from above.
The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder. “I don’t
understand,” stammers the Senator. “Yesterday I was here and there was a
golf course and clubhouse. We ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne,
danced and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage
and my friends look miserable. What happened?”
The devil looks at him, smiles and says, “Yesterday we were
campaigning…… Today you voted.”
Don’t ya love it?_______________________
I was at the B&N the other day looking for “Fiasco” and was about to buy it until I flipped through the pages and it occurred to me: I know all this already. Between all the political /current event books I have already read, and the blogs that I read in the morning and at night, and seven or so hours of air america everyday while I work, there isn’t much I don’t know.
So I put it down and decided that I need an escape book. I picked up “The Alchemist”
I love it. Everyone has probably read it already, but it seems like this is a book I will read more than once, it is very comforting and very transcedent. I am quite fond of the simple moral story — “Life Of Pi” and “KiteRunner” are also among my favorites.
In the wings I have “The Memory Keepers Daughter”
Mencken, the American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of the Bad Boy of Baltimore
A quick review from Metroactive
On President Warren Harding:
Heh – I wonder what Menken could have done with Dubya?
Are we speaking of Henry Louis Mencken?
The Henry Louis Mencken, the man who invented the word “booboisie”? (He also invented the word “ecdysiast,” but that’s for another discussion.)
The Henry Louis Mencken, who is credited with the observation that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public?
The Henry Louis Mencken, who once observed, “I asked the bellboy to bring me a newspaper. The poor man must have been hard of hearing, because he returned bearing a copy of the Los Angeles Times.“?
That Henry Louis Mencken?
I’ll tell you what he would have done. He would have flayed the Deciderer alive and roasted the carcass on a spit.
Unfortunately few people would know about it, because if he were alive today there isn’t a newspaper in the United States that has the guts to hire him. But I daresay he would have a blog (maybe several), and he would cause fear and trembling throughout both the left and the right.
I thought I was out there alone for a sec. Where are our heroes of yesteryear?
Somewhere or another in my collection I have a couple of his works, most notably The American Language and A Mencken Chrestomathy, which has a great account of a Christmas dinner he once threw for the bums of Baltimore, with plenty of beer and absolutely no religious speechifyin’. Even so, these poor men were so used to being contrite for their dinner that they stood up willingly, one after another, and confessed their sins.
Now that I look at the Wikipedia entry on Mencken I notice that he did indeed, presciently, write about His Nibs:
I just received the following, watch this Re-Broadcast with Updates on this Fine Organization, and visit their site:
Countdown with KO is great.
KO`S final words are awesome.
Definitely a must see.
The total shred of ron “dumbshell”.
Absolutely. It ought to be up on Crooks and Liars soon. I’d like it chiseled in stone and taught as a Civics lesson to every student.
Crooks and Liars video
transcript.
That was damn amazing wasn’t it….I’m getting ready to go look it up online and read it slowly and enjoy the fact there is at least one news person who isn’t afraid to speak out. And speak out so elegantly and concisely.
/me stands and applauds
Last night, courtesy of Netflix, I watched Dark Victory with Bette Davis. Great movie–but what struck me was the character that Ronald Reagan played. Yes, here was our future president in a movie made in 1939 playing a dumb but amiable drunk. And the US went on and ELECTED THIS PERSON PRESIDENT. And now we have a president who is not even capable of being a movie star (too many lines to memorize–its easier to be preznit and have a teleprompter). There is something wrong with this country.
If you are looking for a break from our grim reality, try another reality. I’ve recently stumbled across two skewed realities created by Jasper Fforde. Both are twisted versions of detective novels (subclass: police procedurals). The Eyre Affair introduces SpecOps 27 agent Thursday Next, as she attempts to save (and improve the outcome of) the doomed love affair of Jane and Rochester, the brooding, haunted master of Thornfield Hall, not Jack Benny’s valet. The Big Over Easy brings us DC Jack Spratt and Sgt. Mary Mary, Nursery Crime Division, investigating the shooting death of the drunken, womanizing, financial double-dealing, and bon vivant egg, Humpty Dumpty. It is a crime to murder talking eggs or literary characters, but it is no crime to take a break and laugh.
I came across his books awhile ago..aren’t they great!…Wonderfully fun, inventive and clever and particularly good escapist reading after hanging around on the Internet half the day(or all day).
They are extremely clever and entertaining – a tricky combination. Wit and parody are brittle. Too much can become an exercise in intellectual showing off. It seems to me the trick is to hold onto the narrative line, while bouncing wildly along an imaginative path. Ah well, that’s too much talking about how the books work and not enough comments about how fun the are. I just finished the third one and have the fourth warmed up and ready to go!