Stray Thought

I like some of Stephen King's work very much. I dislike some of it quite a bit as well. Stephen King writes about upper-middle-class people sometimes (writers, artists, etc) and working-class people sometimes. Are the two related? Must go flip though bookshelf.

50 Books Challenge

I don't actually have a comment at the moment about what's become known on Livejoural as Racefail '09 (although I may eventually) but one thing that came out of it was the challenge to read 50 books by people of color this year. That sounds like a good one to me, and I plan to participate. More comments once I have something of substance to report.

Library Book List

I have a few things to get through around the house, but I'm starting the list for the next library trip:

- Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
- the second Arbinger Institute book
- something on Flash/Actionscript
- Team of Rivals
- old classic fantasy that I haven't read yet
- Omnivore's Dilemma
- the new David Allen
- Q&A, Vikas Swarup (Slumdog Millionaire)

Goodreads

My library is getting a little absurd, and so I'm facilitating the absurdity by cataloging it on Goodreads. Yes, the only book on there right now is The Nymphos of Rocky Flats - it's at the beginning of the alphabet! And it's actually (to my profound disappointment) not nearly as trashy as it sounds.

Library Report

Despite the fact that I had to dig through to-be-shelved carts for two of the three books I was looking for, this trip to the library was a success. I still need to get through the third volume of the FDR history, but I have a few treats waiting for me afterwards :)

I picked up The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Taking On the System (about the way the internet is affecting politics) and a Suze Orman book just to find out why some people hate her. Plus I came across a novel I was waiting for in paperback - that was a nice surprise.

It's really sort of funny - I never read nonfiction unless I'm in one of my go-to-the-library phases, but when I do, I read a ton of stuff on a whole variety of topics, and it's probably good for me. I just don't like actually buying them, I guess.

Library Day

Actually, it wasn't a full library run, since I had to renew the second two New Deal books. I looked for a few other things off the top of my head but it seems that everyone's thinking along similar lines, and everything was out. One success, though, was finding the HBO documentary on Air America, which I commented earlier sounds like a much more interesting story than the collection of transcripts I got last time. While I was digging in that section looking for it (turns out it was mis-shelved) I picked up An Inconvenient Truth as well, which I haven't seen. So those should occupy me for a week or so, and then I'll bring my ever-growing To Read list and do it properly.

History Repeats

Schlesinger's history, The Crisis of the Old Order was published in 1957, but it sounds like it was written about the past ten years. The governmental enthusiasm for deregulation, a rapidly spiraling overvaluation of a particular market, rumblings of worry without any clear warning - sound familiar? Sure does to me. I'm only about halfway through - it doesn't go quite as fast as the latest Anita Blake mystery, although it's very readable - but I am pleased with my pick. More to come.

Books To Get

The Shock Doctrine
DMZ: Body of a Journalist
Team of Rivals
Taking On the System
the new Malcolm Gladwell
something by Suze Orman

Updated as stuff crosses my mind. Third Term is done - wasn't bad, although as I think I mentioned it felt like stuff that I've seen covered in detail in a billion places in the past couple months. Taking a brief fiction break now, then it's on to the FDR bigoraphy.

Air America and Big Fat Idiots

Two books on my library list down: Air America: The Playbook and Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot. I'm not entirely satisfied with either of them.

The Air America book didn't have any real problems - I just found it sort of unsatisfying. It's about two years old, and therefore sort of dated, but I wasn't paying a lick of attention to politics two years ago so it was still mostly new stuff. The real problem was that it consists of either fairly fluffy satire pieces and one-page tidbits (like a series on evil corporations presented ironically as good investments,) or transcripts of radio interviews. Don't get me wrong, the radio interviews were neat, but a ten-minute interview takes me a minute and a half to read and really doesn't contain that much information. I think, on the whole, I would have preferred a book about Air America, because from the introduction, there's a story and a half there.

The Al Franken book - well, I picked it up because he's still in the running for Senator of Minnesota, and I don't know a thing about the guy other than that he was on Saturday Night Live. After reading the book I know two things: he's a liberal, and his jokes don't translate to print. Like, at all.

I didn't realize that the "Big Fat" part of the title was the main theme of the book, but fat jokes don't do it for me. It's not one of my hot button issues - I just don't find it funny or ironic or remotely relevant, particularly because their subject, Limbaugh, is a radio personality. I sat there after the first three pages of fat jokes and thought as hard as I could, but could not call to mind even a dim picture of the man. I gather he's a big fella. *shrug*

The rest of it - I guess I just prefer my politics straight. I find having to guess whether a given line is satire or truth more tiring than anything, and I'm already sold on most of his basic premises. I don't regret picking it up - it was a quick read - but I'm not going to rush out and pick up more from this genre.

Next up, Paul Begala's Third Term, which is similar to Franken's in many ways except all the statements and facts have citations and I find the humor much more effective. It reads like a compilation of MSNBC campaign punditry, but it's nice to have it all in one place.

Renewing My Library Card

I have a very firm line item in my budget for books and bookshelves (although I'm running out of space for the latter) because I read fast enough that I reread novels all the time, and I'm happier just having them on hand. I very seldom buy nonfiction books, though, because I generally have no desire to reread them, unless they are how-to books of some sort. I don't usually read all that much nonfiction in book form anyway.

However, the election has spurred me to do a bit more digging about a few things, so I hauled out my faded old library card and picked up a three-volume biography of FDR, a book by Al Franken, a random and probably worthlessly partisan book about how Bush <3 McCain 4EVA, and the Air America Playbook (as well as two or three entries in a couple of series that I haven't been able to find used yet.) I'll probably comment on these as I read them, if any are worth commenting on.