Links I Love

 

WE got through another week! Thank you to all of the service members that served.  

1.  Crime Novels and the first sentences.
2. Reclaiming a North Carolina Plantation.
3. Mandy Patinkin on Elon Musk quoting the Princess Bride.
4. This podcast looks interesting.
5. Killers of the Flower Moon trailer has dropped.  I'm hopeful that it'll be as good as the book.
6. Disney is closing the Star Wars resort.
7. A butterfly field
8. THe origin of the term Red Herring and it's place now.
9. Is the new Indiana Jones movie woke?
10. 5 books on Italy.
11. How people feel about the end of the Covid-19 emergency.
12. Celine might never tour again.
13. Inaugural  poem banned after single complaint.

REVIEW: A Vast Conspiracy by Jeffrey Toobin

 

I was a teenager when this was all going down and in college when this culminated in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. It was all the subject of a podcast that I listen to regularly and so I wanted to really get the behind the scenes story of what happened - the nuances that I was too oblivious to pick up on when it was going on. This doesn't just go into the Monica details though. He tries to figure out why an extramarital affair caused such a holdup in Congress. 

The title's source should be fairly obvious - on Good Morning America Hilary Clinton called it a vast right wing conspiracy. Toobin agrees with her but their reasons are kinda different. The scandal actually started with Paula Jones and the Paula Jones case originated with the President's political adversaries, who backed the lawsuit. He also opined that there was a conspiracy by the US legal system to take over the political system - think a separation of powers issue if you're a lawyer. Toobin looks at things like Whitewater being weaponized against Clinton before Monica even though there was no evidence to support criminal charges. 

Many people found this readable and it was insofar as language goes but I found it incredibly difficult to get through this book. It wasn't as interesting as I thought it was - perhaps Norton's biography of Monica is better (it's also on my list). It took me a lot longer to get through than I thought it would. Having said that, he did make the conspiracy more understandable and provided one coherent narrative - whether you agree with it or not. 

Links I love

 

Two weeks worth in one is always good!  Sorry for missing last week! I was sick the week before and wanted to make sure that I got what I could. 

Happy Mother's Day! 

1.  Gordon Lightfoot passes away at 84.
2. There's a new Gabriel Garcia Marquez book coming out.
3. I love Tom Perrotta - he brought us Tracy Flick in Election - and now he's curated a book list!
4. Half Price Books has a summer reading program.
5. Star WArs Starbucks been there mugs!
6. The Old Man fell 20 years ago.
7. Fight censorship with these goods
8. Illinois becomes the first state to ban book bans.
9. Books about Walt Disney and WDW
10. Carrie Fisher gets a Hollywood Star (finally).
11. The 2023 winners of the Pulitzer prize.
12. Five books about aliens - I've read The Sparrow which was amazing.
13. For you 80's and 90's kids:  MTV news is shut down. BOOO.
14. Ray Liotta's cause of death is announced.
15. This is a very strange twist on things. 
16. The 11 most endangered historic places in the US.
17. 23 books made into movies and series over the next two years. I'm excited about the Hunger Games prequel and Black Cake as well as American Born Chinese. 
18. THe reading habits of adults have changed - the most surprising for me was that they approximate that 21% of adults are illiterate!
19. Controversy over Cleopatra's race.

REVIEW: Straight Man by Richard Russo

 

I'm sorry I was MIA recently.  I've started new things but I was also pretty sick last week with a cold that went into my chest. It was only this week that I've started feeling better.  As a result, my reading and reviewing have slipped but I'm back for the foreseeable future.

I read this book because AMC has a series called Lucky Hank based upon this book and starring Bob Odenkirk, so I wanted to read it first. It isn't really like his other books, which are more about blue collar America.  This one actually is about a college professor - William Henry Devereaux, Jr. - and takes place mostly on the state college campus in Railton, PA that he teaches at. The focus - more obsession really - is the lack of budget and threat of cuts that Hank is faced with (he's the head of the English Department - interim of course).  The *best* scene - and the pivotal one - is when Hank (wearing one of the following disguises - now imagine Bob Odenkirk in them - pretty funny all around) holds up a duck and threatens to kill one a day until he gets a budget. The resulting uproar takes most of the book - and causes Hank to be either a hero or a villain depending on the character he's talking to. 

I found the dark and dry humor in this book very funny and entertaining.  So much so in fact that I found myself like snorting or chuckling to myself at various points, earning side glances from the people that I was around while I was reading. I found myself very much imagining the settings and the characters, even though I didn't always identify with them (I don't think I was supposed to - it wasn't really a character examination of me).

Definitely a read from Russo's backlist.