BOOKS THREAD

Took a break from re-reading Dostoyevsky (Spoiler alert: It’s still good) to go pop with Chuck Klosterman’s and Mike Schur’s books.

Chuck Klosterman’s “The Nineties” is the most Klosterman-y book he’s ever written, for better and for worse. Essentially: What if I told you the biggest twist…is there’s no twist at all. It can be fun and tiring in the same way “But What if We’re Wrong” was and it displayed the cultural blindness you’d expect from a lower-case c conservative who spent the 1990’s in rural North Dakota, but I did enjoy a 1990s history that viewed things from the perspective of the time and not hindsight. That in itself is valuable especially in regards to Bill Clinton, and triangulation and the crime bill, etc.. I wish he’d extended that more to the steroid use in baseball. It is very easy to assume the occurrence or negative value of the strategies was obvious. It wasn’t while living through it. It’s something we as younger people need to consider in the age of cancellation and social media. It’s a needed warning sign much more valuable than the Right defending heinous behavior. Instead it’s a shaking finger that you too will one day have cringeworthy things in your past and they won’t come from a place of evil, but ignorance. Show grace accordingly.

I just wish Klosterman had connected the dots better.

Also, I did not expect the most scathing judgment of the decade to be against…the voters of Ralph Nader. Not Ralph Nader himself. But Ralph Nader voters.

Maybe Al Gore should’ve won Tennessee, Chuck.

 

As one of those Nader/Green Party voters, maybe I should read the book.

Note I said “read” … not buy. My support of quasi-Libertarian NBA fans only goes so far.

 

Oh, that was a Libby app borrow from the library. Chuck doesn’t need my money.

 

The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal.

This book provides the back and forth between the writer of (D'Agata) and the fact-checker for (Fingal) a magazine essay D'Agata submitted.

I'm not sure what amazes me more: that the fact-checker is a much better writer than the "essayist," or that even after being undressed in this book, D'Agata was promoted to director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Ancillary recommendation: "In Defense of Facts," a 2017 review of D'Agata's three-volume anthology of the essay. The first paragraph:

John D’Agata has accomplished an impressive feat. In three thick volumes, over 13 years, he has published a series of anthologies—of the contemporary American essay, of the world essay, and now of the historical American essay—that misrepresents what the essay is and does, that falsifies its history, and that contains, among its numerous selections, very little one would reasonably classify within the genre. And all of this to wide attention and substantial acclaim (D’Agata is the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, the most prestigious name in creative writing)—because effrontery, as everybody knows, will get you very far in American culture, and persistence in perverse opinion, further still.​

The review was by William Deresiewicz, the author of "Excellent Sheep," which I also recommend.

 

Thank you for posting this. The Atlantic piece you linked to, "In Defense of Facts," was exactly what I needed to read today. I don't know why I enjoyed that teardown of John D'Agata so much, given that I had never heard of him before. But man did that hit the spot.

 

Kind of felt the same way when reading that review. It was surgical evisceration without any concern about whether or not the target was anesthetized. I didn’t know who D’Agata was, either, but after reading that review and “Lifespan,” I have a new target of derision.

 

Charles Leerhsen's recent Butch Cassidy bio. Pretty fun, if a bit meandering despite its compact length.

 

Just binged the Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) Strike Cormoran series and LOVED it - the stories, the characters - all of it. I've set a date in my calendar for the the release of the 6th volume on August 30th. As an aside ... it seemed like each volume was longer than the previous with the 5th clocking in at over 900 pages, but they never felt too long to me.

 

Great books, really really good. I've never read any of the Harry Potter stuff but I can highly recommend these books. The shows produced from the books are excellent too.

 

Dipping in here real quick for a recommendation. This is for sure one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. Passive followers of history frequently think of Guadalcanal as a Marine victory, but his covers the overwhelmingly important naval portions of that campaign.

I couldn't recommend this more.

 

This was a quick, interesting read. The author worked in security at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for nearly 40 years, and was the top security person during some major events at the museum, like when presidents Clinton and Obama hosted more than 150 heads of state, and when Princess Diana visited. He writes about those events as well as thefts that occurred there. I really enjoyed this.

Joe Bob says check it out.

 

This one took a while to get through. I actually stopped when I was partway done to read another book for a project, then got back to it.

Two TV critics pick the best American shows throughout the history of television. They did their research and gave numerical scores in various categories, and the result was five shows that were tied with the highest score. I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but a couple of those shows would be at the top of most critics' lists, and some were a surprise. The good thing about this book is that, like I did, it can be stopped and started as needed and you won't lose your place in the plot.

Joe Bob says check it out, and give yourself plenty of time.