BOOKS THREAD

Two-thirds through Coming Apart. First five chapters are a fair, but slanted opening, but things start to slide late in Chapter Six, and go downhill, from there. Murray's a smart guy, and makes some decent points, but like most libertarians, the steaming pile created by one-third of the Libby creed marginalizes the remaining two-thirds. Defending the United Way -- with its top-heavy, grossly-overcompensated administration -- remains a gag. And most of the sociology exposition makes you almost think that the likes of Tom Delay got a bad rap. Heh, heh.

 

Me too for the can't-wait vote. The first volume is still by far the best political biography book I've ever read.

BTW, Jones, who wrote the Esquire piece, talked a bit about it in the "Jones gives good blog" thread in the Journalism Topics Only sub-board, although things go off the rails at times.

 

Just got that in and was reading some at lunch. Don't know how far I'll go, but the premise sounds interesting. Thanks for the review.

 

Wasn't fond of a couple of things, but the only thing I really didn't like was how much Collins wrote about Kat's guilt. We get it. She thinks it's all her fault.

I saw a couple things at the end coming, but the things that I didn't see were sad but good twists. One major late event got wrapped up like a bad Law & Order though.

Didn't like the resolution of the triangle, but I guess it had to end that way. I never felt like it got off the ground though, and maybe that was one of the points of a conversation that is had in the Capitol late in the book that sums up Katniss pretty well (spoilers):

The one that Peeta and Gale have about Katniss picking the guy that will keep her alive, not the one she loves and it kills her to hear it.

I swear I read somewhere that Collins is using this book as a satire, since up until the last two or three pages everything is televised. Her readers are just as guilty of eating this up as the viewers in the Capitol because we're going crazy about this series. Plus we all watch our reality shows and read articles about them.

It raises and interesting point and she does something kind of cool, making the reader interactive in a fictional book in the smallest way possible. I know she was trying to make a point about society, but doesn't that make her the biggest fame whore of them all now that she's rich and famous?

Yeah, I'm overthinking this. It was just irritating that she had to be all point-making and stuff.

 

Got this yesterday. I'm 75 pages in and it's excellent.

 

Pre-ordered and downloaded it on Monday. I've got my train reading for a few weeks!

 

Re-reading "AFarewell to Arms" for the first time in a few years.

Can a Hemingway expert clue me in on a hazy interpretation of the final chapter?

(Spoiler alert, even though you've had 80 years to read the thing.)

When he sees the child after the birth and the doctor proclaims that the baby is doing well, is this him in denial? Him papering over the pain of the death in hindsight of Catherine's death by shifting blame to the doctor? Was the doctor simply hoping the baby would start breathing? Or is it simply Hemingway making the comparison to the early optimism about the war even clearer and I'm overthinking this? Or is he just drunk from that parade of beer he downed with the eggs and ham at the restaurant?

This has bothered me in a way it didn't when I read it the first time about seven years ago.

 

Bought it last week, am 178 pages in now.

Once again, Caro is bringing it hard. He is going back to his previous works a bit here and there, but merely for illustrative purposes. It all works.

The detail on LBJ accepting the Veep job and the bit with Bobby Kennedy (who is as unlikeable as a human being as his POS old man was) trying to derail it was really, really interesting stuff. Caro even dismantles Schlesinger's take on the whole process -- albeit with kid gloves.

 

Just finished Kristen Johnston's memoir "Guts: the endless follies and tiny triumphs of a giant disaster". Highly recommended. A very honest, very funny account of her addiction and recovery. Not just another Hollywood memoir.

 

The Caro book delivers.

He doesn't come right out and say it, but implies heavily LBJ wasn't going to be on the `64 ticket.

He also very effectively paints a picture of how Johnson, in the moments before Oswald's shot, was at his lowest political ebb and had virtually no way out of it. All of that changed in a second.

I'm guessing, but it sounds like he'll be arguing in the next book that JFK wouldn't have escalated in Vietnam.

 

I am really looking forward to Douglas Brinkley's book about Cronkite. I only recently heard about it but I've read a bunch of other Brinkley books and love works on journalism. I have several Murrow bios and while I own Cronkite's memoirs, the CBS stuff comes off as actually a lot less interesting than his early career.

 

Caro will be on The Daily Show tonight.