BOOKS THREAD

With nothing better to do a few hours ago, grabbed "The Final Days" off a shelf.
Well I'll be darned ... 50 years ago today (Nov. 3, 1973), Fred Buzhardt and Len Garment flew to Florida to recommend President Nixon resign.
A local history professor is researching another Nixon book (head scratch).

@garrow I read Frank's Truman book a month or two ago. Had an issue with how he described the HST Library and Museum. Emailed Frank and he responded back. We agreed to disagree, I guess.

 

I will admit I didn't know too much about Leon Russell other than his involvement with Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and some of the great Dylan covers from his early albums but the recent book Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock & Roll History by Bill Janovitz shows him to be a seriously talented musician who played on a ton of influential records by Phil Spector and others long before he became a star in his own right. His list of collaborators over his career reads like the inductee list at the Rock Hall.

The book drags a bit over the last third as Russell's career and health lose steam but the book and his career both pick up when Elton John comes along to revive the career of one of his major influences.

 

Just finished Tim O'Brien's new novel America Fantastica which is a fast, entertaining read that will appeal to those who like Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen.

 

Because of life and stuff getting in the way, it took me a while to get through this, but it was totes worth it. It talks a bit about the history of the Gutenberg Bible, but then follows the path on Gutenberg Bible #45 and how it ended up where it resides today. The reporting and the details are great. I talk about the Gutenberg in a class (and show a picture of my daughter looking at the copy that's in the Ransom Center at the University of Texas), so this was a worthwhile read, but I would have enjoyed it even without that connection.

Joe Bob says check it out.

 

This is sitting in my to be read pile. Grabbed it from The Strand few months ago; definitely want to get to it.

Related: My folks came to visit us in NYC last month and my mom suggested a trip to the Morgan Library and Museum. I'd never been there despite being here 20 years. It was awesome! Highly recommend for anyone looking for spots in the city you might not normally hit. But it's got three copies of the Gutenberg Bible as part of its collection.

 

Three copies?! Wow. If that library ever gets into a financial bind, it can sell two of those copies and raise enough funds to operate for a long, long time.

 

It’s true, they own three. They have some scans on their website.

It’s the J. Pierpont Morgan Library, so they probably have plenty of money.

 

“T-Model Tommy” (1938) by Steven W. Meader is a re read from when I was a kid and borrowed the book from the school library then we moved and it was never returned. I read it a couple of days ago, new print by Southern Skies, for the first time since the mid 1960s. It’s a gentle young adults book full of everything that is admirable in life and how Tommy starts a small but growing trucking business in Pennsylvania hauling coal to local customers and produce to New York City markets.
I have purchased a number of other of his books and it’s a good harmless way of spending a few hours and getting away from today’s reality which is diametrically opposite to what his books represent. Young man works hard, has a goal, becomes a moderate success, has a girl friend, lives happily ever after.
Meader was a noted author of these books from the late 1920s into the 1950s. I’m reading something similar from the 1900-1910 era by Burton E Stevenson, innocent enjoyable books.

 

Philip Bump’s “The Aftermath” looks at all the issues we’ll face when the Boomers are no longer with us. It’s a pretty even-handed guess at the difficulties and unknowns of such a large percentage of the population aging and eventually no longer being around. As you’d expect from Bump, it is chock full of graphs and statistics and he does a good job of acknowledging his blind spots and the impossibility of forecasting much of the future, but it’s a good start at guessing all the weirdness that will come about in a Post-Boomer world after everything in society bent to their will and their needs for 70 years.

 

Oh man, "In the Lake of the Woods" was one of the best books I read in the 80's (or was it the 90's?). I'll try this.

 

Not sure if anyone else reviews books on a regular basis and has come across this. Someone offered me a copy of their vegan world cuisine cookbook. Sure. Fine. I'm always glad to amplify vegan voices.

What I got was a PDF with no cover art, no tear sheet with the usual release information (ISBN, MSRP, where to get it, formats, preferred illustrations, etc.) I asked the writer if s/he had one or would at least give me the information and a cover image. Nope. S/he would send me a link when the book was released and I could file my review there.

I read the book and felt a little sick that I'd agreed to review it. The recipes were obviously untested. The provenance of the recipes for a book devoted to "world cuisine" were lumped together as "Native American," "Asian," "Irish," and "Tex-Mex" with no further details about who made them or how they were collected. There were no annotations and the bibliography in the back was a pretty good indicator this person was trying to do a quick CYA to keep from being sued for stealing intellectual property.

S/he contacted two weeks later to remind me to post my review. "There" turned out to be Amazon. I asked this person if they came up with the recipes themselves and did they test them. A day later they responded that they "worked with a person and she cooked some of them." Oh, the dark gods of my ancestors, no. I have friends who have labored for decades in this particular niche, one of whom had her material stolen word for word by something leaving a slime trail of stolen books across the field. (I am being as restrained as I can. Don't hurt my friends.)

After wrestling for a day with whether to leave an honest review or pass on reviewing it altogether, I told them that for a variety of reasons, I could not review it and wished them luck. They thanked me for telling them I was passing on it and went away.

So I was telling another reviewer about this, and they asked me if I'd ever seen those ads promising folks they could make thousands a month on Amazon. Weren't they selling Audible subscriptions? Some of them still were. There's a new racket, though. Pick a subject, get enough content to make a book, then hire a writer from Fiverr to cobble it together and sell it as an ebook on Amazon. SMDH.

 

I’ve been reading the Mike Bowditch books by Paul Doiron. The main character is a game warden in Maine.

I had read the first couple of CJ Box books, but didn’t care for them. I found the lead character a little dim, and the stories to conspiratorial.

These have been better, but I think I’ve hit the wall. I’ve read about 6, mostly in order, and it just feels like the subject matter is fully mined. I know fiction requires some level of suspension of disbelief, but a game warden being involved in one or two fatal shootings every year is just a little much. (I acknowledge Harry Bosch has had way too much gunplay for a homicide detective and it’s a weakness of a Connelly).

Anyway, too busy to read anything intellectual these days. I’m going to get myself the book about the US Army rugby team for Christmas (oops, just ruined the surprise) and hopefully when I’m less occupied in the new year I’ll get into some meatier tomes.