A delightful murderous romp, with excellent characters that leap off the page.
I will be reading more in this series. The one thing I have a quibble wiA delightful murderous romp, with excellent characters that leap off the page.
I will be reading more in this series. The one thing I have a quibble with is I like a whodunnit that can be solved by the very astute reader, and I don't think this one could have been.
For me, the book took a while to get going, because I was hearing about Lewis Morris, William Cosby, and James Alexander for the first half of the booFor me, the book took a while to get going, because I was hearing about Lewis Morris, William Cosby, and James Alexander for the first half of the book much more than Peter Zenger, without understanding what roles they played until Zenger was becoming the pawn in the middle of a fight between a provocateur and a corrupt royal governor who seem like they were cut from the same cloth.
Of course the trial is interesting, as is the correction of the reductionist, school-taught trope that "Peter Zenger fought for and won freedom of the press for the people." And unfortunately the end, wherein Kluger laments the very real erosion the press has suffered under the name of national security, is interesting as well....more
What a cool premise, and well executed. The telling of the Frankenstein story from the doctor's young bride.
I don't want to telegraph any spoilers, buWhat a cool premise, and well executed. The telling of the Frankenstein story from the doctor's young bride.
I don't want to telegraph any spoilers, but stick with the book through to the end. It's particularly rewarding if you've read the original novel....more
Oh, British people, do you really pronounce them "kawn-TRAW-versy" and "HHURBS" and "arky-puh-LAY-go" (arky-puh-LAY-go?) and "VITT-a-mins" when you knOh, British people, do you really pronounce them "kawn-TRAW-versy" and "HHURBS" and "arky-puh-LAY-go" (arky-puh-LAY-go?) and "VITT-a-mins" when you know other English speakers aren't around? It's the world's largest trolling, isn't it? It can't be real.
I mean, kawn-TRAW-versy - you sound like Megamind.
Anyway, Goodall knows a lot more about plants than I do. And it's not her primary expertise (duh), but she did a tonne ton of research. ...more
Before reading this book, Frederick Douglass was just a set of flashcard facts I knew - escaped slave, from Maryland, started a newspaper. I had neverBefore reading this book, Frederick Douglass was just a set of flashcard facts I knew - escaped slave, from Maryland, started a newspaper. I had never appreciated how canny Douglass was. He came into his free life nearly fully formed, it seems - knowing that his life purpose was to write and speak and persuade, and with an awareness of how politics and popular opinion behave.
And reading this I see in some ways how little has changed in how racist American society is. One can draw a straight line from the mechanisms to disenfranchise African American men from voting in the late 19th century to mechanisms to disenfranchise African Americans from voting today, or from lynching to Black Lives Matter.
But Douglass always had hope, so I guess I should....more
Really good, comprehensive story of the events. The book also provides the right amount of context - enhancing the overall narrative without feeling lReally good, comprehensive story of the events. The book also provides the right amount of context - enhancing the overall narrative without feeling like padding....more
If anybody ever requests of me where John Mosby was on any date between June 1862 and April 1865, I shall consult this book. If it can't be found in tIf anybody ever requests of me where John Mosby was on any date between June 1862 and April 1865, I shall consult this book. If it can't be found in these pages, it is unknown.
The chronological journey of Mosby, and, starting in January 1863, his 43th Battalion - a cavalry of "partisan rangers" - could not be more thorough. Wert does his share of arguing how important and influential this band was in keeping northern Virginia one of the most frustrating pieces of land for the union army to attempt to bring under control, too. Somehow, though, I found myself wanting more from this in terms of the author's take - the historical significance of these names and actions and places.
Then again, I'd probably be complaining about that, too, had he romanticized it and been a Confederate apologist.
Probably my favorite part of the book was the epilogue, where Wert does talk about what it all amounted to, and I did appreciate that even their enemies respected them. I found it fascinating that Mosby himself became a friend of Grant and a Republican after the war, both of which were apostasy for a former rebel.
Finally, I'm glad I read it because it helps those parts of Virginia, the counties hugging the Potomac from from DC to Harpers Ferry, which is some of my favorite land in the world, "come alive" for me. I hope I remember what transpired there next time I'm at Point of Rocks, or Marshall, or Front Royal, or a hundred other places where Mosby's Rangers fought....more
Thank you, Brian Greene. I never thought a book about cosmological physics would help get me closer than books by Daniel Dennett, Stephen Pinker and oThank you, Brian Greene. I never thought a book about cosmological physics would help get me closer than books by Daniel Dennett, Stephen Pinker and others to getting consciousness, but here we are.
If you want to understand anything, have Brian Greene write a book about it. General relativity, quantum physics, existential dread, you name it.
So what's this book about? It's the universe's life story, and the life story of how life and self-awareness came to be, and what happens for the next 10^10^68 years. And it's fascinating....more
Listen up, and listen good. Joe Mannix is as tough as they come, and even though this is a novelization of an episode of the show, he's even tougher tListen up, and listen good. Joe Mannix is as tough as they come, and even though this is a novelization of an episode of the show, he's even tougher than on TV!
Mannix says some swears! He uses the lord's name in vain!
Some random woman is naked in one scene!
Peggy's last name is Fast, not Fair!
Yeah, I don't get that last one either. This was obviously written based on a submitted script before shooting, not on the episode itself, and the author didn't watch Mannix enough to know her last name is Fair, nor did the novel's editor. Mannix also has a door from his garage (you know Mannix would have called it a car hole, if it even were a garage, which it wasn't, but a covered carport) to his office/apartment, which there just wasn't one.
Also, the woman on the cover is explicitly described as blonde in the book, but that's understandable, because the cover shot is an image from the two-part episode Bird of Prey, which aired about the same time the novel came out.
But if you're jonesin' for some early seventies hard-nosed private-eye TV-show energy magically turned into book, this'll do you up. There's driving, there's crashing, there's fighting, there's guns, there's drinks at every stop. And there's one unstoppable force.
Any fan of baseball owes it to themselves to learn about Old Hoss' 59 (or 60?) win season in 1884. Bonus - it's got the first interleague championshipAny fan of baseball owes it to themselves to learn about Old Hoss' 59 (or 60?) win season in 1884. Bonus - it's got the first interleague championship (which called itself a World's Series) in professional baseball.
With a cast as colorful as one would expect of a 19th century, no glove, hardball game, Achorn tells a good story. His only large, perhaps even unearned, flights of fancy involve Radbourn and his later wife Carrie Stanhope. As far as I can tell, the only evidence they were romantically involved in 1884 is circumstantial - she lived in Providence, and he pitched for Providence from 1881-1885, and they eventually married (after living together as husband and wife in Illinois for several years).
So the parts of the book that deal with Carrie running a boarding house (read: house of ill repute) and where it was and how far it was from the train station and police activity that occurred at other boarding houses in Providence take a little more of the stage than they should, even as they provide interesting milieu for the main story.
That's a quibble, though. Radbourn and his team-rival Sweeney, both ornery sunuvabitches, but Radbourn at least a law-abiding and dependable sunuvabitch, so a likeable antihero, and the late season miracle-on-dirt Radbourn produced, make a real page-turner and a story every baseball fan should know....more
I think the most interesting part of the book were the chapters devoted to the Polyface farm, even if Joel Salatin is dangerously wrong-headed about CI think the most interesting part of the book were the chapters devoted to the Polyface farm, even if Joel Salatin is dangerously wrong-headed about Covid.
And the book also helped me see how little 'organic' really means, or how little 'free range' 'organically fed' meat actually improves the lives of the animals. Still, organic is better than not-organic, if only because that much more farmland doesn't have the next DDT being sprayed on it.
But what is it about Pollan's writing style that hits me so...smug? I wanted to tell the book, "oh shut up," times probably numbering in the dozens....more
I read this for my book club. Many of the men in my book club are vets, so I thought this would sing the praises of the guys who are willing to lay doI read this for my book club. Many of the men in my book club are vets, so I thought this would sing the praises of the guys who are willing to lay down their lives to protect their charge.
Wow.
What an eye-opener. The Secret Service, in Leonnig's telling, are all the cool boys from high school who thought rules didn't apply to them, and were usually right. The systemic toxicity in the organization has made it so that only luck has kept any successful assassinations from happening under their watch since JFK, with severe injuries to George Wallace and Ronald Reagan (Robert F. Kennedy didn't have Secret Service protection - his assassination caused policy to change to protect candidates).
It's not clear what can fix it, either. Each president has the privilege of choosing his personal detail, and each chooses agents with whom they have rapport. The budget for things like updating technology, hiring enough agents so that time off isn't routinely canceled, and the priority for changing from an old-boys-network for success within the agency just aren't there.
The only time it came close was during Obama's presidency, when he looked at solving endemic problems instead of just symptoms after a couple of bullets were shot through an upstairs window at the White House and nobody knew about it for days. But his choice for a start-fresh head of the agency had to take a fall after yet another scandal involving hookers or driving drunk or I-don't-remember-what among the agents in her charge.
And Trump's way of doing business, of course, only reinforced the it's-who-you-know-and-how-you-look-and-you-should-be-a-man way of doing business.
The service is broken. This is great rage porn....more
Montgomery writes well, but I'm not sure who the intended audience is here. I liked it, but found it a bit too precious at times. On the other hand, sMontgomery writes well, but I'm not sure who the intended audience is here. I liked it, but found it a bit too precious at times. On the other hand, subject matter about having a toxic mother, and considering suicide during a bout with depression, would keep me from giving it to my kids to read.
I had thought the book would be about thirteen species of animal, for some reason, rather than thirteen individuals that Montgomery knew personally, so the lessons would be broader.
Still, the overarching lesson I got was that loving, terrifying though it is to love that which can be taken by death, is the way to be. And I think that lesson is always worth amplifying, because that terror is hard to overcome....more
I don't think I'll star this one. Celebrity memoirs aren't my thing, so if they're yours you will probably like it.
Entertaining, but not as reflectivI don't think I'll star this one. Celebrity memoirs aren't my thing, so if they're yours you will probably like it.
Entertaining, but not as reflective as I was expecting. She's been through a lot, and survived, and I respect that, but I didn't feel the struggle. She doesn't owe anybody that, of course, and maybe she wasn't putting it out there, either. I really don't know. Like I said, maybe just not my thing.
It also felt kind of disjointed but maybe that comes with the territory of celebrity memoir....more
I picked up this book without reading the blurb, just happy that a Pollan book about plants was available on CD so I'd have decent audiobook material I picked up this book without reading the blurb, just happy that a Pollan book about plants was available on CD so I'd have decent audiobook material to listen to on my iPod classic*. Based on the title I was expecting a much broader overview of what different plants do for brain function and health and mood altering.
It's a book about 3 specific consciousness-altering chemicals that are plant-derived: opium, caffeine and mescaline. That's it.
OK, so I adjusted my expectations as much as I could. But toward the end of the opium section, he posed a question with an unstated but implied answer - "what reasoning do we as a society follow in deciding what plants we're going to make illegal for consumption?" And, while I can be persuaded that some plants that are illegal to smoke/eat/make-into-tea should not be illegal, his reductive reasoning really turned me off. It's been bugging me since, and it was in the first third of the book, and I still haven't let go of it. It affected my willingness to take in what he had to say for the whole rest of the book.
He says society's reasoning can't be because some plants are addictive, because tobacco and caffeine are addictive but legal. It can't be because some plants are severely detrimental to health, because lots of poisonous plants are legal to cultivate. He has another couple of EXCLUSIVE OR reasons for why some reason or other can't be the SINGLE CRITERION for making a plant illegal to cultivate and/or consume.
You see where I'm going. His implication is society's reasons for making some plants illegal to cultivate, or to use for consumption, are nonsense, because he looks at each reasonable reason in isolation and without acknowledging it could be a combination of reasons that cause acts involving plants to be illegal.
By the same reasoning, you could argue that there is no cause for fire. It can't be fires are cause by fuel, because I have wood all around me and it's not burning. Fires can't be caused by oxygen, because there's enough oxygen in all the air around me for fire. Fires can't be caused by heat, because I can microwave a bowl of water to boiling and beyond but there's no fire. Fire can't be caused by sparks, because I can strike a flint against metal over a sink all day long and not get a fire.
Maybe we don't make some poisonous plants illegal because nobody would bother to eat a rhododendron. Maybe we don't make caffeine illegal because overall it provides a benefit, even if it is addictive.
Nevertheless, I learned a bunch, especially about caffeine and the shorter-than-I-realized history of coffee and tea in Europe and the New World.
*What's the matter with CD's anyway, or iPods? I don't want another app on my phone so I can listen to audiobooks. I can already listen to audiobooks. iPods solved the need better than phones do. And I don't like the library yanking back the audio book after 3 weeks on that app on my phone, regardless of whether I've finished the book. It depends how much driving I've been doing lately....more
Wow. In the beginning, he asks seemingly unanswerable questions about what could make people believe the crazy stuff they do, and by the end of the boWow. In the beginning, he asks seemingly unanswerable questions about what could make people believe the crazy stuff they do, and by the end of the book, he actually answers them.
And I don't feel the need, so much, to strangle people who believe such harmful and obvious insanity as one sees every day in social media.
To become a better species, everyone in the world should read this book....more
Taking a second attempt 30 years later, I finished the book. I'm not sure I understood everything Pirsig was saying, but I got more out of it than if Taking a second attempt 30 years later, I finished the book. I'm not sure I understood everything Pirsig was saying, but I got more out of it than if I hadn't. I'll probably never understand how consciousness really works. It's like the ex nihilo issue of cosmology - but instead of getting something from nothing it's getting something aware from all the unaware things.
I don't have any grounding in Sophists versus Socrates, which probably would have helped, and maybe I'm not any smarter than I was but I think I am. Or at least I tried to become smarter by reading this....more
As always, Roach's dry humor and interesting choice of subject matter make for a worthwhile, entertaining read, as she covers topics as varied as "howAs always, Roach's dry humor and interesting choice of subject matter make for a worthwhile, entertaining read, as she covers topics as varied as "how do you keep albatrosses from interfering with flights on Midway Island?" and "when you find a human who's been killed by a wild animal, what kinds of clues tell you it might have been a bear, a cougar, or a pack of wolves who did that mauling?"
The only thing I would advise against is getting the audiobook. Not because Roach, who is her own narrator, isn't good at it. She reads well, and never falters with any Fozzie-bear deliveries of her dry writing style. No, it's for one simple reason you shouldn't go with the audio book. The footnotes are all shoved to the end - the last track at the very end. That's one of the best aspects of her writing style! Seeing the footnote*, drifting down to the bottom of the page, reading the aside, and then rejoining the main thread of thought in the text. You can't skip to the end of the audiobook to the last track, where all the footnotes are, pointlessly introduced by page number WHICH THERE AREN'T ANY OF IN AN AUDIOBOOK, and then go back, and besides there's no indication during the main part of the book when you would do that anyway.
*Besides, by having them all at the end, they're not footnotes, they're endnotes. Maybe having them all scrunched in at the end might work if she titles her next book Cram....more
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