Category: books

in defense of Ayn Rand

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, books, economics, movies, philosophy1 Comment

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.

The other, of course, involves orcs.”

– Attributed to Paul Krugman.

Atlas Shrugged had that effect on me.

… explores a dystopian United States where leading innovators, ranging from industrialists to artists, refuse to be exploited by society.

The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry (including Taggart Transcontinental, the once mighty transcontinental railroad for which she serves as the Vice President of Operations), while society’s most productive citizens, led by the mysterious John Galt, progressively disappear. …

I’ve given Atlas Shrugged to a number of teens. It’s an important book …

Kids need to learn that all men are not created equal, rather that all men should have equal opportunity.

Kids need to learn that we should promote and encourage greatness.

Kids need to learn that authority organizations can ruin their lives ... OK, they already know that.

Now I find myself defending Ayn Rand alongside fans as odious as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. That does hurt.

The new Ayn Rand movie adaptation Atlas Shrugged Part 1 got nuked and ridiculed on the Slate Culture Gabfest audiocast.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

I’m going to see it. Unfortunately the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said:

… that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.

“Critics, you won,” …

I hope he joins Gault and makes the two sequels.

disappointed by Greg Mortenson

On By Rick McIn books, product complaintsLeave a comment

If you saw the 60 Minutes piece (VIDEO) on author Greg Mortenson, you’ll be saddened and disappointed too.

… Krakauer, and others, say that Mortenson has embellished some of the details of his story to make them sound more dramatic and impressive. That some of the things he claims happened to him in his books are, at best, stretches of the truth, and at worst, outright fabrications.

There are even some indications that the funds that are raised by CAI are not being spent properly and that the organization lacks transparency in how it operates. …

I’m not at all convinced by Greg’s response to the charge as published by Outside – Greg Mortenson Speaks

Greg Mortenson is finished. What a setback to a great cause.

(via The Adventure Blog)

funny Borders Books sign

On By Rick McIn books, humour1 Comment

… We’ve gotta hand it to the employee at a doomed Borders store who still has a sense of humor about the company they work for going down the drain.

Consumerist reader Sam says he snapped this sign at a store which will be closing in Chicago, telling customers where they can now go to find a bathroom.

Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid-February, after struggling for years to compete against Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, which have cornered the digital and physical book store markets, respectively. As a result, they have been in the process of closing 30% of their stores. …

Consumerist – Closing Borders Store Tells Customers Where To Find A Restroom

author Robert Sawyer in Saskatoon

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

Warren stopped by at Robert’s reading at McNally Robinson Booksellers, a preview of the April 5th launch of his latest Sci-fi novel, Wonder.

This is exactly the thing bookstores need to do more of if they are going to survive competing against online book sellers.

The LIVE draw gets people into the store, buying high mark-up coffee and (hopefully) a high mark-up copy of an autographed Robert Sawyer book.

reactions to Borders bankruptcy

On By Rick McIn books, internetLeave a comment

Economist:

… We can spare a little thought for Borders.

It has a particular relevance for American small towns and suburbs that isn’t apparent in urban centres.

In the latter, the chain bookstores are the impersonal monoliths that destroyed small independents by undercutting them on prices. But elsewhere, the arrival of a Borders would mean that a town was finally getting a bookstore, rather than a rack of paperbacks and Sudoku books at the supermarket.

(Similarly, while Starbucks might have hurt local coffeeshops in, for example, New York, in rural America it has achieved its stated goal of creating a “third space”.) …

Beyond Borders

L.A. Times – Carolyn Kellogg responds:

It’s an interesting argument, but the only example the Economist provides is a counter: In Austin, Texas, longstanding indie BookPeople successfully prevented a Borders from moving in nearby.

It’s nice to think that Borders provided bookstoreless towns with their first bookstores, creating new community space around books — but I’m not entirely sure that it’s true. …

Borders should die. … But I really don’t think the online experience is anywhere near as good. Yet.

Borders Books bankrupt

On By Rick McIn books, product complaints1 Comment

I used to drive a milk cart, pulled by a horse.

Those were the good old days.

I used to enjoy lounging around in book stores like Borders, browsing the travel section, browsing magazines. Enjoying a coffee. (… Libraries didn’t allow coffee, back in the good old days.)

Borders is selling at least 200 of their 500 Superstores. The company is going the way of the milk cart.

There should be some pretty sweet bargains … right?

We should swoop down on the corpse. … right?

… At the Borders Group Inc. store on Broadway near Wall Street, box sets of Stieg Larsson’s best- selling “Millennium” trilogy, including the “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” sat on a table near the door last week on sale for $69.39 — a liquidation markdown of 30 percent.

The set costs half as much on Amazon.com Inc.’s website, where it was listed for $34.58 — with free shipping. Amazon’s Kindle e-book editions were even less, priced at $27.97. At Wal- Mart Stores Inc.’s website, the three books sold for $34.96. …

Businessweek

Even in death, Borders can’t compete.

Last week I took my Mom into a Borders to look at the Kindle. … But the e-reader display wasn’t set up. Nobody on staff would have been able to explain it, in any case.

Borders deserves to die.

Why didn’t they rebrand to become an entertainment / food / drink venue, with high mark-up product on the side. That could have worked. We’d go there for book readings, poetry readings, public meetings, etc. … Something like an Apple store.

Hey, isn’t Borders the big, bad company that killed the neighbourhood bookstore in the film You’ve Got Mail (1998)

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Some of the local bookstores will survive, I predict. Happy that big box Borders is gone from their city.

The Tree Where Man Was Born

On By Rick McIn books, travelLeave a comment

by Peter Matthiessen (1972)

A perfect moment. …

Sitting in the outdoor hot tub looking out over Pismo Beach. Listening to classic Matthiessen as an audio book.

Africa in the 1960s

On the great East African plain it is the human who feels himself the intruder. Here, and perhaps only here, the world is that of the animals. It is they who belong, as humans do not. In the more sensitive traveler this evokes a feeling of being privileged to observe ancient forms, settings and behavior that have survived intact from pre-history.

“Matthiessen has the language to express this feeling of awe…Matthiessen also goes into the relationships between humans past and present in East Africa’s great fauna with many a flash of insight into the instincts each has bred in the other…This is the Africa book par excellence.”

(Saturday Review)


Amazon

Here’s where Matthiessen first met famed field biologist George Schaller, the man he’d join in the Himalayan adventures documented in The Snow Leopard, one of my very favourite books.

Both Schaller and Matthiessen are still alive. In fact Matthiessen in 2008, at age 81, received his second National Book Award for Shadow Country, an 890-page revision of a trilogy of novels he released in the 1990s. (41hrs audio)

social networking for booklovers

On By Rick McIn books, product complaintsLeave a comment

There are many options out there (Goodreads, Shelfari, Google Books, Anobii, WeRead), including some good ones for sharing only with Facebook friends.

About 20min research leads me to believe that the best of the bunch is LibraryThing.

It got a great review on PC Mag. And by a user jameswharris.

Check it out at librarything.com.

Sadly, I still find LibraryThing too crude. Having no widget for this WordPress.com blog is a deal breaker. … I’ll wait until something better comes along.

Leave a comment if I’m missing the perfect social network for books.

P.S.

I saw a number of warnings about one competitor, now owned by Amazon – Shelfari. … Avoid.

Poisonwood Bible

On By Rick McIn books, product endorsements1 Comment

The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to … the Belgian Congo …

… to save African souls.

Like most readers, I love how the narrative alternates between the four daughters.

Adah is my favourite.

Adah Price (14 at start of the novel) – Hemiplegic from birth, Adah is silent, brilliant in math and languages, witty, skeptical, sarcastic, envious of her twin sister, and prone to self-pity.

She reminded me a little of the brilliant Norma Cenva, a congenital dwarf, mathematical genius. One of the most important characters in the entire Dune franchise.

And Owen Meany, the malformed dwarf, “God’s instrument”, one of the great characters of fiction.

In some ways the book is cliché, though. I immediately thought of Mosquito Coast (1986) and the brilliant film, The Gods Must be Crazy.

Yet it kept me going strong right up to about page 500. When the women flee after one of the daughters is killed.

The author lived in Congo as a child. The details feel real.

Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist about my age who often writes about social justice.

In 2000, she established the Bellwether Prize to support “literature of social change.”

In the late 1990s she was a founder member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band made up of published writers. Other band members include Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, and Stephen King. (That must have been fun.)

official website: kingsolver.com

Leave a comment if you liked the book. It’s really got me thinking.