Category: books

Double Down: Game Change 2012

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, GOP USA, governmentLeave a comment

Ezra Klein:

“a joyous romp through the seedy underbelly of presidential campaigning“.

Though not nearly as good as Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (2008), I still enjoyed hearing insider anecdotes of the dirty dealings.

double-down-book-barack-obama

Double Down: Game Change 2012 is a book written by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2012 United States presidential election, in which Barack Obama was re-elected as President of the United States, defeating Mitt Romney. …

… a behind-the-scenes narrative of the Obama and Romney campaigns.

The book relies on over 400 sources, most of whom are anonymous. The authors treated their interview subjects with alcohol in a private suite or restaurant to get them to open up …

… Rep. Michele Bachmann‘s belief that as a “branier” Sarah Palin she could win the nomination, only to suffer horrible stage fright and a series of gaffes …

Herman Cain‘s initial appeal deflated by charges of sexual harassment and a poor understanding of U.S. foreign policy

Jon Huntsman‘s campaign collapse due to poor organization and attacks by both the Romney campaign and the Obama White House, each viewing the ambassador as a turncoat …

Gov. Rick Perry‘s gaffe-ridden campaign, apparently the result of painkiller use. …

… Karl Rove‘s role in the primaries, pushing Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee to enter the race, only to have both decline over issues of finance. …

Biggest idiot of all — as usual — was Donald Trump.

ROMNEY trump planeRomney was criticized for being an out-of-touch fat cat, beholding to the very rich. I feel that charge was fair. Like George W, if elected, he would have had to do everything he could to make the rich richer.

Chris Christie comes out looking best of the many who might have got the nomination instead of Romney. I do hope he runs in 2016. He’s a heavy weight legit candidate. Smart enough and tough enough to do the job. Sadly, skeletons in the closet could derail.

Paul Ryan was a gutsy choice for VP. He kept arguing to put forward alternative policies to Obama — but Mitt’s people wanted to make few specific promises, sticking with anti-Obama rhetoric. Of the Republicans covered, Ryan’s to my mind the closest to a fiscal conservative. His budget was Micky Mouse, hardly better than Obama. But I was hoping it was a first step in the right direction. For example, this week he defended cuts to military retiree benefits. Ryan’s got balls.

Mitt Romney is a good man. He might have been a good President. Might have been better than a term 2 Obama. We’ll never know.

I supported Romney when he first got the nod, hoping that a business man might better manage the nation. Unfortunately he voiced no platform. Weaseled or flip-flopped out of every question. It was embarrassing to listen to him interviewed.

His best moment was in the 1st presidential debate, Wednesday, October 3rd. Romney was good. Obama was terrible.

There are no scandalous reveals in the book regarding Mitt. He’s just as boring in real life as he was on the campaign trail.

HBO Films, which produced Game Change, the film version of the book, has optioned the rights to Double Down. When asked about casting, Halperin suggested Will Smith or Giancarlo Esposito would be his choices for Obama, while George Clooney or Jon Hamm could play Romney.

I’d love to see Clooney playing a Republican. 🙂

In some ways the respective National Conventions symbolize the respective Presidential campaigns.

The Democrats tightly scripted. Disciplined.

Their celebrity loose cannon the biggest hit of the event. Read the transcript of Bill Clinton’s Speech to the Democratic National Convention.

Obama Clinton

The Republicans. … Not so good.

No need to read Clint Eastwood‘s GOP convention speech: Full transcript. It was a mess, though I still like Clint personally.

clint_eastwood_and_invisibleobama.jpeg.size.xxlarge.letterbox

2016?

I can’t see any Republican beating Hillary.

They’ll have to take a shellacking before finally turning to fiscal conservatism, abandoning Tea Party trivialities.

Most Tea Party candidates are no more competent to govern than Occupy Wall Street extremists.

PalinIf you are interested in what’s really happening in the campaign war rooms, read this book. You’ll never again believe a word an American politician says.

Work or Play?

On By Rick McIn about Rick, books, hiking, philosophyLeave a comment

Kelley Durbin-Williams linked to this great truth:

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.”

~ James Michener

West Coast Trail
West Coast Trail

A Clash of Kings (1998)

On By Rick McIn books, TVLeave a comment

A Clash of Kings is the second novel in A Song of Ice and Fire, an epic fantasy series by American author George R. R. Martin …

Like its predecessor, A Game of Thrones, it won the Locus Award (in 1999) for Best Novel and was nominated for the Nebula Award …

A Clash of Kings picks up where A Game of Thrones ended. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are plagued by civil war, while the Night’s Watch mounts a reconnaissance force north of the Wall to investigate the mysterious people, known as wildlings, who live there. Meanwhile, in the distant east, Daenerys Targaryen continues her quest to return to and conquer the Seven Kingdoms. All signs are foreshadowing the terrible disaster that is to come. …

Clash

The highlights for me were Tyrion Lannister (the Imp) and Arya Stark, the Tomboy daughter.

The subplot of the Night’s Watch on The Wall is fascinating.

Though Clash was not nearly as good as Game of Thrones, I’ve downloaded book 3 – A Storm of Swords (2000)

I’ve also started watching Game of Thrones, the TV series.

Game of Thrones

On By Rick McIn books, TVLeave a comment

A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels written by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. …

A Game of Thrones (1996)
A Clash of Kings (1998)
A Storm of Swords (2000)
A Feast for Crows (2005)
A Dance with Dragons (2011)
The Winds of Winter (forthcoming)
A Dream of Spring (forthcoming)

I listened to audio versions of the first two on my recent travels.

Long … But engaging. Especially during dark nights in the tent.

… While the first novel contains nearly no magic at all, the prominence of magic grows within and beyond each novel to the next. The assortment of disparate, subjective, and not always accurate points of view confronts the reader with a variety of perspectives on each of the other characters from one chapter to the next. The reader may not safely presume that a favorite prominent character will prevail, or even survive. Violence, sexuality and moral ambiguity frequently arise among a set of over a thousand named characters. …

Too violent, I’d say.

Still, I’ll likely download A Storm of Swords for my next trip.

And watch the TV series.

Click PLAY or watch the season 1 trailer on YouTube.

Tales From Firozsha Baag

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

tales firozshaAs is everything Mistry.
Excellent.

Tales From Firozsha Baag is a collection of 11 short stories by Rohinton Mistry about the residents of Firozsha Baag, a Parsi-dominated apartment complex in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). Mistry’s first book, it was published by Penguin Canada in 1987.

Tales from Firozsha Baag

Lonely Planet India

On By Rick McIn books, travel, travel IndiaLeave a comment

India_travel_guide_Large

I just purchased the essential Lonely Planet India — 1248 pages — for $10.

Published Oct 15th, 2013 for USD $34.99, I got the PDF version early.

The PDF should be $24.49. But LP has a sale on right now. The electronic versions of every guidebook are just $10 with promo code Ebook10.

bibiliographic databases

On By Rick McIn books, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Back in the 1990s I worked a fair bit with Endnote. We tracked thousands of books and articles.

Since 2012 I’ve been working with two of the big four: Mendeley and Zotero.

Mendeley competitors

Both are free. Both available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Both work with MS Word.

Mendeley is the darling right now, a NEW start-up from England. Very friendly.

But there’s a problem.

A gigantic publishing company Elsevier bought the start-up a couple of months ago, claiming only good intentions.

Mendeley-Elsevier-eArmin.com_1

The news was not well received by librarians and scholars. Here’s their thinking …

elsevier.mendeley

Evil, greedy, unethical Elsevier will ruin Mendeley.

They might be right. Therefore, myself and many others are organizing to move to Zotero.

It’s free, open source, developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Virginia.

I recommend Zotero.

Lonely Planet soon DEAD to me?

On By Rick McIn books, dead to me, economics, internet, things getting worse, travelLeave a comment

I love Lonely Planet.

But not — perhaps — for much longer.

The end of guide books? Lonely Planet lays off one-third of editorial staff

lonelyplanet

Venerable travel guide brand Lonely Planet, which has bounced from owner to owner in recent years, just announced some bad news: They’re slashing staff on three continents and getting rid of much of their content staff. Almost 100 jobs were slashed in Melbourne, Australia alone, and additional layoffs were made at Lonely Planet’s London and Oakland offices. …

Update: According to an email from a Lonely Planet publicist, “Print will continue to be part of the mix” for the company.

END OF AN ERA: LONELY PLANET SLASHES CONTENT JOBS

They say they’ll switch to more digital format, more user generated content.

The time’s not right. Yet.

Show me a worthy digital alternative to a Lonely Planet guidebook?

World War Z – the book (2006)

On By Rick McIn books, moviesLeave a comment

After seeing the movie, I downloaded WW Z as an audio book.

World_War_Z_book_cover The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of 30 million souls, to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet.

He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. …

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the 12-year-old Patient Zero … this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War….

Amazon

Pretty good. Any zombie fan would enjoy this story.

I’m glad I got it as an audio book.

Martin Scorsese, F. Murray Abraham, Rob Reiner, Henry Rollins, Mark Hamill and many, many more voices were used.

In her review of the audiobook for Strange Horizons, Siobhan Carroll called the story “gripping” and found the listening experience evocative of Orson Welles’s famous narration of The War of the Worlds. Carroll had mixed opinions on the voice acting, commending it as “solid and understated, mercifully free of “special effects” and “scenery chewing” overall, but lamenting what she perceived as undue cheeriness on the part of Max Brooks and inauthenticity in the Chinese accent of Steve Park.

Publishers Weekly also criticized Brooks’ narration, but found that the rest of the “all-star cast; deliver their parts with such fervor and intensity that listeners cannot help but empathize with these characters”. In an article in Slate concerning the mistakes producers make on publishing audiobooks, Nate DiMeo used World War Z as an example of dramatizations whose full casts contributed to making them “great listens” …

wikipedia

The author has stated that the Brad Pitt film has nothing in common with the story other than the title. He’s mostly correct. Yet the movie is inspired by the books.

I enjoyed both.