Monday, October 13, 2008

Please Don't Remain Calm

Provocations and Commentaries
Michael Kinsley


Back in the dark ages of the 1990s, Michael Kinsley was Pat Buchanan's punching bag on the CNN news-talk program Crossfire. The show was so archaic in it's format that the two adversaries would often be seen to smile at one another and shook hands publicly on many occasions.



Kinsley left Crossfire to become the editor of a newfangled magazine on your screen called Slate, something invented by Microsoft. He has since written for real newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and even Time magazine.

Please Don't Remain Calm is a collection of some of Kinsley's writings for all of these various publications dating from 1995 up until 2007. I would guess that another collection won't be appearing until some time in 2020. This will give you plenty of time to work your way through this one.









Many of the early pieces are quite clever and stand the test of time better than a stained blue dress. It is interesting to look back and remember how worked up we all were over issues that seem, frankly, to be trivial by today's standards. Midway through the book we are introduced to the misadventures of George W Bush. Things I would rather forget are on almost every page from that point on.

The book's title is derived from a piece written in 2006, reflecting on the actions of the passengers on United Flight 93 on September 11th 2001. Kinsley concludes that, unlike those passengers, he would have followed instructions and stayed in his seat. I'm not so sure. Those were a random group of ordinary people and hey acted as they did. Why not any other random group, even one including a journalist and bon vivant.

Generally I don't consider these collections of editorials as real books, and this is no exception. It was a bit like reading an out of date blog, except for the anachronistic use of paper as a medium of expression. And no YouTube videos.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Book Review Blog Carnival Second Edition

Novel Bloggers

The second edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival was posted this morning at Novel Bloggers. My review of Suze Rotelo's "A Freewheelin' Time" is part of the carnival, along with a plethora of other reviews. Go take a look. Your books to read list will grow.

The next edition will be on Books Books and More Books on October 26th. If you would like to participate, submit your book review at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_5161.html.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

An Award Winning Blog


Early this morning I was startled from a deep sleep by a phone call from Sweden . . .


Not really, but Ruthie, at Books Books and More Books,
aka Ruthie's Book Reviews, gave me this nice "I love your blog" award.

Now I'm supposed to pass the award on to some other blogs. I'm going to give it to all the blogs that have volunteered, to date, to host the Book Review Blog Carnival, which I started on a whim about a month ago, and which is taking off like a literary Sopwith Camel. The next edition, only the second to be published, will be featured on the homepage of blogcarnival.com.

That famous, October 12th, edition will be hosted by Novel Blogers, an online book club, hosted by Military Wife. She posts her reviews a chapter at a time and readers discuss the books in the comments section, just like a non-virtual book club, except without the tea and cookies.

Ruthie, at Books Books and More Books is going to host the carnival on October 26th. How awkward of me to be passing the same award right back to her. Ruthie is hereby excused from passing it along, again, to another set of blogs.

Joana's The Symposium will be the host on November 9th. Joana is noted for her brutal honesty. I get enough of that at home, generally, but I enjoy reading her reviews.

Age 30+ A Lifetime of Books
is written by Heather J. She will host the carnival on November 23rd. Heather says that she started to blog in order to have a record of all the books she read during her 31st year on Earth. I sort of got started the same way back in the last millennium. Of course, I had to use a quill pen and parchment, not a nice Macintosh, to record my thoughts.

Imaginary Lands written by Liz, will host the Pearl Harbor edition of the carnival on Dec. 7th. Liz reviews books and movies for a national newspaper in Malaysia. Nice work if you can get it.

Maw Books will host the Dec. 21st, solstice edition carnival. Natasha looks terribly young in he photo, for someone who writes so well.

Bloody-Kisses.org will host on January 4th. Charli apparently likes romance and crime, especially if they are under the same covers, so to speak.

NathanKP at Inkweaver Review has offered to host but it looks to me as if I have neglected to answer him. Whereas I have neglected my duties, therefore by this post, I hereby offer Nathan the opportunity to host on January 18th.

If you write book reviews on your blog, you can join the carnival at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_5161. If you would like to host the carnival some time in 2009, shoot me an email at the address in the sidebar. I'll try not to lose it.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

A Freewheelin' Time

A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
Suze Rotolo

The photo on the cover of this book is instantly recognizable, to persons of a certain age, as the cover photo on the 1963 Colombia Records album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." The author is in fact the young girl shown clinging to the arm of the soon to be famous singer-songwriter. Susan "Suze" Rotolo was a seventeen year old emancipated minor, house sitting a friend's apartment in New York's Greenwich Village when, in 1961, Robert Zimmerman arrived from Minnesota and began to invent the mythical character we know as Bob Dylan.


Rotolo's memoir gives an interesting insight into the process and into the mind of the developing artist that became Bob Dylan. Memory being a tricky thing, however, she begins the book with a disclaimer:

Secrets remain. Their traces go deep, and with all due respect I keep them with my own. The only claim I make for writing a memoir of that time is that it may not be factual, but it is true.






Keeps them with her own what? Dylan like she doesn't say. Like a poet, like Dylan himself, Rotolo's language sometime eludes understanding. This book was definitely not ghost written. I bears the marks of a non-professional, veering from one subject to another unexpectedly, leaving the reader wondering what just happened. Fragmented sentences and abandoned thoughts pepper the narrative. In a perverse way, this is perfect for a memoir about a time spent with this master of evasion and misdirection.

Rotolo was a red diaper baby. The passages that deal with her own family, her involvement with radical politics in the 1960s and her visit to Cuba, as a test of the travel ban imposed on American citizens, could have been expanded into a book themselves, if she had never met Bob Dylan. Another book certainly could be written about the folksingers, Pete Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs, Mary Travers, Ian & Sylvia, who wander in and out of her Dylan centered story. The story of her work in the avant-guarde off off Broadway theater could make a third. Perhaps a career as a memoirist is being born here.

What this memoir is, though, is an impression, looking back 40 years in memory, of a time when a young man and a young woman were embroiled in a moment of extreme pressure and confusion and the way that they tried, with difficulty to deal with it. Some things are glossed over and some things are left unsaid.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The First Book Review Blog Carnival

Welcome to the first in what I hope will be a long lasting series of Book Review Blog Carnivals. These carnivals will appear periodically, hosted by different bloggers around the web. If you write book reviews on your blog you are invited to submit a review for the next carnival, which will appear on Novel Bloggers on October 12th. All submissions are handled through blogcarnival.com. Just click on the link and follow the easy to read directions.

If you would like to host a carnival, email me at the address in the sidebar.


Without further ado, here are the reviews. I have divided them into Fiction and Non Fiction sections. After that you're on your own.

Fiction:


Bloody-Kisses.org writes about On The Edge by Pamela Britton. This is apparently a romance novel, part of a series, with a NASCAR theme. You live and learn.


Naomi writes in Diary From England that a book of short stories, published to raise funds for charity and containing a Harry Potter prequil, written by J.K. Rowling, has broken the record for fastest sellout of a first printing.


Military Wife has submitted a post in Novel Bloggers The Internet Book Club, about The Notebook chapter of "Swans and Storms." I don't see the author's name listed in the post.


Bette Fetter reviews two books by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, on he blog Power In Art The Seuss books are titled "The Shape o f Me And Other Stuff" and "My Many Colored Days."


Lizi Fetter writes, in Power In Art about the book Degas and the Little Dancer by Laurence Anholt, a fictional account of the creation of Degas' little dancer sculpture.


Writing on Scribed.com, Patricia Rockwell of Communication Exchange reviews Protect and Defend by Vince Flynn, a spy thriller set in Iraq. Hmmm, I knew a guy named Vince Flynn in high school, I wonder . . . . nah!


Alessandra writes in Coraline a spooky juvenile novel by Neil Gaiman. Not that the novel is juvenile, mind you, but it's intended audience is that betwixt and between age group.


Christina, of Livin' The Dream read a hollywood insider story, Whacked by Jules Asner. My first impression is that she hated, hated, hated it.


Ruth Schaller writes in Books Books and more Books! about Accidentally Dead by Dakota Cassidy.


Alyce reviews The Violets of Usambara by Mary Soderstrom on her blog At Home With Books. It is a Non Governmental Organization thriller, which must be quite nearly unique.


Joana at The Symposium has written a review of Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyers. It's the fourth installment in Meyers' Twilight Saga and you finally fget to find out how the vampires and the werewolves learn to live together - or something.


Tiffany Aller writes on Read and Release about Odd Thomas By Dean Koontz . A fry cook who talks to the dead, sure, OK, I'm cool with that.


Cromley has read The Big Overeasy a tongue in cheek crime novel about the murder of one Humpty Dumpty, featuring detective Jack Spratt and his sidekick Mary Mary. Read the facts at Cromely's World.


Michele Jacobsen, writing in A Reader's Respite reviews The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows, a novel about a WWII era book club on the isle of Guernsey.


Flash Gordon, that's right THE Flash Gordon, writing in Great New Books that Are a Must Read reviews The Confederate War Bonnet by Jack Shakely, a historical novel about Native Americans during the civil war.


Carrie White reviews Not Dreamt of in Your Philosophy, a short story collection by Lynn Veach Sadler in her blog 4 Star Rating.


Sarah Small, writing in SmallWorld Reads, has discovered A Death in the Family by James Agee. I was an English major, too and haven't read it yet. That's what's wrong with our educational system!


Bombastia has reviewed the entire, four book The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer at one go. Apparently Bombastia read the entire four book series at one go, too.


Pamela Rappaport , of Pamela-te-da, really didn't care for Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass. Find out why.


On Children's Books: What, When & How to Read Them, TZT writes about The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, 262pp RL 5.


Jim Murdoch, on his blog The Truth About Lies, which one might incorrectly think is a blog about politics, actually admits that he is attempting to promote Major Benjy by Guy Fraser-Sampson.


Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All compares Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird to books by Ayn Rand. That's a new way to look at it.


Drama Queen reviews Final Sacrifice by Patricia Bray on her blog Imaginary Lands. It's sort of a new twis on "The PRince and The Pauper, the third book of a fantasy series, Chronicles of Josan. I think it's one of those where you should read the books in order, in order to know what's going on.


Non Fiction:


Penelope Anne from The Library at the End of the Universe reviews Under A Flaming Sky by Daniel James Brown., the story of a catastrophic fire that destroyed a Wisconsin town, with great loss of life, on the same day as the famous Chicago fire.


Book Calndar has submitted a review of Green Investing A Guide To Making Money Through Environment-Friendly Stocks by Jack Uldrich. Good luck with that. Any investing beyond putting some more bucks in my Roth IRA is over my head.


Book Advice.net has a review of The Freedom Writers Diary by The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell. The reviewer is highly, did I say highly, exited about this story of educational success in an inner city school.


Douglas Karr of The Marketing Technology Blog doesn't care much for Content Rich Writing our Way To Wealth On The Web by Jon Wuebben.


Heather J writes in The Pages In Between: A Holocaust Legacy of Two Families, One Home by Erin Einhorn which is the story of the author's mother, who escaped from eastern Europe during the holocaust at the age of three, and of the families that took her in, and the conflict which resulted years later.


Breenie Books has reviewed Withc School, First Degree by Donald Lewis-Highcorrell, which is not a Harry Potter wannabe novel. It is, in fact a textbook teaching Correllian tradition Wicca.


FIRE Finance has written a review of Do You Want To Become A Millionaire Quietly? . I'd rather be a noisy one, I think.


Shamelle, of Enhance Life reviews Who’s Pulling Your Strings? (How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation ...) by Dr. Harriet Braiker. If only I had known . . .


Cinderberry, writing in Stationery Fetish, has learned all about making paper airplanes from “The Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes” by Doug Stillinger. There are many airplane designs and some fancy paper in the book. Something new to fill time at the office?


Diana has read Laurie Notaro’s Idiot Girls Action-Adventure Club:True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life and written about it in Reading is Sexy!. That's why I became an English major, actually. The sight of those horn rimmed glasses and a "Complete Works of William Shakespeare" just drove girls wild.


Charles Euchner has discovered a fascinating book, The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life by Philip Zambardo and John Boyd. He writes about it in START SIMPLE, which it isn't.


Toni , of Wifely Steps, reviews Love the One You're With by Emily Giffen. Do you have a "one who got away" in your life? Well, here's some sage advice - don't tell the one you caught.


Callista liked The Reading Solution by Paul Kropp because, like her, it is from Canada. You can read about it in her blog SMS Book Reviews.


Fiona Veitch Smith presents Shakespeare: the World as a Stageby Bill Bryson in her blog, The Crafty Writer.


Rodney Smith, of Hippo Web Solutions, looks at Problogger - Secrets for Blogging your way to a Six-figure Income by Darren and Chris Garrett. Rodney was surprised and impressed that it was not a e-book. Paper, who woulda thunk it?


Ted, not the famous gathering of smart people, but just Ted, of CampusGrotto College Advice, reviews Ditch the Flip Flops and Ace your first Interview. Flip flops are a non starter apparantly. No wonder I didn't get that Wall Street job.


Stephen writes about How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! by Paul Chek on his blog Balanced Existence.


Malia Russell, writing on Homemaking 911, has reviewed Baby’s First Foods; A Mother’s Guide to Whole Grains and Family Nourishment by Theresa Powers.