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Some books recently read ...
Aug. 20th, 2004 07:08 pmHistory, politics, and criticism, mostly checked out from libraries or read while standing up in bookstores.
Once Upon a Time by J. Randy Taraborrelli
The romantically-titled story of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. Gossipy without being smutty or scandal-digging. Pretty good on how they all lived ever after with reasonable happiness but not so much that it sounds implausible.
I never knew all that much about Princess Grace (I've only ever seen one of her films, Rear Window), so this was interesting. Best moment: her earthy father meeting Rainier for the first time, calling him Ray, and inviting him to sit down with the words "Take a load off."
Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Lawrence Miles et al
Covers all seven seasons, good. Has a critical evaluation of each episode's quality, good. But the entries for each episode's best lines were sufficiently off that I decided not to buy it. I can barely believe not picking Xander's taunt "Who's a little fear demon?", but there's just no excuse for not picking Spike's greatest line, "I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
A Terry Teachout Reader by (and yes, I did have to give this information at one bookstore where I asked for it) Terry Teachout
I came across Teachout as the classical music critic for Commentary, where he still reigns and writes the best commentary on the field now regularly being published - Alex Ross of The New Yorker might match him but he's not so frequent - and now I also read his blog. This fat little collection of his writings - very hard to find it was - covers lots of arts, and has less about classical music and more about ballet than I'm interested in reading, but it's thoughtful throughout. Although Teachout is as conservative in politics as he is in art, in art he does not confuse conservatism with stuffy elitism, and I now have from the library a book he reviewed enthusiastically as a good critical study of a great American artist: Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings by Hugh Kenner.
Best line in the collection, a reference to something (I no longer remember what) as showing that not all noir stories take place on a rainy night in Los Angeles in 1946.
Major McKinley: William McKinley & the Civil War by William H. Armstrong
What did the future President do in the war, daddy? If you want to read a selective history of the Civil War that's not campaign-oriented but instead follows the career of a dedicated, respected, much-honored staff officer, you could do well with this one. The payoff comes at the end, though, where it turns out that, 30 years later when McKinley ran for President, his distinguished service record didn't prevent his political opponents from belittling it and claiming he was an unprincipled coward. Does any of this sound familiar?
Jefferson and the Gun-Men by M.R. Montgomery
Not a particularly successful attempt at demotic history. Tries to tell simultaneously the stories of the Lewis & Clark expedition and the Burr-Wilkinson conspiracy in little present-tense vignettes. Irritated me further by the preface, proudly claiming the reader would be spared all that grad-student stuff like citations reading op cit (apparently in ignorance of the fact that the MLA citation rules tell you not to use that any more).
Two books on Lewis & Clark I saw in the bookstore and didn't have time to read, but want to, are Larry E. Morris, The Fate of the Corps and Landon Y. Jones, William Clark and the Shaping of the West. About time a full biography of Clark was published, but I'm sorry to see that Jones swallows uncritically the story that Lewis's death was clearly a suicide. Morris also believes it was suicide, but he reaches his conclusion with proper hesitancy and after studying the evidence.
And if I want a gripping demotic history, I might try Kenneth D. Ackerman, Dark Horse, on the election and assassination of James Garfield, which looked pretty good at a lengthy glance.
Why the Electoral College is Bad for America by George C. Edwards III
Remarkably lucid for a political science book, though I'm not sure I buy the arguments. The presence of the electoral college confines vote-counting dilemmas to single states, whereas with a nation-wide popular vote you'd have to hold a nation-wide recount to solve a near-tie. Edwards says don't worry, the nation-wide popular vote couldn't be close enough to make it worthwhile to do that much vote-stealing. Wanna bet?
Read much of this one while waiting for a lunch appointment. Always bring a book, or better yet arrange to meet in a bookstore.
Democracy Challenged by William Heward Grafftey
Canada was closed for the day when I was last there, but my mother, finding a bookstore open at another end of the country at about the same time, knew I like this kind of political book and got me this one, an account of 50 years of ineptness of the Progressive Conservative Party (which has gained power three times during that period and promptly blown it each time) by a disillusioned retired Conservative politician. Not very well written, but, like other books on Canadian politics I've bought there, fun to read for the honest appraisal of their country's mess that Canadians will give each other when they don't think any foreigners are watching. Since the book was published the two rival Conservative parties (the P.C. or anemic conservative party and the Canadian Alliance or lunatic conservative party) have merged, an outcome Grafftey apparently wasn't quite expecting, but without much effect on the outcome of the ensuing election. This book goes on my shelf next to the wonderful I'll Be With You In A Minute, Mr. Ambassador by Allan Gotlieb, the unabashed memoirs of a Canadian diplomat in Washington.
Once Upon a Time by J. Randy Taraborrelli
The romantically-titled story of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. Gossipy without being smutty or scandal-digging. Pretty good on how they all lived ever after with reasonable happiness but not so much that it sounds implausible.
I never knew all that much about Princess Grace (I've only ever seen one of her films, Rear Window), so this was interesting. Best moment: her earthy father meeting Rainier for the first time, calling him Ray, and inviting him to sit down with the words "Take a load off."
Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Lawrence Miles et al
Covers all seven seasons, good. Has a critical evaluation of each episode's quality, good. But the entries for each episode's best lines were sufficiently off that I decided not to buy it. I can barely believe not picking Xander's taunt "Who's a little fear demon?", but there's just no excuse for not picking Spike's greatest line, "I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
A Terry Teachout Reader by (and yes, I did have to give this information at one bookstore where I asked for it) Terry Teachout
I came across Teachout as the classical music critic for Commentary, where he still reigns and writes the best commentary on the field now regularly being published - Alex Ross of The New Yorker might match him but he's not so frequent - and now I also read his blog. This fat little collection of his writings - very hard to find it was - covers lots of arts, and has less about classical music and more about ballet than I'm interested in reading, but it's thoughtful throughout. Although Teachout is as conservative in politics as he is in art, in art he does not confuse conservatism with stuffy elitism, and I now have from the library a book he reviewed enthusiastically as a good critical study of a great American artist: Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings by Hugh Kenner.
Best line in the collection, a reference to something (I no longer remember what) as showing that not all noir stories take place on a rainy night in Los Angeles in 1946.
Major McKinley: William McKinley & the Civil War by William H. Armstrong
What did the future President do in the war, daddy? If you want to read a selective history of the Civil War that's not campaign-oriented but instead follows the career of a dedicated, respected, much-honored staff officer, you could do well with this one. The payoff comes at the end, though, where it turns out that, 30 years later when McKinley ran for President, his distinguished service record didn't prevent his political opponents from belittling it and claiming he was an unprincipled coward. Does any of this sound familiar?
Jefferson and the Gun-Men by M.R. Montgomery
Not a particularly successful attempt at demotic history. Tries to tell simultaneously the stories of the Lewis & Clark expedition and the Burr-Wilkinson conspiracy in little present-tense vignettes. Irritated me further by the preface, proudly claiming the reader would be spared all that grad-student stuff like citations reading op cit (apparently in ignorance of the fact that the MLA citation rules tell you not to use that any more).
Two books on Lewis & Clark I saw in the bookstore and didn't have time to read, but want to, are Larry E. Morris, The Fate of the Corps and Landon Y. Jones, William Clark and the Shaping of the West. About time a full biography of Clark was published, but I'm sorry to see that Jones swallows uncritically the story that Lewis's death was clearly a suicide. Morris also believes it was suicide, but he reaches his conclusion with proper hesitancy and after studying the evidence.
And if I want a gripping demotic history, I might try Kenneth D. Ackerman, Dark Horse, on the election and assassination of James Garfield, which looked pretty good at a lengthy glance.
Why the Electoral College is Bad for America by George C. Edwards III
Remarkably lucid for a political science book, though I'm not sure I buy the arguments. The presence of the electoral college confines vote-counting dilemmas to single states, whereas with a nation-wide popular vote you'd have to hold a nation-wide recount to solve a near-tie. Edwards says don't worry, the nation-wide popular vote couldn't be close enough to make it worthwhile to do that much vote-stealing. Wanna bet?
Read much of this one while waiting for a lunch appointment. Always bring a book, or better yet arrange to meet in a bookstore.
Democracy Challenged by William Heward Grafftey
Canada was closed for the day when I was last there, but my mother, finding a bookstore open at another end of the country at about the same time, knew I like this kind of political book and got me this one, an account of 50 years of ineptness of the Progressive Conservative Party (which has gained power three times during that period and promptly blown it each time) by a disillusioned retired Conservative politician. Not very well written, but, like other books on Canadian politics I've bought there, fun to read for the honest appraisal of their country's mess that Canadians will give each other when they don't think any foreigners are watching. Since the book was published the two rival Conservative parties (the P.C. or anemic conservative party and the Canadian Alliance or lunatic conservative party) have merged, an outcome Grafftey apparently wasn't quite expecting, but without much effect on the outcome of the ensuing election. This book goes on my shelf next to the wonderful I'll Be With You In A Minute, Mr. Ambassador by Allan Gotlieb, the unabashed memoirs of a Canadian diplomat in Washington.
