"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Unsolicited opinions on books, movies, TV shows, consumer products
If I had a rant in me this morning, I’d lay into NPR for its slavish commitment to normalizing Trump, arguably not the worst unelected occupant of the White House (George W. Bush still has that distinction IMO), but certainly the most abnormal.
I’m just waiting for someone to tell me those are coyote tracks, because I have some very literal-minded friends who never understand when I’m joking, and of course I know those are coyote tracks because that’s why I took the photo, innit?
As a patriotic American, living and working in America, speaking American English, a voting citizen who drives around in a big American pickup truck with Arizona plates, I never felt the need to remind my countrymen I’m one of them.
Six short book reviews: non-fiction, science fiction, mysteries, thrillers
Finally saw my first Kentucky Derby … actually my first horse race of any kind. Now here’s a televised sport I can endure while pretending to be as into it as everyone else in the room. I can do anything if I only have to do it for two minutes!
“The future was coming nearer, one relentless goose step after the next. Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (“The clowns are the dangerous ones,” Perry said.)” —Kate Atkinson, Transcription Transcription by Kate Atkinson I first read about this novel on the literary website The […]
Eight short book reviews: fiction, science fiction, mystery, thriller, horror, young adult, fantasy.
I remember a huge flap at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands when a new guy, one of the first of a wave of evangelical Christian officers from the Air Force Academy (a wave that continues to plague the USAF today), recorded Spielberg’s awful “1941” movie over all the alert shack’s Betamax porn tapes. Funny now, but an existential crisis at the time!