Seen on Twitter: “RT if you still haven’t said the words ‘President Trump’ aloud.” These lips haven’t, but I did type them once, in a January blog post. In my defense, I was quoting a Washington Post headline, and I hope George Soros won’t invalidate my intolerant liberal license.
So now we have, or had, a liberal with a gun. Had to happen sooner or later. On Facebook, conservative family members have been copying & pasting rightwing jabs at intolerant liberals ever since the election. I expect my newsfeed to overflow with them now. I dunno, maybe they think they can bully the rest of us … the majority whose votes were invalidated by the Electoral College … into shutting up about the un-American travesty of a wannabe dictator they put in office, with help from the Russians.
Yikes. I’m not one to hold a grudge, but I’ve been angry since the 8th of November, and it’s not letting up. We was robbed, folks, and the bastards are a long way from being done with us.
Every now and then a writer or publisher will offer me a free book in exchange for a review. I don’t need any more physical books cluttering up the house, but if the description sounds interesting, I’ll download and review the ebook version. A friend of mine always scolds me for doing this without payment, but my reviews are in no way scholarly or researched, and I review every book I read anyway … it’s nice to get a freebie once in a while.
So long as the freebie’s worth reading, that is. I’m pretty good at deciphering book jacket blurbs and knowing if something’s up my alley or not, but occasionally I’ll get stuck with a crappy book, poorly written or not at all what the publisher promised, a book I have to plow through and write about because that’s my end of the deal. And if I write a terribly negative review, which I will because I won’t pull punches on bad books, I worry the freebie faucet will run dry. So far, though, that hasn’t happened.
I hate it when vaguebloggers and vaguebookers don’t give you the deets, so here are links to two reviews I wrote in exchange for free books:
- Stuart Archer Cohen: This Is How It Really Sounds: A Novel
- Richard Marcinko: Curse of the Infidel (Rogue Warrior #17)
Cohen’s novel was one of the best I’ve read in ages. Marcinko’s was an airport thriller about special operations, but since I worked with snake eaters who knew Marcinko (the disgraced former head of Seal Team Six), interesting.
Donna’s taking a friend to dialysis today. Our friend is suffering from leukemia and kidney failure, and we’re watching her dog Bella, a puppy who, to our sad surprise, wasn’t housebroken. We’ve had her for two weeks and she’s basically trained now, barring the occasional accident, which tells me we haven’t lost the touch and are ready for another miniature dachshund puppy … as soon as Bella goes home.
Meanwhile, I’m hunkering down for what promises to be a very hot day, with even hotter days forecast for the weekend and following week, as high as 114°F. I’m closing shutters to keep the sun from beaming through the windows, and putting up the big umbrella over the shallow end of the pool so I can jump in later without getting radiation burns.
One of our bicycle clubs is putting on a hare & hounds ride Sunday morning, but the hares don’t want to start until 10 AM. It’ll be close to 100° by then … even starting as early as 8 AM would be pressing it. I wish they’d consulted an experienced hare (namely me) … there are places in downtown Tucson where you can get a cold beer before 10 AM, and I know where they are. Donna has already said she isn’t going, and I’m wrestling with it. The last time I rode one of these trails in triple-digit heat, two months ago (who says global warming’s a hoax?), I got so close to heatstroke I went down, scraping the hell out of one knee. A smart person would stay the hell home. I like to think I’m smart, but I don’t always act that way. We’ll see.