Category Archives: Books

Can A Ship Sail Right Over The Edge Of The Earth?

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“The U.S no longer has a well-functioning self-government. . . .  American democracy has been hacked. The United States Congress, the avatar of the democratically elected national legislatures in the modern world, is now incapable of passing laws without permission from the corporate lobbies and other special interests that control their campaign finances.” 

The above quote is from Al Gore’s new book, “The Future.” It makes sobering reading as the U.S. ship of state drifts, apparently rudderless, toward “sequestration.” Is the bridge abandoned? Have the helm and the engine room broken down?

I don’t understand the panic over sequestration, but I am concerned about the ability of U.S. government institutions to function. Continue reading →

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Al Gore’s New Book

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Got the book! “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change,” by Al Gore. Splurged on the hardback. I can’t help myself. I need to know this stuff right away. I need to highlight it! “The Future” is not the kind of book I want to read on a Kindle. Nor is the book I’m finishing now, “A People’s History of the United States,” by Howard Zinn. Besides, my Kindle Fire has died. RIP. Next time, I’ll buy the iPad. – John

America Divided

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U.S. 2012 ELECTION RESULTS, BLUE STATES FOR OBAMA, RED STATES FOR ROMNEY. FLORIDA, THE LAST STATE TO BE DECIDED, WENT BLUE. (Map via Wikipedia)

U.S. 2012 ELECTION RESULTS, BLUE STATES FOR OBAMA, RED STATES FOR ROMNEY. FLORIDA, THE LAST STATE TO BE DECIDED, WENT BLUE. (Map via Wikipedia)

“This is the America that Obama will govern in his second term: A place divided not only by ideology, race and class but also by the very perception of reality. . . .
The president who spoke ambitiously at his first inauguration about uniting America instead arrives at his second with the country further divided.”
– Eli Saslow, The Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2013

I’ve been reading about the Civil War the past few weeks. Bad timing.

Divided by ideology, race and class.

English: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth Presid...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That sums up America in the decade leading up to the Civil War, as described in “Team Of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s history of Abraham Lincoln and the politicians, abolitionists, generals, and ordinary people of his era.

The similarities between the present time and the decade before the Civil War are striking and frightening.

Continue reading →

‘Back To Blood’ — Tom Wolfe On Men, Women, And Miami

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John Hayden photo

John Hayden photo

Tom Wolfe’s tour of contemporary America continues in ”Back To Blood.”

The Bonfire of the Vanities (film)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like Wolfe’s other blockbusters – The Right Stuff, Bonfire Of The Vanities, and A Man In Full –  Back To Blood focuses on Men and Manhood in modern America. The setting this time is Miami.

In Back To Blood, Wolfe writes about Real Men doing Real Work for the Right Reasons. The heroes are policemen, followed closely by newspaper men. Not a single female police officer or journalist in sight. Not exactly a politically correct portrayal of contemporary America! What is Tom Wolfe saying?

Nestor Camacho is a young Cuban cop, intelligent and without guile, self-effacing and polite, god-fearing, muscular. Continue reading →

Back To Reality, 2013

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Thank goodness the holiday season is over. Especially the past two holiday weeks. I have no predictions for 2013, only questions. Will the U.S. default on its debt? Where will war break out? Can I find something useful to do with the rest of my life? When is the next storm coming? Is Congress mad?   Continue reading →

Uncommonly Good Books By Great American Writers

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It’s not exactly writer’s block. But I have chronic difficulty writing about exceptional  books.

How long has it been since I promised to finish my review of J.K. Rowling’s “The Casual Vacancy?”  Is it a novel about small-town life, or human hypocrisy, or intolerance, or poverty? Local politics gone crazy, or class warfare? Darned if I know. I’d have to read the whole thing again to sort it all out. (Rowling is British, but her story resounds in American culture.)

Usually I can comment freely while in the middle of a good book. But as I read the final page, I’m struck speechless. Partly it’s a sense of grief that the book is over. Partly it’s awe at the author’s virtuoso performance. What can I say but, “Bravo!”?

Continue reading →

Saint Dorothy Day

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Day 100/365 : Choices

(Photo credit: ~jjjohn~)

“It’s a terrific idea: a home-town saint for the Occupy Wall Street era.”   – The New Yorker

Liberals, progressives, radicals: Take heart!

Dorothy Day half-length portrait, seated at de...

DOROTHY DAY (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We knew it all along, but now Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan agrees. Dorothy Day is a candidate for sainthood!

NYC radical journalist Dorothy Day (1897-1980), co-founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper and a nationwide movement of “hospitality houses” serving the homeless, the hungry, and the poor, has been a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church since 2000. Now she even has the support, appropriately enough, of the archbishop of New York.

Continue reading →

Simplifying Your Life Is Not Simple

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SIMPLIFYING YOUR LIFE IS NOT SIMPLE – I’m finally getting serious about my winter project, which is weeding out and getting rid of the stuff I don’t need or use. Today I started on the books (I already decimated my library once, about five years ago.) Spent the afternoon dividing books into three categories: give away, throw away, and save. I didn’t know this was going to be so hard.

The Secret to Highlighting on the Kindle Fire

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Setting the record straight, maybe it’s my own fault my highlighting was lost. (See the immediate previous Kindle post.) Digging through the online “User Guide,” I discovered the following:

Using Highlights, Bookmarks, and Notes

“Annotations (bookmarks, highlights, and notes) that you make in Kindle books are stored in your Kindle Library on Amazon.com. Your Kindle must be connected wirelessly for your annotations to be saved.”

The above is from the Kindle Fire “User Guide,” under the section “Books: Reading On Kindle Fire.”

I believe it explains why I lost the highlighting I did as I was reading last night. Thinking that I was clever, I turned off the Wi-Fi last night to save battery life. The book is on my Kindle device, so I can read it without being connected to Wi-Fi. (Morale of this story: “Don’t think! It can only get you in trouble.”)

Continue reading →

Kindle Fire Highlighting Failure

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I was planning to write an updated report on how much I’m enjoying my Kindle Fire. There was a learning curve when I first opened the box, but once I figured out a few basic functions, the Kindle became a breeze and a pleasure to use.

I’ve enjoyed browsing the Kindle store, and found a number of books I’ve been wanting to read. One is “Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy,” by MSNBC’s Christopher Hayes. (This “Twilight” isn’t about vampires.)

“Twilight of the Elites” is a great book, examining our collective loss of trust in virtually all the major institutions — the pillars — of society. In particular, Hayes analyzes how and why the “elites” who rule by virtue of “meritocracy” have failed us.

I’ve been reading the book for the past few evenings, highlighting many informative sentences using the Kindle highlighting function. This morning, I opened the book on the Kindle and found that all my painstaking highlighting is gone. The highlighting has disappeared!

Continue reading →

Kindle Fire — Power Failure In A Fancy Box

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UPDATE, NOV. 16, 2012:  Happy to report that I’ve received two emails from Amazon in response to my phone calls. Bottom line:

“In order to resolve this issue please de register and re register your Kindle Fire HD to the same Amazon.com account. In order to De register and Re register please follow the steps:

Swipe your finger down from the top of the Home screen and tap More . . .”

I followed the directions and re-registered my Kindle, which wasn’t hard. Presto, my material was again visible on the carousel. Using the information I’ve learned in the last two days, I made sure everything was downloaded from the “cloud” to the “device.”

I also browsed through the apps store and downloaded several interesting apps. Most of them were free, and I paid 99 cents for one. The Kindle can do a lot of stuff, and I’m slowly learning how.  – John

END UPDATE

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WHAT COMES IN THE BOX?

I titled my first product review (of a digital camera) “Power In A Box.” The first and most important information I want to know when purchasing a new high-tech device is: WHAT COMES IN THE BOX?

Regarding the camera, the answer was: “Everything you need, and it’s a powerful product.”

Regarding the Kindle Fire, the answer is: “Not so much.”

In the photo above, you can see the fancy box for the Kindle Fire HD 7″ and EVERYTHING THAT COMES IN THE BOX. It’s exactly as stated in the small print on the back of the box:

“USB charging cable included. Ask for the Kindle PowerFast accelerated charging accessory for even faster charging times.”

This latest consumer technology is pretty much ready to go, right out of the box. Or so I thought.

I followed the directions on the black card you see in the photo above, which constitutes the entire written documentation and instructions included in the box.

Continue reading →

Dark Age Ruminations (Hurricane Sandy Inspired)

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Let’s think seriously about “apocalypse.” Stay with me. This will be brief. The dictionary definition is:

“noun, the complete final destruction of the world, esp. as described in the biblical book of Revelation; an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale: a stock market apocalypse / an era of ecological apocalypse.”

However, I’m not thinking of “apocalypse” in the biblical sense; or in the nuclear-annihilation sense.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy this past week provided us with a  vivid picture of how the apocalypse of modern civilization might go. The suffering of the people of New Orleans, New Jersey, and New York could be widespread in the not-too-distant future. (Any city or state with “New” in its name has reason to be frightened.)

Continue reading →

Finished Reading ‘The Casual Vacancy’ — Now The Hard Part

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Stayed up way late last night (nothing unusual about that) and finished “The Casual Vacancy.” I reached that point where you’re so close to the end, you don’t dare put it down.

Adventure stories have a chase scene near the end, to step up the tempo and raise the suspense.

Mysteries have a detective following the evidence, piecing it together, closer and closer, the danger mounting, until . . .

J.K. Rowling’s wounded and wounding humans wander in circles, running away, crossing paths, reversing direction . . . not seeing the obvious until it’s too late . . . the sirens come . . . bringing them all together, sort of, . . . and they find themselves . . . and each other . . . or not.

Whew! A great novel. Now all I have to do is find time to write a review that’s worthy of the author, the book, and the characters.

– John

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So Many Books, So Little Time

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I haven’t forgotten about my unfinished review of J.K. Rowling’s “The Casual Vacancy.”  I’m on p. 448. The pace of the story is picking up as I near the end @ p. 503. It’s a wonderful book tracing an intricate web of human interactions, hypocrisy and deceit. I haven’t written another interim installment of the review (the first part is here) partly because I hardly know where to begin.

And partly because I’ve been busy with so many other projects, like trying to become a photographer and to improve this blog. Hard to believe I’ve written 12 posts on other subjects in the intervening days. Casual Vacancy, despite its length, is a book I would easily finish in two days (and enjoy more) if only I could sit down and read it straight through.    Continue reading →