Category Archives: Library

Tom Sawyer

Posted on March 23, 2008 | Comments Off on Tom Sawyer

Mr. B. and I have been enjoying reading Mark Twain’s famous book as a bedtime story. I remembered the part where Tom persuades his buddies that whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence for him is a far better thing to do than whatever else they might have in mind. But I forgot the part when Tom and Huck and Joe Harper run off to play pirates, and then attend their own funeral. I’d also forgotten when Tom finally decides to testify for Muff Potter by revealing Injun Joe as the murderer. Then Tom and Huck spend the rest of the book worrying about Joe coming back to take revenge on them. Mr. B. doesn’t understand Tom’s flirtations with Becky Thatcher, why a boy would want to waste time with a girl, but he has wisely decided not to worry about it. It’s a different world, antebellum Missouri, without processed food for sale on every corner, not everyone having a watch to tell what time it is, misbehavior in school getting you a whipping, and toys being things like old doorknobs, fish hooks and marbles.

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Vietnam Inc.

Posted on March 20, 2008 | Comments Off on Vietnam Inc.

Phillip Jones Griffiths, the Welsh photographer/author of Vietnam Inc.–an amazingly one-sided harangue on the Americans and Vietnamese unfortunate enough to have come under his lens–has died. He was 72. I have an old review copy of the 1971 book, which I acquired somewhere. It’s the sort of thing Noam Chomsky would love. Did love, in fact, because as the BBC says, it "became crucial in challenging attitudes to the war" No kidding. It’s also a good lesson in how photos can be made to seem more (or less) than they really are–for instance by the act of moving a headless doll into the foreground for enhanced pathos. The camera does lie. Even without photoshopping. Jones Griffiths proved it.

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Posted in Library, Obituaries, Viet Nam

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New Texas History Movies

Posted on March 19, 2008 | Comments Off on New Texas History Movies

Browsing through Texana author Mike Cox’s very occasional book review blog (as in about one entry a year) I ran across his review of the new, updated Texas History Movies comic book. He liked it, and us being former newspaper colleagues, that was good enough for me. I’ve ordered a copy from Amazon for myself and Mr. B. The original was produced in the 1920s by my great grandfather’s old outfit, the Magnolia Petroleum Co. (he was an original investor) but all these years later it was deemed too racist for reissue. But it’s hard to keep a good book down. So The Texas State Historical Association teamed up with the late author/illustrator Jack Jackson to produce an updated version that, presumably, won’t offend anybody. Mike, who read a reissued edition of the original as a schoolboy in 1959, says the new one, published in 2007, still makes the history of early Texas an exciting kid’s read. I’m looking forward to it.

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Posted in Library, Texana

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Not so thrilling

Posted on March 18, 2008 | Comments Off on Not so thrilling

Dan Brown’s thriller Deception Point ain’t very, and I wouldn’t recommend it. I skipped around to ignore the political plot and stick with the action, which was far-fetched enough. Granted, it’s a story, not a documentary. But, once again, Brown apparently can’t help ignoring that the aim of fiction is to touch the heart and instead tries to make it all seem factual–as he did, so deceptively, in the Da Vinci Code. He says at the beginning of DP that all the technology mentioned exists. He forgot the Internet, wherein you can find out that much of it doesn’t. His nasty Republican (of course) senator did in the politico aspect for me. I also disliked his putdown of ALH84001 as proven to be wrong, when in fact it hasn’t been. Controversial?Certainly. But not wrong, Dan. Even some of his fans don’t like the book much.

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Mendacity

Posted on March 4, 2008 | Comments Off on Mendacity

The credulous multicultie crowd is always ready to be fooled, and foolin’ seems to come naturally to Peggy Seltzer, the "all-white" (whatever that means) well-to-do, private school, Los Angeleno. The idea of her phony memoir, Love and Consequences, of drug-running in minority L.A. is funny enough. She claims to have been given her first gun (or "piece" as the thriller/cop crowd knows it) for her fourteenth birthday. But she added the fillip of being half-white, half-Native American–with African-American foster brothers. But of course. Now "she’s contrite," says the steward of the Left, the NYTimes (which knows a lot about contrition these days) for having made the whole thing up. Heh.

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Without Fail

Posted on March 2, 2008 | Comments Off on Without Fail

I’m still enjoying the Jack Reacher novels, including this one which I picked off the rack at the grocery the other day, then began a marathon read until I finished it. Good tough, loner good guy is ex-military cop Reacher, the man who carries only a toothbrush. Although it is still a bit disconcerting to find pseudonymic author Lee Child’s Britishisms here and there in the text. I got by the idea that the American characters were not "taking a walk," but doing a "walkabout." Minor annoyance. I winced, however, when the minister of a Wyoming country church was referred to as "the vicar." Give me a break. Good thrillers, though, with logical plot consistency. I bought two more from Amazon. Happy to see there are four more to read after that before the series dies. Assuming it does.

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On My Honor

Posted on February 28, 2008 | Comments Off on On My Honor

An intriguing new "culture war" book by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, an Aggie and an Eagle Scout, on the value of the Scouts, who are under political and legal assualt for denying leadership roles to gay men and women. I’m not so sure I agree with the denial, but, as an old Scout myself, who learned a lot and had a lot of fun, I’ve been pleased to see Mr. B. take to it–and I agree that its civilizing value for boys is unquestionable.

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Posted in Library, Texana

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