Kind Words from Charles

C.G. Hill of Dustbury.com reviews John Donnelly’s Gold.

This really should not have worked as a novel: technical descriptions tend toward the mundane, and most of the techies I know are decidedly short on drama. What makes this worth your time is Noggle’s attention to detail: J. Random Noob will appreciate the extra exposition, and your local expert will nod, “Yeah, that’s exactly the way I’d do that. If I were going to do that, which of course I’m not.” There might be a hair too much geographical exposition — by the time you’re finished you should be able to hire on as a cab driver in St. Louis County — but no matter about that. The plot is more than sufficiently twisty; I’m pleased to report that I did not even come close to predicting the way it ended. And if the dialogue meanders a bit, hey, that’s the way these people talk. I’ve heard them, and so have you.

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Book Report: The Well-Stocked Bookcase by the editors of the Book-of-the-Month Club (1998)

This book updates an earlier edition of the book, wherein the editors of the Book of the Month Club got together to decide what a well-stocked bookcase should include and then included a couple paragraphs of why they think so. The subtitle limits the conceit to 72 Enduring novels by Americans published between 1926 and 1998. The analysis of each book is much shorter than in Vintage Reading, as they more likely reflect the blurbs in the BOMC newsletter than actual news reviews.

So what do they think should be on your bookshelves? (I have italicized those I know I own and have bolded those I have already read.)

Title Author Year
Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler 1985
Alias Grace Margaret Atwood 1996
All the King’s Men Robert Warren 1946
Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner 1971
Appointment in Samarra John O’Hara 1934
The Assistant Bernard Malamud 1957
Bastard Out Of Carolina Dorothy Allison 1992
Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart Joyce Carol Oates 1990
The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963
Beloved Toni Morrison 1987
The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987
Burr Gore Vidal 1973
Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger 1951
Cold Mountain Charles Frazier 1997
The Counterlife Philip Roth 1987
The Day of the Locust Nathaniel West 1939
Death Comes For The Archbishop Willa Cather 1927
Delta Wedding Eudora Welty 1946
Edwin Mulhouse Steven Milhauser 1972
A Fan’s Notes Frederick Exley 1968
A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929
A Flag for Sunrise Robert Stone 1981
From Here to Eternity James Jones 1951
Geek Love Katherine Dunn 1988
Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936
The Grapes of Wrath James Steinbeck 1939
Guard of Honor James Gould Cozzens 1948
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940
Heaven’s My Destination Thornton Wilder 1935
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952
The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan 1989
The Last Hurrah Edwin O’Connor 1956
The Late George Apley John P. Marquand 1937
Libra Don DeLillo 1988
Lie Down in Darkness William Styron 1952
Light in August William Faulkner 1932
Little Big Man Thomas Berger 1964
Lolita Vladimir Nabakov 1958
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne Brian Moore 1956
Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929
The Magic Christian Terry Southern 1960
The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930
The Man with the Golden Arm Nelson Algren 1949
The Mountain Lion Jean Stafford 1947
The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961
The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948
Nickel Mountain John Gardner 1973
Other Voices, Other Rooms Truman Capote 1948
The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain 1934
Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960
Ragtime E.L. Doctorow 1975
The Recognitions William Gaddis 1955
Seize the Day Saul Bellow 1956
The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles 1949
Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1969
Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929
Studs Lonigan James T. Farrell 1932, 1934, 1935
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926
Tales of the City Armistead Maupin 1978-1989
Tender is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934
Them Joyce Carol Oates 1969
To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960
The Transit of Venus Shirley Hazzard 1980
The Trees/The Fields/The Town Conrad Richter 1940, 1946, 1950
U.S.A. John Dos Passos 1930, 1933, 1936
The Wall John Hersey 1950
The Wapshot Chronicle John Cheever 1957
What Makes Sammy Run? Budd Schulberg 1941
That Which Springeth Green J.F. Powers 1988
The World According to Garp John Irving 1978

Apparently, my bookshelves are not well-stocked. I must find another book fair, stat! Although it would not surprise me if I did not own more of these titles hidden among my to read shelves and forgotten.

The only one on the list I read but do not own is Catch-22, which I read the summer before my freshman year of college when the big Swedish mechanic next door taunted me for not having read much literary literature and planning to be an English major. He recommended it. Thanks, Mark!

The thing about this sort of popularity contest is that the list tends to be stacked toward more recent books. Or, in this case, books recent to a decade ago. You end up with a lot more “Who?” responses the later you get; I think the “classics” portion of this list really stops about 1960, and anything after it is very suspect. I mean, two books by Joyce Carol Oates? Really?

At any rate, it’s a quick read and hopefully has brushed me up a little about contemporary serious literature, but I’m not sure I’m going to remember anything new except that Carson McCullers is the author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Books mentioned in this review:

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A Demographic Shift Noted In Macy’s Full Color Insert

It’s the Macy’s Father’s Day Sale. Who are the fathers who will receive gifts from Macy’s?

These guys:

Macy's Father
Macy's Father
Macy's Father

That’s 3 of 6 of the images that have a father and a small child in them. Note that roughly half of these fathers of small children in the Macy’s world have greying or white hair.

(Yes, I know that the second and third pix are of the same model.)

I’m making no value judgments here, just noting.

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A Small Sample Size Does Not Yield Good Predictive Results

The New York Times uncorked this fact, which I’ve seen repeated elsewhere:

No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.

Well, okay. But how many presidents have we since?

13. One of whom has yet to run for re-election.

So the 12 who have include:

  • Harry Truman
  • Dwight Eisenhower
  • John F. Kennedy
  • Lyndon Johnson
  • Richard M. Nixon
  • Gerald Ford
  • Jimmy Carter
  • Ronald Reagan
  • George H.W. Bush
  • Bill Clinton
  • George W. Bush

Of those, one died in office, so he could not run for re-election (John F. Kennedy for those of you who went to public school and are not a baby boomer).

Here are the election results and the unemployment rate in November of the re-election year:

Year as Incumbent Unemployment
Harry Truman 1948 3.8
Dwight Eisenhower 1956 4.3
Lyndon Johnson 1964 4.8
1968 3.4 Withdrew
Richard M. Nixon 1972 5.3
Gerald Ford 1976 7.8
Jimmy Carter 1980 7.5
Ronald Reagan 1984 7.2
George H.W. Bush 1992 7.4
Bill Clinton 1996 5.4
George W. Bush 2004 5.4

I’ve added LBJ in 1968 since he was sort of eligible to run again but he withdrew before the primaries, so maybe he would count as not winning a second full term in office (although he did win a second term, his first full term, in 1964).

So, who did not win reelection? Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. That’s three, and it is assured that the unemployment was over 7.2% on election day for those fellows, although in Bush’s case it was coming down. Of course, this statistic does not account for the 1992 candidacy of Ross Perot, who ran on a ticket of more fiscal conservatism than “Read My Lips” Bush.

Why the cutoff at “topped 7.2 percent”? Because in 1984, Ronald Reagan won reelection with that very figure.

By focusing strictly on the unemployment, the New York Times and its repeaters do disservice to other factors, including the mood in the country.

So this factoid is more of a “Huh.” kind of thing rather than something we should accept as a scientific truth.

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Whither Hollywood?

You know what I would pay to see twice? A film starring William Shatner and Shaquille O’Neal.

Shat and Shaq. What would beat that?

Since Hollywood is out of ideas and cannot probably think of something appropriately awesome, maybe a Lethal Weapon reboot with the colors reversed just so Shatner’s Murtaugh could say, “‘I’m getting too old for this s—,’ my dad says.”

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