Celina > Recent Status Updates

Now I have to go back to the beginning.

I can see that this is quality but I’m just not very interested right now. I’ll try again some other time.

Aw. Idpol.

The bankers and utility men who funded the party wanted Democrats to continue this strategy [of cooperating with Hoover] in 1932. They encouraged leading candidates to run on social issues, specifically whether to repeal the unpopular ban on liquor, or Prohibition. The liquor question split the country along ethnic lines, but didn’t offend business interests.

“By 1928, the top one percent of the population received nearly a quarter of all income. This excess income flooded into the stock market, and into speculation.”

“The result, in coming years, would be fascism if private actors took over the state, or communism, when groups used the state to take over the private sector.“ 2/2

“The telegraph and railroad broadened knowledge and spread people and goods across the land at breakneck speeds. But they also extended the reach of any financial or political leader, in ways that posed entirely new challenges to existing political institutions. Many countries failed to control this power. 1/2

From the last page of the preface: “Popular debates are stuck in the 1970’s. We attack or praise capitalism, socialism, or the free market. All of this misses the point. The fight has always been about whether monopolists run our world, or whether we the people do.”

That’s it, I’m done.

“Though tragedy was in the process of becoming unreal and meaningless it seemed one was still permitted to remember the days when an individual life held some value and was not a mere misprint in a communiqué.” I was on page 141 but came back to the beginning now that summer challenges are done.

I can’t stop reading this book. Who knew.

Mel was a high-strung person ... He was, in fact, not unlike Henry Laines, so they made a great pair. They would always argue about things, like Decadence versus Progress. Henry was for decadence, and Mel was for progress. Or they would fight about the South versus the North, which was the same thing.

Another quality nonfiction book about recent history. I’ve delved into some of this movement before, around the time the documentary If a Tree Falls came out in 2011, but this fleshes out the characters and events. It hits about the right tone for me, laying out the activists’ experience and motivation, avoiding both sneering and unquestioning cheerleading.

Quick, partial reread. I have a feeling this won’t be my last time revisiting this book.

I’d been doing too much drowsy reading and ended up lost. Went back 20 pages and now I’m caught up.

It was because one day it’s Freddy’s – some other guy’s watering hole – and the next day it could be yours. Or your house. Or your block. Or the neighborhood you’d always called home. Taken. Without one word of your say in the matter. Because suddenly, what you had—what you cherished and loved that had been shat on and forgotten by everybody? Well, suddenly, it has value. It is deemed nice.

A couple hours’ insomnia last night got me past the halfway mark. Now I see a path to the end.

The first plot twist has turned this book from something I thought I’d love to the kind of plot I think of as an ingrown hair. Ugh. I remember twisty plots like this in the movies of 20-25 years ago but I don’t remember them in books, until this one.

“Radicalism usually prosperous in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities. This is especially true where the population is young, idle, and bored.”

“New Mexico’s where I decided that if I ever had the misfortune of coming within arms’ length of Bill Bryson I should punch him in the face. He seemed like an affable curmudgeon in A Walk in the Woods, but if you have the misfortune of meeting him in The Lost Continent, and I did, it’s hard to see him as anything but an asshole who hates women and gays and waitresses.” I knew I loved this writer.

“Sí, así era: en su país uno se despertaba y ya no sabía qué esperar, que broma cruel le jugaría la historia, que escupitajo le lanzaría a la cara. ¿Cuando les había ocurrido esto a los Estados Unidos de América?”

I’ve been looking for something that fits my feelings on this crappiest anniversary for America. This bit, about Confederate flags at Plymouth Rock and visiting a concentration camp in Germany, comes as close to the mark as anything.

The culture shock was probably more shocking when this came out 40 years ago than it is now. The writing has its moments but the characters and their dialogue are on the dull side.

This is just lovely. I don’t say that lightly but that’s the best word to describe it. Just because it’s an audiobook doesn’t mean it doesn’t require close attention though. Not the kind of book to set and forget while puttering around the house.

I’m not sure about this. Sixteen pages in (the first 50 were the foreword which I didn’t read), Interiority Overload alarms are going off. But I’ll read past the first chapter, which takes place a year later than the others, before I decide.

Not sure how long I can stand to hear about the abject vermin of the London oligarch class. For now, onward.

On one hand, it’s Patrick Radden Keefe, who’s never not worth reading. On the other, these are some seriously unpleasant people I’m going to be hearing about. Even the sympathetic ones are awful.

I prioritized long stretches of reading time this weekend and finally got back to the point where I’d lost the plot because I’d let the book sit too long. It worked and I’ve reconnected the dots. Onward.

“James, the most vicious of the lot, was forgiven for his crimes. He was white, entertaining, and an alleged foe of the government; in other words, an ideal American.” (2/2)

“The makeover of Jesse James was part of a broader mid-century rehabilitation of slave owners including Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Their biographies were rewritten by Hollywood’s cowboys-and-Indians culture, softened to appeal to 10-year-old boys and the 10-year-old boy in every man.” (1/2)