Sunday Morning Book Thread 02-26-2017

Library of Kindltot

Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, where men are men, all the 'ettes are hotties, safe spaces are underneath your house and are used as protection against actual dangers, like natural disasters, or a Trump press conference, and special snowflakes do not get respect, but instead, a big load of guffaws. And unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, which I can't see you could wear them and keep a straight face.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.
--Old farmer's Almanac

Pic Note

If this library didn't belong to an actual moron, it would have had to have been invented. You can click on it for a closer look. It's got pretty much everything a moron library should have:

Shelves crammed with books? Check.
Unorganized stacks of books on floor? Check.
Interesting bric-a-brac scattered throughout? Check.
Comfy chair? Check.
Cat? check.

Yeah, it's a moron library, all right

Kindltot tells me:

the aluminum boxes are Svea and Coleman camping stoves, and of course there is my truncated collection of US mess kits. We will brush over the various stabby things, the lard press, and only mention that I regret I couldn't fit in the Matthew Brady portrait of Millard Fillmore that is on the adjacent wall.

Where Are They Now?

Chelsea Clinton, whom a former top aide to Bill Clinton once referred to as 'a spoiled brat', has a new book out. I'll bet you didn't know that. The way it's not being promoted, maybe *she* doesn't know it, either.

And speaking of the Clintons, in this "where are they now?" article about the current whereabouts of the many shady and sleazy operatives from the early days of the Clinton crime family, when their corrupting influence was still limited to Arkansas, sacred honor compels me to inform you about the books that they've written, what with me being the proprietor of the book thread and all.

Susan McDougal

A couple of years in the pokey gave her enough time to write The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk: Why I Refused to Testify Against the Clintons & What I Learned in Jail.

I can think of a number of very good reasons:

1. I don't want to be placed on that list.

2. I knew Bill would pardon me before he left office

3. Hello, sweet retirement nest egg.

Webb Hubbell ("Chelsea's Dad")

After he wrote his memoirs, Friends in High Places: Webb Hubbell and the Clintons' Journey from Little Rock to Washington DC, he wrote several detective novels, starting with When Men Betray:

Why would Woody Cole, a peaceful, caring man, shoot a US Senator in cold blood on live television? That's the mystery facing attorney Jack Patterson as he returns to Little Rock, Arkansas, a town he swore he would never step foot in again.

The tagline of the latest entry in this series, A Game of Inches, which will be released in June, is “Believe it or not, murder is just the tip of the iceberg.”

You have to ask yourself if he did that on purpose.

I wonder if there's an Arkansas horndog governor who puts in an appearance along with his power-crazed, corrupt wife who will never be president?

Where Are They Now? - Again

All that and I forgot the actual book Chelsea wrote. It's this one here, Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?. Right. The title sounds like Chelsea went to a Rage Against the Machine concert or read some Noam Chomsky and is now "woke." But it's just an analysis of public-private partnerships (PPPs) that exist to combat health problems. Pretty dry stuff. And according to her wiki page, she actually does have the academic chops to handle a topic like this. She was even able to get it published by, get this, Oxford University Press. That's quite the prestigous academic publishing house.

"Believe Me, I'm Right This Time" Says Journalist

Here's an upcoming book we all should be suspicious of: Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign.

Here is the author's CV:

Jonathan Allen is an award-winning political journalist and New York Times bestselling author. He is the head of community and content at Sidewire, a columnist for Roll Call, and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University.

Jonathan was formerly the Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg News and the White House bureau chief for Politico. He is a winner of the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for reporting on Congress and the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for excellence in political journalism.

So, in other words, he's part of the MSM/Beltway hive mob who totally miscalled the election. And now he wants us to buy his book wherein he explains to us why everything he said before is BS.

It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the tragic story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself.

So Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. At least he got that part right. But I like how Hillary's defeat is called "tragic". Heh. I guess that all depends on your perspective, doesn't it? I am reminded of ace's classic posts on how a certain indicator of liberal bias in reporting is that most news stories are written so that the audience is guided into wanting the progressive character(s) or cause to succeed.

No, I think I'd much rather read How the Hell Did This Happen?: The Election of 2016 by everybody's favorite blarney-filled drunken Irish lout, P.J. O'Rourke:

This election cycle was so absurd that celebrated political satirist, journalist, and die-hard Republican P. J. O’Rourke endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. As P.J. put it, “America is experiencing the most severe outbreak of mass psychosis since the Salem witch trials of 1692. So why not put Hillary on the dunking stool?”

In How the Hell Did This Happen?, P.J. brings his critical eye and inimitable voice to some seriously risky business. Starting in June 2015, he asks, “Who are these jacklegs, high-binders, wire-pullers, mountebanks, swellheads, buncombe spigots, four-flushers and animated spittoons offering themselves as worthy of America’s highest office?” and surveys the full cast of presidential candidates including everyone you’ve already forgotten and everyone you wish you could forget.

No-one hurls epithets like O'Rourke. He gets extra credit for "buncombe spigots" and "animated spittoons".

As an analysis of the election, this book may be as completely full of BS as I think the previous one is. But it's probably a lot funnier.

McMaster

Surprisingly, Trump's pick of Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster to replace Mike Flynn is recognized as a superb choice. He is the author of Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. McMaster is a career Army officer with a Ph.D. in history who served on the faculty at the U.S. Military Academy.

For years the popular myth surrounding the Vietnam War was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew what it would take to win but were consistently thwarted or ignored by the politicians in power. Now H. R. McMaster shatters this and other misconceptions about the military and Vietnam in Dereliction of Duty. Himself a West Point graduate, McMaster painstakingly waded through every memo and report concerning Vietnam from every meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to build a comprehensive picture of a house divided against itself: a president and his coterie of advisors obsessed with keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue versus the Joint Chiefs themselves, mired in interservice rivalries and unable to reach any unified goals or conclusions about the country's conduct in the war.

There is lots of blame to go around, but McMaster is particularly hard on LBJ, who pretty much lied his ass off:

He would tell Congress one story, Military staff another and the public a third story. None of which was too close to the truth...[T]his continual shading of the truth...eventually caught up with LBJ and caused the war to become such a mess and his popularity to fall so low. If he would have been above board and honest there is a good chance that...[he] would have coasted into a second term. If ever there is a case study in how not to conduct a war, at least from the political side, this is it.

Should make for interesting reading.

A Call For Submissions (Redux)

Back in January, I mentioned that a lurking moron (Mastiff) was putting together a military sci-fi themed anthology and was looking for submissions. He e-mailed this week and said:

I wanted to let the Morons know that the first three authors have been selected, and the Kickstarter project is live. I'm also extending the submission deadline a month, since I had initially planned to launch the KS project before now. I'm now accepting submissions until April 1.

All the pertinent details are on Mastiff's Kickstarter page.

Books By Morons

Fade (Paxton Locke Book 1) by Daniel Humphreys is a horde-beta'd paranormal/urban fantasy novel that is now complete and available for pre-order.

Family drama is bad enough without adding magic and human sacrifice. Ten years ago, Paxton Locke’s mother killed his father in a mysterious ritual that – thankfully – went incomplete. Now, Paxton makes his living as a roving paranormal investigator, banishing spirits while Mother languishes in jail.

When a terrified ghost warns him of a dangerous, newly-freed entity, Paxton faces a fight far beyond simple exorcism. In a battle for his very soul, will he be able to endure – or simply fade away?

Daniel says that one of the Horde readers told him it reminded him of "a crossover between Evil Dead and Burn Notice."

If you purchase it on Amazon for $4.99, it will be delivered to your Kindle device on March 1st.

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Don't forget the AoSHQ reading group on Goodreads. It's meant to support horde writers and to talk about the great books that come up on the book thread. It's called AoSHQ Moron Horde and the link to it is here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/175335-aoshq-moron-horde.

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So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

posted by OregonMuse at 09:00 AM

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