Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
Not much time today, but a quick observation about a phenomena I have seen up close.
*** I list this link not because it has book associations, but because I've done much of what is discussed here. Munich, home to the Nazis, was the first stop on a group tour of Europe that included yours truly a few years ago. Reading about Marienplatz, Hofbrauhaus, etc., brought back fond memories of a great time. We did not, of course, take the Hitler tour, we took just a general tour, but you can't even do that in Munich without tripping over Nazi history.
To offset this we toured Dachau and visited the Museum of Modern Art. Hitler would absolutely have hated the latter. For example, one exhibit had a video camera that filmed visitors (you) walking up a flight of stairs, then displayed the images on a giant screen. A computer then turned those images into amorphous blobs floating around, kind of like a lava lamp. Odd, maybe a little entertaining, definitely not Adolf's cup of tea.
Nazis remain big business
Oh, and I did buy a book while in Germany, in German, no less, so that makes it book related.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Good news, new news and bad news
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
The 'life comes at you' stuff that has eaten up my time in the last few months has been at it again, so my apologies for not having a blog up lately. This could continue for a while yet, but I hope not. Anyway, let's get to today's news and comment.
*** Ah, leave it to the French to make something good out of something very bad. In this case, the very bad part was surrendering to the Germans during World War II. Sure, the downside was pretty drastic, having German soldiers getting big discounts and the best tables in all of the swankiest restaurants, putting up with those drab Gestapo men standing on street corners giving you the creeps. No fun. But the upside! Ah, the upside. If you were a madam in a bordello, or even just a common streetwalker, those were the best of times.
At least, that's the claim in a new book that has France all a-twitter. (No, not Twitter, a-twitter.) 1940-1945, Erotic Years by Patrick Buisson is a history of the French sex business during the German occupation. According to many of those Buisson interviewed for his book those years were an absolutely howling good time, business was booming for brothels and the Germans were just fun-loving teutons far from home who only wanted to have fun.
Quite predictably, the French aren't wild about this book, portraying as it does a harsh reality many would like to forget, namely, that not only did the French Army gets its butt kicked badly but the French people weren't all that upset about it. C'est la vie!
When the Germans came it was party time for the French!
*** I'm a big movie buff, especially good war movies, and double especially war movies about World Wars 1 and 2. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of good WW2 movies, but far fewer about WW1. I mean, once you've shown the horror of living in a mud-filled trench for months at a time, with machine guns ready to slice you in half and the occasional artillery barrage that might obliterate all traces you were ever there, there just isn't all that much left to portray. Except for the very small number of movies about the war in the air. And one of the best of those was The Blue Max. George Peppard was great, of course, but the whole thing was well done.
Did you know that it was based on a book? It was. And that book's author has, sadly, just passed away. Jack Hunter was 87 and lived in one of the great cities of America, St. Augustine, FL.
Blue Max author has written his last chapter
*** I have to admit that reading stories about great book collections being auctioned is something that I always find fascinating. I don't really know why. Maybe it's just the chance to see what other people collect, to wonder where they found this or that rarity. Anyway, he's a short piece about a major collection going under the hammer down under.
New Zealand collection auctioned
*** When Burt Reynolds posed for Playgirl magazine there was quite an uproar. How could a man possibly be a pin-up? Women didn't want or need that sort of thing, did they? It was considered bad form and, to a male eye, with good reason. But Burt wasn't the first, oh no, not by a long shot. No doubt some ancient Roman had his likeness carved into a wall somewhere for the admiration of the girls. But even if Trajan wasn't a pin-up in his day, we know someone who was: Hermann Goering.
That's right, the Reichsmarshall himself, was once a glamour boy for women of the Reich to swoon over. Hitler's Number Two was considered an ideal of German manhood, at least, he was before he gained so much weight that he looked like a bipedal walrus. And, largely forgotten today, Goering really was a hero of the First World War. He was an ace, a very good pilot and the last commander of the famed Richthofen Flying Circus. Goebbel's propaganda machine had some actual grist for its mill with Goering, which must have surely irritated the club-footed little doctor no end, since the two men could not stand each other.
I do take exception with one piece of the article, however. National Socialism wasn't so much a fascist regime as it was a hodge-podge of whatever kept the economy from collapsing at the moment.
Thank God he wasn't wearing panty hose
*** Just when you thought Ebay could not do anything more stupid than they already have, along comes John Donahoe to prove you wrong. The doofus who ruined the company last year is now saying it may take another 3 or 4 years to completely destroy it. Not in so many words, mind you, but from the beginning nothing this man has said has come through, none of his changes have proved beneficial, the stock price is less than half of what it was...one can only wonder what he's got on the board of directors that allows him to keep his job.
Ebay's Donahoe says more stupid things to go along with all of the other stupid things he's said
*** Here's something you don't see every day: Holocaust victims being pursued as terrorists. Jews in Lithuania who escaped captivity when the Nazis marched in, who then went on to fight a partisan war against the Nazis and their countrymen who helped the Nazis, are now being investigated for those actions.
In truth, Lithuania had no good choice. In 1940 they ceased to exist as a nation when the Soviet Union overran them without a fight. Stalin wasted no time in rounding up and executing thousands of Lithuanians who might oppose his rule, so is it any wonder that when the Germans came through on their anti-Bolshevik march the Lithuanians supported them as liberators?
That's not to make excuses, merely to point out that things aren't always as cut and dried as they seem. Anyway, this relates to books because much of the evidence against one of these so-called criminals is his memoir, The Partisan. The claim is made that members of a partisan band executed Lithuanians who aided the Germans. Seems pretty thin to me, but then again, I'm not a Lithuanian prosecutor.
Be careful what you put in your autobiography
*** For lovers of fine literature, fans of compelling thrillers and researchers of obscure history, this week brought the worst possible news: Dan Brown has written a sequel to The Da Vinci Code. That's right, as if writing the 2nd worst book of all time wasn't bad enough, now this hack has to slaughter a whole new generation of trees to publish more worthless nonsense. The only question for me is, after using every cliche known to the English language in his previous book, what will he do for an encore? Use the same ones again? Find cliches from other languages?
Fortunately, I won't read this tripe and won't care. May God have mercy on those who will.
The 'life comes at you' stuff that has eaten up my time in the last few months has been at it again, so my apologies for not having a blog up lately. This could continue for a while yet, but I hope not. Anyway, let's get to today's news and comment.
*** Ah, leave it to the French to make something good out of something very bad. In this case, the very bad part was surrendering to the Germans during World War II. Sure, the downside was pretty drastic, having German soldiers getting big discounts and the best tables in all of the swankiest restaurants, putting up with those drab Gestapo men standing on street corners giving you the creeps. No fun. But the upside! Ah, the upside. If you were a madam in a bordello, or even just a common streetwalker, those were the best of times.
At least, that's the claim in a new book that has France all a-twitter. (No, not Twitter, a-twitter.) 1940-1945, Erotic Years by Patrick Buisson is a history of the French sex business during the German occupation. According to many of those Buisson interviewed for his book those years were an absolutely howling good time, business was booming for brothels and the Germans were just fun-loving teutons far from home who only wanted to have fun.
Quite predictably, the French aren't wild about this book, portraying as it does a harsh reality many would like to forget, namely, that not only did the French Army gets its butt kicked badly but the French people weren't all that upset about it. C'est la vie!
When the Germans came it was party time for the French!
*** I'm a big movie buff, especially good war movies, and double especially war movies about World Wars 1 and 2. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of good WW2 movies, but far fewer about WW1. I mean, once you've shown the horror of living in a mud-filled trench for months at a time, with machine guns ready to slice you in half and the occasional artillery barrage that might obliterate all traces you were ever there, there just isn't all that much left to portray. Except for the very small number of movies about the war in the air. And one of the best of those was The Blue Max. George Peppard was great, of course, but the whole thing was well done.
Did you know that it was based on a book? It was. And that book's author has, sadly, just passed away. Jack Hunter was 87 and lived in one of the great cities of America, St. Augustine, FL.
Blue Max author has written his last chapter
*** I have to admit that reading stories about great book collections being auctioned is something that I always find fascinating. I don't really know why. Maybe it's just the chance to see what other people collect, to wonder where they found this or that rarity. Anyway, he's a short piece about a major collection going under the hammer down under.
New Zealand collection auctioned
*** When Burt Reynolds posed for Playgirl magazine there was quite an uproar. How could a man possibly be a pin-up? Women didn't want or need that sort of thing, did they? It was considered bad form and, to a male eye, with good reason. But Burt wasn't the first, oh no, not by a long shot. No doubt some ancient Roman had his likeness carved into a wall somewhere for the admiration of the girls. But even if Trajan wasn't a pin-up in his day, we know someone who was: Hermann Goering.
That's right, the Reichsmarshall himself, was once a glamour boy for women of the Reich to swoon over. Hitler's Number Two was considered an ideal of German manhood, at least, he was before he gained so much weight that he looked like a bipedal walrus. And, largely forgotten today, Goering really was a hero of the First World War. He was an ace, a very good pilot and the last commander of the famed Richthofen Flying Circus. Goebbel's propaganda machine had some actual grist for its mill with Goering, which must have surely irritated the club-footed little doctor no end, since the two men could not stand each other.
I do take exception with one piece of the article, however. National Socialism wasn't so much a fascist regime as it was a hodge-podge of whatever kept the economy from collapsing at the moment.
Thank God he wasn't wearing panty hose
*** Just when you thought Ebay could not do anything more stupid than they already have, along comes John Donahoe to prove you wrong. The doofus who ruined the company last year is now saying it may take another 3 or 4 years to completely destroy it. Not in so many words, mind you, but from the beginning nothing this man has said has come through, none of his changes have proved beneficial, the stock price is less than half of what it was...one can only wonder what he's got on the board of directors that allows him to keep his job.
Ebay's Donahoe says more stupid things to go along with all of the other stupid things he's said
*** Here's something you don't see every day: Holocaust victims being pursued as terrorists. Jews in Lithuania who escaped captivity when the Nazis marched in, who then went on to fight a partisan war against the Nazis and their countrymen who helped the Nazis, are now being investigated for those actions.
In truth, Lithuania had no good choice. In 1940 they ceased to exist as a nation when the Soviet Union overran them without a fight. Stalin wasted no time in rounding up and executing thousands of Lithuanians who might oppose his rule, so is it any wonder that when the Germans came through on their anti-Bolshevik march the Lithuanians supported them as liberators?
That's not to make excuses, merely to point out that things aren't always as cut and dried as they seem. Anyway, this relates to books because much of the evidence against one of these so-called criminals is his memoir, The Partisan. The claim is made that members of a partisan band executed Lithuanians who aided the Germans. Seems pretty thin to me, but then again, I'm not a Lithuanian prosecutor.
Be careful what you put in your autobiography
*** For lovers of fine literature, fans of compelling thrillers and researchers of obscure history, this week brought the worst possible news: Dan Brown has written a sequel to The Da Vinci Code. That's right, as if writing the 2nd worst book of all time wasn't bad enough, now this hack has to slaughter a whole new generation of trees to publish more worthless nonsense. The only question for me is, after using every cliche known to the English language in his previous book, what will he do for an encore? Use the same ones again? Find cliches from other languages?
Fortunately, I won't read this tripe and won't care. May God have mercy on those who will.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
This and the other, no that
Good day, bookies! It's the weekend! Stand by for book news and comment.
*** Torpedo 8. If you're a WW2 buff, I need say no more, you know exactly what this was and what happened. However, if you're not a WW2 buff, a short explanation is in order. Torpedo 8 was the carrier torpedo plane squadron that was wiped out to the last plane, and almost to the last man, during the Battle of Midway in June, 1942. Ensign George Gay was the sole survivor. This would be a tragic story if their sacrifice had not lead directly to the staggering US victory at Midway.
Torpdeo planes needed to be close to the water to drop their torpedoes, otherwise they would malfunction. The TBD Devastators of Torpedo 98 were very slow and very underarmed. Sitting ducks for the Japanese Combat Air Patrol that swooped down like hungry raptors and slaughtered them. However, by doing that the Japanese abandoned defending the higher altitudes where, just as the last of Torpedo 8 was crashing into the sea, US dive bombers appeared. Unhindered by fighters they went on to sink 3 out of the 4 Japanese aircraft carriers, effectively ending the spread of the Japanese across the Pacific and handing the initiative over to the US.
A new book, A Dawn Like Thunder by Robert J Mrazek finally does justice to the sacrifice these men made. When the Japanese CAP was swarming around them, not one plane veered off from its attack run. They all stayed on course, died, and in so doing set up victory.
The Story of Torpedo 8
*** Smith College is hosting an exhibit that I would love to see, "From Weimar to War: Popular Propaganda in Germany 1928-1941". Mostly featuring 'cigarette albums', this shows the evolution of modern propaganda under watchful eye of the man who more or less invented it, Joseph Goebbels.
German Propganda
*** This one goes under the category of 'How stupid can you possibly be?' J.K. Rowling will no longer be the patron for the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland. Think about that a second. You are a charity, your highest profile patron is perhaps the world's most well known author, and you lose her patronage because of a management dispute? Seriously? Who are you going to get to replace her? These people are so dense, so stupid, that frankly I have to wonder if they don't serve in the US Congress, having written the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Indeed, they may be even more doltish than the brainless fools who wiped out the used children's books business, because we expect members of Congress to be idiots, but you would hope that managers of charities might exhibit at least the slightest bit of good sense.
JK Rowling and MS Society Scotland part ways
*** Finally, an emailer asked me if there was a new book coming out titled "John Calipari will burn in Hell." I have researched this extensively and, as of this writing, I can say that I have found no evidence that such a book is being published. Lots of evidence for the premise, but none for the book. Sorry to my correspondent, but look at it as your opportunity to write the book yourself.
*** Torpedo 8. If you're a WW2 buff, I need say no more, you know exactly what this was and what happened. However, if you're not a WW2 buff, a short explanation is in order. Torpedo 8 was the carrier torpedo plane squadron that was wiped out to the last plane, and almost to the last man, during the Battle of Midway in June, 1942. Ensign George Gay was the sole survivor. This would be a tragic story if their sacrifice had not lead directly to the staggering US victory at Midway.
Torpdeo planes needed to be close to the water to drop their torpedoes, otherwise they would malfunction. The TBD Devastators of Torpedo 98 were very slow and very underarmed. Sitting ducks for the Japanese Combat Air Patrol that swooped down like hungry raptors and slaughtered them. However, by doing that the Japanese abandoned defending the higher altitudes where, just as the last of Torpedo 8 was crashing into the sea, US dive bombers appeared. Unhindered by fighters they went on to sink 3 out of the 4 Japanese aircraft carriers, effectively ending the spread of the Japanese across the Pacific and handing the initiative over to the US.
A new book, A Dawn Like Thunder by Robert J Mrazek finally does justice to the sacrifice these men made. When the Japanese CAP was swarming around them, not one plane veered off from its attack run. They all stayed on course, died, and in so doing set up victory.
The Story of Torpedo 8
*** Smith College is hosting an exhibit that I would love to see, "From Weimar to War: Popular Propaganda in Germany 1928-1941". Mostly featuring 'cigarette albums', this shows the evolution of modern propaganda under watchful eye of the man who more or less invented it, Joseph Goebbels.
German Propganda
*** This one goes under the category of 'How stupid can you possibly be?' J.K. Rowling will no longer be the patron for the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland. Think about that a second. You are a charity, your highest profile patron is perhaps the world's most well known author, and you lose her patronage because of a management dispute? Seriously? Who are you going to get to replace her? These people are so dense, so stupid, that frankly I have to wonder if they don't serve in the US Congress, having written the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Indeed, they may be even more doltish than the brainless fools who wiped out the used children's books business, because we expect members of Congress to be idiots, but you would hope that managers of charities might exhibit at least the slightest bit of good sense.
JK Rowling and MS Society Scotland part ways
*** Finally, an emailer asked me if there was a new book coming out titled "John Calipari will burn in Hell." I have researched this extensively and, as of this writing, I can say that I have found no evidence that such a book is being published. Lots of evidence for the premise, but none for the book. Sorry to my correspondent, but look at it as your opportunity to write the book yourself.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Miss me?
Good day bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
So, did you miss me? Sorry, but now that the Memphis Tigers have hired a new coach I can get back to book blogging.
*** Michael Crichton may be dead, but reports are that he has new books coming out anyway. It seems he finished a rollicking historical tale of pirates in 17th century Jamaica that no one knew about. And finished means finished. Apparently he even edited it, so it's pretty much ready to go. Reports are for an initial print run of 1 million copies. The second book is a new thriller centered on technology. This one is only 1/3 finished and will need someone to do the last 2/3. No writer has been hired yet.
*** I'm not a video game guy, which is a good thing because if I were I would never get anything done at all. Those kinds of entertainments really appeal to me and I could spend all day every day playing games. But for those of you who love 'Halo', Tor Books is bringing out a trilogy based on the games, written by veteran Greg Bear.
Halo becomes a book trilogy
*** Schindler's List has been found. No, not the DVD of the movie you lost a few years ago and found under the couch, the real list, the one that inspired the movie. In Australia, of all places. How such historical documents travel around the world is often more interesting than the documents themselves. Australian writer Thomas Kenneally used the list to write his Booker Prize winning novel Schindler's Ark, from which Steven Spielberg developed his movie, and the list was found in a box of his manuscripts that had been donated to a library. Incredible, when you think about it. A list typed up in desperation during the final days of the war, by a man few at the time had ever heard of, is now safely ensconced in an Australian library as proof of what the man did for humanity.
Schindler really did have a list, and here it is
*** In my last blog entry (yes, yes, I know, you can't remember back that far. Everybody's a critic) I mentioned the passing of John Hope Franklin, a gracious gentleman who many considered the historian of the Civil Rights Movement. Here's a nice obituary of the man, much better than I could ever do.
John Hope Franklin
*** Finally, just because Hunter S. Thompson is dead doesn't mean he won't have his revenge on all of us. The Rum Diaries is being developed into a movie and the Doctor is being played by, who else?, Johnny Depp. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was really not the book to make into a movie, but this one might be. Profane weirdness is almost assured and that, of course, is a good thing.
Don't look now, but Hunter S. is coming back
So, did you miss me? Sorry, but now that the Memphis Tigers have hired a new coach I can get back to book blogging.
*** Michael Crichton may be dead, but reports are that he has new books coming out anyway. It seems he finished a rollicking historical tale of pirates in 17th century Jamaica that no one knew about. And finished means finished. Apparently he even edited it, so it's pretty much ready to go. Reports are for an initial print run of 1 million copies. The second book is a new thriller centered on technology. This one is only 1/3 finished and will need someone to do the last 2/3. No writer has been hired yet.
*** I'm not a video game guy, which is a good thing because if I were I would never get anything done at all. Those kinds of entertainments really appeal to me and I could spend all day every day playing games. But for those of you who love 'Halo', Tor Books is bringing out a trilogy based on the games, written by veteran Greg Bear.
Halo becomes a book trilogy
*** Schindler's List has been found. No, not the DVD of the movie you lost a few years ago and found under the couch, the real list, the one that inspired the movie. In Australia, of all places. How such historical documents travel around the world is often more interesting than the documents themselves. Australian writer Thomas Kenneally used the list to write his Booker Prize winning novel Schindler's Ark, from which Steven Spielberg developed his movie, and the list was found in a box of his manuscripts that had been donated to a library. Incredible, when you think about it. A list typed up in desperation during the final days of the war, by a man few at the time had ever heard of, is now safely ensconced in an Australian library as proof of what the man did for humanity.
Schindler really did have a list, and here it is
*** In my last blog entry (yes, yes, I know, you can't remember back that far. Everybody's a critic) I mentioned the passing of John Hope Franklin, a gracious gentleman who many considered the historian of the Civil Rights Movement. Here's a nice obituary of the man, much better than I could ever do.
John Hope Franklin
*** Finally, just because Hunter S. Thompson is dead doesn't mean he won't have his revenge on all of us. The Rum Diaries is being developed into a movie and the Doctor is being played by, who else?, Johnny Depp. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was really not the book to make into a movie, but this one might be. Profane weirdness is almost assured and that, of course, is a good thing.
Don't look now, but Hunter S. is coming back
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