What are you reading?

I'm going into the book (it's only six hours) unencumbered by what the movie did to it.

Vance seems to be an interesting dude.
Raised up in Blue Collar 'merica.
Went into the green machine as a recruit and came out a little over four years later as an E4.
Doesn't make much of his military gig even though he was a combat vet by DOT standards.
Picked up a poly-sci and philosophy degree and got a JD as a Yaile.

Don't know what kind of investment banker or sheister he is or how good a Cpl he was, although I'm pretty sure somebody will remember something about their primary grade-school history and note that Adolph was a lance-corporal (Gefreiter) and JD was a corporal and make the usual leaps over the usual canyons.

JD is 39.
Ten years older than a certain POTUS was when HE was elected as a Senator.
That means that JD is just NOW starting to figure out a thing or two about a thing or two.

Meanwhile....I'm just reading the bliipin book.
You can tell a lot about how a person thinks by listening to them speak for 6+ hours.
Warren read her book to me.
So did P44, IIRC.
And P39.
And others.

SOME people don't even write their own book OR narrate them.
Others try to narrate a book that they didn't write that has their name on the cover and we find out all kinds of groovy stuff (like - they should not be proof readers.....or politicians.)

 

I’ve heard of this most of my life, and found it at the dump.
50 pages in, so so.
Hoping it gets better, just life in prison so far

 

Huh. Never saw the film.

 

ron howard film, interesting

 

Was a Netflix one.

 

I watched it after finishing the book.
Ron Howard did a good job with the film but, typically, the book was better.

Shifting now to:

 

With the presidential flurry this year, dugout my old copy of "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

That made me think about what the good doctor said about Richard M. Nixon's death.

Some of you may relate
Hunter S. Thompson eulogizes Richard M. Nixon (1994): “He Was a Crook.” | Roger Baylor

Some have called it the finest ever written. Myself, I am very careful about calling anything the finest.

 

All politicians are crooks, some worse than others

 

It's not Stockett or Lee, but it was a good tour through post WW2 Virginia's contribution to the Cold Wah and the Space programme.
It's a great retrospective look at America's 'science industrial complex.'
I'll be interested in watching the movie but I'll wait for it to pop up on Amazon or in the Tubes.

 

The movie was excellent. I’m afraid to read the book, because the movie will then appear stupid

 

That's why I read the books first whenever I can.

The Groucho Marx rule applies:
'I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.'

The thing is.....movies like Hidden Figures (and The Help, and others) often point me towards a book that I will find both educational AND entertaining.

Hidden figures IS absolutely worth your time, but from what I've seen from the outtakes, DO NOT expect it to be ANYTHING like the movie.
This isn't a knock per-se against the latter, which I understand was excellently done, it's just VERY hard to condense 30 some odd years of very complicated history into something that people will pay to watch in a theater.