Book reviews- January

[bedsitter23]

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72- by Hunter S Thompson-  As a political (and HST) junkie, I knew I had to eventually tackle this famous work.  One thing that stands out is that HST is a pretty pragmatic guy.  He is pretty liberal, but he’s not nutty liberal, and he has a pretty well-reasoned stance.  On top of that, he had keen political insight.  Obviously, he was an outsider, but there’s no doubt he knew his stuff.  Four decades removed, we may think of HST as a self-parody, or more exactly, we’ve been fed shadows of HST parody and influence (HST’s book on the 92 election, while great in its own right pales to the monumental undertaking of this book).  F&LCT72 is an astute study.  It is as quoted as being the ‘least factual, most accurate’ book written on the 72 election.

Which sums it up.  It is still pure Hunter, and there are times where it is hard to figure what is real and imagined.  Negatives include the size of the book, which isn’t HST’s fault.  It’s that Presidential campaigns are these huge slogs that take years from the first primary moves to the November election.  It also probably suffers in that many of the figures from the early 70s are no longer as well known.

The book is amazing in its truths.  Nixon, certainly, and the power of incumbency, but the book (and the election of that year’s)focuses on McGovern’s ill-fated campaign and whether it could have worked.  It did seem that Clinton and Obama learned and were able to succeed (getting the minority vote and youth vote to the polls) with a ‘liberal’ agenda.  Also, the truth that a 3^rd Party like George Wallace (pre-Arthur Bremer) or indeed HST himself could stage a formidable 3^rd Party run and in theory win, though the two parties would make sure that it wouldn’t happen even if it meant sacrificing themselves (a truth we have seen with John Anderson, Ross Perot, and would likely see if Rand Paul or others took up the torch).

The book starts out with a burst of energy that doesn’t slow down, and ends with a couple of essays that will blow you away (covering the election and possible 3^rd Party runs; and a piece on sports journalism which is especially illuminating and predicts ESPN, I suppose)  The only part I found boring was the part about conventioneering, which didn’t make sense to me, but maybe would have back in the 70s.  Overall, it was sort of what I expected, but it just goes to concrete everything that made HST great, and it’s a really great campaign book too (not just a “I took a bunch of drugs and followed McGovern around” story.  If I had to rate, I would say four stars for the average reader, but five for politics or HST fans

Redshirts- by John Scalzi  - I was really excited by the idea of this book, and then quickly scared as I saw the first reader reviews.  It seems like a fun idea- the ‘redshirts’ as we all know are the characters on Star Trek (or any tv show) who aren’t major characters, so they are the ones who died.

The premise of the book (trying to spoilerish-free as possible) is what if you were a ‘redshirt’.  I really enjoyed this  book.  It is a great premise, and anyone could probably have wrote it, but Scalzi really thinks it through, so it is a worthwhile read.  He knows how to make it thought out enough, but not overlong.  It’s not a laugh out loud book per se, but it is a very clever book, and I thought he pulled it off very well.

 

The criticism I have heard about Scalzi’s lighter works is that he doesn’t draw the characters out much; and he really doesn’t here.  That said, he doesn’t really need to either.

I really enjoyed the concept and thought it was a satisfactory drawing out of that concept, and enjoyed right to the end.  It has to take a certain path for a satisfying ending, and I think the strange path it takes is enjoyable.