lorarobson
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Started reading Desert Star by Michael Connelly, and I like it. It's a crime book, so if someone is into crime/detective books, I can recommend this one
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced that it was "morning in America." He declared that the American dream wasn't over, but the United States needed to lower taxes, shrink government control, and flex its military muscles abroad to herald what some called "the Reagan Revolution." At the same time, a tiny band of American-born, well-educated extremists were working for a very different kind of revolution.
By the end of the 1970s, many radicals had called it quits, but six veteran women extremists came together to finish the fight. These women had spent their entire adult lives embroiled in political struggles: protesting the Vietnam War, fighting for black and Native American liberation, and confronting US imperialism. They created a new organization to wage their war: The May 19th Communist Organization, or "M19," a name derived from the birthday shared by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, two of their revolutionary idols. Together, these six women carried out some of the most daring operations in the history of domestic terrorism--from prison breakouts and murderous armed robberies, to a bombing campaign that wreaked havoc on the nation's capital. Three decades later, M19's actions and shocking tactics still reverberate for many reasons, but one truly sets them apart: unlike any other American terrorist group before or since, M19 was created and led by women.
Tonight We Bombed the US Capitol tells the full story of M19 for the first time, alongside original photos and declassified FBI documents. Through the group's history, intelligence and counterterrorism expert William Rosenau helps us understand how homegrown extremism--a threat that still looms over us today--is born.
Just finished The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. Brutal stuff. Same process as the others, switching between the physical books & audiobook.
I just attempted to start the audiobook for The Dark Tower V: Wolves of The Calla.
It’s so bad. Not the story, but the new actor doing the audiobook.
Apparently Frank Muller (original actor who’d done the 4 preceding novels) died before the series finished. What a loss for the world of audiobooks. Never heard a more engaging voice actor for an audiobook. Stephen King dedicated the 5th installment to him.
This new guy.. I don’t know his name. Or, I heard it, but forgot.
Fuck. He is awful. Limited inflection changes or dialect or tone shifts when reading for characters. And the spit. I can hear the spit gathering in his mouth when he speaks. It seriously gets gross after awhile. Apparently he’s done over a thousand audiobooks. Those poor sight-impaired people with no other options. I hate spitty speakers. I bet the mic was soaked after each recording session.
Just ugh. Maybe it’ll be tolerable in the car with the sound of the motor kind of blurring the spit. If not, it’s back to the hardcover completely for me.
Burr, William, and Jeffrey P. Kimball. Nixon's Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War. University Press of Kansas, 2015.Beyond the mining of North Vietnamese ports and selective bombing in and around Hanoi, the initial DUCK HOOK concept included proposals for “tactical” nuclear strikes against logistics targets and U.S. and South Vietnamese ground incursions into the North. In early October 1969, however, Nixon aborted planning for the long-contemplated operation. He had been influenced by Hanoi's defiance in the face of his dire threats and concerned about U.S. public reaction, antiwar protests, and internal administration dissent.
In place of DUCK HOOK, Nixon and Kissinger launched a secret global nuclear alert in hopes that it would lend credibility to their prior warnings and perhaps even persuade Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi. It was to be a “special reminder” of how far President Nixon might go. The risky gambit failed to move the Soviets, but it marked a turning point in the administration's strategy for exiting Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger became increasingly resigned to a “long-route” policy of providing Saigon with a “decent chance” of survival for a “decent interval” after a negotiated settlement and U.S. forces left Indochina.
Burr and Kimball draw upon extensive research in participant interviews and declassified documents to unravel this intricate story of the October 1969 nuclear alert. They place it in the context of nuclear threat making and coercive diplomacy since 1945, the culture of the Bomb, intra-governmental dissent, domestic political pressures, the international “nuclear taboo,” and Vietnamese and Soviet actions and policies. It is a history that holds important lessons for the present and future about the risks and uncertainties of nuclear threat making.
On to Book 7.I just finally finished The Dark Tower V: Wolves of The Calla yesterday. Switching between hardcover & audiobook. I started that around the end of September.
it felt like nothing really happened until the very very end of the book,but there could be something I’m missing. And I’ve certainly had a lot going on the past couple of months, which may have also unconsciously colored my experience with the story/writing in some way or another.
AND WTF WAS THAT EPILOGUE?! Stephen King inserted himself into the story— what in the Bastian Bux is that?!
...because it’s Stephen King, i find it bizarrely adorable, but if it were anyone else, I’d probably be more critical.
I didn’t dislike it, but it was difficult to get through, compared to the previous books. I may get more out of it on a second read, someday.
Next up, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
On to Book 7.
Unwritten msg to Stephen King:
Thanks so much for that human-infant-hybrid-spider-baby at the end of Book 6. If I already never ever wanted to produce offspring before, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to now. More than never. Whatever more than never is.
I knew Mordred was gonna come out fucked... how did I not predict the particular form of fucked. Of COURSE it’d be a spidery thing.
or is there?Well at least there isn't a clown thrown in the mix.
Otenyo, Eric E. Covid-19 and Vaccine Nationalism: Managing the Politics of Global Pandemics. Elsevier, 2023.Description: Covid-19 and Vaccine Nationalism: Managing the Politics of Global Pandemics provides an in-depth overview of the complex nature politics played in vaccine production and distribution. The book ensures international and domestic politics, governance, and mechanisms of vaccine production and administration are understandable through insightful discussions. The book aims to solve several problems, including the essence of vaccine nationalism in a context of international politics, the discourse of vaccine nationalism outside popular media, historical documentation of the problem of vaccine inequality and low access of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries of Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Asia, and more.
Kristin Roth-Ey: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/people/kristin-roth-eyWhen Nikita Khrushchev visited Hollywood in 1959 only to be scandalized by a group of scantily clad actresses, his message was blunt: Soviet culture would soon consign the mass culture of the West, epitomized by Hollywood, to the "dustbin of history." In Moscow Prime Time, a portrait of the Soviet broadcasting and film industries and of everyday Soviet consumers from the end of World War II through the 1970s, Kristin Roth-Ey shows us how and why Khrushchev’s ambitious vision ultimately failed to materialize.
The USSR surged full force into the modern media age after World War II, building cultural infrastructures―and audiences―that were among the world’s largest. Soviet people were enthusiastic radio listeners, TV watchers, and moviegoers, and the great bulk of what they were consuming was not the dissident culture that made headlines in the West, but orthodox, made-in-the-USSR content. This, then, was Soviet culture’s real prime time and a major achievement for a regime that had long touted easy, everyday access to a socialist cultural experience as a birthright. Yet Soviet success also brought complex and unintended consequences.
I finished The Dark Tower back in June...On to Book 7.
Unwritten msg to Stephen King:
Thanks so much for that human-infant-hybrid-spider-baby at the end of Book 6. If I already never ever wanted to produce offspring before, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to now. More than never. Whatever more than never is.
I knew Mordred was gonna come out fucked... how did I not predict the particular form of fucked. Of COURSE it’d be a spidery thing.
I think my next read will be Joyland. If, for nothing else- Stephen King takes inspiration from a small amusement park local to me, that I know & dearly love (& have visited quite recently).
Is that one about Russian parliament?I may opt for another of his books, Duma Key, next. . .
Ha, nope... book jacket references some near-death experiences, & Florida...Is that one about Russian parliament?
Florida is a near death experience.Ha, nope... book jacket references some near-death experiences, & Florida...