Fresh Salman

Salman Rushdie will be giving a lecture, Autobiography and the Novel, on February 10 at Emory University’s Glenn Auditorium.  (details)

It sounds like a blast:

Due to the author’s schedule, there will no book signing at this event.
Seating is first come first served. Church style pew seating – you may be seated in the balcony.
No cameras or recording devices permitted. Large bags and backpacks are discouraged.

Dude.  This is, like,  hassle lecture.

Adventures in Social Networking: Part 1

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to create a community of book lovers. We started out with a community of eight people who knew one another, and we’ve slowly grown from there. One of the rewarding benefits of creating this blog has been getting to “meet” and talk about books with people that I would never have met in real life. In the interest of fostering our modest community, I’ve begun to spend some time checking out the social networking sites with some trepidation.

Since I am – well, let’s say over 30 (100 in internet years) – this social networking thing isn’t something that comes naturally. In the interest of internet geriatrics everywhere, I thought that I’d share my experiences in the unsavory world of social networking. Since this isn’t a term paper, I’ve taken the liberty of breaking this up into several parts that will be organized by types of site.

Part 1: Social Networking for Book Nerds

One of the obvious places to begin my online experiments was with social networking sites that specialize in readers and books. These seem innocent enough. I haven’t heard of anyone losing their jobs, becoming credit fraud victims, killing themselves, or suffering crushing humiliation on a grand scale by creating a virtual bookshelf. A nice place to start.

VS

The first book networking site that I joined was Library Thing in November of 2005. You can check out my library here. To say that I’ve been underwhelmed would be an understatement. The site has been in beta forever and does not appear to have been improved significantly since I joined. To be fair, I’ve spent next to no time at the site, so maybe I shouldn’t expect to have gotten anything out of it. Friends at Library Thing: 0.

In 2007, I decided to track all of the books that I read over the year by testing the waters at Shelfari. You can check out my library here. Everything about Shelfari is easier and slicker than Library Thing. Shelfari has been an excellent tool for my purposes — keeping a record of the books that I’m reading and have read. I’ve even managed to land two friends on Shelfari. (Full disclosure: I’m related to both of them.)

The down side to both sites is that not much seems to “happen” there. I am able to keep up with the books that my two “friends” are reading on Shelfari, which I like. It might be even more interesting with more friends. (I suppose I could do the same thing if I had friends on Library Thing, but I suspect that my Library Thing shelf is not long for this world.) There may be other bookish social networking sites, but I think that my work here is done.

I plan to continue using Shelfari to keep track of my reading for the foreseeable future. If you’re on Shelfari and want to be pals, you know where to find me.

Making the Rounds

I’ve got a guest post up today over at The Yellow Stereo. They invited me over to talk about Rob Sheffield’s appearance at the Baby Got Books Reading Series next week. They’ve even gone the extra mile and put a track from our musical guest, The Swear (below), in the post. Excellent.

The Yellow Stereo is based in Auburn, Alabama if I remember correctly. They are an excellent source for finding new music. These are the guys who gave me my first listen to Jens Lekman, who made an appearance in yesterday’s post. They make me glad that there was no internet when I was in college. (Can you imagine such a thing?)

It sure seems like there is some buzz building on the internets about the reading. You may want to get there early. It’s one week from today. (Details)

I was on an Athens, GA-based music/culture blog yesterday. Today I’ve got Auburn, AL covered. If only I had some friends with a music blog in Atlanta to help get the word out. *ahem*

Those Swedes

In case you haven’t been keeping up with Sweden’s best book blog, Bokhora has recently posted an interview with author/actor Miranda July. It’s in English. I think that they are just taunting us with their multi-lingual skills now.

They’ve also provided a link to this excellent t-shirten:

To round out the post, a little Jens Lekman to listen to while you check them out. (I can’t believe that it has taken me three years to figure out how to do this.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Caldecott & Newbury Medals

The NYT’s Paper Cuts blog reports on the winners of the prestigious children’s book awards, the Caldecott and Newbury Medals.  (Many thanks to Dr J for the link.)  The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Caldecott Winner) looks spectacular.   Amazon features a “deleted scene” from the book.

Check me out…

I got to guest post over at Cable and Tweed. It’s all about this…

Thanks again, Rich!

Quick Bits

The National Book Critics Circle has announced their award finalists.  The Millions have thoughtfully compiled a list of the ficiton and non-fiction nominees complete with links to excerpts of each.  Like they do.

Geraldine Brooks is reading from her new novel, People of the Book, at the Margaret Mitchell House’s Center for Southern Literature tomorrow night. Jonathan Yardley gave the novel a thumbs up in the Washington Post. It might just be me, but it sounds like a Jewish DaVinci Code. Brooks previous novel, March, won the Pulitzer.

On Wednesday night, the Georgia Center for the Book presents Kurt Andersen at the Decatur Library. Andersen will read from his enormous novel, Heyday. The novel has gotten great reviews. Heyday was on my list of books to pick up for a long time and then it slowly drifted off for some reason. Has anyone read Heyday?

Q&A

Q&A, by Vikas Swarup, came highly recommended to me by my sister. Normally I wouldn’t trust anyone who’s related to me, but I made an exception here.

The book tells the story of Ram Mohammad Thomas, a poor uneducated waiter from Mumbai, India, who miraculously answers all twelve questions on the new game show “Who Wants to Win a Billion.” The story opens with Ram in custody and the police working with the producers of the show to determine how Ram managed to cheat everyone and win a prize that the producers are not able or prepared to pay (and didn’t intend to have to pay for quite some time). A lawyer mysteriously appears at the jail offering to represent Ram and is able to have him released, at least temporarily.

The scene shifts to Ram and his new lawyer, Smita, at her house, and she begs him to explain to her how he was able to answer all of the questions on the program. After some initial hesitation, he begins to explain to her, one-by-one, how he knew the answers to the questions. And the basis of his knowledge for each question forms a single chapter in the book, as Ram tells Smita the story of a chapter in his life, in which events occurred leaving some nugget of knowledge in his brain which ended up being the answer to his question.

That idea is sort of like the dreams many people have about “Jeopardy”, or “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, in which even people who aren’t particularly “book smart” just know in their hearts that if they were to get onto the show, there’s a chance that every question would fall right into their tiny little wheelhouse: the woman who’s only taken one vacation in her life, to the Grand Canyon, would get a question about the Grand Canyon. The man who did a science fair project in high school on the planet Mercury would get a question about Mercury. And so on.

Except in this case, most of the answers to the questions given to Ram took him back to very difficult times in his life, growing up as an orphan who was witness to countless tragedies involving almost everyone around him.

I’ll confess that it was at times difficult to connect the dots of Ram’s story, which wasn’t told in chronological order (it would have been a little too much of a coincidence, I think, if the questions asked of him tracked perfectly with the trajectory of his life). But each chapter could for the most part stand on its own, almost as a short story. It’s not until near the end of the book that certain elements begin to come together cohesively, explaining to the reader how he ended up in Mumbai and on the game show in the first place.

This is not an earth-shattering work. But at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with it. For some reason, though, I just didn’t feel connected to Ram or the other characters in this book the way I have in books that deeply affected me. And I don’t believe it’s a cultural thing, either. The Kite Runner and Shadow of the Wind were both books that took place in foreign countries with which I had little familiarity with customs, history, etc., and yet I felt drawn to their characters and moved by their lives. With Ram, on the other hand, I just kind of read along and whatever happened happened. It’s not that I didn’t care, but rather that the only reason I cared was for the sake of the story, and not for the sake of the people in the story.

I won’t get on a soapbox and tell everyone to go read this book, and I also won’t steer anyone away from it. I have a feeling that this book could be more impactful for others than it was for me. If anyone wants to read it, I’d love to hear their thoughts.

Happy Birthday to Us

I almost missed it.   On this day waaaaaay back in 2005, our first post made its way onto the internets.  We’ve had a lot of fun carving out our own little corner of the web ever since.

On behalf of all of us here at BGB, I’d like to thank all of you who have supported our efforts over the years by stopping by and reading what we have to say.  It has been a wonderful experience connecting with fellow book lovers.   I’ve especially enjoyed “meeting” our new pals in Canada and our even newer pals in Sweden.  This book thing is international, baby!

Special thanks as well to those who have supported our efforts by sending us free stuff, agreeing to be interviewed, guest blogging, and just being awesome.  You are our heroes.

Our domain registration has been renewed, and we’re looking forward to  spending another year with you.  Come back and see us soon.

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh – A Woman in World History

I resolved to get back on track with posting for 2008 and have decided to stick with the brief synopsis plus pros/cons format.

As Linda Colley, the author of The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, states in the introduction, this book tells three stories – the life of Elizabeth Marsh, the lives of her extended family members and most importantly, the historical events which were taking place during this time period. This book is not a biography of Elizabeth Marsh; it is more of a historical textbook with Elizabeth’s story interwoven throughout. I think that Colley found that Marsh was the perfect vehicle to describe the tumult of globalization during this time period. None of Marsh’s travels or experiences could have occurred were it not for the spread of English imperalism, the Revolutionary War and the economic ties that were beginning to interconnect the world through the East-West trade of salt, tea, textiles, etc.

Elizabeth Marsh lived from 1735 to 1785 and during her life she lived in England, travelled to Morocco (she was the first woman in history to write about Morocco in the English language), and lived and travelled extensively in India. What is remarkable is that most of her life was spent journeying alone or in the company of men who were neither her relatives or husband.

Marsh was a resourceful, independent woman who continually changed her path depending on her financial resources and personal situation at the time.

I admire Colley’s decision to interweave a biography with a historical narrative. However, I did not feel that Colley had enough information to write a true biography of Marsh. She was able to state the facts of Marsh’s life, but there was minimal information as to her state of mind and emotions which is what typically makes biographies engaging. While I learned a lot about England’s imperialist developments during that time period, the Royal Imperial Navy, the East India Company and global trade routes in the mid eighteenth century, I was never fully immersed in Marsh’s life.

The “+”:

- Detailed historical description of global events in the mid 18th century
- Lots of detail around the merchant society of that time and the expansion of British imperialism in India
- Impressive research into the extended Marsh family and how members of their family dispersed around the world

The “-”:

- Not enough information about what made Elizabeth Marsh tick (because that documentation doesn’t exist)
- Very dry; I would have preferred if this book was made into a historical novel and Marsh’s emotions and relationships embellished
- Tough read unless you are a world history/women’s history fan

Make Your Plans

I was reminded today that this is now less than two weeks away…

Free coolness!  I also have it on good authority that awesome will be available.

All About the Suns

Two of the last books that I read in 2007 were books that I had in the stack most of year. I had promised myself that they would not languish into 2008. It was crunch time, but both were removed from the pile by year’s end.

The first was Khaled Hosseini’s follow-up to The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The second was Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I’ve decided to review the books together given the similarities between the two books – both were written by foreign born authors, both have sun imagery in the titles, both feature two women as the novels’ central characters, and both stories are set in war torn nations.

Many people loved The Kite Runner. I wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t that the book was bad, just that there were flaws in the book that I couldn’t get past. I thought Kite Runner was over-the-top melodramatic, conveniently overlooked women, and – worst of all – used an expository style to explain what foreign words meant in dialog spoken by people who ostensibly spoke the language. It drove me nuts. NUTS.

Fortunately Hosseini chose to address my concerns in 1000 Suns. The book tells the story of two Afghan women whose lives become intertwined through circumstance. The lives of the two women are not enviable, but the hardships they endure as Kabul is torn apart around them is believable. Hosseini doesn’t make it past Page 6 before he feels compelled to throw in dialog like this, “But he was a coward my father. He didn’t have the dil, the heart, for it.” Wouldn’t the smart ass response be, “Yes. I know dil means heart. We’re speaking the same language.” Mercifully, there’s much, much, less of this kind of thing in 1000 Suns than in Kite Runner.

Although I enjoyed the novel overall, I have a new beef with Hosseini’s novels. Both the Kite Runner and 1000 Suns take place in time frames that span from the pre-Taliban to the approximate present. Neither book does more than make cursory reference to the fact that American troops landed in the country and are still there. The Taliban were there, a miracle happened, and now they are gone and life continues. His characters all happen to be occupied somewhere else when Team America arrives. Surely the characters have some opinion on the subject – good or bad. It seems a bit of a cop out. Hopefully he will address this concern in his next novel.

Half of a Yellow Sun is set during Biafran War that took place in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970. I didn’t know much about the war before reading the novel, and I had assumed that post-colonial Nigeria was always a stable country. It was a little surreal to finish the book and then watch the situation in Kenya, another African country I always thought of as stable, blow up following their recent election.

The novel focuses primarily on two sisters as their country slowly slip into a civil war. The result of the civil war is the formation of a new country, Biafra. The sisters belonged to the Igbo ethnic group, which were the principle ethnic group of Biafra and had comprised the ruling elite of Nigeria before the war. Ultimately, the sisters were on the losing side in a war which saw losses of more than one million people on the Biafran side alone. It is the slow unraveling of of the sisters lives that provides the emotional weight of the story. And they don’t tell each other what basic words mean.

Half of a Yellow Sun was on many year-end best lists in 2006. It’s a powerful and well-written novel with well developed characters. And as Bill Cosby used to say at the beginning of Fat Albert, “…and if you’re not careful, you might learn something before it’s done.” You can’t ask for more than that.

A failure to communicate

Yesterday I posted about a Swedish blog that had included Baby Got Books in their list of Bokbloggars. They have posted about our post in turn (it’s all very meta), and were even nice enough to offer a translation “for our new American friends.” Sadly, it appears that they too have relied upon translation software to make the jump from Swedish to English. Or they are just messing with us. Here’s the English:

Yous had welfare spanat in ours eminenta länklista? Yes , the interacts yous had done , and any of yourself interacts also had find bedårande Baby Got Books åtminstone if husband ska faith mentioned site. Läs if when BGB detection that they have a Scandinavian fanclub here. Such is wes Swede. Always joke the six.

Seriously. Is there no one who can serve as an intermediary between BGB and the Swedes?

Do we need to try a third language? I nominate French.

We fear that a unique opportunity for cultural exchange may instead turn into an international incident.

Their logo is very cool though.

Always joke the six.

Update:  This post was actually written last night before going to bed.  Over night, comments from the Svensk began to appear in yesterday’s post.  Excellent!

Happy Birthday, Elvis

Today is the birthday of Elvis Presley. Mrs. Got Books and I celebrated the occasion on Saturday night in our traditional fashion. Big Mike and his band Kingsized once again put on a stunning Elvis Tribute at the Variety Playhouse. Purists may have quibbled with the inclusion of “Purple Rain” in the playlist, which is not technically an Elvis song, but it ridiculously good just the same.

From an earlier post:

If you’d care to mark the occasion in a more literary frame of mind, I recommend the two volume definitive biography by Peter Guralnick. (A tip of the hat to Dr J who recommended the books to me some years ago.) The first volume, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presely, is the better of the two and is a frankly incredible story. Volume two, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, is a slow downward spiral of despair (but still interesting and well written). Expect scholarship over sensationalism in these two volumes. If you’d like a taste of Guralnick’s style on the subject, the New York Times ran an Op-Ed piece last weekend in which Garulnick questions how it is that Elvis has become viewed as a racist.

We’re Huge in Scandanavia

I have no idea what this Swedish web site says, but they’ve linked to us under the heading “Bokbloggar.” This may explain why we’re suddenly getting lots of hits from Sweden.

I’ve clicked around, and it appears to be a fantastic book blog. I wish that I new what it said. The blog has separate tabs for Skonlitteratur (fiction?), Facklitteratur (non-fiction?), Barn and Ungdom (???), etc. The Skonlitteratur section has a great acronym for a subclassification, BOATS – “based on a true story.” Apparently, there is no Swedish word for “Chick-Lit.”

Does anyone know Swedish or know of a reliable Swedish-English translation site? The Muppets taught me everything that I know about the language.

I Am Legendarily Not Very Good

Here’s a lesson I learned at the poker table: don’t believe the other players. I know, I know — this is a fundamental theorem of playing poker. But despite how much I thought I knew about this practice, I unfortunately believed it when a few folks at my last poker game told me that I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson, was a groundbreaking horror novel and a great book. So I bought it. Despite “NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FEATURING WILL SMITH” plastered across the paperback cover.

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS BOOK, STOP READING THIS POST.

Matheson isn’t a bad writer. He’s got a pretty easy-to-read style. His two major faults, in my humble opinion, are (i) a tendency to beat a metaphor into the ground, and (ii) his inability to bring a story to a rewarding conclusion.

As to (i), in this book, Matheson has a tendency to fixate on something — whether it be a “palsy”-type feeling (he uses the term at least three times over page and a half), or a feeling of “razors” or “fire” or “stabbing” or “nails” on the main character’s chest — he drives it into the ground.

As for (ii), I guess I was mislead by the trailers for the Will Smith movie. Did you see them? Did they indicate that the entire freaking story was about vampires? I didn’t think so. Had I known that’s what this book was about, I might not have endeavored to read it. It wasn’t until after I finished and checked with my friend Wikipedia that I learned that the movie deviates significantly from the book. As did “The Omega Man”, which was also apparently an adaptation of this book. Minus, of course, the vampires. Anyway, as to the spoiler, the main character is persecuted by vampires and almost-vampires following a plague that turns people into . . . you guessed it . . . vampires, and when captured, takes suicide pills given to him by a sympathetic captor who he had previously “captured”. The end. He is legend, because he’s the “abnormal” one, since everyone else who’s still alive is half-vampire. That’s not a great description, but hey — it’s not a great story.

When I finished, I kept reading, not realizing that the paperback I had bought featured several stories by Matheson. I kept reading, wondering how the next chapter connected with the last. After a couple of pages, I came to the realization that the man in the black suit at the carnival was part of a new story. That’s how abruptly the story ended. I couldn’t believe it. It reminded me of the 1958 movie “The Blob”. When the people freeze the Blob, they don’t know what to do with it, since freezing it seems to be the only thing that can contain it. Cut to a scene of a plane dropping a huge package in Antarctica, with “The End” (and then a question mark) on the screen. Talk about cutting to the chase and wrapping things up a little too quickly, even for Mr. Short Attention Span over here. Aaaargghhh. I’m annoyed.

Of Interest

The Monday Morning roundup looks like this:

• The Millions take a look at anticipated books of 2008
• Bookfox highlights short story collections coming our way in 2008
• Wordsmiths Books picked their favorites of 2007
• Brock Clarke’s sequel: The Underage Drunken Vandals’ Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England
• A reverse-engineering guy found that the Kindle has some cool, but hidden, features
• Opus doesn’t like the Kindle one bit
• We found out that our web hosting service has gone carbon neutral. If the world burts into flames, it won’t be because of Baby Got Books. We’ve smugly added a “green” button on the right so that you’ll be reminded of how “aware” we are.
• The Boston Herald has an interesting story about libraries for people with too much time on their hands.
• Ever read an enthusiastic review of some software only to find out later that it is Mac Only? I hate that. The latest entry is Scrivener, which promises no less than to revolutionize how you write. If you have a Mac.

Truthiness and Falsiness

I just finished a couple of political works back-to-back, so I thought I’d post on them together. Sort of like a two-for-one special. Or half-off. Or something like that.

First up was Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen. This was another one of those books that was on my bookshelf, despite my having no idea how it got there. But given the struggles I’d been having in the world of fiction, I thought I’d give it a shot.

To say that the message of this book was startling might be an understatement. Loewen talks in depth about how so many critical events in our nation’s history have been inaccurately recounted in our history books. Many of these events are somewhat well-known (e.g., the mistreatment of Native Americans by explorers and settlers, including the bizarre twisting of the tale of the first Thanksgiving), but others were sort of news to me (e.g., the falsification of what truly happened during Reconstruction). I couldn’t possibly summarize all of Loewen’s alleged inaccuracies or the evidence he uses to back them up, but suffice it to say that if he’s only half right, our history books are all wrong. I think this book is a must-read for anyone who considers him or herself a history buff.

Next up, by complete coincidence, was Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!). I had read Jon Stewart’s America: The Book, and that book was absolute, no doubt about it, top shelf political humor. I think I’ll probably read that one again, maybe several times. In fact, if I read it this year (timing uncertain), add that to my “Best Of” list.

Well, given the connection between Colbert and Stewart, I thought I’d give this book a spin (pun intended). I watch the Colbert Report on occasion, and he’s a pretty funny guy. Unfortunately, stretching his schtick over the course of 200+ pages gets a little tiring. I appreciate what he’s trying to do, but the egomaniacal right-wing bullsh*t positions as applied to every subject ranging from family, to animals, to dating, to science, plus all of the expected topics (race, religion, the media, etc.) just wore kind of thin. Don’t get me wrong — there are some funny spots in the book — it’s just that you can only laugh at the same joke so many times before you tire of it (unless that joke is “The Aristocrats”).

The Manliest Cookbook of All Time

While I was in Louisiana over the holidays, I stumbled across an incredible cook book – er – collection of wild game and game fish cookery. After the Hunt by legendary Louisiana chef John Folse was truly something to behold.

First off, check out that cover. The guy has an alligator casually draped over his shoulder. That’s a six foot long genetic killing machine. Anthony Bourdain is a pansy! Secondly, the book is HUGE. I’d call it a coffee table book, but you might need to get a bigger coffee table first. I had to set it down to flip through the display copy.

The cook book is filled with over 500 wild game and game fish recipes, some of which are for only the hardiest sustenance hunters. Fried muskrat, for example, probably has a limited appeal. But if you want to make your own venison, pork, and yam sausage, John Folse has you covered. The seafood recipes looked especially tasty. I’ve eaten at one of Chef Folse’s restaurants, and it was among the best meals I’ve eaten. The man can cook.

The recipes are almost beside the point. The book is filled with amazing photography of swamps, fishing holes, hunting camps, and other manly Louisiana locales. It should be preserved as an historical snapshot of Louisiana’s sportsman culture. Really. And I don’t even like to hunt or fish.

Chef Folse was signing copies of the book at the local B&N later same the same day I came across it. Luckily, we had a family party that coincided with the signing, or I might have had to pony up the $50 for my own copy. I’d be afraid to actually cook from the book, because I’d almost certainly get stains on my investment.

Unfortunately, the book is self-published by Chef Folse’s publishing company, and it does not appear to be readily available outside of Louisiana. If you want to order a copy, you have to do so from the Chef’s web site (which will cost you an additional $15 for shipping – seriously, it is enormous) or wait for one to show up used on Amazon.

The Audacity of Hope

I fell in love with Barack Obama during his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and even more in love after I watched this speech.

He’s been my favored candidate for president ever since he announced, I’ve given him a little money, and I’ve expressed my enthusiasm for him in various ways. I knew about his general biography and could mark his spot on the political spectrum, but I couldn’t honestly say that I knew exactly what sorts of specific policies he would pursue, or what kind of leader he was likely to be, if elected president until I read The Audacity of Hope.

Suffice it to say that I like what I read.

I don’t share all of Obama’s beliefs and values — I’ve given up on trying to find candidates who match my beliefs and values perfectly — but we’re pretty close in this regard, and after reading this book I have a deep respect for how Obama developed them. For instance, I don’t share his religious faith, but I get it. I understand why he’s made the choices he has made, and I deeply respect the mature and intellectual way that he decided to become a practicing Christian. (It had nothing to do with political calculations, by the way.) I also appreciate the fact that he remains skeptical and doubtful about his faith, in addition to everything else in his belief system. We could use somebody in the White House who’s a little less certain that he’s carrying out god’s will.

Obama’s politics come across as deeply rooted in a particular value system, but remarkably non-ideological. I can only paraphrase the distinction he draws, because I don’t have the book in front of me, but it boils down to using a value system to help him assess the facts that present themselves in the real world — and perhaps adjusting the value system to the facts, instead of the other way around — and not using an ideology to filter out the inconvenient facts and concentrate on the ones that buttress the ideology. I’d like to have a president like that.

Best of all, the guy is a fantastic writer, even if he sometimes uses twelve words when three will do and his prose, like some of his politics, sometimes edges toward the purple. (Call me naive, but I believe he wrote every word in this book.) Can you imagine what it would be like to have a president who can not only read, but write, books? Keep hope alive!

I signed an online endorsement that compares Obama to JFK. But I think that misses the mark. I honestly believe that if elected, Obama would think more like Lincoln and govern more like FDR. That’s high praise, since those two are in my judgment far and away the greatest presidents in US history, and I don’t say that lightly.

I hope Obama wins in Iowa tonight, then wins the nomination and the general election. But I’d also like to see him as a Supreme Court justice or the Senate majority leader. So if he loses, I’ll live and I’ll expect bigger and better things from him in the future. But I sure hope he wins.