Reviews and Comments

avatar for BreadAndCircuses

BreadAndCircuses

BreadAndCircuses@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

I’m male, he/him, hetero, strongly supporting LGBTQ rights, also a baby boomer, born at 312 PPM 🌏, with a passion for the climate and the environment, and finally I'm a United Statesian, although I’ve traveled extensively for work and lived in Europe (mostly Hungary) for several years.

In the past, our rulers gave us "bread and circuses." Now we get fast food and apps. But it's basically the same — distraction from what's REALLY happening.

Follow on Fediverse

This link opens in a pop-up window

reviewed Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life by James Curtis

James Curtis: Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life

Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life is a 2022 book by James Curtis that examines the …

There are many other much better Keaton biographies

This was hugely disappointing. I was hoping for a meaningful, in-depth look at one of history's greatest filmmakers. However, although the author apparently knew everything about Buster Keaton, he didn't know the real Buster Keaton. We get page after page of factual detail, tedious reporting of even the most incidental occurrences, but no insight, no revelation of character. What a letdown.

reviewed Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

Kristin Hannah: Four Winds (2021, St. Martin's Press)

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the …

Her editor should have stood firm.

Kristin Hannah: I've got a great idea for my next book. It’s a story about a family who leaves the Dust Bowl during the Depression and travels to California where they face hardships and fight against prejudice.

Editor: Um, isn't that just like John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath?

Kristin Hannah: Yes, but my version will be different in several small ways and I won't even mention Steinbeck in the Acknowledgments!

Editor: Well, it's not quite plagiarism, I suppose, and I'm sure it will sell, so let's go for it.

reviewed Our Final Warning by Mark Lynas

Mark Lynas: Our Final Warning (Hardcover, 2020, Fourth Estate)

Scary but honest

This book was published in 2020, but because gathering material and writing and editing all take time, much of the research the author reports on is from around 2015 to 2019. And you know what? It's already largely out of date.

I'm not faulting the author, Mark Lynas. He couldn't help that. Almost no one could have predicted how rapidly the climate would continue breaking down in just the next few years. But anyway, it's a very good book, an honest and frightening account of how bad the situation already is and how much worse it's likely to become within our lifetimes.

In the end, we're not left without hope. But that hope is based upon the possibility of our industrial society taking unprecedented steps, making enormous and drastic changes between now and circa 2030. Will that happen? Well, even if we the people wanted to make a start, I'm …

reviewed Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Shelby Van Pelt: Remarkably Bright Creatures (Hardcover, 2022, Ecco)

For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration …

Not what I was hoping for

  1. I wish I liked this book more. 😕
  2. I wish the story had been more about the clever octopus, and less about the boring, predictable humans and their silly "mystery." 🙄
  3. I wish the author had bothered to get her geography right. How could they drive a car from the mainland to the San Juan Islands without taking a ferry? There is no bridge to the islands. 😡

reviewed Repo Madness by W. Bruce Cameron

W. Bruce Cameron: Repo Madness (2016)

Juggling the possible loss of his job, a romantic estrangement, and court-ordered medication, Michigan repo …

I'd skip it

What a disappointment. Everything feels stale, worn out, as if the author was under heavy pressure to write a sequel and just cranked out a re-run of the first book ("Midnight Plan") with no new ideas.