Thursday, September 28, 2017

"What Happened" Review

If you're not interested in politics, you might want to skip this one.

"Breath now. Scream later." This is what Hillary Clinton told herself during Trump's inauguration, according to her new book, "What Happened". It's one of the things that I always wondered about: how do you feel when you lost something like that? If you're Mitt Romney, how do you go to Obama smiling and congratulate him? If you're Al Gore, how do you step before the microphones and tell your followers to accept a ruling you abhor and to support a president you think will be a disaster? I have to say, I didn't expect much insight in this regard. I'm not a regular reader of political memoirs; I didn't even read Obama's wildly praised books. "What Happened" is my third political memoir ever, since these tend to be just expanded stump speeches. You'd have to lock me in a cell with "Hard Choices" to actually read that one. So why did I read "What Happened"? I didn't plan to initially. But the reviews it got were quite interesting. After a wave of "oh no, who wants to hear about Hillary's blame game?", there were many reviews by people I trust and respect who said it was actually, you know, good. I had to see for myself.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Great War Movies, part II

This is a contination of the list from two weeks ago. Check out the first part first!

Friday, September 8, 2017

Great war movies, part I

This post comes out of a new series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to mini-podcasts I'm doing with Sean T. Collins answering questions by listeners of the podcast. Give the Patreon a look!

The Telegraph has a list of the "30 best war movies". It might surprise you that I don't agree with a lot of it. To show you why, I'll list the Telegraph's list and comment on it. This is the first half. If you think I missed any movie or disagree with my list, please share in the comments!