Sunday, September 22, 2024

Don't Ban Books - Read Them

@mudhousebooks Somehow somewhere at some time a bunch of great books have been banned by someone. Make it make sense. Here are some of my favorite #bannedbooks - #booktok ♬ Make No Sense - YoungBoy Never Broke Again
 


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Which books made your top three? Here are mine. Wrote a little about each of them at Shepherd.com
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Monday, August 5, 2024

Worth a Listen

 


I will be brief, because the purpose of this post is not for you to read what I have written. It is primarily for you to listen. So rest your eyes if you so choose, but kindly indulge and lend me your ears.


 
















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      Yoga Lady is one of my favorite pieces of Art by Erin Rogers Pickering  

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So many great patterns to choose from. Click on their logo below to be taken to her shop.






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Another audio book fan!


According to Publishers Weekly, US audiobook sales hit $2 billion in 2024. I'm responsible for a dollar or two of that courtesy of Matters of Convenience.

@mudhousebooks My novel Matters of Convenience is available at Amazon in print (paperback), Kindle and audio formats. Readers loved, reviewers adored, word of mouth spreaders revered. #booktok ♬ Please Please Please - Sabrina Carpenter


BONUS TRACKS



@mudhousebooks Quotes from an assortment of my works of fiction. #booktok Books by #RoyPickering are available at #Amazon ♬ Aesthetic Vibes - Megacreate



AND NOW FOR SOME BOOK HUMOR COURSESY OF ELLIS ROSEN










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Saturday, August 3, 2024

All The World's A Stage

 


According to the principle of Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation for an occurrence is most likely to be the correct one. Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. This makes sense to me. Most conspiracy theories are too far fetched to be believed by rational thinkers. Just as the shortest physical distance between two points is usually a straight line, the less convoluted a theory is the less probable it will be that holes can be poked in it. The simplest, least serpentine explanation of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump is that some nutjob didn’t like him (there are no shortage of reasons to dislike the man) and decided on his own to take him out. Thomas Crooks was killed after firing a series of shots that failed to kill Donald Trump, but did end the life of an innocent bystander who put himself in the path of a bullet to heroically protect his family.

With this simple explanation accounting for everything that took place that day, why did many people (including me) immediately reach a different conclusion? Why did #Staged trend on Twitter (I can’t make myself call the thing X)? Probably because of an alternative theory that has no fancy name that I am aware of. The theory goes like this. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Man did that assassination attempt, particularly Trump’s dramatic gesture and tough guy chant moments after a bullet whizzed by his head, look and swim and quack like a staged event.




Within minutes after Donald Trump was ushered to safety, I wrote on Facebook that the whole thing struck me as a poorly produced movie scene rather than chaotic reality. I referenced Tyler Perry because making fun of his work is something that I do sometimes, but I’m trying to cut down on that. Then I learned that a man named Corey Comperatore was killed by a bullet meant to prevent 45 from having a chance to become 47. The life of the gunman was also ended by sharpshooters who opened fire after Crooks took several shots in the direction of the ex-president. Two other people were reportedly shot by Crooks, but they survived and have since been released from the hospital. Calling the event staged when lives had been lost, including a rally attendee unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a man who lost his life by being a shield to protect his family, seemed to be in very poor taste. Surely a result of an orchestrated event would not be the unintended death of a civilian. Comperatore’s death along with injuries suffered by others confirmed that it was best to go with Occam. So I took down my Facebook post and put aside my suspicions.




In the time that has since passed there have been no new developments or revelations. It has been remarkably quiet. Trump rode the high of narrowly avoiding death into the Republican convention. Those who adore him turned the camera captured sight of him throwing a fist in the air, blood streaming down his face, the American flag fitting neatly in the frame, into merchandise imagery. One more reason to be enthralled by the guy. He’s a bad ass who came away from the ordeal with nothing more than a band-aid on his ear. A bandage that seemed way too big, but why quibble? Bad assery was still on display, and what could be a more essential characteristic for a President of the United States than that? No way was Biden going to steal his thunder with comparatively mundane achievements like low unemployment or record high stock market numbers.



Yet somehow Joe Biden did subsequently steal the spotlight – by dropping out of the race and shortly thereafter being officially replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris. Within ten days or so, hardly anyone was talking about Trump being shot at anymore. His campaign was forced to pivot to a different derogatory accusation than “Sleepy.” As of the time I’m writing this they are still searching, because accusing Kamala Harris of suddenly becoming Black after previously being exclusively Indian is not going to cut it. A disastrous interview with the NABJ won’t be helpful to the Trump campaign either. Meanwhile, the Democrats still have momentum from selection of a running mate for Kamala and their own convention to look forward to. By all appearances, narrowly avoiding death turned out not to be the deal closer. Instead, Americans may go the old-fashioned route of looking at the candidates’ policies and qualifications to determine who our next president will be.

With less emotion and greater imagination, I decided to re-evaluate the shooting at Trump’s rally in Butler, PA. Why did it initially feel staged, and if in fact it was, what would the specifics of the scam be? How could everything be accounted for? Why would they think they could get away with it? As a writer of fiction, I am accustomed to coming up with a dramatic scenario and then figuring out how to lead up to it in a way that is plausible. For a conspiracy theory to be effective, one need not be able to prove it. It only has to be possible, to be sensible, to hold up under scrutiny. The main hurdle to overcome was the death of Corey Comperatore. Nobody would stage something meant to improve a political candidate’s poll numbers at the expense of someone dying. His death needed to be an accident. The following is what I (in discussion of the matter with my wife) came up with. I have no proof. Occam’s Razor states that it is nonsense because it has too many moving parts. Certain fantastical events are staged not by duplicitous man, but by God. This is why the word “miracle” was created and added to the dictionary. Logic can’t explain everything. But that doesn’t mean we can’t come up with alternative theories.

Trump’s campaign realizes that their lead will probably be short-lived because they have read the tea leaves. Too many prominent figures are calling for Joe Biden to bow out. So, he probably will, to be replaced by the far more dynamic Kamala Harris, and Trump’s advantage would evaporate. As a pre-emptive strike, shortly before the boost they hope to get from the GOP convention and selection of Best-Selling author JD Vance as running mate, Trump’s team hatches a devious plan. The main thing needed to pull it off is a patsy. Someone with shooting experience who would be willing to help the GOP campaign because he is either Republican or neutral. Someone who would gladly take a duffel bag full of cash in exchange for getting up on the roof of a garage and firing shots in the direction of Donald Trump. Convince the kid that nobody will be harmed because the gun will contain blanks or some non-lethal projectile. 'Don’t even hit him' would be the directive, just come close to make it look good. Tell Crooks that he will be allowed to escape and never become a suspect. In case anyone sees and can ID him, it is best to put Crooks into hiding. Change his identity. Live the rest of his life somewhere else under a new name and plenty of money in his new bank account. Even if spotted by people prior to shooting, which is what happened, nobody will interfere until he has done his part. Crooks agrees because he believes no one, including himself, will be killed. He agrees for the age old reason of greed $$$ along with securing victory for the Republican.



Crooks is being lied to by plan organizers. His gun will contain live ammunition because bullets need to be retrieved from the scene to make it look real. The bullets fired at him in return will also be real. He will not be allowed to escape. That would be reckless. Eventually he would talk too much, maybe under the influence of alcohol while trying to charm a pretty girl. Leaving him alive is too big of a risk to take. Crooks must be the sacrificial lamb, only he does not realize he has volunteered for that role. Nobody other than him is supposed to die in this plan. If Corey Comperatore stays in his seat, the only blood shed will be from a bag that Trump presses to the side of his head while covered by Secret Service agents. Movie magic. Then he majestically arises, refusing to let the agents keep him safely out of potential harm’s way until he…you know the rest, that the crowd goes wild in response to his display of patriotic machismso instead of him ducking for cover in case more bullets are on the way. Trump probably would have shouted “Yippee Ki-Yay, MF” if Bruce Willis didn’t already claim that line for Die Hard. But "fight fight fight" is a suitable battle cry.

    


The reaction of rally attendees seen behind Trump was so muted (imho) given the circumstances prior to their hero rising like a phoenix from the ashes, that I considered if they were in on the plan. Not everyone at the rally, just those you could see on TV. If they did not know what was going to happen, then the result could have been a stampede that killed someone. Even when bullets miss, it does not necessarily mean that nobody dies. Those with great seats being in on the plan, believing like Crooks that the bullets would be blanks, enabled them to remain calm. But not too calm. It would also mean that Corey Comperatore did not think his heroic gesture would cause him harm.

This is probably too far of a stretch though. The fewer people involved in a plot, the better the odds of success. Involvement of more people creates more opportunity for someone to crack and spill the beans. Best to keep the number of perpetrators in the know as few as possible. The real reaction of those in the frame therefore is not calm, but people who are stunned by what's happening.



The plan worked, if a plan is what it was, because no funny business has been exposed. Not yet anyway. An investigation is not going to be launched as result of this blog post. Medical records have not been released to prove or disprove that Trump was hit by a bullet, or shrapnel, or glass from the teleprompter. We are left to accept the official story that Trump’s blood was legitimately shed. Remarkably little has emerged about the shooter in the aftermath. He did not leave behind damning social media posts that showed he was a ticking time bomb. Thomas Crooks was simply a young man who had access to an AR-15 and decided to kill Donald Trump when he came to town to force Republicans to run a better candidate. That’s a crazy thing to do, so we’re left to accept that even though nobody in his life had reason to suspect it, Crooks was insane. Or insanely hateful of Donald Trump, a man that it is pretty easy for many to loathe. Corey Comperatore tragically died in heroic fashion. And Donald Trump – he continues his streak as the luckiest man of all time. Can’t take him out in criminal court, can’t take him out with a wannabe assassin’s bullet, so all that’s left is for Kamala Harris to repeat on Election Day 2024 what Joe Biden accomplished on Election Day 2020.

As for my conspiracy theory presented here for your examination, I’m not sure if it has any holes in it. But it is still probably less convincing than the principle of Occam’s Razor. Most likely there was a legitimate attempt on Donald Trump’s life. Factors such as security incompetence, and the wildness of a man being shot at and receiving only a scratch on his ear for the effort, and Crooks being immediately killed so unavailable for comment, and a presidential candidate being gifted with the photo-op of the century to assist his campaign, stirred suspicion of staging. 




Unless/until an investigator much closer to the evidence than I am unearths evidence of a fake assassination attempt, the official story must be accepted as gospel. Sherlock Holmes was not available to look into the matter, him being fictional and all, so I did my best detective work in his place. If it turns out that the theory presented here is correct and Occam has been defeated, then yes, I do want a cookie as reward.


For now, we must accept that Donald Trump is so brave and determined that not even a bullet nicking his ear as it flew past could faze him. But you would think that someone supposedly so courageous wouldn’t be afraid of a little debate, unless the debate is moderated by his friends and takes place in front of his fans. If a bullet can’t stop him then what danger can be posed by Q&A in an impartial setting where journalists are allowed to fact check the most blatant of perceived lies?  If the shooting in Pennsylvania was not staged then surely Donald Trump can’t be intimidated by a mere debate stage. So one would think. But the world is a strange place indeed.



So gotta keep on (cyber) trucking.
   
       


Traumatized or Monetized? You decide.


THE GRIFT MUST GO ON
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Monday, July 22, 2024

Thanks Joe - Go Kamala Go

 


                                           The time is now



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While I wait, I will be supporting Kamala Harris to be the next President of the United States. 
Be sure to vote in November as if Democracy (among other things) depends on it.
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Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Books for Juneteenth


 



On Juneteenth we reflect on the gap between legal freedom afforded by the Emancipation Proclamation and actual emancipation. In the period spanning from the surrender of the Confederacy on April 9, 1865, to June 19, 1865, while Union troops spread the news of freedom, many slave owners, despite knowing the Confederacy had surrendered, kept this crucial information from those they enslaved.

 
Worth noting is that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to Confederate states. Lincoln did not free slaves in Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia - Union states where he actually had the authority to do so. While Maryland, West Virginia, and Missouri ended slavery in early 1865, Delaware and Kentucky did not abolish slavery until well after Juneteenth. 


Juneteenth 

Books About Racial Identity / Race Relations


The following novels examine racial identity and race relations in a variety of ways, styles, and genres. Book lovers (like me) in search of fiction that not only entertains, but also examines the human condition, will find what they’re looking for. Particularly those who are interested in how black and white people often struggle to understand, accept, and get along with each other. Getting in the way are superficial prejudices along with issues central to who we are, why we differ, and how we nonetheless are tied together by our commonalities. The gap dividing the realities of our lives as fellow Americans and the more perfect union we're still headed toward remains in place.

 

*****


Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour – Darren graduated valedictorian from his high school, yet rather than moving on to higher education, he works at a Starbucks. He and his mother live in a spacious home, he is the manager at his job, regularly hangs out with his best friend, and he has a beautiful, supportive, girlfriend. So, he is content.


On a whim he talks a customer into trying a different drink than usual. From this interaction the man offers Darren a career opportunity. Darren and two other recruits go through what seems more like a fraternity hazing period than job training, and Darren (who is the only African American) is given the hardest time. He receives the nickname of Buck due to his previous place of employment, but its racial overtones are obvious. For every advantage that results, such as making good money from his sales abilities, there is a downside, such as alienating people he used to be close with. The plot veers from plausible to over-the-top as he eventually ends up running a worldwide top-secret organization that cranks out black salesperson success stories. Whether earnest or satirical in intent - Black Buck is a unique, easy read.

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Caucasia by Danzy Senna - For biracial people a layer of complexity is added to the racial identity equation. If one’s skin color is light enough to pass as white, such as is the case with Birdie (but not her sister Cole who fits in with other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend), passing can create an easier life. Is a half-truth equal to a lie?

Readers who love action-filled plots will find this book set in the 1970’s to their liking, as will those looking for introspection on social issues. When Birdie and Cole’s parents split up, their black father takes Cole away from Boston to see if racial equality can be found elsewhere. Birdie is left behind with their white mother, but they end up on the run, living under false identities. Birdie longs for a reunion with her sister and is wary of betraying her mother. Understanding yourself from a cultural viewpoint can get complicated when you belong to two sides but society insists on choosing one.

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The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow – A girl is haunted by events that are only vaguely remembered but form the fabric of each passing day. A father who has vanished without a trace. A mother who left this world in the splashiest of ways, taking her own life along with those of her other children by leaping from the roof of a building. There is a witness and a survivor. This book is the latter's story. 


She is her father's black daughter and her mother's white daughter. Her racial identity is thus both and neither, dependent on how one sees her, or how she chooses to see herself.  Along with her blackness and her whiteness and her status as one who has been taken in upon being abandoned, she is a proven survivor. The narrative moves back and forth in time, told from multiple perspectives, revealing the back story in as random a manner as the markings of heredity. Beneath longing, loneliness and confusion is muted hope that a fall from great height can turn into flight.

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Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee –This book features characters from To Kill a Mockingbird years later. Jean Louise (aka Scout) is now a grown woman contemplating marriage to Henry who remained in their hometown of Maycomb, Alabama and followed the footsteps of her father Atticus into the law profession. If Scout wishes to return home and marry a father figure, she's all set. She now lives in New York City, a far cry from the small southern town she was raised in.

Much has changed from the period in which the events of Mockingbird take place to the 1950's setting of Go Set a Watchman. Closet bigots who once had enough good manners not to let it show in polite society now feel free to express hostility openly. Count Henry and even Atticus among those more willing to hear out the KKK than the emerging NAACP. Changing times to them means putting up a more aggressive fight against progress. Amazingly Scout has been clueless about her father's true social/political views until he is about 70 years old. Once in the know, she feels betrayed and must figure out how to come to terms with it. Perhaps the Atticus Finch we know and love from the classic is simply too good to be true. Maybe the Watchman version is the more realistic depiction of a flesh and blood man, rather than an idealized one, because his hypocrisy is made plain.

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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler – A wonderful blend of science fiction with literary fiction. The main character (Dana, a black woman recently wed to a white man in 1976) must keep an ancestor (who is white) from dying on several separate occasions to sustain the family lineage. She doesn't need to keep Rufus (who she first meets as a boy) alive to old age, just long enough for him impregnate the woman who will give birth to the most distant relative Dana is aware of.

To protect Rufus she is repeatedly transported to the era of slavery. He summons her subconsciously and perhaps consciously as he grows older whenever he is in grave danger. Dana can return to 1976 only when her own life is in immediate peril. The vehicle of haphazard time travel is used to show that what happened in the past impacts our present and shapes our future.

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Little Bee by Chris Cleave - Dual narration alternates between two women. Sarah is a white magazine editor from England. Little Bee is a black undocumented refugee who gets out of a detention center after escaping from a violent landscape and must now stay under the radar.

The two women are as different from each other as the places they are from. Sarah is older, a mother, a wife when she first meets Little Bee along with being another man's mistress. Little Bee is a teenager from a small Nigerian village which is rich in oil, but the wealth generated by black gold does not make it to someone in her position. What reaches her is violence, the barbaric cruelty of men. Learning to speak like those from a safer place is not sufficient to stop them from ejecting Little Bee. Being born into privilege like Sarah does not mean tragedy cannot come calling. Despite superficial differences, common humanity allows them to connect with one another.

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The Man by Irving Wallace - This is a fictional account of the first black president. Senator Douglas Dilman isn’t elected to the position, but rather, the president, vice president and others ahead of him in line are killed. The time is 1964 and Dilman is overwhelmed by an avalanche of responsibilities and pressure, plus being burdened by a lack of confidence in him from those in his cabinet.

On the job training is especially challenging when it's the most difficult job in the world, particularly when many are resentful of your ascendancy, condescending about your ability to be up to the task, or both. There is no shortage of crisis for Dilman to deal with on the national and international stage. Once navigated, there's the matter of deciding whether to run for re-election. Barack Obama later became our first non-fiction POTUS. His election makes it seem that we have come a very long way from 1964 but looks can be deceiving. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, sometimes fiction is far beyond the logistics of reality, and then there are occasions when fiction accurately predicts a reality we haven’t gotten to yet.

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Pym by Mat Johnson - An African American Literature professor’s primary focus is on examining Edgar Allan Poe’s only full-length novel. Poe’s race makes his writing inappropriate for the syllabus, which costs the professor his job. The name of the book is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Chris believes it holds the key to understanding White-Black race relations. After being fired, he and various members of his inner circle head off on a quest. Their destination is Antarctica. On this frozen terrain they discover a lost race of creatures representing Whiteness that Poe wrote about in his novel.

When the world as we know it seemingly comes to an end, the motley crew members are perhaps now the lone civilized survivors of Armageddon. And they have become slaves of the primitive creatures in Antarctica. If they can escape, the opposite of the place they are being held captive, a tropical island representing Blackness that Poe also wrote about, possibly awaits.

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The Sellout by Paul Beatty –Nearly every sentence of this book is a rambling, rapid fire joke with multiple punch lines delivered. Authored by a spoken word poet, it seems written to be listened to rather than read silently to yourself. The plot involves a black man who was home schooled by his social scientist father, with every lesson being about racial identity. After his father is murdered by cops, the son inherits the family farm along with acquiring settlement money. He lives in a California town that has literally been erased from the map. In addition to providing neighbors with incredible fruit, stellar weed, and crisis counseling in times of mental emergencies, he is on a mission to reclaim recognition that the town exists.

He is friends with the last living cast member of the Little Rascals, a man named Hominy who voluntarily insists on being the narrator's slave. I don't have an explanation for motive beyond noting that this book is wildly satirical with every line meant to be taken with a large grain of salt added to the social commentary. Besides being a slave owner, he attempts to bring racial segregation back to their town one location at a time, starting with a city bus driven by his crush. Readers are hit with every cultural reference under the sun along the topsy turvy way.

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When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole – This story of gentrification is made even more sinister than it is off the page. The setting is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY rapidly undergoing changes. The Gifford Place community has been predominantly African American for generations, but lately a lot of the black folks have been moving away, and in their place has been the arrival of affluent white people. A black woman named Sydney Green encounters a white man named Theo and his soon to be ex-girlfriend on a walking tour of the neighborhood. Sydney disapproves of what the tour is highlighting and what it is leaving out, the latter being contributions by the majority black population. She decides to create a tour of her own to counter it, and unemployed Theo volunteers to be her assistant.

Sydney does not hold back from expressing displeasure with gentrifying white people. Theo shrugs this off though and is not without charm. Since Sydney is conveniently single just as Theo is in the process of becoming, a potential love connection is in the making. The book is written in alternating first person point of view perspective - each chapter from Sydney's viewpoint followed by one from Theo's. Peculiar circumstances pile up and suspicions rise from mild to full blown conspiracy territory. Why are so many of their neighbors here one day - gone the next? When did the neighborhood bodega change hands and become a far more upscale store? Why isn't Syndey's best friend answering her texts? What does the company that's building a hospital in the neighborhood have to do with the various ominous things that are taking place? We find out in the closing pages as the book races towards a thriller genre conclusion.


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