Read Any Good Books Lately?

Monday, December 4, 2017

I am nearing the end of my second year in retirement and it has proved successful, so far.  I had two purposes in choosing to retire from a job that was quite satisfactory over all, more time to travel and more time to read, I mean books, instead of the legal briefs and case law that occupied me for over a dozen years.  The travel record has been pretty good.  Last year, I went abroad to London, Tel Aviv, Croatia and London/Paris, while going once to the Bay Area (San Francisco).  This year, I've been to Berlin, London/Tel Aviv, New Orleans and the Bay Area.  

Although I can't precisely tally my reading in the same period, I estimate that I have been reading about two books a week.  So, I was excited to inspect the New York Times list of the 100 notable books of 2017.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/books/review/100-notable-books-2017.html?_r=0

I thought that I would be weak in the fiction department, since I focus on crime and spy novels, not usually found at the height of the literary pyramid.  However, I expected that my interest in history, politics, current affairs and strange people would have directed me to some of the year's notable nonfiction works.  Nope.  Except for a couple of books that appeared in shorter form in the New Yorker, I struck out.  I hope that you have a better nose for notable than I do. 
. . .

I'm here to help.  My years as a management consultant taught me to seek practical solutions, and the fuss over the administration's tax plan has whipped me into action.  Since we all know how inefficient government is, I have instituted the Financial Fairness Initiative (FFI) to accomplish the Republican Party's objectives without dealing with red tape and bureaucratic paperwork.

FFI will take money from ordinary people and deliver it directly to rich people, eliminating Washington and waste from the process.  It will spare the current and past Goldman Sachs partners from spending time with their accountants and lawyers devising ways to game the system to maximize their wealth.  All they will need is a paper knife to slit open envelopes. 

While FFI fights for economic justice, it has other concerns.  We are currently conducting a campaign to get Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, to appear on Wheel of Fortune so that he could buy himself a vowel.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Just as I was striking out with the year's notable books, the New Yorker comes along and redeems me somewhat.  This week, it lists its most read stories of the year.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2017-in-review/the-twenty-five-most-read-new-yorker-stories-of-2017?mbid=nl_Daily%20120517%20Nonsubs&CNDID=26743037&spMailingID=12501595&spUserID=MTMzNjY1NzcxNzA3S0&spJobID=1300460011&spReportId=MTMwMDQ2MDAxMQS2

 

Here I batted over .500, reading a majority of the stories everyone else seemed to be reading.  Were that the case with the notable books, I might rank as a first-class culture vulture.  Instead, I merely follow the decline of American society, delivered to my mailbox every Tuesday.   
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There was some goodish news today, but it had to come from London.  Sadiq Khan, the Islamic terrorist who managed to insinuate himself into the job of London's mayor, has announced a program for "providing more drinking fountains and bottle-filling stations" in London, with the desired byproduct of cutting down on the use of plastic water bottles.  Public water fountains are scarce in London and scarcer throughout the country. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/world/europe/london-sadiq-khan-water-fountains.html?_r=0

Paris, on the other hand, "boasts a broad array of drinking fountains, including some newer ones that dispense sparkling water, and the older, but imposing, so-called Wallace Fountains created with donations from a British philanthropist, Sir Richard Wallace, in the late 19th century to provide clean water for the poor."  Wallace Fountains provide a delight for the eye, as well as relief for the thirst.  

What rocked me though was mention of public seltzer fountains in Paris.  I remember when Katz's Delicatessen, 205 East Houston Street, site of Meg Ryan's self-induced rapture, had a free seltzer fountain in the back of the restaurant.  Also, a long-gone cafeteria at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and West 38th Street, whose name escapes me, had a free seltzer fountain, very popular with taxicab drivers, then more likely to have originated in Minsk than Mumbai.  Will someone promise that America's return to greatness include free seltzer?