Book Review: A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Brian Wright

by Ernest Hemingway
Review by Brian Wright

It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a new book, so I thought I’d break the ice with an old one—by the literary icon Ernest Hemingway. I remember reading Old Man and the Sea in high school and appreciating it, but not realizing of course why Hemingway was/is one of the greats. I just remember the essence of that grueling story: that perseverance is its own reward, that just because the external trappings of success are not present doesn’t mean a man doesn’t have what it takes. Continue reading →

Book Review: Three Nights in August (2005)

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Brian Wright

Strategy, heartbreak, and joy inside the mind of a manager
(Tony La Russa of the St. Louis Cardinals)

by Buzz Bissinger

So there’s a tendency among political ideologues —actually I’m trying to be a recovering ideologue— to eschew other avenues of real life… as if whether we achieve our liberty today or three years from today were the only issue that mattered. Fortunately, real life is more rich than politics. We have birth and death, love and marriage, sex and movies, golf and homebrewing, etc. And baseball. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Walmart Syndrome

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Brian Wright

Friend or foe of citizen empowerment?

Here’s a conundrum (a puzzle with no easy solution) for you:

What’s wrong with a mass-merchandising giant bulldozing one of its dollar-days aircraft hangars and 1/2-square-mile runways into the countrysides of the world? With Walmart you “always get the lowest price. Always.” Continue reading →

Book Review: The Lonely Silver Rain (1984)

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Brian Wright

A later episode, Travis McGee no longer prime time
by John D. MacDonald

But still great writing as Travis deals more with his mortality

Of all the John D. MacDonald Travis McGee novels I’ve read to this point (I think I’ve done approximately half of the 21), I’m giving this one—the final one, published in 1984, in the series—my ‘least favorite’ assessment… for a couple of reasons: Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Thorn Birds (1983)

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Brian Wright

1980s series works via great performances _ 8/10

Ralph de Bricassart: [telling the legend of the thorn bird to Meggie] There’s a story… a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree… and never rests until it’s found one. And then it sings… more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.
Young Meggie Cleary: What does it mean, Father?
Ralph de Bricassart: That the best… is bought only at the cost of great pain. Continue reading →

Book Review: Technopoly

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Brian Wright

by Neil Postman
The surrender of culture to technology

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Thoreau

Neil Postman is the prophet of the Second Enlightenment, the one that “builds a bridge” to the First Enlightenment of the 18th century. The former chair of the department of communications arts and sciences at New York University has a thing about technology and language. Reading any of his books—and I did review his Building a Bridge to the 18th Century—gives one the pure joy of seeing a first-class literary mind wrestling conceptually with the neverending stimulus-response “stuff” coming at humankind through the unchecked machinery of wretched excess. Continue reading →

Book Review: Chicken Soup for the Soul, Runners

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Brian Wright

101 inspirational stories of energy, endurance, and endorphins… Ron Kaiser, et al

I’ve run short stories from Ron before, and he’s also been published before in the Chicken Soup series. The Soup book on runners I thought would be fairly prosaic, ho hum stuff. I mean, it’s just running, right? Who wants to think about all the boring minutes on the road while worrying about knee damage? What’s the inspiration? Where’s the human interest? Well, you’d be surprised. A lot of the stories are from women who have used the rigors of running to free themselves from depression or household routine or the desire to pop a Twinkie. Yet the common theme for men and women is a certain spiritual connection they find in the experience of running, in the streets or, better, through nature. — bw Continue reading →