Picked up from the Library today. Appears as if I'm the first guy to borrow it in 100 years.
Reviews and Comments
Trying to find a better way to track books I want to read than a random spreadsheet. I had used readinglog.info which was provided by my local public library until they shut down the program. Luckily, I regularly backed it up via their CSV export. I've used Library Thing for years, but adding books for "To Read" really screwed up a lot of the other features of the website, like recommendations, etc. I really love Free Software & the Fediverse particularly. My primary social media account is on Friendica @fu@libranet.de for now everything I post here is automatically "re-tooted" there.
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Ji FU started reading Actions and reactions by Rudyard Kipling
Ji FU wants to read Actions and Reactions by Rudyard Kipling
Ji FU wants to read Independence! by Dana Fuller Ross
I bought this for my dad for Christmas a few years ago because I saw it at the bookstore and I know he likes cowboys. He got into it so much it read practically the whole series from the public library, until he eventually decided it was trashy romance novels in chaps. Now I want to see what all the fuss was about.
Ji FU wants to read Christians at the Border by M. Daniel Carroll R.
I'm hoping to get a new perspective on why loving our neighbor and open borders are intertwined. In particular I'm hoping for new apologia to convince my fellow Christians of the need for open borders and there having been drawn into closed border xenophobia by fear and the devil.
Ji FU started reading The American Zone by L. Neil Smith
Ji FU wants to read On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
Ji FU reviewed Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater
A childhood favorite
3 stars
I wanted to buy a copy of one of my children favorites. It wasn't quite as entertaining as I remember, but the pictures where better, I was pleasantly surprised to find they were done by Robert Lawson
Ji FU started reading Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater
I first read this book over 30 years ago. My brother got it for me at Christmastime, so I'm going to see if it was as good as I remember. Already impressed as I hadn't known the few illustrations had been drawn by Robert Lawson, my favorite author.
Ji FU started reading Indiana Jones and the Interior World by Rob Macgregor
Ji FU stopped reading Indiana Jones and the Unicorn's Legacy by Rob Macgregor
Ji FU reviewed M*A*S*H goes to Texas by Richard Hooker
Another forgetabale TV Tie-In Story
2 stars
Butterworth gives us another tale of some random foreigners trying to get together with Hawkeye and Trapper and it takes nearly the whole book for them to get there.
This time they through in a congressman who had been mentioned before and his wife who is all mad that their daughter wants to be more than just a big boobed cheerleader.
Somehow the Uncle of the wife ends up in a chewing tobacco commercial with his Indian Compatriot, but they wouldn't include their buffalo because that just wouldn't be believable. Said Buffalo, Teddy Rosevelt, ends up driving the Hurse so they can meet up with Hot-Lips all pansi ac-apella choir, but can they do it before the Knights of Columbus Marching band shows up?
If that sounds fun, read this book if not, give it a pass.
Ji FU reviewed Bill Haywood's book by Big Bill Haywood
A working class hero in his own words
5 stars
Big Bill Haywood was raised in Salt Lake City, because that's where his family was forced to deboard the train headed to the California Gold Rush as they realized his younger brother wasn't with them. His father passed not long after getting established in Utah. Bill had to be the man of the house since a young age. He has his first strike when he was 11 years old after her mother lent him out to a distant uncle for farm work, and the uncle wouldn't even give him a water break. By the time he is 15 he's out of school and working as a miner full time. Living in the bunk house with everyone else.
He's introducted to the ideals of socialism by an old member of the Knights of Labor and clings to it for the rest of his life.
What I found most surprising is how …
Big Bill Haywood was raised in Salt Lake City, because that's where his family was forced to deboard the train headed to the California Gold Rush as they realized his younger brother wasn't with them. His father passed not long after getting established in Utah. Bill had to be the man of the house since a young age. He has his first strike when he was 11 years old after her mother lent him out to a distant uncle for farm work, and the uncle wouldn't even give him a water break. By the time he is 15 he's out of school and working as a miner full time. Living in the bunk house with everyone else.
He's introducted to the ideals of socialism by an old member of the Knights of Labor and clings to it for the rest of his life.
What I found most surprising is how firmly Haywood is convienced their is no God while everyone close to him has such faith. His wife is a believer in Christian Science, his mother an Episcopalian, in whose church Haywood is confirmed only because his mom knowns no other way to legally get his name changed so that he can pay honor to his late father without a religious ceremony, and he indicates he had seen Bringham Young in the temple, so he must have spent some time in the LDS Church without actually admitting such.
Joining the Western Federation of Miners not long after he starts in his chosen profession they are able to levy for stronger involvement in many mines. Though his description of a bull pen I learned really what the boss class can do.
Never again! He lost his eye in a mining accident. By the time he was in his 30s his Fellow Workers elected him the Secretary-Treasurer of the WFM. I was surprised that after this he never went back to manual labor again. While there he set off the IWW one Big Union for all industries. The first convention in Chicago sounds like a heck of an adventure.
I was surprised, but probably shouldn't have been, that by the end of that first year of the IWW there were two different groups claiming to be the only legitmate union. In-fighting and sidetrackign since the beginning. Haywood is accused of murder, which he claims is is only because he organized well.
My "favorite" legal troupe here was the little girl who was shot by a police officer and Haywood and two additional organizers are tried as responsible for the murder because the girl wouldn't have been on the picket line to be shot if they hadn't called a Strike.
After reading his autobiography I am only further convinced that there needs to be a movie of which he is the primary subject. I still think the one scene with Haywood was the best of the 80s masterpiece "Reds"