Recent reads
Here's what I've managed to read over the past month or so...
Al Gore's The Assault on Reason:
A scholarly work on the declining role of thoughtful, logical, reflective, searching thinking in the public sphere. Gore remains upbeat but flummoxed as to how many people buy into evidenceless claims, and pins a lot of the blame on TV, which is "a one-way medium." Gore's current gig (other than promoting awareness of climate change issues) is running a TV channel where users submit content, and he sees this as the modern-day equivalent to revolutionary-era pamphleteering. If Thomas Paine were alive today, Gore thinks he would opt to express himself on Current TV. The book is a good read (I'm a very sympathetic reader, it should be noted -- my opinion is that if the 2000 election had gone to Gore, the world would be in a much better place), but its pages feel a little dated, written as they were during the fifth/sixth years of the G.W. Bush presidency. There's an ominous undercurrent that has evaporated a bit in the present Obama era. Doubtless the book would read differently if it were penned today.
Alan Moore's & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen:
The graphic novel which provided the inspiration (and pretty much the screenplay/storyboards) for the recent blockbuster movie of the same name. I haven't read a comic book in a long time, and a graphic novel... Well, I think this was the first. [Does that make it the 'best graphic novel I've ever read'?] It was really entertaining and full of the same interwoven set of plot elements and 'easter eggs' that makes watching the television show LOST such an intricate, engaging exercise. If you're not already familiar with it, it envisions an alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is still president of the US, and we're on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and costumed 'super'heroes (really just masked 'adventurers') are outlawed. Some of these 'heroes' are really psychos, and others merely emotionally/psychologically damaged goods. It's interesting to see these do-gooders wrestle with life's tricky bits, while simultaneously attempting to avert World War III.
I also read Tyler Volk's CO2 Rising, but that one deserves a blog post of its own to discuss... Stay tuned.
Al Gore's The Assault on Reason:
A scholarly work on the declining role of thoughtful, logical, reflective, searching thinking in the public sphere. Gore remains upbeat but flummoxed as to how many people buy into evidenceless claims, and pins a lot of the blame on TV, which is "a one-way medium." Gore's current gig (other than promoting awareness of climate change issues) is running a TV channel where users submit content, and he sees this as the modern-day equivalent to revolutionary-era pamphleteering. If Thomas Paine were alive today, Gore thinks he would opt to express himself on Current TV. The book is a good read (I'm a very sympathetic reader, it should be noted -- my opinion is that if the 2000 election had gone to Gore, the world would be in a much better place), but its pages feel a little dated, written as they were during the fifth/sixth years of the G.W. Bush presidency. There's an ominous undercurrent that has evaporated a bit in the present Obama era. Doubtless the book would read differently if it were penned today.
Alan Moore's & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen:
The graphic novel which provided the inspiration (and pretty much the screenplay/storyboards) for the recent blockbuster movie of the same name. I haven't read a comic book in a long time, and a graphic novel... Well, I think this was the first. [Does that make it the 'best graphic novel I've ever read'?] It was really entertaining and full of the same interwoven set of plot elements and 'easter eggs' that makes watching the television show LOST such an intricate, engaging exercise. If you're not already familiar with it, it envisions an alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is still president of the US, and we're on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and costumed 'super'heroes (really just masked 'adventurers') are outlawed. Some of these 'heroes' are really psychos, and others merely emotionally/psychologically damaged goods. It's interesting to see these do-gooders wrestle with life's tricky bits, while simultaneously attempting to avert World War III.
I also read Tyler Volk's CO2 Rising, but that one deserves a blog post of its own to discuss... Stay tuned.
1 Comments:
For The Assault on Reason, a lot of the concern over information dissemination I think is still relevant, although I don't entirely agree with Gore on all aspects of it.
And without making this explicitly political, I would also like to mention that although the "ominous undercurrent" present in TAoR or Naomi Wolf's The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot may appear to be outdated due to the 2008 elections, it would behoove those concerned with civil liberties to be aware of what is (and more importantly) what is not actually changing in terms of governmental authority and potential for abuse.
The Watchmen is of course a classic. For a different flavor of graphic novel/film adaptation, I recommend Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
Post a Comment
<< Home