Hi, friends!
Happy Tuesday!
A few months back I started getting books recommended at the library, all outside of my standard preference for romance. Some have been really good, some have been okay, only 1 so far has been a fuck no.
One of the things that has really annoyed me is how my preferred genre gets a bad rap for things like being lurid, yet a lot of these mystery novels and fiction novels have just unnecessarily weird lurid plot points. One had a subplot where I was like wow the author was really channeling Flowers in the Attic . Another one I read last week just decided that the protagonist needed horrendous amounts of childhood trauma and an imaginary family member, but also, a makeover! One chick lit book had enough woo-woo plot points that it was worse than a gothic romance.
How about you? Do you have a genre (books, tv, music, fashion, etc) where you feel like it gets a bad rap compared to other styles in that area?
Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell series has elevated my sense of what historical fiction can be like. I’ve read the first two and she’s brilliant.
I have some older friends that say they hate all rap & hip hop but I hate that word “all”.  Then I play them some jazzy US3 & they love it.
Same with some people on Reddit beer groups & even here that say I hate all IPAs. Â Have you had them all? Â Spend a day with me & you will find that is not true if you like any beers.
I think IPAs are in some ways a gateway to other craft beer.
Which is also why I think some people are really disdainful of IPAs, it’s like oh you’re not a real craft beef person if you really like IPAs.
Problem I find is if you don’t live in a craft beer Mecca, you get corporate or shitty IPAs that are nothing like what you find in WA, Portland, Colorado or certain NE cities.  Good ones are not a gateway but an endgame.
I may have mentioned before that the older I get, the less vehement I am about anything. Like cilantro; I respect your choice to hate it, dear ones.
(With the exceptions being Trumpian fuckery, political shenanigans, misogynistic laws, war, famine, genocide…I get more radical as I age. SplinterRIPian tirades are my jam.)
Especially so with music. My Spotify recommendations are wide-ranging; here are two songs from Monday’s list:
Radium Dolls Tractor Parts
Kyle McEvoy Reaching Outwards
So I guess that many people make fun of the romance and paranormal book genres (also my jam), but I guarantee that I am having more fun reading the bonbons of literature than are the folks reading what someone else deems high-brow.
Were I born in the 1800s I would be sneaking Gothic novels disguised as the infamous improving books deemed acceptable for women.
That’s pretty much my response. I know I don’t like cilantro because I have THE GENE. But that just means more for the rest of you. But people who think I am some kind of subhuman for liking ketchup on my hotdog or not liking onions or whatever… I’m like, how does this affect you?
I am also getting more lefty with age. Thank DOG my dad is a nevertrumper and also seems to be getting more anti-republican as time goes by. My mother, who wore a “lock her up” shirt the last time I saw her, is even admitting some unkind things about her party (if I phrase the question correctly).
Yeah I hate mushrooms. Which means yay more mushrooms for everyone else.
I hate so called historical movies changing facts. Was going to save it for the weekend but I saw American Made and I was kinda blown away… By how they tried to make this into a comedy.
It’s the story of a pilot named Barry Seal who organized the personal airline of the Narcos which got involved with the Iran-Contra affair after he got murdered by a Colombian hit squad.
Barry is played by Tom Cruise. To be fair, with good material he can do a really good job in a dramatic movie (Born on the Forth of July) but basically he played Barry as some kind of joke. Even they tried to make him some kind of family man when in reality he was more a man whore baby daddy (could have been my Grandfather.)
I read Barry Seal’s story. The only part they got right was the hypocrisy of the Just Say No Admin and the culpability of GHW Bush’s involvement. Even hinted that Oliver North may have outed him as a CIA asset to the press and indirectly the Narcos.
Otherwise, I was just… Disappointed.
I really hated Argo. My sister knew someone who was in that group of embassy employees, and the reality was more interesting and unusual than the movie. I think it was one of the worst Best Picture Oscars in recent years.
Argo was a decent film if you look at it as fiction. As a true story? Nah.
A piece of trivia I learned was that the Canadian Government at the time was trying to negotiate buying Iran’s entire fleet of F-14 Tomcats for cheap. When the news broke that Ambassador Taylor helped get six Americans out of Tehran, they cancelled the negotiations.
FYI, Iran still flies the F-14 unlike the US Navy which retired them in 2006.
So if you’re wondering who Maverick and gang were fighting in Top Gun 2.0… it was Iran and Russia.
As for American Made… Barry Seal was a scumbag (he got fired from TWA for faking his illness to go on medical leave so he could smuggle Pot from Mexico and when he got arrested then TWA found out and fired him) , but they tried to make him into some kind of folk hero.
I read my share of political and military thrillers. It seems most of the authors are conservative types who think libs are the idiots, cowards and fuck ups.
From what I’ve seen… Most of the horrible errors of foreign policy tend to come from ideological right wingers who either seem to want to prove something or are out of their depth in the jobs they have.
Not to say that libs don’t make errors (cough Vietnam cough). But it makes me laugh seeing Cons act like they never fuck things up.
i think books themselves have it pretty bad with the stereo types….i assume its better when you work with higher educated people
but i think im the only person i work with that reads for fun…and once people get past thinking i maked a joke saying i like to read usually get told i dont look like a book worm…lol