Showing posts with label Jimmy Breslin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy Breslin. Show all posts

Friday, May 12, 2017

My Current Reading List

I suspect that I am like most inveterate readers, in that I often have more than one book underway at any particular time. I don’t know why this is. What is it about some books that keep you glued to the page, reading late into the night, while others manage to keep you engaged for the first few chapters before your interest begins to tail off to the point you finally give up (though not completely), and you turn to that second or third book on your tottering pile of reading material stacked on the dresser next to your bed?

I also suspect that the comment about ‘not completely’ giving up is also true for many readers. Some half-read books sit next to my bed or on the bookcase in the lounge room for weeks and months, waiting patiently for my return. These books may not have the ability to keep me up late at night, but neither do they fall completely off my reading list. There is just enough of interest in the story they are telling to keep me on the hook, waiting for the right moment to take up the tale again.

As for my current reading list—the three books I have been juggling this month are Jimmy Breslin’s Table Money, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, and Joseph Michael Reynolds’ Dead Ends, a book detailing—as the subtitle states—The Pursuit, Conviction, and Execution of Serial Killer Aileen Wuornos.

I started out the month with Table Money, by Jimmy Breslin. I have mentioned Breslin in other posts, noting that to date I have bought eight of his books. Of these eight I have read four titles, and Table Money was going to be my fifth Breslin book.

Table Money recounts the story of several generations of ‘sandhogs’, a name adopted by the tunnel workers who toiled beneath the streets of New York City carving out the subterranean tunnels that brought fresh water to the great metropolis. All the Breslin trademarks are here—hard working, and even harder drinking working class immigrants; corrupt politicians and union leaders; brutal bosses and their meaner henchmen who stand over the immigrant workers ensuring they remain unorganised and un-unionised; and long-suffering wives and their under-educated children.

Despite the glowing praise for the book (“…a serious literary novel, a superior work of fiction.”—The New York Times; “…a heavyweight saga in an era of welterweights,”—Los Angeles Times; and “…easily Breslin’s best novel.”—Library Journal), I found the going tough and put the book aside around a quarter of the way through.

Last week I bought J.D. Vance’s much acclaimed memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Subtitled, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis—the ‘culture in crisis’ being that of white working-class Americans. James David Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. His grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio to escape the endemic poverty that surrounded them in Jackson. 

They raised a middle-class family, which eventually included the author who went on to graduate from Yale Law School, and who has now written a timely book that may provide some of the answers to the many questions being asked about the rise of the alt-right in America and the unexpected rise of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States.

Again, despite my interest in America and American politics, and despite the fact that I was settling into the book quite comfortably, I somehow managed to distract myself by working on entries for this blog, and by the other general reading that I do. And then, wouldn’t you know it, before I could get back to Hillbilly Elegy, along came Aileen Wournos.

Wournos was one of those atypical phenomena that thankfully come along all too rarely, that is, a female serial killer. I had seen and been greatly moved by the 2002 film, Monster, in which Charlize Theron portrayed Wounos with a stunning Academy Award winning performance that would earn her an Oscar for Best Actress—so when I saw the eBook being offered at a discount for just USD$1.99, I jumped at the chance to buy it. 

Joseph Michael Reynolds was a journalist for Reuters at the time Aileen Wuornos was embarking on her late-1980s killing spree, and it was Reynolds who first broke the story in the national media. First published in 1992, Dead Ends traces the story of Wuornos, a person who might have fitted very well into J.D. Vance’s book as just another of the millions of down on their luck working Joe’s with few prospects, and even fewer options for escaping the hole they had found themselves in. Holes, it should be said, that they mostly dig themselves.

Here at last is a book that has managed to keep me up at night. As I write, I am down to the final few chapters, and with less than an hour or so of reading remaining, I will finish the book later today. I will then make my way back to Hillbilly Elegy, and before the month is out, I will take another look at Jimmy Breslin’s novel. Having said that, there are dozens of other books straining for my attention, and any one of those might win out over Table Money or for that matter Hillbilly Elegy.

Monday, May 1, 2017

Surf’s Up on The Weekly Web

I don’t know about you dear reader, but I spend far too much time online. Some of my online discoveries find their way onto this blog in some shape or form, while others make their way to my Twitter feed and Facebook page. I have so many sticky notes cluttering up my desktop that I thought I might try a weekly Surfing The Web round-up of the best items I find online each week, and share them here. Speaking of surfing the web, I can’t think of better way to kick off this post than with an article looking at the beginnings of the internet.

The Life and Times of the World Wide Web
My internet service provider is the source for this Out Of The Archives piece about the origins of the Internet, or the World Wide Web as it was initially referred to by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who had the bright idea to begin the project in the first place way back in 1989. Some much has changed in the few short years since the advent of the internet, that it seems odd to think this groundbreaking, world-shaking service has been around for less than 30 years. 

By the way, the image seen above shows the world’s first internet server. I don’t know what the specs for the computer were, but I suspect they were not all that great when compared to today’s super fast computers with their almost unlimited storage drives, and ultra-sharp display monitors.

Read the full blog post here and make sure you follow the link to the world’s first web page.

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NYC's Racist, Draconian Cabaret Law Must Be Eliminated 
For “the greatest city in the world,” New York has appallingly few places to dance. The next time you find yourself confined to toe-tapping to a tinny Top 40 song in a sports bar, or clutching an $11 Heineken in a booming EDM hall, you can thank the city’s cabaret law, a 90-year-old edict that despite being racist in origin and outmoded in practice, remains a very convenient cudgel for the city to wield against local businesses. Many valiant attempts to repeal it have been made over the years. None have succeeded.

So begins a piece by Lauren Evans in a recent issue of The Village Voice, one of the most venerable of New York City’s free ‘street’ papers. Lauren goes on to report that the law, which dates back to 1926. In its current form, the cabaret law prohibits dancing by three or more people in any “room, place or space in the city... to which the public may gain admission,” and includes “musical entertainment, singing, dancing or other form[s] of amusement.”


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Jimmy Breslin: The Last Word
I discovered the writing of Jimmy Breslin less than twelve months ago, and I have been making up for lost time ever since. At last count, I have eight eBooks by Jimmy Breslin on my iPad, and I am working my way through all of them slowly but surely. Sadly, Breslin, who was 88, died earlier this year after long and illustrious career in journalism, which he followed up with an equally illustrious career as an author of (mostly) crime novels, which drew on his many years as a reporter in New York City.

The New York Times’ ‘Last Word’ series are video obituaries of prominent Americans, among them politicians, sportspeople, writers, directors, and musicians. 


Here is an obituary from the New York Times that provide more information about this man. If you are into reading, I highly recommend that you seek out his books in printed form or in electronic form. You won’t be disappointed.


Vancouver Island’s enchanting quarry gardens
Quarries are not generally noted for their elegance, but the glorious Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island show a makeover at its very best. Amanda McInerney paid a visit the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, off the coast of Canada. The gardens have been developed on the site of an exhausted quarry owned by Robert Butchart. In 1909, when the limestone extraction was completed, Robert’s wife Jenny set about turning the quarry pit into a sunken garden.



Australia’s Northern Territory
My one and only visit to the Northern Territory took place in 1983, during a brief visit to Alice Springs and Uluru (previously known as Ayers Rock). Somewhere on my Bucket List is a plan to visit that region of the Northern Territory we call the Top End. Thankfully, Monica Tan, writing for the Guardian, has put together a comprehensive guide to the Northern Territory that has reminded me of my previous all too brief visit, and reminded me as well, that I need to see more of this amazing country.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

New York City Round-Up #2

Remembering Jimmy Breslin
I came very late to the writing of Jimmy Breslin when I eventually 'discovered' him last year and bought an eBook copy of The World According to Jimmy Breslin, a 1988 compilation of some of his best essays. Since then I have added another seven Breslin books to my collection, and I am slowly working my way through all of them. I’ll let Wikipedia introduce the man:
James Earle "Jimmy" Breslin (October 17, 1928 – March 19, 2017) was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various New York City newspapers. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper. He was known for his newspaper columns which offered a sympathetic viewpoint of the working class people of New York City, and was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens".
Breslin, who passed away last week, was one of the old school newspaper greats, certainly in the same league as Joseph Mitchell, Alistair Cooke, and Meyer Berger, although the focus of his topics was often quite different.

Read A Part Of A Cop’s Past Lies Dead, the column Jimmy Breslin wrote following the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

If you can't find print copies of Breslin's books, many of his most popular works are now available as eBooks for Kindle, iPad, and other electronic devices. If you have never read the man, I urge you to seek out his work online, in secondhand bookshops, or electronically, and spend a few weeks as I am catching up with his remarkable writing.

Wikipedia entry for Jimmy Breslin…

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In the shade of the 4 train’s elevated track, Jerome Avenue’s dense clusters of auto-repair shops, storefronts, and manufacturers have long formed the economic spine of the Bronx, one of New York’s increasingly rare blue-collar neighborhoods. But as the city government considers rezoning the corridor to add residential development, change looms for the neighborhood’s social and economic landscape. 

Against that backdrop of uncertainty, Giacomo Francia, writing for the New York Times presents six short documentaries profiling an orange seller, ice cream vendor, glass cutter, hairdresser, mechanic, and pigeon keeper.

Giacomo Francia writes:
To make these profiles of the people who live and work around rapidly changing Jerome Avenue in the South Bronx, I decided to spend last summer [2015] there. That summer turned into 10 months. I spent so much time with the workers on Jerome Avenue that when I greeted them in the morning, smiling, they would nod back at me and say “cuidate” (“be safe”)! I found that the rhythm of Jerome Avenue is driven by the mechanics and street vendors who line its streets, and the shops run by hard-working families, who are often sustaining small businesses proudly handed down to them from generations past.

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Destination Midtown App
Planning a visit to New York City? If so you might want to check out the newish Destination Midtown app. Some of New York City’s top attractions are highlighted in this interactive tour guide to Midtown Manhattan. 

The app features ten step-by-step walking tours that include 34th and 42nd Streets, parts of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, as well as suggestions for rainy days, nights out, the fashion conscious, and others.

Destination Midtown claims to be “your perfect companion to all the best landmarks, museums, restaurants, and shops.” Along with the ten walking tours users will find:
• Detailed attraction profiles featuring locals-only info, insider tips, photos, hours of operation, and more
• Perfectly-framed selfie spots to help you snag that next profile pic
• Always-up-to-date event calendar with Midtown’s top happenings
• The ability to save your favorite walks, attractions, and destinations in “My Trip” to help plan your day
• “Back of the guidebook” info about eating, drinking, and getting around in the Big Apple
The app, which is available as a free download for both Apple and Android devices, has been developed by the Destination Midtown Alliance, founded last year by Empire State Realty Trust. The Alliance is a coalition of businesses and attractions who joined together to spread the word about Midtown Manhattan as a primary tourist destination. The Alliance provides visitors with a variety of interactive itineraries of Midtown’s best sightseeing, dining, shopping and entertainment, all within a 15-minute walk of the heart of New York City, and the Empire State Building.

Here’s a six minute video from Expedia highlighting some of the main New York City attractions including those around the Midtown area:



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