Books We’d Rather Not See

Hardback, Paperback, Ebook, Audio, Doesn’t Matter

What makes a book compelling? Join me in reading good books and honing the craft of writing.

It’s not the usual posting Friday but it is the funny first day of a special month. And an idea swirling around in my head insists on seeing the light of day. For better, for worse? You decide.

Suppose a writer writes a book that is engaging, has good characters, suitable stakes, and yet nobody wants to read it. What would such a book be about? My wife, Debbie, who is a long-time math teacher accustomed to prodding reluctant readers, might say algebra, to which I’d reply, What characters? What stakes? She’d come back with The Numbers and Knowledge, turning the page on her algebra book to prepare for another class.

Suppose we think broader than algebra. Read on.

Bernie Madoff fleeced many with overly-generous promises of returns, returns that looked good on paper. Alas, the house of cards collapsed. Madoff is gone, but we’d rather not see his in-prison story: Trading Bars of Soap and Other Ways to get Cleanly Rich.

Madoff wasn’t the only one to pitch get-rich-quick schemes. Sam Bankman-Fried founded Alameda, a trading company, and FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. He was convicted of fraud after playing fast and loose with investors’ money, bankrupting both companies. It wasn’t due to ignorance of the law. His lawyer parents were faculty at Stanford Law School, his mother an ethics professor, his father a paid employee. We’d rather not see the collaborative tome: Law in Theory Versus Practice: Keeping up with Silicon Valley, Who Only Think They Have Money.

Prince Andrew was in waiting for the throne long before Prince Harry. It goes with the job of being a lifer, after all. What’s a bored prince who didn’t go live in California to do for fun? Hang with monied Jeffery Epstein and his hidden lifestyle using young women. Andrew seems to have gotten off lightly, only relinquished his too-trying schedule of public appearances. We’d rather not see Spared, Andrew’s story of how he avoided prosecution. What we would like to see is Traded, where Andrew swaps places with a commoner. (Crossing our fingers we see Cured, re Princess Kate.)

The federal government needs a reality check. Unique among countries throughout the world, thousands pour over a border (US-Mexico) on a daily basis. Coyotes become millionaires from the exorbitant fees they charge to smuggle souls (bet they don’t pay their fair share in taxes). You’d think a government that works would address the problem, as they did with their zealous investigations into the January 6 Capitol mobbing. Yet they’re a poster child of fecklessness. We’d rather not see Congress Fiddles Like Nero While Crowds Storm Federal Fences. Unfortunately, it’s being printed in sequential editions.

We have two lame ducks, very, very old ones, running for Prez. Ready or not, we’re in for a pair of titles. One is Previously Untold Stories About The Two Ducks—an uber-slim pamphlet at best. Part of our problem is we know them both too well. The other is 2024 Ways To Raise Your Enthusiasm This Year. Highlights include singing in the shower to eating lots of garlic.

Speaking of old ducks, the advanced age of each candidate raises the odds the Veep will advance to promotion. The Republicans have no Veep candidate as of this posting. The Democrats haven’t mentioned changing running mate, leaving Kamala Harris as part of the ticket. Her last audition for the job was uninspiring, as her 2020 presidential campaign encountered many bumps in the road, many internal. RFK Jr, no youngster, named his running mate, a young lawyer known more for her access to fundraising than leadership (nada). Will any Veep candidate have some leadership training or are we supposed to cross our fingers? We’d rather not see the lightweight compendium The Running Mate’s Favorite TED Talks on Leadership.

Jesse Ventura, former pro wrestler (the matches are real!) turned politician, sued Chris Kyle for defamation over a few lines in Kyle’s book American Sniper regarding a bar fight. Kyle was tragically killed when helping a fellow veteran. Ventura continued the case against his widow, not in her state of Texas, but in his home state Minnesota. The publisher mitigated its risk by deleting the sentences in subsequent printings, but a Minnesota jury awarded a few million bucks to Ventura for the books already sold. The book we’d rather not see by the former politician/wrestler: Smacking Down the Widow.

Elon Musk has remade Twitter. Walter Isaacson's Elon is an entertaining biography of the larger-than-life businessman and shows the mercurial Musk loves trial and error. Definitely worth a read, Isaacson’s book ends on the Twitter acquisition. Since then, Musk has learned running a social media platform is in a different universe than building rockets and cars. The next book about Musk we’d rather not see is Why Twitter Was Called X, But It’s Now Y: How Twitter Lost its Leg of Advertising. (I could be banned from Twitter for this. Sorry, meant Y.)

Lastly and certainly leastly, the book you don’t want to see, the book you can count your lucky stars because you won’t see it is the multi-volume set Mantooth’s Unpublished Manuscripts.

MUMs the word.

What books would you rather not see published?

All the Best,

Geoff

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