Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
I did a Costco run the other day and, as I always do, I glanced at the book display. This time, they had two books by one of my favorite junk/romance novel writers: Linda Howard. Both of the books were at prices comparable to what I’d pay for them on
Continue readingOne of the things that makes it very difficult to write a conservative-oriented thriller is that you cannot simply assume that your audience will understand your references. In a standard pot-boiler, written for an American market brought up in public schools and addicted to Hollywood movies and television shows, there
Continue readingRobert Avrech, who blogs at Seraphic Secret, flattered me tremendously when he asked me to read his e-book How I Married Karen and, if I felt so inclined to write a pre-publication blurb. As it turned out, I felt very inclined, because the book was a pleasure from beginning to
Continue readingFor our Thanksgiving drive to L.A., I went to our local library and got several books on CD. Since our small family manages not to have any overlapping areas of interest, this is always a challenge. One wants teenage hero spy books, another wants high school romantic dramadies (half drama,
Continue readingI have some very exciting news: I have found my long-lost identical twin. It’s amazing, really. Like me, my twin grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 60s and 70s. Like me, my twin went to UC Berkeley and found Leftist antics revolting. Like me, my twin
Continue readingThanks to a handy-dandy Amazon gift certificate, I just bought myself a Kindle copy of Greg Gutfeld’s The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage. It sounds like a book that is simultaneously important and enjoyable. I’ll be reading it with a close
Continue readingI discovered that I was too nervous about the election even to read my usual round of blogs this morning. After I saw a post about shenanigans in Pennsylvania, my stomach did a little slip-sloppy thing, and I closed all the political blog tabs I had open. Until I get
Continue readingAlthough few academics would want to acknowledge this, economics is, at bottom, about human behavior: rational humans respond to incentives and shy away from disincentives. If you understand that, you’re more than halfway to understanding the marketplace. Maggie Larche does understand the human connection to economic behavior, and she also
Continue readingJust a reminder that today is the last day that my book, The Bookworm Turns: A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land, is available for free at Amazon. As one very nice reviewer said: When I stumbled across Bookworm Room in the vast blogosphere of political chatter and rants, I knew
Continue readingI am very pleased to announce that I have published a new Kindle book called Easy Ways To Teach Kids Hard Things : The fun way to teach your children important life principles ($1.99 on Amazon). In it, I distill the parenting knowledge I’ve acquired over the years as I’ve
Continue readingReal Clear Politics, Sunday, September 30, 2012: I’m excited not only for myself, but for Laer Pearce, whose book, Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State – How California is Destroying Itself and Why it Matters to America, is the subject of the post that RCP picked up. It’s a great
Continue readingThe one good thing about bad books is that they can give rise to brilliant book reviews. Such is the case with Florence King’s review of Naomi Wolf’s latest offering, Vagina: A New Biography. This may well be the funniest book review I’ve ever read. Admittedly, Wolf provides a reviewer
Continue readingI was doodling about on that Folio Society site I told you about, and I came across a book I’ve never heard of: The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. Here’s the product description: ‘Well, as everyone knows, once witchcraft gets started, there’s no stopping it’ On a hot spring
Continue readingThose of you who were lucky enough to have started using the internet a few years ago probably remember Laer Pearce, who blogged at Cheat-Seeking Missiles. Laer was one of my first blog friends, meaning that we corresponded by email and, eventually, we met. He is precisely what you’d imagine
Continue readingI regularly troll the Kindle book “Bestseller” page in search of free books. Usually, free is more than they’re worth, because they are so poorly edited or written that it’s a waste of my time to read them. The exception occurs when a publisher prices at zero an author’s earlier
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