Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Story Time w/Ed: #1 Mafia and Magellan

I thought I'd humor E-rock and give his "bigger and better" blog idea a try. I've been assigned the Book Review section by Editor Lobao. I wont sit up here and preach I'll just give y'all a little insight into how the other half (i.e. the unemployed) has been spending their time....

As a new employee of the Lobao E-Dispatch, I need to set a few ground rules... (1) I reserve the right to moonlight in the Sports Department (moonlighting as the Cavs beat reporter, and writing negative articles about the Steelers, Bengals, etc), (2) I reserve the right to not read any of Rock's ".nerd" techie articles... I don't care if he's in charge. (3) Somebody tell me how to post pictures again...

On that note:

The Godfather

For anybody who likes the movie, this book is a must read. As with all "movie-books" there is much more to the story then what made the cut in the film. Additionally, Puzo is able to spend time explaining the reasoning behind much of the action. For example, you really understand in the movie why Luca Brasi is consider such a bad-ass, in the book you get teh back story. Other areas drastically expanded on include: Micheal's time in Siciliy, the war while Micheal is away, details of the other major Mafia families around the U.S., and the "Hollywood" side of the Corleone family.

For the perverts out there, the book is suprisingly graphic. If you read it let me know what you think about the chapter detailing the surgery Sonny's side-girl has to get after he dies. I have a copy if anyone needs it

Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's terrifying circumnavigation of the Globe (by Laurence Bergreen)

Ok, I have a confession to make: I have a problem. The source of that problem is Half-Priced Books. The store is unbelievable. I go in there at least once a week just to "look around." Now, when I'm browsing I have an idea of books Im looking for. These usually include Presidential Biographies, and other history stuff. It's hilarious to find a book that is normally $25 going for $4.98 at HPB. Anyway, my parents have built a pretty sweet library at their house. Im tying to help fill. My first goal is to get a book on every US president. This explains my recent purchases of books on Grover Cleveland and John Quincy Adams.....

So why did I buy this book?... The same reason I buy most of my other non-presidential purposes: It looked cool. By looked cool I mean it would look cool in the Library. I keeping claiming shelfs at my Mom's... I'm up to 3 shelfs. Plus, I like real life adventure books (Erick have you even touched Undauted Courage yet?). Well this book is sweet... It's one of those 5 boats and 250 people leave, and one boat and 18 guys return stories. Mission Accomplished, sort of.

Magellan (not one of the lucky 18) had a goal of finding the "Spice Islands" and hoped to show they lied in Spanish controlled water. The pope had demarcated half the world for Spain and the the other half for the other world superpower, Portugal (dont laugh). I wont bore you all the details (I still have about 100 pages to go) but supringly good records survive from the trip. Anyway, there is plenty of mutinies, battles, orgies, scurvy, etc. Oh yeah, the guys literally thought they were gonna either (a) go off the edge of the earth or (b) get eaten by giant sea monters.

Hastie, OUT!!!

P.S. Erick consider yourself "humored"....

7 comments:

  1. Wow... I didnt realize that I was that long.

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  2. Nice work!! And just remember we're all editors here, my suggestions for articles were just pointers, everyone can write about whatever they want. Now to the point...

    You've got me thinking about the Godfather. Looks like I need to read it. I always thought it'd be nice to see more of the back-story on the other families in the first movie. Check out this Godfather trivia page.

    On the Magellan Tip... Do you think the era of human exploration on this scale is over? What's up with us going to Mars? What about the ocean floors... where's our Magellan (working for google or NASA?).

    Once again, Nice work... keep the good stuff coming!

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  3. Good work Eddie - you *are* pretty long.. at least in blog form. Were the 2nd and 3rd Godfathers based on books? I'm not sure I've ever seen the 3rd, but rumor has it that it borders on blasphemy..

    On the 1/2 Price books front.. on amazon you can often get used books for literally pennies.. or just a penny, which in the case of Richard Simmons' "Still Hungry After All These Years" is still a ripoff. I've bought books this way and haven't had any problems.

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  4. 1: Rock's human exploration question

    That type of exploration is over because we no longer are truly going into the unknown (well our robots are, but humans aren't). We will expand distance, etc., but is never unknown like it was then. Now we identify Mars for example, we know its there, we know how to get there, hell we even have sent robots there. Magellen had no idea where he was. People theorized the earth was round but no one had proved it yet. Basically everything from the Eastern side of South America to the Phillipines was "undiscovered".

    #2 Gordo's Godfather question

    Godfather 1 is on the book. Parts of the book are also in G2. Namely the section about Vito coming to america from Sicily and his rise to power. The rest, especially the parts in the "present day" are constructed for the movie. However, Puzo wrote the screen play (w/Coppola I assume) for 1 and 2.

    Godfather 3? Cant say Ive ever heard of that. My dad told it was not worth watching. I will be breaking his advice shortly probably tommorrow. But no book was ever written for 3.

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  5. One other Godfather thing....

    Puzo wrote a book called the Sicilian which delves even further into Micheal's time in Sicily. If you remember from the movie, Micheal was in Sicily for 3 years after the murders. This book is based on the premise he was supposed to come home after two +/- years but The Don sent him over a mission. I have just recently started it (50 pages in) and appears promising. I didnt want to read this much fiction in a row but I think the story is too good.

    Gordo did you get the Sparrow? I actually just bought an autographed copy of the sequel at Borders, it didnt even cost more.

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  6. Good point on the human exploration question. I guess I was also trying to ask what are the great unknowns on that magellan scale, not necessarily a geography astronomy thing? Is it stem cell or biologically related (i.e. understanding and heredity / DNA type stuff). Perhaps space/time related (we all want a time traveling delorean right? Are there anymore great unknowns? Judging from last night's wife swap tv reality show a lot of people are still afraid of the cosmos.

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  7. Yeah - I just finished The Sparrow a couple days ago - and am going to pick up the sequel at the 'brare (what cool people call a library) tonight. You know the author is from Clevetucky, right? That's gotta be why there's so much lamenting over the Indians losing the World Series in 2016 or whatever. She's also got a new book out this year - I think it's a historical novel about the Jews fleeing Italy at the end of WWII..

    I missed the wife-swapping reality show - anyone tape it? Sounds like one of those once-in-a-lifetime television events..

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