Today’s TTT is ‘April showers’, which a challenging one. One obvious approach that comes to mind is books in which rain is a major element, either in shaping the plot or in creating an atmosphere. The problem is that I can’t really think of any off-hand, and I don’t want to do weather nonfiction because I’m fairly certain I’ve done that for a list before…so I’m going to have to bow out of this one!

Edit: Marianne of Let’s Read just did a Top Five Tuesday hosted by Meeghan Reads, and their topic is politics which I think TTT has always steered clear of.

(1) Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Everything, Gene Healy. Several essays on how the rapid expansion of federal crimes not only creates injustice by ruining lives for petty, bureaucratic matters, but distorts services in ways that diminish the lives of everyone.

(2) Saving Congress from Itself, James L. Buckley. Argues that Congress is overwhelmed by petty work — listening to committee reports on grants-in-aid — and spends very little time on issues of national interest, and none in defending its Constitutional prerogatives from the executive branch.

(3) The Iron Web, Larken Rose. This is a fascinating thriller that is also a political dialogue; a teenager and a wounded Federal agent find themselves living in the compound of a so-called terrorist group/extremist cult, which is engaged in a Waco-style standout with armed goonie boys. As the standoff proceeds, the teenager and the agent both have arguments with the ‘terrorists’ about politics: the thriller part has a heck of a twist ending. This heavily favors voluntarist politics.

(4) Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, James Scott. This is one of the more conceptually interesting books I’ve ever read: one of its recurring themes is that the state seeks to increase the ‘legibility’ of things in order that it might better control them. This is, of course, EXTREMELY relevant in the data age: every bit of information that corporations and the government hoover up about us makes it possible for them to render us more legible/known/transparent. Scott also points out that the process of making things more legible often destroys or diminishes them.

(5) The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt. One of my best reads ever. Its precis, shared in my review:

Jonathan Haidt delves into the nature of morality, following the pursuit of it from philosophy to evolutionary psychology. Haidt produces three core ideas: one, David Hume was correct in positing that people are more intuitive than rational; two, moral concerns don’t have a singular source, but fall along six separate axes, each derived from our natural history, despite being couched in flourished religious and philosophical language; and finally, that morality is double-edged sword, binding us with one another as well as against others

Teaser Tuesday

Richard would become one of the most celebrated kings in British history; he remains the only monarch to be commemorated with a statue outside the Houses of Parliament. This is ironic, for of all the kings who reigned after the Norman Conquest, Richard probably spent the least time – and took the least personal interest – in his English kingdom. MAGNA CARTA, Dan Jones

I’m being rather a brute to you, aren’t I? This isn’t your idea of a proposal. We ought to be in a conservatory, you in a white frock with a rose in your hand, and a violin playing a waltz in the distance. And I should make violent love to you behind a palm tree. You would then feel then you were getting your money’s worth.” REBECCA, Daphne du Maurier

(Some phrases…..change meaning after a century or so…)