Oh, how well rounded and eclectic...

SO because the Lost One is...How to put this delicately?...Poor, the Lost One was leaving the library this afternoon with an armful of amusements, when he was struck by the sheer breadth and width of his literary interests, for in that armful of books were both Meg Cabot, and John Ringo. For those of you who are unaware of the particular proclivities of these authors and the reasons for the strict dichotomy between them, read on:

Meg Cabot is the author of many best selling, critically acclaimed books for teens, including the Princess Diaries series, ALL-AMERICAN GIRL, and HAUNTED, as well as NICOLA AND THE VISCOUNT and VICTORIA AND THE ROGUE. When she is not reliving the horror that was her high school experience, she also writes books for adults. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and a one-eyed cat named Henrietta.(From the about the author section in Teen Idol)

Here website can be found here.

Now the Lost One must admit, he does indeed enjoy her work. Yes it's mostly chedder-esque romance stories, but every now and then a fellow enjoys the comedy that love usually inflicts on its victims. And say what one will about Ms. Cabot (and fear not the Lost One will shortly), but her books are usually well written and humorous.

If only her politics weren't so messed up. A lefty's lefty, Ms. Cabot is unashamedly from New York, and has an easily read contempt for the politics of those who live in fly-over land. The best example of her dislike is in fact, the aforementioned book Teen Idol which takes place in an Indiana (the birthplace of the author) High School where the kids are seriously messed up and cruel. And stupid (Boy Howdy). But of course they're from middle America so...Any ways, the plot moves forward when the tragically intelligent, kind, helpful, and nurturing (and, incidentally, leftist) heroine of the book is chosen to guide the school's would be savior, a left coast pretty boy child actor who is researching a role as well as being shocked, Shocked!, by the loutish behavior he finds. Because the child stars of La-La land are universally none as being balanced, level-headed adherents to the Aristotelian concept of moderation. Yes, she can be that subtle. Our Heroine is daily forced to live among these boors, with only the company of her similarly adjectived friends (including, most importantly, lefty) and must bring her politics to the masses to save them from themselves.

Sample reading:

"so I finished Lucifer's Hammer[.]"
...
"Oh yeah?" I said. "What did you think?"
"I thought it was a load of right-wing bull," Scott said.
...
[I]t probably isn't the best way to get a guy to like you. I mean, telling him that his views on a book are all wrong.
...
I insisted that Lucifer's Hammer was a survival story about the worth of the individual. Scott said it was political commentary on the socioeconomics of the seventies. Trina and Steve, who hadn't read the book, stayed out of it and just groaned whenever one of us said a word like facile or specious.

You get all that? Right wing = Bull. Midwesterner = Philistine. If this were an article from a news paper I would probably add a Democrat talking point like "Strong. Tough." or "Layers"

You might think that the Lost One would not have been enamored of this book, but then you'd be wrong. While he doesn't buy that she did it on purpose, by being so biased against reality, Ms. Cabot manages to create a sublime comedy of stupid stereotypes that becomes more then the sum of its parts. Of course one can't suspend one's disbelief while in the book, but after reading it one is left shaking his head at the sheer comic genius of finding the edge where stereotypes go from reasonable to absurd, and leaping over it without a backward glance. Very very funny.

Which brings the Lost One to the second author:

John Ringo had visited 23 countries and attended 14 schools by the time he graduated high school. This left him with a wonderful appreciation of the oneness of humanity and a permanent aversion to foreign food. He chose to study marine biology and really liked it. Unfortunately the pay was for beans. So now he manages a quality control database and the pay is much better. He hopes to someday upgrade to SQL Server. At that point life will be complete.

With his bachelor years spent in the airborne, cave diving, rock-climbing, rappelling, hunting, spear-fishing, and sailing, the author is now happy to let other people risk their necks. He prefers to read (and of course write) science fiction, raise Arabian horses, dandle his kids and watch the grass grow. Someday he may even cut it. But not today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe he‚’ll just let the horses. (From Bean Books author's profile website)

His web site can be visited here.

Again, the Lost One loves this author. He's funny, smart, and can tell a story like no one's business. The difference is that Mr. Ringo is a bit more.Violent in his stories. And politics, since he essentially starts from the spot that there are some who are so evil they need killing. Now. And if you don't want to help, then get your European rear out of the way and let a man handle it. Hoowah.

While the Lost One can't say he likes all of Ringo's books or even literary ticks (he seems determined to tell you the bust size of every female character, a disturbing number of which seem to have larger then average ones. It's like a chiropractors idle fantasy sometimes...But I digress), Mr. Ringo does usually have a solid core of story around which the reader can watch shades of...Well...See the political philosophy stuff above.

Sample reading:

Mike slid slowly along the wall, catching one terrorist leaning out to do a "spray and pray." Mike calmly serviced the target, hitting him twice in the chest with his silenced .9mm. Then Mike shot a second terrorist right through the eyes, sending a spray of blood and brains on to the prone form of the female hostage. Who had large breasts, probably DDs.

Okay, so that was mostly from memory since I had to return the book it was from, Ghost, after beginning the second mini-story in the book in which Mr. Ringo decides to educate the reader as to the er..Finer points of the BDSM scene (the Lost One did not want one of his friends catching him with it, the conversation would have been something like this:

Lost In Academia: Oh, uh hi Miss K.

Miss K: What are you reading there Lost?

Lost: Well, erm, Uh, a book by a science fiction author I like.

K: Oh really? You mind if I take a look?

Lost:Erm...Ah...Uh...suuuuure.

K (reading): "then Mike said, 'Get down and su'...('aha' flips two pages later)..Then Mike started touching her...('huh' flips four more pages)...Then Mike tied her down and...(hands the book back)."

Lost: Well its not really mine I'm holding it..For a friend..A friend you don't know...Who I don't hang out with around you..Not that its a secret friend..Or...uh...DON'T YOU DARE JUDGE ME.
Then he would have committed Sepuku [hari-kiri to the non-Japanese in the crowd]). Really it was the Lost One's own fault, if he had just read the author's site or his review of his own book he would have seen that reader discretion was advised. Oh, well chalk that one up to "failure to receive proper intel." But here's a couple the Lost One does recommend:

A Hymn Before Battle

March Upcountry

And most of all:
Princess of Wands

Well that's all for today. Until Next time.

(P.S. is it wrong that the Lost One is worried that he will get the wrong kind of hits now that he has the word B*D*S*M in one of his posts?)

Because good prose is hard to find...

Having grown tired of people giving him strange looks when they discover the Lost One, a certified Neo-con/zealot member of the religious right/ evil male oppressor reads Esquire, the Lost One has but two words for you...Answer Fella. Well, also as the Chinese once said, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day." Case in point, this piece (How to Stay Faithful by Tom Junod) of an article entitled, Women: The Manual in the April 2006 issue is one of the best piece of prose the Lost One has read in quite some time, so enjoy:

The Faithful Man is a stranger among men. Among men, where it is an article of faith that no man is capable of sexual fidelity- that sexual fidelity is, in evolutionary terms, unnatural- the Faithful Man is considered suspect. Because infidelity is seen as lacking in the drive and daring that make for compromised husbands and successful capitalists.

Go to a steak house: At the same table where an Unfaithful Man counts his latest conquest, the Faithful Man keeps a prim silence at his principled surrender. Even when a friend who avers that he could never stay faithful asks the Faithful Man how he does, the Faithful Man makes excuses for his success rather than boasts about it. "I dunno," he says. "I guess I have a great wife."

Among men, he accepts the moral equivalence of fidelity and infidelity, because moral judgment is one of the few dealbreakers in male friendships. Among men, he presents his fidelity as a condition passively acquired-as something that just happened to him- because he doesn't want to present it as an ideal he has actively pursued. And so, among men, he has a secret, and the secret is this: He does judge. He does presume that fidelity is morally superior to infidelity. He does idealize it, and he does actively pursue it. Indeed, he knows fidelity wouldn't be worth the bother-it wouldn't even be possible- if he didn't tell himself it was the most important thing in the world.

In the absence of a sustaining mythology of male faithfulness, he has had to develop his own private one, wherein he struggles to be true not just to his wife and family but also to himself. At issues is the question of choice, and choosing is the difference between surrender and defeat. Sure, the Faithful Man has surrendered to his vows and his marriage and, yes, his wife. But he has chosen to surrender, because the choice, as he sees it, is not between cheating and not cheating; it's between love and the utter desolation and meaninglessness of lies. He has had to draw the line in order to walk it, and he has had to give up some part of his volition in order to keep himself whole.

How does he know he's chosen? Well, he knows he's chosen because he knows he chooses. Every day, when he wakes up to his home and his life and his wife's face on the pillow, he makes sure to say, "Yes, this," or more important, "Yes, her," because fidelity without active assent is just as futile and confining and absurd as other men say it is. Every day he chooses, every day he has to choose, every day he has to keep on choosing , every day until he's dead. And when one of his friends ask him how he does it, he's only trying to tell the truth when he mutters, "I dunno. I guess I have a great wife."

It's a sad fact that some couldn't get through the fun house mirror of the piece's early efforts to portray morality, to see the truth and beauty of the piece as a whole. That is why Esquire is so good. Yes there are attractive women (what magazine doesn't have attractive women in it?) in various stages of undress, yes there is a scary man-love for former president Clinton, and yes, sometimes, the liberal arrogance of knowing that they are right and the rest of America is wrong wafts through like a rose garden freshly fertilized. But there are usually still roses. Just saying.