Boomsday by Christopher Buckley Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Boomsday
Book Review: ABSURB BUT FUNNY AND WITH A MESSAGE
Summary: 4 Stars
ANYBODY WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR IS GOING TO LOVE 'BOOMSDAY'. YOU CAN'T HELP BUT LAUGH EVEN THOUGH THE MESSAGE BUCKLEY DELIVERS IS UNFORTUNATELY NOT A JOKE. THE CONTENT AND DIALOGUE ARE SPOT-ON WHEN IT COMES TO OUR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE. WHAT BETTER WAY TO GET CONNECTED THAN A FUN, INSTRUCTIVE READ. IT REMINDS ME OF A VERY FUNNY BOOK, 'TRASH TALK'. LIKE 'BOOMSDAY', 'TRASH TALK'S'PLOT - A CLASH OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS PLAYERS AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS - IS ABSURD, BUT THE READER IS GUARANTEED TO LAUGH OUT LOUD. THE WORLD DEFINATELY NEEDS MORE HUMOR.Book Review: Affecting ... just like Idiocracy and Dilbert
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a huge fan of Christopher Buckley. He is bright, clever, witty, all that and a bag of chips. "Thank You for Smoking" is a true masterpiece, and I used to be one of Nick Naylor's brethren. I read Boomsday from the perspective of a former public affairs consultant (as the protag, Cass) and a former candidate for national office (as the protag's romantic interest), as well as a member of the generation that is going to take it in the shorts as a result of America's unsustainable Social Security and Medicare entitlement regimes. And I responded to the book the same way I responded to the film "Idiocracy" and the comic "Dilbert" - I wished it were funny instead of sad. I wished it were satire instead of observation. I wished that I could see it through the eyes of someone who hasn't been there/done that/got the t-shirt.
I give Buckley great credit for writing an accessible, engaging commentary on the greatest challenge our country faces. I encourage everyone to read the book so they can understand, at least at a cursory level, the enormity of the debt tsunami that will inexorably and inevitably destroy our economy.
Book Review: Almost too true to be funny - but it still is
Summary: 4 Stars
With the bottom dropping out of the economy and bad news coming from every direction, Chris Buckley's satire on similar times sparking a youth uprising against the Baby Boomers - whose retirement after a life of self-indulgence threatens to bankrupt the nation - is almost too true to be funny. Happily, it still is funny. Buckley has great comic chops.
Protagonist Cassandra Devine is a twenty-something PR woman in Washington, bitter over losing a chance to go to Yale because her father invests her college tuition in a dot.com IPO. Forced to join the Army instead, she becomes a scandal queen when, guiding blue-blooded (and headline-seeking) Congressman Randy Jepperson through Bosnia, he drives their Hummer into a minefield. The ensuing scandal gets her kicked out of the military.
Jepperson tries to make it up to her, giving her a job on his Congressional staff, and from there she gets hired by his PR man. She spends her nights blogging about Social Security. And she becomes an overnight sensation when she suggests the government balance the budget by offering tax and inheritance incentives to Baby Boomers willing to commit suicide at age 70. Youths riot in Florida, trashing golf courses and gated communities at her suggestion.
Jepperson, now a senator, sees her platform as his ticket to the White House, while the president, up for re-election, plots with her own father - now a dot.com billionaire - to politically destroy her. A leader of the Christian right fights this appalling insult to life. Political chaos ensues. Great fun.
Book Review: And You Think the Current Political Situation is Whacky...
Summary: 5 Stars
If you follow politics, if you are intrigued by the foibles and follies of what passes for our federal government, then you have probably found Christopher Buckley before now. I certainly hope you have and if for some reason he is a new author to you, then you have much entertaining reading ahead.
It doesn't really matter what you politcal bent is, Buckly is hard on all aspects of the political spectrum with his satire.
Buckly has taken on varying scenarios of the Washington scene in past books. Their titles fairly highlight the topic. Boomsday however, took a little while to understand where he was going. The title refers to the generational warfare that is waiting slightly down the road as the Baby Boomers start retiring on Social Security in droves and those in their wake have to basically work the rest of their lives to fund the retirement of those ahead of them. (President Bush has pointed out the problem. The Democrats, before Bush was elected, agreed it was one also. Since that happy moment, the Democrats have gone tone deaf and the problems with Social security continue to fester)
That's where Buckley comes in...several years down the road...another President in office...almost no one paying attention to the impending disaster involving Social Security.
Cass Devine, however, is paying attention. A mover and shaker at a Washington PR firm, she also runs a BLOG under the name of Cassandra. On it she devises a most unique way to solve the problem. It involves "voluntary termination" with government incentives. All of that and much, much more gets wrapped up in one of the strangest presidential elections in history.
I'm not going beyond that with my description of the story. It is flat out funny, biting satire with moments of truth slipping in. The Boston Globe calls Buckley an "authentically comic writer." Tom Wolfe says he is "One of the funniest writers in the English language." They are masters of understatement.
Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it.
Book Review: Any daughter will do
Summary: 1 Stars
I got as far as Page 8, where Buckley explains that Clytemnestra kills her husband in revenge for sacrificing his daughter Electra. There are different versions about what happened to Iphigeneia, but I never heard that Electra had been substituted. There seemed little reason to read further.