Customer Reviews

The Bookworm Turns: A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land

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I've been a follower of Bookworm for years and am reading the book now. Her writing is thoughtful, smart, and always entertaining. She never gives a quick off-the-cuff opinion, but gathers all the facts and considers all angles before writing a deep and thoroughly thought out response. I highly recommend this book.

When I stumbled across Bookworm Room in the vast blogosphere of political chatter and rants, I knew I had found something special. The first post I read was thoughtful, passionate, intelligent and eloquent - all at the same time, and I began to find myself being drawn back again and again to see what Bookworm might be thinking about any number of the political events that had occurred during the week. Soon Bookworm had a place on my browser toolbar with the handful of other websites that have earned a place there.

Part of the reason that I found myself drawn to Bookworm was because I, too, live and work in an environment where conservatism must be suppressed due to very real fears of being blacklisted both socially and in the workplace. However, the main reason I keep returning to Bookworm is to read her brilliant analyses of the continual problems that face us as individuals and as a nation.

I downloaded this book as soon as I found it and was delighted to find that it was absolutely packed with essays on so many subjects that matter. Nothing gets a light going-over from Bookworm. Every topic is placed under her analytic microscope and examined thoroughly and thoughtfully. One of the most fascinating things to me is Bookworm's ability to explain how and why liberals think about certain things, which she is able to do enormously well because of her own former liberalism combined with her deep curiosity about how and why people believe what they believe.

I have found myself passing along more than one of Bookworm's proposed solutions to the problems of the day, from her brilliant idea for what tax-payer-funded tuition in the UC system should buy, to her desire to abandon the terms Left and Right for the more descriptive terms of Statist and Individualist, respectively.

If you want to read elegant, passionate, meticulously-thought-out insights about politics and other things, you will not be disappointed by this book. For the price, it is an absolute steal. I only wish that every liberal I know would read this book - but you will have to read this book to find out why it is not likely that any of them will!

Please keep it coming, Bookworm!

I've been reading the Bookworm's blog almost since she started. Her work is passionate, thoughtful, principled, and (at times) funny. She is an excellent writer - no big surprise as she does it for a living.

I don't own a Kindle, so I won't be buying this book until it (hopefully) comes out in a "dead tree" edition. However, should it appear on paper, I WILL buy the book - despite the fact that I've read everything in it already.

I'm that confident in the value of her essays.

As a conservative from West Los Angeles, I can relate to Bookworm's loneliness surrounded by progressives! I love this book!

Reading Bookworm's essays is like intellectual chocolate - highly addicting, except it expands your mind instead of your waistline!

A lot of her work in general focuses on what I'd refer to as the new, bloodless American Civil War, and Bookworm's twenty chapters draw on all aspects of it, in a style that combines her uniquely dry wit with a lawyer's eye for detail.

Recommended.