Book Log 2014 #37: A Burnable Book by Bruce Holsinger

Richard II has a tenuous hold on the throne of England, and with all of the usual threats to his rule comes a new one - a book of prophecy purported to have foretold the deaths of the kings of England up to Richard, and one final prophecy for Richard himself.

When the book falls into the hands of a prostitute, the high and low worlds of London become entangled, Those that hold the book may have the key to fortune if they can sell it to the right bidder, but also risk being executed for treason if caught with the book. Into this falls poet and intelligencer John Gower, who is charged with finding the book by Geoffrey Chaucer, a bureaucrat in the king's service.

There's a lot to like about this book, it's a good historical and literary thriller. The jacket intimated that Chaucer would be more involved in the book than he was; Chaucer's appearances are important but the main character really is Gower. Not a huge issue.

Book Log 2014 #36: The Discovery of Middle Earth by Graham Robb

This book should have been right up my alley - using geography and various sources to demonstrate the complexity of Celtic society - but it never quite clicked for me. Spent a good 75 pages trying to get into it but never did. Not sure if I needed to go back and start over or if the book started off too quickly for my level of expertise in pre-Roman France. Either way, if you do pick this up take your time.

Book Log 2014 #35: Everything I Ever Needed to Know About _____* I Learned from Monty Python by Brian Cogan and Jeff Massey

This book seeks to explain the wide variety of serious subjects that Monty Python referenced in its TV show and movies. And there are many, many subjects to cover, not surprising given the Oxbridge background of the Pythons.

The problem is that exhaustive can often be exhausting, and I found that happened pretty quickly. The first major subject tackled is philosophy, and about halfway through covering all of the subtopics I found that I was spending more time thinking about the skits and scenes than the book. So this may be better read as a reference while actually watching Python than read cover to cover.

Book Log 2014 #34: Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie

A young scribe named Peter is recalled from Paris to his native Mainz in order to meet a man with a new way of getting words onto the page - Johann Gutenberg, whose press may revolutionize book making. Peter is then apprenticed to Gutenberg, with mixed emotions about the prospect as it will derail his promising career as a scribe and means leaving Paris for his provincial home.

Peter soon learns he has some talent for printing, and becomes a vital part of the team that will take on Gutenberg's lofty idea - a printed Bible. Producing the book will put Gutenberg's printers in jeopardy, as the city - and the churchmen who control it - have concerns about the new process. So the rush is on to produce and sell the copies before someone puts a stop to them.

All that said, the conflict in the book never quite feels like conflict. It's always looming, but even when a turning point comes, the resulting action is a little flat. That's probably more realistic - amping up the conflict is always better for sales - but it's a little unexpected.

I do recommend the book, as it's well-written and tells the story of Gutenberg's Bible from a unique perspective.

Book Log 2014 #33: American Catch by Paul Greenberg

In this follow-up to the award-winning Four Fish, Greenberg looks at three native species of seafood - New York oysters, Gulf shrimp, and wild Alaskan salmon - to answer the question of why most of the US-caught seafood is exported while most of the US-eaten seafood is imported (and how that arrangement impacts the US economy and environment).

There are a number of reasons why this has happened, from a US dietary shift away from seafood to the profits to be made selling fresh seafood in the Asian market. There's a good argument made for trying to shift the US back to focusing on domestic production and consumption of seafood, though the challenges to doing so are significant.

I liked the book, and need to seek out Four Fish in the future.

Book Log 2014 #32: The Black Country by Alex Grecian

Inspector Walter Day takes his murder-solving skills on the road, as a potential killing in a small coal-mining town in the Midlands leads the locals to call Scotland Yard for help. It's clear from the start that Day and his team - Sergeant Hammersmith, Doctor Kingsley, Kingsley's daughter, and even Day's wife - aren't wanted in the town, with residents actively working against them to protect the town's secrets, even in the face of a likely murder.

I have mixed feelings about setting the second book of the series outside of London. On the one hand, the Midlands setting allows for some very different story telling and plays on the pasts of both Day (originally from Devon, so a return to an area that's not London) and Hammersmith (whose life in the mines as a child was well documented in the first book). On the other hand, I wonder if it's too early to set a book outside of London. The first book set the tone for the newly-formed Murder Squad and the tensions between the squad and the regular police as well as within the squad. The second book could have helped develop that further, adding complexity to the relationships. By moving outside of the city, we don't get that development, which may lead to the third book having to cover old ground to get the reader back up to speed.

But that's a larger concern for the series. As far as this book goes, we do get development in the relationship between Day and his colleagues, and even between Day and his wife (though her appearance in this book is brief and a little confusing). The Midlands setting is very different from London, though the use of a small, backwards town with its own ways and superstitions could be seen as a little cliche. But I enjoyed it overall, and plan to keep up with the series.

Book Log 2014 #31: Coup d'Etat by Harry Turtledove

The War that Came Early continues, and looks like it will continue for some time when a coup changes the leadership in Britain, ending the armistice between Britain and France and Germany. Otherwise, things more or less stay the same in this book. There are some larger changes towards the end (including a cliffhanger for one of them), but otherwise this entry in the series suffers from the same issue as some of the earlier books. Not enough happens - soldiers fight another battle, pilots fly another mission, civilians suffer another indignity - and the war continues. Which may be the point - war being uncaring, cruel, and seemingly without end - but maybe not the most interesting way to demonstrate it.

Book Log 2014 #30: The Seven Wonders by Steven Saylor

Often mentioned, this book recounts the trip that Gordianus the Finder took as a young man to visit the Seven Wonders, a trip taken with his tutor under somewhat unusual circumstances. As you might imagine, at each stop Gordianus manages to get caught up in a local mystery, and uses his developing skills to solve it.

The mysteries aren't that complex - not surprising, as there's a limited number of pages for each - but they're enjoyable nevertheless. They give a fuller picture of how Gordianus came to be the Finder, and the greater forces that led him away from Rome and to Alexandria.

Book Log 2014 #29: Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson

Charles Boxer is a kidnapping consultant, hired by families to help negotiate for the release of their taken loved one. His skills, honed in the Royal Marines, Metropolitan Police, and with a private security firm, make him the perfect choice for those who want to work outside of official channels. He's also the perfect choice for those who want the additional -and illegal - services that Boxer can offer now that he's a freelancer.

When the daughter of an Indian billionaire goes missing, Boxer is hired to help get her back. But there's more to the case than meets the eye, a melding of professional skill and personal intent that leads Boxer into the billionaire's past and his connections with the Pakistani military. Compounding the professional difficulty are personal ones, between a love triangle involving his ex-wife and another woman and a very difficult relationship with their daughter.

I don't think I've read a book by Robert Wilson that I didn't like, and that continues here.

Book Log 2014 #28: The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst

A dangerous game is forming in pre-war Paris, pitting a group of Italians who publish a resistance newspaper against Fascist secret agents who have turned up the violence in the hopes of keeping the paper out of Italy.

In the middle of this struggle is the foreign correspondent of the title, an Italian working in Paris for Reuters. He has to balance his actual job with his increasingly important role with the paper, a role that also draws him into the orbit of the French and British secret services. On top of all of this is his reunion with a former lover, who is now married and involved with a resistance cell in Germany. Can our hero keep the resistance newspaper running and save the woman he loves?

Furst again tells a compelling story of people who, out of the spotlight, put their personal and professional lives on the line to fight fascism. He's got a formula, and it works really well.

As I mentioned in my last post, the USOC's selection criteria for determining which bid to put forward don't specifically mention two things: venues and cost. So how do the four bids stack up in those areas?

Boston, as I also mentioned, has put forward a "walkable" Games, with most venues within 3.5 miles of the city center. The only event I've seen mentioned as being held outside of Boston is rowing, which is reportedly going up to Lowell to be held on the Merrimack River (the Charles being too twisty and bridge-covered). Still not sure this is the best way to go, but I do think there's a certain logic to a dense Olympics that could allow spectators to walk between venues rather than rely on public transport for all trips.

There's a real focus on using existing venues, and on making any new venues temporary (or in some cases, convertible to office/retail/residential space). The big question is where an Olympic stadium will go. I tended to think the site of Suffolk Downs would make sense - it's on Route 1A and the Blue Line - but there's more talk now about the site of the New Boston Food Market. It's located right next to the Southeast Expressway and rail lines from South Station, which seems ideal (though the Expressway traffic is always problematic), but to get the parcel the city would likely need to take it by eminent domain. Warm up your lawyers.

As far as costs go, $7.5 billion gets bandied about quite a bit, but depending on how you count things it could go as high as $20 billion. A fairer number is probably somewhere in the middle - for now - as the high estimate includes projects in a $13 billion transportation bill that will happen regardless of how the Olympics go.

Washington has a more spread out plan if these map views are anything to go by, though it's more compact than earlier plans that saw venues spread out from Baltimore to Richmond. It looks like there will be more new building in this plan than in Boston's, unsure if the Olympic Stadium plan would renovate or raze RFK Stadium. The Olympic Village is also slated to go in an area whose most notable facility is apparently a homeless shelter. Not sure how well that will go over.

I didn't find a lot of cost projections, but it looks like they're aiming at a similar operating budget to Boston and what was spent in London. It's the additional costs that can cause the budget to bloat, which is especially concerning for Washington given that much of their governance is done by Congress rather than local officials. Good luck squeezing an extra billion out of a House committee chaired by some guy from Idaho.

Los Angeles will put the LA Coliseum back to use as their Olympic Stadium, which makes sense. Venues will be placed into four clusters, two in what I consider LA proper, one in Carson, and one in Long Beach. A walkable Games this is not, though organizers have a stated goal of having 80 percent of spectators get to venues by public transportation. It's not clear to me how many new venues are needed, but many of the ones listed in a venue map (that may have come out prematurely) seem to already exist.

Same story on costs as with the other bids, and I'm finding no estimates of costs beyond the operating budget. Given the emphasis on extending a couple of transit lines, I'm thinking the costs here may be significant.

San Francisco also seems to be taking more of a regional approach, looking at using existing facilities in San Jose, Santa Clara and Berkeley. There's also a potential $2 billion stadium deal for Oakland that could be included, but there are apparently significant challenges to that project as well. There's also talk of a temporary Olympic stadium like Boston's, and using existing venues or building temporary ones in the city (beach volleyball in front of city hall, for example).

Costs - should I even bother? Just like everyone else, as far as we know.

 It's probably a fool's errand to try to compare these bids at this stage, when so much is unknown. But from what is out there, I do think the Boston bid is the most walkable, and perhaps the one that does the best job of using existing venues (or of not talking about what will need to be built, temporary or not). It also appears to be the bid that's the most up-front about costs outside of the operating budget, for better or worse (living in the Boston area may also may be making more aware of Boston's details). I'm most concerned over Washington's bid, between the specter of Congressional involvement and the likely backlash of clearing out the homeless to build an athlete's village.

The Boston bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics was officially submitted to the US Olympics Committee yesterday. And while details are sparse as to contents of the bid, the Boston committee's website does list six selection criteria that the USOC will use to compare the Boston bid to those of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington DC. Those criteria?

45,000 hotel rooms - organizers claim Boston clears this minimum, but the city's tourism bureau claims 30,000-plus. The chairman of the organizing committee claims the 45,000 are in Boston proper, and that 5,000 more rooms will be added to Boston's total from hotels under construction now.

An Olympic village that sleeps 16,500 and has a 5,000 person dining hall - talk is that this will be located on the UMass Boston-Bayside Expo Center parcel, which makes me wonder how athletes and the like will get from there to venues given the usual horrific traffic on the Southeast Expressway (more on how that might work later).

Also worth noting that the UMass-Boston master plan from 2009 (warning: large PDF!) only mentions 2,000 bed spaces. At 16,500 beds, the village could house the entire undergraduate population of the school with room to spare.

Operations space for over 15,000 media and broadcasters - I have no idea where this would go, and what talk there's been about the bid doesn't mention this. I'm guessing some mix of existing and new office space will cover this.

An international airport that can handle thousands of international travelers per day - Logan's international flights mostly come from Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe. This past October Logan saw just over 420,000 international passengers. So while the volume may not be a problem, the lack of direct flights from most of the world is a concern (though one that other hosts have likely encountered).

The biggest problem may be getting people from Logan to sites around the city, which leads us to the next criterion...

Public transportation services to venues, roadway closures to allow exclusive use for Games-related transportation - this is the topic of the most importance to Bostonians, as transportation infrastructure is already strained and may not be able to handle the additional load the Olympics would bring. The bid proposes to make the Games walkable, with most venues in or near the city center.

The road closures are perhaps more problematic, as traffic in Boston on a good day is challenging. Taking away a lane from the major thoroughfares (as happened in London with its Olympic lanes) is feasible but could completely screw up what little order there is in driving in the city currently.

A workforce of up to 200,000 - a potential drawback given our reasonably rosy employment numbers, but a number that could be reached by employing a large number of retirees and students. Students may well form the backbone of this workforce, as the timing and temporary nature of the Games does lend itself to be an ultimate summer job. Whether or not these are paid or volunteer positions is kind of an open question, though I did run across some talk of using international students as free interpreters.

There's no talk among these criteria about venues or cost, but from what's come out the Boston bid will lean on existing college facilities quite a bit, which helps with the walkable theme and keeps costs down. This is also where the use of college students as volunteers or low-cost workers is implied.

Where cost is concerned, the estimated costs seems to be in the $7.5 billion range. The money seems to be 60 percent revenues (tickets, broadcasts and international sponsorships) and 40 percent other sponsorships (local biotech firms are mentioned in this context quite a bit, not sure why they'd pony up over $3 billion for this). The organizers swear up and down that no public funds will be used outside of infrastructure improvements. Considering the federal government just pledged $1 billion for a Green Line extension that will cover less than half of the total cost, you can see where this might go.

Without more specifics it's hard to tell if this bid is really feasible, or how it measures up against the other bids. But at this point, the Boston bid seems to at least meet the minimum requirements.

Book Log 2014 #27: An Officer and Spy by Robert Harris

Harris deploys his usual mastery of historical fiction in the service of the Dreyfus Affair, the railroading of a Jewish army officer on charges of being a spy. His eventual exoneration is often told in relationship to J'accuse, an open letter written by Emile Zola detailing the lack of evidence and the institutional anti-Semitism that made Dreyfus an easy mark.

This novel take a different approach, centering on Georges Picquart, the new head of the army's counter-intelligence service. As he begins to settle into his job and reform the office, he comes to the conclusion that Dreyfus was innocent - and that the actual spy is still at large. The army would rather not revisit the case against Dreyfus, and Picquart winds up giving up his career - and puts his life in danger - to help clear Dreyfus and bring the malfeasance of the army's general staff to light.

This story is a retelling of actual events using actual people, giving an example that the best drama often comes from real life (especially when Harris puts his talents to work converting history to prose). You can even look at the story through some modern lenses, such as the reported rise in anti-Semitism in Europe or the inside jobs of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, though the book easily stands on its own. Highly recommended.

Book Log 2014 #26: Identical by Scott Turow

The latest visit to Kindle County centers on Paul Giannis, a state senator running for mayor whose campaign is ending just as his twin brother is being released from prison after serving a sentence for killing his girlfriend. The girlfriend's brother, who oversees a family fortune, is convinced that Paul was responsible for the killing, and sets his director of security - and a retired cop who worked the original case - to reinvestigate.


As their investigation rolls on, and as Paul continues to weather the very public charges made against him over the killing, there's clearly something not right with the events that led to the killing. A mix of flashback and present-day story lines help flesh out a complicated relationship between Paul's family and the girlfriend's family that also hints at the similarly complicated relationship between Paul and his brother. Less complicated are the relationships of the pair investigating the case - a woman whose girlfriend is, kindly put, unstable, and a man who seems to be marking time until he is reunited with his deceased wife.

Turow is always good, and his modern Greek drama is excellent as expected. That I read it during this past summer's Market Basket conflict (itself a real-life Greek drama) was an added bonus.

Book Log 2014 #25: Slow Getting Up by Nate Jackson

Nate Jackson embodied the Cinderella story as applied to football, working his way from a division III school to becoming (briefly) a starter for the Denver Broncos.  This memoir shows the reality behind the story, from the uncertain life of an undrafted free agent to playing in NFL Europe to injuries. Many, many injuries.

For all the talk in reviews about the book's discussion of sex and drugs (which are discussed, though not often in the sort of detail you'd expect from the headlines), it's really the injuries that frame things, as one-time injuries become chronic injuries that wind up being career-ending injuries. And yet through all of the rehab, Jackson's story underscores the idea that football players just want to play football, and will put up with the injuries in order to get back on the field. It's also notable that Jackson didn't have access to his team medical records (which he quotes from several times) until he filed a worker's compensation case against the team, and was able to get a copy via subpoena.

At a time when professional athletes rarely give more than blandishments shaped by some PR flak, Jackson's recounting of his career is refreshingly honest within certain boundaries (he rarely, if ever, speaks ill of teammates, and doesn't trade in locker room gossip that would have sold more books). The book doesn't quite reach the tell-all level of Ball Four or reflect on being a professional athlete with the clarity and depth of Ken Dryden's The Game, but it's pretty damn good, and well worth reading.

Book Log #24: Raiders of the Nile by Steven Saylor

I'm always excited to find a new Gordianus the Finder novel, but was surprised to find that this is the second in a series of prequels set during the time in his youth where he traveled and then lived in Alexandria. In this book, Gordianus is enjoying his life in Egypt with Bethesda, as he waits out the conflict that makes returning to Rome impossible. That enjoyment is cut short when Bethesda is kidnapped, and Gordianus has to use his skills to find out who took her and how he can get her back. This puts Gordianus among the titular raiders, and sees him embroiled into a wider plot involving the throne of Egypt and the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great.

Seeing the younger Gordianus in action is interesting, as he already has many of the skills needed for his profession but not the experience that would later help him navigate the twisting political currents of Rome. Otherwise, the story has the same feel and tone as the other Gordianus books, allowing it to fit into the series even with it being set well before the first Gordianus novel. Looking forward to seeing how Gordianus gets back to Rome and establishes himself.

Book Log 2014 #23: The Adjacent by Christopher Priest

A photographer returns to the UK from abroad after the death of his wife at the hands of terrorists. Her death came from the use of something called a quantum adjacency weapon, which obliterates everything within its triangular field. It's even being used within the UK, where the Islamic government can't stop it (or the extreme weather that's tearing up the country).

Meanwhile, during World War I and II we see the first ideas leading to the development of the weapon (a magician has an idea about adjacency as a way to camouflage planes). Many of the characters have similar names to those of the characters in the future story line, and you start to get the idea that the weapon doesn't so much destroy as relocate.

Not that this is ever made clear, as the book is happy to let you sort out how all of these story lines - and one set in a country that may be on Earth, but just not the Earth we're on - fit together. In fact, not much about any of the story lines is explained, underscoring that the important thing is really the characters and how they seem to find each other across the timelines. I enjoyed the inventive structure of the book, and as this is the first book by Price that I've read I'll have to start working his stuff into the rotation.

Book Log 2014 #22: & Sons by David Gilbert

I'm of two minds about this book, as while I appreciated the writing and the depiction of the the struggles sons often have establishing themselves outside of the ambit of their fathers, I never quite warmed to it. Not sure if I couldn't quite identify with the characters and their conflicts (my own relationship with my dad was much less problematic) or their place in the Manhattan of prep schools and upper classes, but I could never fully engage.

The book is narrated by the son of a life-long friend of A. N. Dyer, a Salingeresque author whose monogram is too cute by half given the title of the book. Like Salinger, Dyer wrote an influential novel while young (the title: Ampersand), whose success has colored his career and his personal life. We first see Dyer as he's preparing to give a eulogy for the narrator's father, who has recently died. Dyer is preoccupied with the whereabouts of his teenaged son, ostensibly the product of a dalliance with a Swedish nanny. Dyer sees in his youngest son a chance to succeed where he failed with his two older sons (who are contemporaries, if not exactly friends, of the narrator). That preoccupation leads Dyer to crash and burn with the eulogy, which then leads to the narrator moving in with Dyer (fortuitous as the narrator is without job and spouse given his own sexual indiscretions).

From there we get a story of Dyer trying to reconcile all of his sons, while the narrator's return into their lives leads him to learn more about his own father and the nature of his friendship with Dyer. There's probably more to say about that, but where I couldn't connect I found myself reading the book to appreciate the writing, and kind of let the story just kind of happen. So I'd say it's worth reading to at least see a well-crafted novel, and quite possibly to get more out of it than I did.

Book Log 2014 #21: The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry

A secret passed from US President to US President is used by Lincoln to strike a bargain with the Mormons, in which Lincoln promises to leave them in return for the Mormons not antagonizing the Union while they're trying to fight the Civil War.

Jump to the present day, where a splinter group of Mormons is trying to discover that secret in order to use it to gain independence. In doing so they capture a Magellan Billet agent in Denmark, and Cotton Malone is called out of retirement yet again to find and recover the agent, and perhaps help defuse the situation with the Mormons while he's at it.

Malone is saddled with a partner, a young Magellan agent who hits most of the stereotypical points for such a character: brooding, disdainful of working with an older partner, and skilled but without the wisdom to use those skills in the most efficacious way (there are personal reasons for some of this, which wind up getting solved in a convenient and slightly mawkish manner). I will say that it's a better attempt than the two people from the Napoleon book. Cassiopeia Vitt is also involved, as she has a relationship (also convenient) with one of the more colorful Mormon characters.

All in all this is a better book about a Constiutional/Founding Fathers question that one might expect, though Berry's afterword is unusually strident about his position on the matter (I am curious to see if he does the same with the forthcoming The Patriot Threat, which is based on the semi-popular theory that the feds can't collect income tax due to irregularities with the ratification of the 16th Amendment). But I do miss Cotton shooting up World Heritage Sites.

Another election, another round of Blogalicious endorsements!

Ballot Questions

Question 1: This question seeks to repeal the gas tax law passed last year where the tax will automatically increase with inflation. Backers of the question tend to frame this as taxation without representation, which I'm kind of meh on (seems to me to be more about transparency, but we may just be dealing with semantics). Opponents say not indexing the tax will cause shortfalls when it comes to funding infrastructure projects (but do not say the real benefit to indexing is that they don't have to vote for tax increases which can be used against them in future elections).

We think anything that changes the amount of tax people pay should be approved openly, be it in the legislature or by ballot initiative. So we're actually endorsing a Yes on Question 1.

Question 2: We were in junior high when voters approved the bottle bill, putting a 5 cent deposit on bottles and cans for soda and beer. This question seeks to expand the deposit on to other beverages, most notably water and most non-carbonated non-alcoholic beverages. The beverage industry and their cronies have spent the most money on ads asking us to vote against the question.

And the ads have been as effective as they've been inaccurate. Backlash has led to some differently worded ads, including what might be the first #whitepeopleproblems ad, where a suburbanite bemoans having to sort bottles and find recycling machines (hint: they're at the entrance to your supermarket).

There is one thing that our 30 years of experience with the bottle has shown, and it's that containers with a deposit are recycled at a much higher rate than those that don't have a deposit. So go take a second and find your recycling machines, as we're endorsing Yes on Question 2.

Question 3: We're just on the cusp of actually having casinos in Massachusetts, so the timing is perfect for a question that would stop casino gaming in the state. This is one of those crazy questions where "yes" means "no" and vice versa.

Proponents of the question say the legislature's decision to allow gaming doesn't reflect the will of the people,  gaming is bad, the license-granting process is flawed/corrupt, casinos won't help the economy, etc. Opponents mostly tout job benefits and the idea that the money spent by Bay Staters in Connecticut and Rhode Island casinos should stay home.

We don't particularly care about casinos, but generally feel like there's been enough discussion to continue with approving and building them. So we endorse No on Question 3.

Question 4: there's actually been very little talk about what, to us, seems like an important question. If passed, Question 4 would require most employers to give sick time to employees (based on hours worked). Most opposition comes from food service, where employers can pay sub-minimum wage but would have to pay sick time at minimum wage. Connecticut has a similar (but more lenient) law, and costs have not risen greatly for most employers. And while we don't necessarily want to pay more for meals, we do like the idea that our server didn't have to choose between working sick and not getting paid. Vote Yes on Question 4.

Offices

Governor: We have five candidates for governor, though the focus is on Charlie Baker, the Republican taking his second shot at the office, and Martha Coakley, who won the Democratic primary due to what can only be assumed was widespread amnesia regarding her Senate campaign.

Baker is a slightly more affable candidate this time around, but his message is still one of tax cuts, pro-business policies and reforming welfare. That's still more of a plan than what Coakley's presented, as her ads have been very vague outside of a call to provide more mental health services (which is a personal issue for her based on her brother's suicide).

Any way you look at it the major parties are offering us leftovers, and it looks like those of us at the buffet are tending towards Baker (even the Globe endorsed him).

But we cast our eyes towards the three independent candidates, and find one that's more appealing than Baker or Coakley. Evan Falchuk is running as a member of the United Independent Party, which he is hoping to get past the threshold where the party gets better ballot access, etc. And it's not a bad time to try this, as neither of the major party candidates are inspiring and the majority of Massachusetts voters continue to be unenrolled in a party. We also like the deeper thinking Falchuk has presented on improving quality of life in Massachusetts by addressing how the high costs of housing and health care make living here difficult for many. So we're endorsing Evan Falchuk for Governor, to at least give us more choice among candidates.

Treasurer: The main candidates have basically run one ad each. Democrat Deb Goldberg ties her being an adoptive mother to understanding how important it is to give people opportunities to succeed. Republican Mike Heffernan's mentions his private business experience and showcases his wacky family. Given those choices, we endorse Green-Rainbow Party's Ian Jackson for Treasurer.

Attorney General: Maura Healey for Attorney General based on her experience in the AG's office.

Secretary of State: While we've given him the occasional mocking for being a lifer, we'll endorse William Galvin for Secretary of State.

Auditor: As last time, we're going to endorse the candidate with actual auditing experience gained outside of being state auditor. So the GOP's Patricia St. Aubin for Auditor

US Representative: We don't have anything against Richard Tisei, but don't like the idea of giving this particular set of House Republicans another member to obstruct with. Or, perhaps worse, a member who'll be marginalized as a RINO. We also have to admit to having a liking for someone whose big reveal about his military past is that he doesn't talk about the medals he was awarded. So it's Seth Moulton for MA-6.

All the other races: we really don't care who you vote for in any of the other races, so we'll endorse voting for all the third party candidates who may be listed, or the non-incumbent if it's a two party race.

For any unopposed race (like 2nd Essex State Senate), we endorse writing in Mark Coen.
 Though that might prove tricky if he doesn't live in your district.