Tag: Mexico

Saturday Selects #18: Donald Trump

John Guillen33 Comments

Saturday Selects is a series of posts I write the first Saturday of each month to discuss a topic or current event outside the general bookish theme of the blog. You can view some previous topics here.

Today I want to talk about Donald Trump. I know not all of you are in America, but I’m thinking the run up to the US presidential election every four years is covered by media all over the world. Which means you probably know that Donald Trump has been grabbing headlines for weeks now. He’s made comments about immigration, US Senator John McCain, and spoken about what he’ll be like once he’s in the White House.

I sincerely hope that we never have to see this man taking the oath of office. It doesn’t matter to me that he’s rich. It doesn’t matter to me that he’s got bad hair. Hehe. And it really doesn’t matter to me what he thinks about the Texas-Mexican border or immigration. If you can sit there and listen to what he’s had to say about Mexicans and tell me that he’s not racist, then you may need to look yourself in the mirror.

And people want to say it’s not about race, right? But it is. Come down to Texas and show me all the rapists and murderers we have coming in from Mexico. Oh wait, immigrants are actually less likely than native-born Americans to commit crime. But you wouldn’t realize that if you’re sitting there getting fired up by comments from a man in the spotlight.

Donald Trump is ultra rich and feels like that gives him the right to say and do whatever he wants to, and sure he can. But that doesn’t mean we should listen. And it surely doesn’t mean he should be our president.

On this day in 2014 I published July: A Month to Forget.

 

The Books That Have Stayed With…Everyone

John Guillen4 Comments

HarryPotterBookCovers-1

This is sort of an update post to my first post about this topic. Back then I mentioned that I could only come up with one or two books that have stayed with me rather than the usual ten people list out. But recently Facebook released data from another six countries and there’s a clear take away from their data: The stories of Harry, Ron, and Hermione are universal. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking to yourself the billions of dollars that the movies brought in at the box office. True. But when this meme got started I definitely figured JK Rowling would lead the way in the US and UK. But also in France, India, Italy, the Philippines, Brazil, and Mexico too? (Facebook only surveyed English status updates in India and the Philippines)

This just tells me that Potter is one of those characters that’ll be remembered and related to for decades to come. Not because the books are the greatest books ever written, but more likely because the books appear to have readers all over the world who appreciate their message.

The Harry Potter series ranked number one in France, India, Italy, the Philippines, Brazil, and number three in Mexico. What do you think about that?

You can see the full lists for each country here.