MORE OF WHAT WE ARE READING PLUS

 As we continue our sabbatical, we add an addition to our highly anticipated series on the books we are reading- What We Are Listening To (c) Blogstuff 2026 most rights reserved). 

Let's start with our new feature. Everyone has a podcast these days, from lawyers who work on top of garages, to guys doing time at Coleman. 

Alan Alda's Clear and Vivid, available on, inter alia, Apple Podcasts, is a gem. Alda interviews a wide collection of famous, and not so famous people, with an eye on communication, how we engage in it, and how it can be more effective. Walter Issacson's episode is a must listen to as he expounds on the communication during the Continental Congress (the wonky wifi in Philadelphia kept cutting out, causing Franklin at one point to toss his iPhone across the room during one contentious meeting), and talks about his new, short, epistle The Greatest Sentence Every Written.

Fan of the West Wing?  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell talks about his years as executive producer for the show and his task during the last two seasons writing the character Senator Arnie Vinick, who is the Republican presidential candidate vying to succeed President Bartlett and was played by....Alan Alda. 

One recent episode caught our ear- author and neuroscientist Lisa Genova was interviewed about her career and works in fiction and non-fiction, which brings us to...

What We Are Reading: 

More Or Less Maddie, by the just mentioned Lisa Genova, is a thoughtful, engrossing and engaging quick beach read that you must consume as summer wanes. The topic: a fictionalized account of a smart young woman dealing with the onset and challenges of           bi-polar disorder. *

Genova is a masterful writer, spending fifty-some-odd pages developing a character you become fully invested in, with only the barest hints of a plot (in violation of the current  your plot line must be apparent in the first ten pages requirements of block-headed book agents and query letter rules) until you slowly are drawn in to Maddie's illness and say to yourself Oh I see now where this is going, only to have what you think is going to happen turn on its head again and again and again. The worst thing about this wonderful novel is that it ends, leaving you wanting More Maddie. 

More Or Less Maddie comes with our famous Rumpole Money Back Guarantee that you will love this book or your money cheerfully refunded! And we have yet to refund any reader, so buy it and settle down for a great read with confidence. 

 

* For our robed readers, this has nothing to do with the mating habits of those big white bears in Alaska that you see in your IG feeds. 

WHAT RUMPOLE IS READING

 As we recharge our batteries, we have a reading list to recommend to our readers, and the very few robed readers over 40 who read something other than the runaway best seller "Federalist Society For Judges Dummies". 

First up, lying, cheating, millions of dollars at stake, a cast of shady and suspicious characters, and of course some sex. Are we talking about David Portnoy's new book? Nope, we will get to that shortly. This is Ben Mezrich's new great tome "Checkmate". Maybe only the backroom goings-ons at the REGJB are filled with more intrigue than the world of gambling poker the mob the CIA maga the NBA CHESS!   Yes, you read that write (bad pun). The world of chess has changed my friends. And Mezrich takes you inside a scandal in the way only he can do. It is a mystery populated by characters off the pages of a Damian Runyon novel, filled with money, and an allegation about the KGB-like-use and possible misuse of ...warning NSFW....Anal Beads. Read it. You will thank us afterwards. 

Now on to more bizarre characters in Dave Portnoy's new book Cancel Me If You Can.  We did not know much about this fella until we started reading it. There was that late night in an upscale bar in FIDI when we did some shots with him right as Covid was ending, vaguely aware that he was a person of notoriety, and he was a nice enough guy, flipping for the bar tab (we lost). Now we know the backstory of Barstool Sports, and we have a ton of respect for this guy's work ethic, and it has some laugh out loud stories to boot. A really perfect beach-read during these dogdays of August. 

And finally, we were sad to read in the failing NY Times about the recent death of Keigo Higashino, one of our favourite mystery writers. So we downloaded his classic The Devotion of Suspect X and poured through again it in a few nights with our Kindle. 

Voted (by some group who seems to know about these things) one of the top 100 mysteries of fiction, it is a classic that we can rave about for hours. A classic cat & mouse mystery. The stage is set early with characters you quickly care about. Something happens, and you are off on a wonderful journey. Read this book, then get into the author, and you will have months (years if you wear a robe to work) of wonderful novels ahead of you to devour.   

One side effect of this time off. Portnoy reminded us how much we love blogging. So  come the end of summer we will be back at it with some changes. More stuff we like, less law. And on that note, watch these pages for the Award-Winning Fantasy Football and Survivor Pool announcements. The Dolphins and the Jets will be losing games in spectacular fashion before you know it. 

Language police- the announcements are not award-winning. The FF and Survivor Pool are.