Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s nearly noon on Tuesday, July 27, 2021, here in New Hometown, Florida. It is a hot summer day. Currently, the temperature is 87˚F (30˚C) under cloudy skies. With humidity at 67% and the wind blowing from the southwest at 7 MPH (11 KM/H), the heat index is 96˚F (36˚C). It’s going to be a muggy and not-so-sunny day; the forecast calls for scattered showers and a high of 90˚F (32˚C). Tonight, skies will be partly cloudy, and the low will be 76˚F (25˚C). The Air Quality Index (AQI) is 35 or Good.

Yesterday, after I finished writing the review of William Shakespeare’s The Merry Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars Part the Ninth, I decided to buy another book by author Ian Doescher. I didn’t choose yet another of his Elizabethan-style mashups of Hollywood and Shakespeare along the lines of Get Thee Back to the Future or Much Ado About Mean Girls, although I must admit I was tempted.

Instead, I chose a more topical – and-relevant-to-me – title: MacTrump: A Shakespearean Tragedy of the Trump Administration, Part I. Published in October of 2019 and clearly intended to be the first of at least two books, this 240-page book was co-written by Doescher with “Jacopo della Quercia,” the nom de plume of a former Obama White House staffer and author of  The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy.

Because I opted to buy a paperback edition rather than the Kindle e-book, I don’t know exactly what the plot of MacTrump is; from the name alone, I am sure that the co-authors will borrow thematically from Macbeth. But just by the description in the Quirk Books website, I can tell that this is not simply going to be Macbeth mashed up with I Alone Can Fix It (a non-fiction book published this month about the last year of Trump’s Presidency.

From the Publisher’s Website:

No one thought that MacTrump—Lord of MacTrump Towers, Son of New York—would ascend to the highest position in the kingdom. Yet with the help of his unhappy but dutiful wife Lady MacTrump, his clever daughter Dame Desdivanka, and his coterie of advisers, MacTrump is comfortably ensconced in the White Hold as President of the United Fiefdoms, free to make proclamations to his subjects through his favorite messenger, McTweet.

The Democrati, mourning the loss of their cherished leader O’Bama, won’t give up without a fight. They still remember the disastrous reign of George the Lesser, and they can see Putain’s dark influence on MacTrump. Their greatest hope is MacMueller, tasked with investigating the plot that empowered MacTrump’s rise to the throne.

As Desdivanka schemes to overthrow her father’s councilors, and as Donnison and Ericson—trapped in their own Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-like storyline—prove useless to their father, MacTrump soon realizes he has no true allies. Will he be able to hold on to his throne? Only time will tell in this tragicomic tale of ambition, greed, and royal ineptitude.

Basically, then, we are going to get a seriocomic Shakespearean version of the years 2017-2019, starting with McTrump’s rise to the “White Hold” and the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.

Nice!

According to Amazon, my copy shipped today from Haslet, Texas and should arrive tomorrow.

And since I have to do research on the last year of Trump’s Administration, I also ordered  I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. Published last week by Penguin Random House, this is the authors’ second book about Trump, the first one being last year’s A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America. I did not buy that book, nor do I plan to (unless, of course, I Alone Can Fix It wows me so much that I’ll want it, too). It deals with Trump’s second impeachment, his first true Presidential-level crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the summer of protests after George Floyd’s murder by three cops in Minneapolis, and the brouhaha that followed Trump’s defeat on Election Day 2020.

I ordered that book yesterday as well – almost as an afterthought – but according to Amazon it will not be here till Saturday. (It’s a really popular book and #2 on Amazon’s Best-Sellers list)

Aside from that, I don’t have much to add. My life here has gotten boring and utterly uneventful since the double-whammy of the COVID-19 pandemic and my breakup, and my routine is as constant as the North Star.

So, with this in mind, Dear Reader, I shall take my leave of you and bid you a fond….”see you later!” Stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.

Unless, of course, it’s raining.

Sources:

Quirk Books’ MacTrump info page

Penguin Random House’s I Alone Can Fix It info page