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Tuesday, Dec 11, 2012 10:31 PM UTC

Rename “Game Change 2012″

UPDATED: With our favorite suggestion for what the political potboiler should be called

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Topics: 2012 Elections, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Mark Halperin, Game Change, Double Down, , ,

Rename

UPDATED: Dec. 12, 6:24 p.m. (EST): My favorite suggestion for what the “Game Change” sequel should be named was “Same Change” Michael Serafino of Brooklyn.

 

You can almost here the cries of “Too soon! Too soon!”

Following up on the campaign that wouldn’t end, political scribblers Mark Halperin (no relation to this writer) and John Heilemann are going to ensure that the 2012 election lives forever in breezy prose. Following up on their bestselling, absurdly readable account of the 2008 race, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,” Halperin and Heilemann will be unleashing “Double Down: Game Change 2012” on a defenseless public, the Hollywood Reporter reports. Penguin is the publisher and HBO has already optioned the book.

Scarcely a month out from the slog itself, it’s hard to summon much enthusiasm for either the book or the movie. Still, it’s unfortunate that the title is the hackiest of hack political expressions, one that doesn’t seem especially connected to the campaign itself. In that spirit we invite readers to suggest titles that dip more shamelessly into the tepid lukewarm bathwater of political cliché.

Send your ideas to readermail@salon.com with your name and hometown and we’ll update this post with our favorites.

Also, since the first “Game Change” movie revolved around Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign, it’s open season on roles for the 2012 candidates, their families and other choice parts. Who do you want to see play Mitt Romey, Barack Obama and Seamus?

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Alex Halperin is news editor at Salon. You can follow him on Twitter @alexhalperin. More Alex Halperin.

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What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

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  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

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