The 12 Book Challenge

This blog began from interest in the 50 Book Challenge issued from various outlets at the beginning of the year. 50 Books is a lot of reading, and it may be a ridiculous goal to all but the biggest losers most determined. While 5o books might be a pipe dream, I think that we should consider setting some minimum standards around here. Maybe the 12 books a year required for Mexican policemen would be a good starting point.

Book Lover’s Trivial Pursuit

Bookslut has a piece on the new Trivial Pursuit Book Lover’s Edition. I say we head up to Toronto to test our mettle against these guys. We can totally take ‘em. Who’s with me?

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini came to me highly recommended. So the expectation bar was set pretty high going in.

While I had some reservations about The Kite Runner, I think there is a lot to recommend it. The book tells the story of a young boy, Amir, growing up in an idyllic pre-Soviet-invaded Kabul, Afghanistan. Amir is a child of wealth, being raised by a widowed and distant father. His best friend is Hassan, the son of the faithful servant to Amir’s father (also a single father). Not a whole lot of women in this story. As boys they just begin to realize the class distinctions in their lives when Amir does something bad. Holy crap is it bad. It is so totally bad that Amir can never forgive himself. He will torture himself about this bad thing that he did as a bad kid forever, even when he moves to America. If only there some way that he could redeem himself…

The country of Afghanistan is practically a main character in the story. At the beginning of the book, Afghanistan is ruled by a monarchy and is in relative peace. However, the ingrained class and sect differences below the surface suggest that it might be a fragile peace, when suddenly… the monarchy is overthrown, and then the Soviets come. Man, did they suck. The Taliban comes to save the day, and they are cheered in the streets. Until they suck worse than the Soviets.

Rather diplomatically (and conveniently), the US attack on Afghanistan is described like this: “Soon after the [September 11th] attacks, America bombed Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance moved in, and the Taliban scurried like rats into the caves”. That’s it in its entirety. Well except we also learn that people now talk about Afghanistan in Starbucks. That seems a little weak to me, and I feel like I got short changed by not being able to read what surely would have been an interesting perspective.

And maybe I was getting a little cranky towards the end, but I also got annoyed by the overly expository dialog style that seems hard to avoid if you want to work in foreign words and phrases. For example, two people who are both Afghans and speak the same language(s) might have this made up exchange: “Amir, it is raining, don’t forget your elcamino, your raincoat” – “My raincoat is out in my barqsezem, my car”. Although, they did say bismillah (in the name of God) a lot, just like in Bohemian Rhapsody, which was totally hot.

I had some minor gripes with the plot along the way. Overall, though, it was a good solid book that is deserving of much of the praise that is being heaped upon it. My disappointment came in the missed opportunities to do more.

Cycling Fever ….. Catch It!

Well, somebody has to market cycling in this country. The new-style ProTour international cycling season begins today with the 63rd Paris-Nice, the “Race to the Sun”. It’s snowing in France right now, but whatever. Follow the action and work on your French at L’Equipe (Velonews has it in American).

As a community service, I’ve compiled a short and non-comprehensive listing of cycling books that you may want to keep on hand for those long solo breakaways.

Graham Watson’s 20 Years of Cycling Photography is chock full of stunning cycling photography. If you buy only one book of classic cycling photographs this year, make it this one.

Bobke II by former pro cyclist Bob Roll is a great collection of true-ish stories of what it’s like to be not Lance. I haven’t read Bobke, it’s out of print and spendy.

Cycling is all about tradition, and A Century of Cycling is a nice overview of the big races and the sport’s big men.

I’ve read some nice things about Bicycle: The History. But I haven’t read it yet.

If you are in the mood for some bike noir fiction, I can recommend Bad to The Bone by Waddington.

And that Lance guy has written a book or two.

Of course, every cycling season should begin with a viewing of Breaking Away.

(Photo Credit: Copyright 2004 Shortbus)

OT: Announcing New Hardware

Sweet Justice

I’ll try not to post on too many of the books I read for work, but this one deserves your attention.

Arc of Justice won the National Book Award for non-fiction last year. Kevin Boyle earned that prize–and the many others that will surely come his way. This is impeccably researched history (even non-professional historians, I should think, will be impressed by the reach and depth of his footnotes), written in an impressively engaging style. The story at the center of the book lends itself to a readable narrative, but Boyle expands far afield to paint a richly detailed portrait of America in the 1920s.

Here’s the story: Ossian Sweet, a young African-American physician who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps to escape poverty in the Florida panhandle, purchased a house in a previously all-white neighborhood in Detroit. On the second night that he, his wife and young daughter spent in the home, a mob of several hundred angry whites milled around outside, threw rocks and bricks, and threatened to do worse. Someone fired shots from inside the Sweets’ home; one member of the mob was injured and one killed. Clarence Darrow–just back from Dayton, Tenn., where he defended Scopes in the so-called “Monkey trial”–defended Sweet in an another early contender for “Trial of the Century,” and the NAACP used publicity from the case to build a nest egg for its Legal Defense Fund (which would in turn make possible the cases that the court decided in Brown v. Board, among many, many others).

I could say a lot of great things about this book. I’ll stick to this, because it’s near and dear to my own heart: Boyle’s writing style is all too rare among American historians. He knows how to tell a good story. It’s the novelistic style that makes this book so readable. It’s the undeniable truth that gives it power. I recommend it highly.

Wolf Girl, meet Dog Boy

From completely out in left field, a heartbreaking, shocking, but oddly compelling way to spend a few minutes is a visit to FeralChildren.

This quasi-reputable site is a catalog of children who were, in fact, raised by wolves, among other fauna. (There is actually a reference to a child raised by an ostrich, who I believe is now the leader of the free world.) It’s surprisingly well put together and comprehensive, and is simply chock-o-block with “you gotta be shitting me” stories that range from fascinating (the wolf children who walked on all fours and howled each night to be let out to hunt) to gut wrenching (a Los Angeles girl who was confined to a chair in a darkened room, with virtually no human contact, for 13 years.)

Now, obviously, I can’t vouch for the authenticity of any of these stories, but true or not, there’s some good reading to be found here.

Bullshit

That’s right. Bullshit.

Information Design and Presentation

I spent yesterday in a seminar presented by Edward Tufte on presenting data and information. What I learned: every PowerPoint presentation that I have ever done (and yours too) has inherently sucked. Dude. Highlights of the presentation, for me, were when Dr. Tufte illustrated early scientific data presentation designs by pulling out his first editions by Galileo and Isaac Newton. My mind was blown, and the light bulb went on in my head. If you are going to blow tens of thousands of dollars on a book, make sure it is tax deductible by breaking it out at your presentations. I am currently working on a plan to justify incorporating this signed copy of Catcher in The Rye or my Hank Aaron rookie card into my work presentations. Read about Dr. Tufte’s books here (I received all of them as part of the cost of the seminar – sweet).

The Best American Non-Required Reading

Next up, The Best American Non-Required Reading 2004. It has a foreword by Viggo Mortensen, who you may know best as Aragorn. It was edited by Dave Eggers. Speaking of whom (?), on the Gilmore Girls last week, Rory had a Dave Eggers poster up in her dorm room and was later seen reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Or so my sources tell me.

Anyway, on to the book….

I have been reading this book since the beginning of the year as my daily commute read on the Ol’ 97 (Formerly the No. 10 Bus). This book is mostly short stories and essays, although it did feature some comix this year. I read this collection the last two years, and I thought there were more diverse collections of reading in the previous editions, including an article or two from The Onion. This year the collection seemed a bit more predictable and a lot more straightforward. Its “non-required” street cred is seriously in doubt, as some of these pieces seemed suspiciously like homework. But it did have a David Sedaris story, so…. Whether it is really the best collection of non-required reading is doubtful, but if you need an interesting commute book, you could do far worse.