Recently in tome reader Category

At lunch, I visited the Digital Bookmobile, which was parked in front of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in downtown San Jose.

According to its site, the bookmobile is "a community outreach vehicle for public libraries to promote downloadable eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video". It was equipped with laptops, computers, and various mobile devices to give the public a taste of the digital experience. There were also a few helpful guides on hand to answer technical questions.

I decided to check it out because while I regularly use the library to borrow hard and soft cover books, I haven't taken advantage of their digital collection. I thought a visit to the bookmobile might inspire me to start (and it did).

If you're a member of the San Jose Library, you should definitely wander through the library's virtual aisles. If you are a member of the Santa Clara County Library, they have a digital library, too. I don't know how their collections compare, but both are worth exploring.

In the coming days and weeks, the bookmobile will be visiting northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Take a look at the schedule and keep an eye out for a sky blue big rig with laptops in your neck of the woods.

For locals, if you missed it today, don't worry, the bookmobile will be in the area for another two days. Tomorrow, it's at the Saratoga Library, and on Saturday, it's at the Morgan Hill Library (just down the street from me).

I recently read Verlyn Klinkenborg's The Rural Life, a book/journal chronicling the author's experiences on his small farm in New York, his reflections on country life, and his thoughts on life in general.

It was a treat to read. I loved the imagery and detail of his descriptions, the way he tied the human seasons to the natural ones, and the fact he divided the book into twelve convenient chapters -- one for each month of the year.

The book has a number of quotable passages, but I wanted to share my three favorites.

On property and self:

When you take on a property like the one my parents bought -- thirteen rolling acres divided by a narrow irrigation ditch, broken by veins of rock, and covered in poison oak and head-high Scotch broom -- you simply set out to clear the land and find a building site. But you leave traces of yourself with every decision you make, every fence you build, every tree you fell or plant, every quarter-acre you choose to irrigate or leave dry. In twenty years' time, a self-portrait emerges, and it exposes all the subtleties of your character, whether you like it or not. The land and the shape of the buildings show precisely how much disorder you can tolerate, how many corners you tend to cut, how much you think you can hide from yourself. Neatness may reflect nothing more than a passion for neatness, or it may be a sign of small ambitions. - p. 91, June

On travel:

All in all, this looks less like the quest for difference than the diffusion of sameness. Travel gets easier all the time, and it gets harder every year to distance yourself from the web of familiarity that's been thrown over the approaches to scenic America -- the web of ATMs, chain restaurants, chain motels, and chain experiences. Beneath the convenience of it all lurks a hidden fear of disappointment and strangeness, of feeling displaced, of coming to the limits of a known world. - p. 107, July

On Wyoming clouds:

Wyoming is a metropolis of clouds. Some are born in the state, some move here from other places, but they all prosper. Wyoming is also a theater of wind. For days at a time this summer, the clouds have passed in migratory flight, complicating the sunlight. In late afternoon especially, along the northeastern rim of the Bighorn Mountains, great rafts of orographic clouds -- shaped by the mountains, that is -- rise with the terrain and then lean out over the creek bottoms, darkening the face of the Bighorns and reabsorbing that darkness. - p. 127, August

Last year, I read 20 books, which would have been spiffy if my goal hadn't been to read 52 books. I was obviously doing something wrong and doing it often.

To ensure I don't fail to reach my goal this year, I'm giving myself a few rules and recommendations to follow at the end of this entry.

But first, here's the list of books I read:

1. Pyramids by Terry Pratchett
2. Eric by Terry Pratchett
3. Blood Rites by Jim Butcher
4. A Summer of Travel in the High Sierra by Joseph N. LeConte
5. The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston
6. Lost in My Own Backyard by Tim Cahill
7. Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
8. Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis
9. The Black Dove by Steve Hockensmith
10. The Noble Outlaw by Bernard Knight
11. Mountain Madness by Robert Birkby
12. The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett
13. Rowing to Latitude by Jill Fredston
14. First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
15. Flashman and the Tiger by George MacDonald Fraser
16. Zero Days by Barbara Egbert
17. American Creation by Joseph J. Ellis
18. Nation by Terry Pratchett
19. Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution by Mark Puls
20. The Book of Guys by Garrison Keillor

The hot author of 2008 was Terry Pratchett (or is that Sir Terry Pratchett now?). I read three of his books. This year, I intend to read (or possibly re-read) three or four more because life is always better with laughter.

Life is also better with charts, which is why I've included a few for your visualizing pleasure.

Now about those rules and recommendations I mentioned earlier. Here they are:

• Always carry a book (it makes the reading easier)
• Read every day (and everywhere)
  
• Read early, when your eyes and brain are fresh
• Read late (think of it as a bedtime story)
• Read at lunch, away from the desk
• Keep a daily log (I just created one using Google Docs)
• Don't read in front of the TV to avoid the temptation of DVDs and the Wii
• Listen to music to drown out distractions
• Take reading hikes (don't read and hike, just hike to a vista point and read)
• Be like Elkit. She read a whopping 53 books last year. Darn overachiever!

If I heed my own words, I should be able to reach the goal of a book a week this year. And since I'm burning through my lunch break to write this, I'll stop here and salvage the last few minutes to crack open a book.

(These journal entries are now a week behind. Events described as happening tonight actually happened last Thursday. I apologize for the confusion.)

Tonight, I sat on the ground, pretending I was just a few feet away from my tent somewhere along the Pacific Crest Trail. It was a challenge clearing away the sights and sounds of a suburban neighborhood and replacing them with an authentic mental representation of the wilderness. Had I known I would be exercising my imagination so vigorously, I would have stretched my brain beforehand.

My journey into Make Believe Woods was spawned by events earlier this evening. A few hours ago, I was at the Morgan Hill Public Library, listening to Barbara Egbert talk about her book, Zero Days, which recounts her family's 2004 Pacific Crest Trail hike. Four years ago, Barbara, Gary (her husband), and Mary (her daughter) successfully completed the 2,650-mile trek. What makes their journey particularly noteworthy, besides the fact that they accomplished it as a family, is that Mary was only ten years old at the time, making her the youngest person to ever thru-hike the trail.

My favorite part of the evening's talk was the slide show. Normally, a twenty-six-minute photo presentation would put me to sleep, but this one did no such thing. The photos brought the hike to life. They enhanced the stories Egbert put on paper, adding a dimension to the people and places she described. I was awake and alert the entire time.

I left the library with visions of completing my own long-distance hike one day, and the visions were still strong when I visited my sit spot hours later. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail sounds very appealing, but there are countless steps I have to take (figuratively and literally) before I can seriously contemplate the possibility. The key is to start small. For tonight, at least, that means spending twenty minutes imagining camping in the wilderness while sitting in the comfort of my own backyard. (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, even if it's a mental one.)

If I were a place, I'd be Labrador: improbable, impossible, tempestuous, serene, thinly populated. I'd be smooth boulders carried by great rivers of ice, plopped down at random, and balanced, precariously against the odds of gravity for thousands of years. I'd be spired mountains, crumbling ridgelines, and winds that literally make the water smoke. I'd be purple sunsets, bedrock that looks like marshmallows, and relentless green waves beating against the shore... I'd be Windy Tickle, Slam Bang Bay, White Handkerchief, and Blow Me Down Mountain. I'd be sun one minute and rain like Ping-Pong balls the next, with rainbows that seem to span the world.

It has been two weeks since I finished Jill Fredston's Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge, which I posted a few quotes from a while back.

I've been letting it marinate to see if I would feel as strongly about it now as I did when I was in the midst of reading it; and I do.

I like it so much, I've been holding onto it for as long as I can, even renewing it once (two days late, so I owe fifty cents), well after I had finished it, just so I could sneak peeks at passages like the one above. In another week, I'll have to surrender the book to the library and then I'll have to make a journey to the bookstore because buying it would be easier than transcribing my own copy.

Rowing to Latitude is one of those books I would reread in a heartbeat and not feel like I was missing out on reading something new. It's not just the fascinating places Fredston visits (the Yukon River, the coast of Labrador, Norway), but the way she writes about them that keeps me engaged. Her passion for rowing, traveling, nature, and life are evident. She interlaces the narrative of her trips with other parts of her life -- her career as an avalanche expert, her marriage (her husband, Doug, is also her traveling companion), and her family (her mother's battle with cancer). Some pages are dedicated to describing dry topics like packing supplies or kayak specifications, but they're saved by the power of her writing.

One of the reasons I loved this book was that I could relate to it as somebody who enjoys exploring the outdoors. The feelings she describes while rowing (the joy, the fear, the pain, the ups and downs) are similar to the ones I feel when hiking. There's the feeling of entering a different world when one steps on the trail, just as when one enters the water. There's the beauty of rhythm, whether it be paddle strokes or footsteps. There's also the eagerness to return to nature at the end of the journey, to rush home, look at the map, and plan the next adventure. I have yet to undertake an expedition as long or dangerous as anything she has undertaken, but I hope to one day (and live to write about it).

In Rowing to Latitude, Fredston shares the full landscape of her life and it's a life well-lived. This is one of my Top 5 favorite books of 2008.

I'm only halfway through Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge by Jill Fredston, but there are already a few quotes I want to jot down before I forget them...

Each year, I look back and wonder how I possibly knew enough to survive the year before. But it is not so much that I have acquired knowledge over the years as that I have learned to strip away the clutter, to recognize what is most important. - p. 46

Our progress the first few weeks seemed infinitesimal, but that was only because I was using the wrong scale. I kept sneaking glances at our big-picture map to see how far we'd come in relation to how far we had to go. Gradually I began to focus on taking the measure of each day, not so much in miles as in moments -- warm apple pie with a lighthouse keeper, naked baths in clear creeks, seal noses in the kelp beds, a Tlingit legend told in a lilting Native accent by a man who insisted upon taking us for a ride in his truck. - p. 69

By the time I reached the sea, I knew that I could do far worse than to live life like the Yukon: Keep moving but find places to slow down. Don't go straight at the expense of meandering. Nurture others; accommodate both change and tradition. Savor the element of surprise. Be gracious, accepting, resilient. - p. 87

(Title discovered thanks to a mention by Adventure Journalist back in April.)

It was so windy this morning, one could have saved gas and coasted to work with the right sized sail mounted to the roof of the car and the gears shifted to neutral.

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I love books with maps. There is something appealing about being able stop at any point in a story or historical account, flip to the appropriate map, and find a referenced location or landmark.

The first map-clad book I ever read was Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron, the second book in The Chronicles of Prydain.

My favorite maps are the ones found in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I've always wondered if Tolkien had a giant print of Middle Earth hanging on his wall for easy reference when he wrote.

I'm rambling about maps because three of the books I recently read contained them. All three were non-fiction, which means somebody (not necessarily the author) went through a lot of trouble to make them.

Fictional maps are so much easier to make. Surveying the landscape of one's imagination involves less time, money, and danger than surveying landscape in the real world. Can you imagine how difficult Mordor would have been to survey if it had been real? ("Excuse me, Samwise, I missed that last reading. Could you run back to the top of Mount Doom with the rod so I can take another reading? And mind the equipment around the orcs!")

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The first book I read was A Summer of Travel in the High Sierra by Joseph N. LeConte. In the summer of 1890, a twenty-year-old LeConte and three university friends went on a 652-mile hike, which started in Fresno, crossed through Kings Canyon (by way of Mt. Whitney), Owens Valley, and Yosemite, and finished in Lone Pine. His account of their expedition is inspiring.

I should mention the edition I borrowed from the library is rather rare. In 1972, the publisher only printed 1,000 copies. I read number 662. The book includes an introduction by Shirley Sargent and a neat preface by Ansel Adams. If also includes old maps of Sequoia National Park and the Kings River Canyon (called the King's River Yosemite in the book).

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The second book was Richard Preston's The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring. It's about men and women (well, mostly men) who have fallen in love with climbing trees, primarily old-growth redwoods. In the book, Preston reveals a whole new world high above the ground where a unique and diverse ecosystem exists. It was intriguing to learn about the bonsai forests, made up of small fir, spruce, buckthorn, and other trees, that grow near the crowns.

At times, it seemed as though the climbers were more than just passionate about trees. They seemed downright obsessed. One couple went so far as to get married in between two redwood titans. Amazingly, they were able to find a minister with the requisite climbing skills. (Knowing me, I would have accidentally dropped the ring.)

The book included maps of Northern California that highlighted a number of parks and preserves. They also showed the general, but not precise, location of some of the world's tallest trees, including Stratosphere Giant and Hyperion, the world's tallest tree (379.1 feet).

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The third (and last) book was Tim Cahill's Lost in My Own Backyard, an amusing book focused on Yellowstone National Park. Cahill highlights some of his favorite day hikes and landmarks in the park. He also gives a brief description of three backpacking trips. Every location mentioned is shown on the scaled map that adorns the inside covers. It's a short, but informative read. I can't wait to visit Yellowstone.

If for no other reason than the silly title, I now want to read Cahill's A Wolverine is Eating My Leg.

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For those keeping score at home, I've now read seven books this year. I expect that pace to drop dramatically as we enter February, especially since the next few books are utterly map-less.

I'm currently reading Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, one of those books I would have read years ago if the title hadn't fallen victim to my antiquated Post-it Note reading list system. I don't know about anybody else, but my Post-its have a way of disappearing from my desk and reappearing weeks later in the strangest places -- behind shelves, in between random book pages, under shoes, in the refrigerator. Of course, when I find one, it's a bit like discovering an Easter egg.

That gives me a great idea for a potential egg hunt when I become a dad some day. I can already hear the kids talking about it, the day after the big hunt, in elementary school...

Teacher: So, Milo, how many eggs did you find?
Milo: Five and they all had chocolate candy in them!
Class: Mmm!
Teacher: Very good, Milo. How about you, Hayden?
Hayden: Three and each one had five dollars in it!
Class: Oooh!
Teacher: And how about you, Jebediah¹?
Jebediah: (dejectedly) One.

(The whole class bursts into giggles and the teacher dowses them with a stern look.)

Teacher: Speak up, please. And what did it have inside?
Jebediah: This. (produces a Post-it, which the teacher takes)
Teacher: Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray? You have a very strange father, Jebediah. Oops, I mean, did I say that out loud?

Okay, maybe it isn't such a great idea, just a good Plan B.

When I read Coupland, I can feel my frame of mind changing, as though my brain is restructuring itself in order to grasp the concepts on the page. I can almost physically feel the individual gray cells rearranging themselves so they can "get" it. It's a bizarre sensation.

I believe every writer has this power, the ability to alter our perspectives, allow us (or force us, depending on our willingness) to see the world through different eyes, or lead us to explore ideas we would have never contemplated otherwise.

Maybe that isn't exactly true. Maybe every writer potentially has this power, but most are unable to use it effectively. Most only reinforce our beliefss or lead us to the same familiar places in our brains. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems most unusual (and refreshing) to come across somebody who veers from the established trail and does some mental trailblazing.

So far, I'm enjoying the path Coupland is cutting. The book is written in the form of a journal, almost in a blog-like fashion, which gives him an incredible amount of storytelling freedom. The tone of his main character reminds me of one or two bloggers I read. At times, I forget he wrote this book nearly thirteen years ago.

With any luck, I'll finish reading it tonight. I'm eager to see how the story ends and to see what surprises the final pages have in store.

If I really thought about it, I would say Coupland belongs to a small group of writers that makes me think, "Gosh, I wish I could write like that."

¹ I believe any hypothetical child of mine should have an embarrassingly anachronistic name. It builds character.

This weekend, I

> hiked around Calero County Park. The recent rains made for messy trail conditions. By the time I finished my six-mile hike, my boots were five times heavier and I was three inches taller due to the dirt stuck to the soles. On the bright side, I now have enough soil to pot a plant. I also have a few photos that might be worth posting.

> biked along the Coyote Creek Parkway in Anderson Lake County Park. The nearly nine-mile trip wore me out. I blame it on the bike, which is new, inexperienced, and out of shape. It also has a bad attitude. The slightest hint of an uphill slope produced grumbling and whining. I even heard it swear under its breath once or twice. To teach it a lesson, I plan to ride it regularly until its attitude improves. (This is known as projecting, a proven technique for relieving aching legs.)

> finished reading my third book of the year. It was easy to accomplish since the first two books were by Terry Pratchett (Pyramids and Eric). Books well oiled with wit and humor make for quick reads. The third book was Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. What it lacked in laughs, it made up for with vampires.

> watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The show premiered last night. I never was a fan of the Schwarzenegger trilogy, but I was curious to see how Summer Glau did as the new Terminator sent to protect John Connor. The last time I saw her, she was River on Firefly. In that show, she was all about emotions and huddling in corners. In this show, she's all about cold, blank stares and kicking butt everywhere she goes. I'll probably watch another episode or two, but I don't know if I can last an entire season. Shows featuring endless pursuits and constant violence are exhausting to watch.

> assembled the new Indiana Jones and the Lost Tomb LEGO set. It's silly, I know, but when I saw the box on the shelf, I couldn't resist it, especially after I saw the Indy minifigure included his trademark fedora, shoulder bag, and whip. To my credit, I didn't let my inner-ten-year-old run completely wild. I managed to postpone purchasing the most expensive set available (the $60 Temple Escape). I'm saving that as a resolution reward for later in the year. Of course, after I finished building the tomb, I had to watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the movie that inspired it all.

I should begin by admitting defeat. I only read 49 books in 2007, 3 short of my intended goal. The cause of my defeat can be traced back to February and March, when I managed to read one piddly book over a two-month span. I made heroic efforts in May (8 books) and July (10 books), but they weren't enough. I plan to read 55 books this year to make up for last year's shortfall.

Of the 49 books I read, 33 were fiction and 16 were non-fiction. Only 4 were written by women and 3 of those were written by the same woman.

Who were the hot authors of 2007? P.G. Wodehouse (5), Terry Pratchett (4), Jim Butcher (3), J.K. Rowling (3), and Kurt Vonnegut (3).

While statistics are fun, lists are even better, so let's get to it. Titles in bold are my Top 5 Favorite Books of 2007.

1. Flashman's Lady by George MacDonald Fraser
2. The Highwayman by R.A. Salvatore
3. The Iraq Study Group Report by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton
4. Palestine Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter
5. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
6. Goodbye to a River by John Graves
7. The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
8. Very Good, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse
9. Jeeves and the Tie That Binds by P.G. Wodehouse
10. I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This! and Other Things That Strike Me as Funny by Bob Newhart
11. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
12. Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
13. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
14. The Joy of Keeping Score by Paul Dickson
15. Requiem For An Assassin by Barry Eisler
16. Dispatches From The Edge by Anderson Cooper
17. The Old Ball Game by Frank Deford
18. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
19. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
20. At the Mercy of the River by Peter Stark
21. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
22. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
23. Battlestar Galactica by Gary A. Larsen and Robert Thurman
24. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
25. Winston Churchill by John Keegan
26. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
27. Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
28. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
29. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
30. Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith
31. On the Wrong Track by Steve Hockensmith
32. The Virginian, Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister
33. Psmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse
34. Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser
35. The Last Season by Eric Blehm
36. Mike by P.G. Wodehouse
37. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
38. George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots by Dave R. Palmer
39. Making Money by Terry Pratchett
40. The Birth of the National Park Service: The Founding Years, 1913-33 by Robert Cahn and Horace M. Albright
41. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer by Daniel Josephs
42. Strata by Terry Pratchett
43. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
44. One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey by Richard Proenneke and Sam Keith
45. Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
46. Storm Front by Jim Butcher
47. Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
48. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
49. Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

Because I'm a practicing Metooist, I thought I'd follow Elkit's example and see how the list of books I've read this year stacks up against the "What's in a Name" reading challenge, which is really meant for next year. Let's see how I'm doing so far. To complete the challenge, one must read a book with:

• a color in its title... Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon,
• an animal in its title... (whoops, strike one),
• a first name in its title... Mike by P.G. Wodehouse,
• a place in its title... Cannery Row by John Steinbeck,
• a weather event in its title... Storm Front by Jim Butcher,
• and a plant in its title... Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick.

So, as you can see, if I were undertaking the challenge this year, I would be needing to read a book with an animal, any animal, in the title. I do have Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird sitting on the shelf. Since I'm still seven books shy of reaching my goal of 52 books in 52 weeks, perhaps I can kill two, well, winged creatures with one stone (disguised as a paperback).

This weekend, I

> watched the Sci Fi Channel's Tin Man online. It's a miniseries that takes L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and gives it a modern science fiction twist. Unless you're a silver-slipper-wearing Ozophile or somebody who must watch every second of film featuring Zooey Deschanel, this is 6 hours of entertainment you can skip (4.5 hours without commercials).

Some of the re-imagined elements are clever (like Toto as a shapeshifter), but most are corny (like tattoos that transform into flying monkeys). Instead of Dorothy in Oz, we get DG in the O.Z. (and no, Mischa Barton does not play the Scarecrow).

For me, the most compelling character wasn't DG, but Wyatt Cain (played by Neal McDonough). He's a former policeman (or "tin man") who rebelled against the evil witch, was imprisoned in a metal suit by her henchmen, and forced to relive the moment when they took his family (his heart) from him for many years. After DG frees him, he sets out on a quest to exact revenge. Keeping that storyline and eliminating everything else would have made for fifteen minutes of worthwhile television.

> read Jim Butcher's Storm Front. Inspired by Ealasaid's praise for his books earlier this year (bottom half of the page) and needing a few "quick reads" to successfully reach my goal of 52 books in 52 weeks (7 books in 21 days is doable, right?), I began reading The Dresden Files.

Harry Dresden is a wizard struggling to make a living as a private investigator in Chicago. In the first book, while trying to help the police solve a supernatural murder case, he battles scorpions, a vampiress, a demon, and a black mage. He also tries to go out on a date. As expected, Dresden has more success battling than dating.

With one foot in fantasy and the other in mystery, Butcher combines to the two genres and creates a story that is exciting, well-paced, funny, and original. I'm already reading the second Dresden book and can't wait to see how the rest of the series unfolds.

> saw The Golden Compass. I went with high expectations and wasn't disappointed. Chris Weitz did a good job of adapting the first book in Philip Pullman's trilogy to the big screen. He managed to keep the film to a reasonable length (just under two hours) without losing the joy of the story (the mystery of Dust, the alethiometer, the Gyptians, and the armored polar bears). There were changes and omissions from the book, but they weren't as egregious as those I've seen in other recent adaptations.

The movie also benefited from an outstanding cast. Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig were convincing as Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asrial. Sam Elliott was made to play the cowboy aeronaut, Lee Scoresby. But most of all, I couldn't get enough of Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Belacqua. She came across as a smart, brave, clever, defiant, curious, and vulnerable young woman. In other words, she portrayed Lyra perfectly.

After I saw The Fellowship of the Ring, I left the theater wishing I could go back in and see the sequel. The Golden Compass gave me a similar feeling. Unfortunately, The Subtle Knife doesn't come out until 2009.

> sauntered around Calero County Park. Because of a late start on Sunday afternoon, I was only able to hike 3.6 miles of the full 6.2-mile loop suggested in the Healthy Trails brochure. I'll post a short report with a photo or two tonight. I hope to try the full hike (or a longer hike) at the end of the week.

Monday is a solicitor who knocks on your door late at night, rings the bell repeatedly, tries to peek through the front window, and says something like, "I know you're in there. I can hear your television and see you hiding behind the couch. You can't hide from my thermal infrared imager." Inevitably, the only way to make him go away is to open the door and endure his spiel -- all 24 hours of it. (If it helps, imagine Dwight Schrute as Monday.)

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I don't usually watch football, but I saw last night's game between the Patriots and Bills. New England annihilated Buffalo 56-10. In seven possessions, Tom Brady produced seven touchdowns; Randy Moss scored four of them in the first half. It was a beautiful game. If some die-hard Patriots fans don't memorialize the team's performance with a poem, song, or YouTube video, I'll be surprised and very disappointed.

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My site has the dubious distinction of being the first result people find when searching for the opposite of funny. The web is trying to tell me something, but I can't hear it over my own laughter.

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Last night, I finished reading One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, the book based on the journals that Richard Proenneke kept during the first sixteen months he spent building a cabin and living alone in Alaska. It was one of those books that I consciously tried to read slower, a difficult task since I couldn't stop turning pages to find out what he did next. If the copy I read didn't belong to the public library, I would happily add it to my own collection. I guess I'll just have to buy a copy (a hardbound edition, if possible).

There are a number of quotable passages from the book, but I'll leave you with one from the epilogue that expresses how I often feel...

"News never changes much. It's just the same things happening to different people. I would rather experience things happening to me than read about them happening to others. I am my own newspaper and my own radio. I honestly don't believe that man was meant to know everything going on in the world, all at the same time. A man turns on the TV and all those commentators bombard him with the local, the national and the international news. The newspapers do the same thing, and the poor guy with all of the immediate problems of his own life is burdened with those of the whole world."

Discworld is smarter (and funnier) than your average fantasy world. It doesn't merely defy fantasy and science fiction conventions; it pokes fun at them and pushes them around. It isn't simply fantasy with a twist. It's fantasy with a twist, a back one-and-a-half somersault, and a biscuit.

In his last few books, Terry Pratchett has shown that Discworld is smarter (and funnier) than your average real world, too. He has taken "real world" topics like revolutions (Night Watch), women in the military (Monstrous Regiment), the postal service (Going Postal), and racism (Thud!) and has explored them using one of the best tools ever invented: humor.

In his latest book, Making Money, he uses that humor to explore the seemingly dry subject of monetary systems. We follow Moist von Lipwig, the hero from Going Postal, as he takes charge of Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint, tries to move the city away from the gold standard, and attempts to introduce its citizens to paper money.

In terms of other books I've read in 2007, I'm confident this will be one of my Top 5 Books of the Year. For those keeping track, I've only said that about two other books this year (The Virginian and The Last Season).

In terms of other Discworld books I've read, though, this wouldn't make it into my Top 5. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say it would be at the bottom of my Top 14. Havelock Vetinari (the Patrician) is in classic form in this story and the Glooper (a water-based economic model of the city) is hilarious, but they aren't enough to propel the book into my Top 10.

Just for laughs, here are my Top 5 favorite Discworld books...

1. Night Watch
2. Guards! Guards!
3. The Truth
4. The Wee Free Men
5. Hogfather

You can't tell by just looking at it, but that list took a lot longer to compile than I expected. The books I didn't include are giving me doleful looks and one is sobbing uncontrollably. I had better console it before it becomes waterlogged with tears.

(Or, Two Alternatives to Reading a Book About "Hypothetically" Committing Murder)

Back in August, I finished reading Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. It's a book that succeeds in painting a realistic picture of the Pilgrim's voyage to the New World (at least new to them) and the Plymouth settlement. He is quick to dispel the myth of Plymouth Rock and the first Thanksgiving. As it turns out, the reality is more fascinating than the mythology.

Philbrick also makes an effort to present historical figures as honestly as possible. While men like William Bradford, Miles Standish, Squanto, Massasoit, Edward Winslow, King Philip (a.k.a. Mecomet), and Benjamin Church had their heroic (or villainous) moments, they were still real people.

Just this week, I finished reading Dave R. Palmer's George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots, a dual biography of two key figures in the American Revolution.

For the first half of the book, Palmer builds a case showing the parallels between Washington and Arnold. It's a compelling picture of two American heroes.

Both were personally responsible for keeping the rebellion alive - Washington as the commander in chief of the Continental Army, Arnold through his victories at Fort Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain, and both battles at Saratoga.

Both also had numerous enemies and detractors. Washington was able to defeat or silence his, but Arnold wasn't so lucky. After suffering a severe wound at the Battle of Bemis Heights, Arnold could no longer handle the slander or lack of recognition for his efforts and his thoughts turned to treason.

The second half of the book recounts Arnold's betrayal, the aftermath, and both men's legacies.

The last chapter is the book's strongest. In it, Palmer argues that for all of their similarities, character is the critical difference between the two men. To the author, Washington had the four qualities that define character: fortitude, temperance, prudence, and justice. Arnold had only fortitude. The lack of the other three ultimately led to his downfall.

Palmer ends with a most appropriate quote...

"Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your habits.
Your habits become your character.
Your character becomes your destiny."

If you're in the mood to read about early American history (and not more recent "hypothetical" history), I highly recommend both of these books.

- Randy Morgenson

Eric Blehm's The Last Season tells the story of Randy Morgenson, a legendary ranger who patrolled the backcountry of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park for 28 seasons, and the intense search and rescue operation that followed his mysterious disappearance in July of 1996. It's the story of a man who was passionate about the mountains and nature, who made it his personal mission to "protect the people from the park and the park from the people", and who loved the wilderness and the isolation it offered to the detriment of his wife and friends.

Blehm intersperses accounts of the search and rescue operation with the story of Morgenson's life. We learn about his childhood in Yosemite and his friendship with Ansel Adams and Wallace Stegner. We see his love for nature develop while in the High Sierras and the Himalayas. We see him find his calling as a backcountry ranger and see him become a legend. We see him romance and marry the woman of his dreams, build a life with her, and then slowly and regretfully lose it all.

The details of his life are critical to understanding the mystery surrounding his disappearance and the frame of mind of the people leading the search. Some believed he was alive and missing. Some believed he was alive, but on the run. Others had theories ranging from fatal accident to suicide to foul play.

Like any good mystery, every possibility seems viable until clues are revealed and pieced together. Blehm does a good job of maintaining the suspense until the very end.

Besides giving us a deeper understanding of Morgenson, Blehm gives the reader a glimpse at the inner workings of the National Park Service. We get to see how it operates and how it treats (and undervalues) its seasonal rangers. Backcountry rangers have one of the most difficult jobs in the service, yet they are treated like second-class workers compared to their "frontcountry" counterparts.

This book was an engaging read and is another contender for my top five books of the year.

I'll finish with two quotes from Randy Morgenson. The first is from page 63 of the book. Morgenson wrote it in the peak register of Mt. Solomon in 1971...

"We are the greatest bulldozers to walk erect. Will we ever permit, in as small place as here, Mother Nature - truly our Mother - to do her thing, undisturbed and unmarred? Will we ever be content to play a passively observant role in the universe, and leave off this unceasing activity? I don't wish man in control of the universe. I wish nature in control, and man playing only his just role as one of its inhabitants. I want every blade of grass standing naturally, as it was when pushed through the soil with Spring vigor. I want the stones and gravel left in the Autumn as Spring meltwater left them. Only these natural places, apart from my tracks, give me joy, exhilaration, understanding. What humanity I have has come from my relations with these mountains."

The other is from page 324 of the book and was recorded in one of Randy's many journals...

"I wish only to be alive and to experience this living to the fullest. To feel deeply about my days, to feel the goodness of life and the beauty of my world, this is my preference... To be thoroughly aware each day that I'm alive, to be deeply sensitive to the world I inhabit and the world that I am, not to roam roughshod over the broad surface of this planet for achievement but to know where I step, and to tread lightly."

(By the way, books 33 and 34 were Psmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse and Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser, respectively.)

When I was a kid, I remember reading a series of books about three teenaged boys who were amateur detectives. They lived in Southern California and set up headquarters in a trailer hidden under piles of junk in a salvage yard. For security, they had a number of cleverly disguised secret entrances.

The series was called The Three Investigators and Robert Arthur, Jr. created it in 1964. He wrote the first twelve books and a cadre of other authors continued the series after his death. I should track down a copy and read one for fun. According to IMDB, a movie based on the first book is set to be released in December.

I mention all of this because I was wracking my brain trying to remember the name of the series this morning. It took forever to pop into my head and now that it's here, this seemed as good a place as any to keep it from getting lost.

Anyway, before July ended, I read four more books. I wrote about Book 29 already, so let's talk about the others. All three were westerns and that wasn't by coincidence. I've been riding what I like to call a Western Wave¹ for a little while now.

It all began with the first viewing of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (you could say that's when I caught the wave).

Then, upon Elkit's excellent recommendation, I read Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith. That took me right into the tube.

The book is a hilarious caper featuring the Otto and Gustav Amlingmeyer (or Big Red and Old Red), two cowboys inspired by the tales of Sherlock Holmes. Actually, it's Gustav who takes a shining to the stories and seeks to follow in his hero's footsteps of "detecting and deducifying". It's told from Otto's point of view, though, which adds a flavor to the narration that is engaging and addictive.

I liked the first book so much that as soon as I finished, I went out and borrowed Hockensmith's second book, On the Wrong Track. That one finds the Amlingmeyers seeking employment as Pinkertons and eventually working as railroad detectives. I have a feeling I shouldn't have rushed through it because the third book in the series won't be out for another seven months.

At the same time, I was reading another western (I was walking the board, if you will). Actually, it wasn't just any western, it was the western, which is to say, Owen Wister's The Virginian, Horseman of the Plains. (It's the second DailyLit book I've finished.)

It's easy to see why the book is considered a classic. The story is beautifully and simply told. It's set in Wyoming and is about a cowboy from Virginia who courts a school teacher from Vermont. It also has a card game, a train ride, a tall tale, a hanging, and a shootout (all of your typical western fixings). It is a strong contender for one of my top five books of the year.

If a book could be paired with a television show, like wine with food, then Holmes on the Range would pair nicely with Brisco County, Jr. They're both comical westerns with a solid footing in another genre (mystery and science fiction, respectively) that sets them apart from the mainstream.

As for The Virginian, I discovered it pairs nicely with television's most recent western, Deadwood. The contrasting presentations of The West (one romantic, one realistic) make them the perfect western odd couple.

I've watched the first four episodes of Deadwood so far. (HBO produced 36 in all.) The characters remind me of those in a Flannery O'Connor story. Deadwood is populated by grotesques - people I empathize with despite their despicable traits. I like the show immensely and highly recommend it to anybody who doesn't mind the abundant use of profanity. Most characters get by without it, but a few can't utter a clean sentence to save their lives (Al Swearengen and Calamity Jane come to mind).

I figure I'll ride in the glasshouse of this Western Wave a while longer, finishing Brisco and Deadwood before pulling out and hunting for a new set.

¹ The recommended way to ride a Western Wave is on a surfboard sporting a saddle and stirrup design. The leash should resemble a lasso and the brand should go on the board's backside. For full effect, the bottom half of the wetsuit should look like chaps while the top half should resemble a denim shirt under a leather vest. To finish the look, a cowboy hat should be firmly attached to the head. Calling somebody riding a Western Wave "dude" is not recommended.

Before The-Book-By-You-Know-Who came out, there was speculation as to what its last word would be. I couldn't understand why this would interest anybody, except for maybe a few gamblers in Vegas, and truth be told, I still don't get it.

Of course, the whole thing sparked my curiosity and made me wonder what the last words were of other notable books. So, for fun, I grabbed The-Book-By-You-Know-Who and nine other random books from my bookcase to compile a quick list of last words. While I was at it, I grabbed the first words, too. As you will notice, none of the novels started with Once or ended with after...

On Saturday, I woke up early with what could best be described as anxious glee. As soon as I had opened my eyes, I was leaping out of bed and yanking the front door open to see where the delivery guy had chosen to hide the box containing The-Book-By-You-Know-Who.

At first, I thought he had done a keen job by tucking the box in the darkness behind a patchwork of freshly woven cobwebs. But after reaching in and pulling out only cobwebs and an angry spider, it dawned on me that maybe UPS or FedEx didn't make deliveries before six in the morning.

A blanket of disappointment draped itself over my shoulders. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning who rushes to count the presents under the tree only to discover that mom and dad have decided not to put anything out until after every last relative has arrived, including Uncle Stu driving from Schenectady.

I made a pot of coffee, sat by the front window, and tried to read an unrelated book about events that transpired in 1620 around Cape Cod. On any other day, I would have been absorbed in the tale of William Bradford and Massasoit, but on Saturday, it lacked the magic and wizardry I craved. It was like satisfying the desire for sashimi with California rolls.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon, I tried my hardest to go about my day as though the fate of the world didn't depend on the arrival of a book - one spellbinding, life-changing book. As everyone knows, I usually spend my Saturdays checking the front door and windows every five minutes to see if any peculiar packages appear or suspicious vans drive by, so I would say my attempts at normalcy were successful.

Unfortunately, no peculiar packages appeared, only a couple of leaflets - one offering cleaning services, the other offering Sunday services. If it weren't for leaflets, I could probably get by with a recycling bin half the size. No suspicious vans drove by either, only the usual SUVs delivering kids to the community pool. I did notice an ice cream truck and mail truck zip by five hours earlier than normal, but other than that, nothing. I began to worry the book might not show up at all.

Two hours passed. Unable to contain my anxiety any longer, I decided to see if anybody else in the neighborhood had received book-sized parcels. I didn't want to appear like I was snooping, so I grabbed the mailbox key and pretended to walk to the community mailbox while surreptitiously peeking at porches for any telltale packages. I breathed a sigh of relief when I reached the box and saw that nobody had received anything. That meant there was still a chance the book was on its way.

I was just about to turn around when I realized how suspicious it would look if I walked all the way to the mailbox without actually checking for mail. Keeping an eye out for onlookers, I opened the mailbox and reached in quickly. Instead of snatching bills and junk mail, I jammed my fingers against a box - a book-sized box with a picture of an owl carrying an envelope on the side.

I stared stupidly at it for a second before comprehension reached my brain. I shouldn't have been looking for delivery vans; I should have been looking for the mail truck.

I rushed inside with the box, ripped it open with care, and plopped down on the rocking chair to discover what happened to our boy Potter.

I know it isn't a race and I know one should savor these things, but I couldn't stop reading and turning pages, even when I knew I wasn't going to like what happened on the next page. Twenty-seven hours later, I was done with the book.

It was as happy and sad as I expected it to be. On a couple of occasions, I muttered, "Please don't let something awful happen to Character X!" And then, as though she had anticipated my dread, Rowling would let something awful happen to Character X. It was brutal, yet brilliant.

I know it will only count as one of the fifty-two books I read this year, but I can already tell you that I'm hankering to read it again before the year is through. In the meantime, I'll return to the story of the Mayflower. Now that I've had my fill of sashimi, California rolls don't sound half bad.

A recent Battlestar Galactica marathon (the new series) inspired me to dig up anything I could find on the original series. One bit I found was a book by the same name written by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston thirty years ago. How far the concept has come! While I can't get enough of the cable series, the book was disappointing. Instead of reading like a science fiction classic, it read like a tired space western with lazy dialogue and uninspired action sequences. Whatever made the story work on the screen failed to make it to the page because it was a truly awful book.

When Rich mentioned that Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons was his favorite comic story of all-time, he piqued my curiosity. After reading a copy borrowed from the library, I can see why. It’s a graphic novel that deserves more than one reading. It contains a complex story that involves morally ambiguous characters and spans two generations of costumed adventurers (a.k.a. superheroes). A movie adaptation of the comic is rumored to appear in theaters next year and my only hope is that they don't make a mess of it like they did with Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

When Tony Blair recently resigned as prime minister, it felt like as good a time as any to read more about him, but before I dug around for Blair biographies, I thought it might be good to read about a few of Britain's previous prime ministers. (Yes, I know I haven't finished reading the biographies of my own country's past leaders and I promise to remedy that eventually, but in the meantime...) The first one that came to mind was Winston Churchill. John Keegan's biography of the man who led England through World War II is brief, but well-crafted. It portrays Churchill as a brilliant speaker and a prolific writer (he wrote 43 books) with great ambitions and a deep interest in history. He was a hardheaded man without any friends. He was also plagued throughout his life by illnesses and injuries. His early opposition to Hitler and appeasement made him an outcast and was a serious (though temporary) blow to his political aspirations. Now I'm curious to read some of Churchill's writings, especially his early war memoirs.

As my last two posts likely indicate, I've been on a Potter binge lately. With the completion of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I'm now ready for the last installment in the series, which I'm waiting for as I type this (no sign of a delivery van yet). The books are still as dark and delightful as I remember them. I'm just hoping the last book lives up to the anticipation. Oh, and if you don't hear from me over the next couple of weeks, it's because I've been checked into Potter Rehab.

On Tuesday, I finished reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's the first DailyLit book of notable length that I've completed. It took several months to finish, but felt a lot shorter. As for the book itself, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Conan Doyle's writing style. Reading his mysteries was deeply satisfying.

According to The Writer's Almanac, the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit arrived in stores on this day in 1954.

It took the great author seventeen years to write The Lord of the Rings. Any anticipation or buzz The Hobbit had created in 1937 must have completely dissipated by the time The Fellowship of the Ring was published. It's hard to picture Tolkien, or any other writer, being able to do that today.

Can you imagine if J.K. Rowling had done that? What if she had published Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in 1997 and then told the public they could look forward to reading all six exciting sequels some time in 2014?

The news probably wouldn't have gone over so well. Her publishers would likely have sued her. Pottermania, if it were ever to develop, would have been postponed by at least a decade.

On the upside, so many people would have lost interest by then that there wouldn't be idiots photographing individual pages of the books and posting them on the web. There also wouldn't be newspapers printing spoilers in the form of reviews mere days before the official release.

On the downside, if there was still any profit to be made from movie sequels in 2014, Daniel Radcliffe would have had to portray a 12-year-old Potter when he was 25. By the time they filmed the last movie, he'd be 35. Just imagining the world overrun with Harry Potter: 90210 jokes is enough to make me glad we don't have to wait seven more years.

In anticipation of the final book in the Harry Potter series, which arrives this Saturday, I've been rereading Books 5 and 6. I had hoped to finish the fifth book before the premiere of the fifth movie last Wednesday, but I only succeeded in getting through fifty pages before the lights dimmed in the theatre. It might have helped if the idea had occurred to me earlier than that morning.

I finished Book 5 on Sunday and went straight into Book 6. I'm currently halfway through The Half-Blood Prince and should finish before The Deathly Hollows appears on our doorstep this weekend.

I've noticed a number of people reading Rowling's books on the bus and train. Some have gone as far back as Book 1 to ensure everything is fresh in their heads when they start Book 7.

Instead of reading the first four, I watched their cinematic counterparts, reasoning that reading all seven over two short weeks would lead to Potter Burnout before the big day.

It's hard to believe that it has been two years since I read the fifth and sixth books. It's also hard to believe that the ten-year journey with Rowling and her boy wizard is finally reaching its end.

For now, I'm eager to find out what happens to Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore, and the rest (all in good time, of course, no peeking at leaked material). I'll get to the sadness of seeing it all end another time.

I just finished reading Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Before I get to a couple of reasons why I like Steinbeck's writing, here is one of my favorite passages, on page 104...

He thought it would be nice to take a very long walk. He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Indiana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida. He walked among farmers and mountain people, among the swamp people and fisherman. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.

Because he loved true things, he tried to explain. He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot. And people didn't like him for telling the truth. They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar. And some, afraid for their daughters or their pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth. He said he was doing it on a bet - that he stood to win a hundred dollars. Everyone liked him then and believed him. They asked him in to dinner and gave him a bed and they put lunches up for him and wished him good luck and thought he was a hell of a fine fellow. Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

One of the reasons I like Steinbeck is his genuine affection for his characters. When he writes about Doc (as in the previous passage) or Lee Chong or Dora or Mack and the boys, one senses he truly cares about them and revels in their good qualities and flaws, in their habits and their lives. The way he describes them makes me wish I could meet some of them, although I'd have to watch myself around Mack lest I be boondoggled into giving him a quart of whiskey.

I also love the way Steinbeck writes about Monterey and Cannery Row. It would be wonderful to visit the places he describes - the Palace Flophouse and Grill, Western Biological, and Henri the Painter's boat. Henri, by the way, is a French painter who is neither a painter nor French. Every chapter is a snapshot of the Row and the people that live there. If the chapters were actual digital photos, one could simply stitch them together to create a magnificent panorama of the seaside community.

I brought this wonderful book along on the backpacking trip because of its size and weight. I also had a feeling it would be the perfect book to read outdoors and I was right.

If you're searching for something to read this summer, I have seven recommendations. Over the last four weeks, I read the following books...

Requiem for an Assassin by Barry Eisler - The sixth installment in the series finds John Rain grudgingly working for his longtime foe, a rogue CIA agent named Jim Hilger. Hilger kidnaps Dox, Rain's partner and closest friend, and threatens to kill him if Rain doesn't carry out three hits. I zipped through this book, eager to see if Rain would save Dox and if he'd take down Hilger once and for all. I got a kick out of the scenes set in Palo Alto, but I'm going to avoid cycling around that area for a while.

Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper - The book mostly focuses on the two major disasters of 2005 - the tsunami in Asia and Hurricane Katrina, but it also provides a glimpse into the life of a journalist in places like Vietnam, Niger, and Iraq. Tucked in between are insights into Cooper's personal tragedies (his father's death and his brother's suicide). Cooper is haunted by the death and destruction he has seen and yet is profoundly drawn to them. A gripping book.

The Old Ball Game by Frank Deford - A fascinating dual biography about two baseball greats: John McGraw and Christy Mathewson. Both shaped baseball while it was still in its infancy. "Mugsy" McGraw was the feisty and controversial manager of the New York Giants. Mathewson (or "Matty" or "Big Six", choose your favorite nickname) was the saintly, All-American boy pitching on McGraw's team. Deford does a nice job of chronicling their lives, their friendship, and their impact on the game.

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut - Based on Elkit's endorsement, I read this Vonnegut story about Howard Campbell, an American who becomes a Nazi propagandist during World War II. The novel takes the form of Campbell's memoirs, which he's writing from inside an Israeli prison where he's being held as a war criminal. I'm curious to see if the film adaptation (a 1996 Nick Nolte movie) lives up to the book.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut - I was in a Vonnegut groove, so I went right into this one. This is a science fiction novel that includes elements that play significant roles in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (Tralfalmadorians and becoming unstuck in time). When he revealed the purpose of life on Earth, I was instantly reminded of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

At the Mercy of the River: An Exploration of the Last African Wilderness by Peter Stark - It's the engaging account of a two-week kayaking expedition down the dangerous Lugenda River in Mozambique. Stark, an author and writer for Outside magazine, is one of the five-member crew making the "first descent". Along the way, the team must contend with hippos, crocodiles, rapids, and waterfalls. All of these seem to pale in comparison to their greatest challenge - conflicting personalities. Woven into Stark's narrative is a fascinating history of European and Asian exploration in Africa. The tales of Mungo Park and David Livingstone complement Stark's journey nicely.

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor – I came across O'Connor's name while reading about Vonnegut. She primarily wrote short stories, but Wise Blood is one of her rare longer works. It's the tale of Hazel Motes, a soldier returning home to nothing, seeking redemption, and struggling with his faith. It's a comic novel, but it doesn't contain light or silly humor. (Okay, there is a guy who dresses up in a gorilla suit, but that's where the silliness ends.) The humor is dark and biting and it deepens the story (the way humor should when it's done well).

When it comes to reading, there are two principal approaches: the Methodical and the Flying Fig.

In the Methodical Approach, the reader's priority is the experience of reading. The environment, or reading spot, must meet specific requirements and standards. It must have suitable lighting, preferably natural. The seat must be clean and comfortable enough to sit in for at least an hour, but not so comfortable as to induce sleep. The spot must be free from distractions or interruptions. Finally, it must be near a flat surface upon which to place snacks or a cup of coffee or tea. Once the environment has been found or adjusted to meet these requirements, the reading can commence.

In the Flying Fig Approach, the reader's priority is the act of reading. As long as the reader has a book, a hint of light, and sufficient oxygen, he or she is happy and could give a flying fig about everything else.

While I primarily use the Flying Fig Approach, I prefer the Methodical, especially on the weekends, when I have time to focus more on the experience than the act. I slip out of bed at sunrise, start the coffee maker, open the drapes in the front room to let the sunlight stream in, pour a cup of coffee, grab a book, and curl up on the couch to read. It is one of the best ways to read.

• Very Good, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse - A compilation of Jeeves and Wooster short stories. I revel in Wodehouse's ability to use the same formula (Wooster gets in trouble, Jeeves saves the day) to create so many fresh and funny tales.
• Jeeves and the Tie That Binds by P.G. Wodehouse - I was on such a roll that I had to read another Wodehouse novel before tackling another author.
• I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This! and Other Things That Strike Me as Funny by Bob Newhart - Part autobiography, part Button-Down Mind in book version. Both parts are entertaining. Newhart is an affable comedian who manages to disguise his sometimes subversive humor with his squeaky clean image. The book inspired me to rent the first season of The Bob Newhart Show, his hit comedy series from the seventies.
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - Before his passing, I hadn't read a single word by Vonnegut. It wasn't that I was avoiding him; I just hadn't gotten to him yet. I'm glad I finally did. The story of Billy Pilgrim is one of my favorites of the year.
• Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain - While searching for Vonnegut, I came across Twain and decided it had been too long since I had last heard him tell a tale.
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck - And since I was in the section, I grabbed one of Steinbeck's novels as well. Tortilla Flat is a somber story (with touches of humor) about a group of friends (paisanos) living in Monterey.
• The Joy of Keeping Score by Paul Dickson - A book I found at a local bookstore. Filled with great anecdotes, quotes, photos, and trivia about scoring and the game of baseball, it's what inspired me to try my hand at keeping score at the Giants game last week.

Even with my recent reading gains, I'm still six books behind. To close that gap, I'm going to be implementing a new project tentatively called Prime Time Reading. For an hour every night, between 8 and 11, instead of watching a television show or DVD, I'll be reading a book. Why watch an unappealing episode of The Real Wedding Crashers when one can enjoy a few engaging chapters of Huckleberry Finn instead?

I've been in something of a reading slump lately. It has had less to do with the books I've been reading than with the mood I've been in. Lately, I just haven't felt like immersing myself in a book. I haven't stopped reading all together. I just haven't been reading as much as I did last year. As a result, I've fallen well off my book-a-week pace, which is bothering me to no end. Instead of writing a synopsis of each book, I thought I would share a favorite quote (or two) from each.

"And in that place (ed. Capitol Hill), I think about America and those who built it. This nation's founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent. And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union. And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams."

"It is that process I wish to be a part of."

"My heart is filled with love for this country." p. 362, The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

"Humanism has to speak in the terms of extant human beings. The terms of today's human beings are air conditioners and suburbs and water impoundments overlaying whole countrysides, and the hell with nature except maybe in a cross-sectional park here and there. In our time quietness and sun and leaves and bird song and all the multitudinous lore of the natural world have to come second or third, because whether we wanted to be born there or not, we were all born into the prickly machine-humming place that man has hung for himself above that natural world." - p. 159

"You could go on forever. You know it. Your muscles have gone supple-hard and your hands as crusty as dry rawhide, and your head has cleared, an your boat goes precisely, unstrenuously where and how you want it to go, and all your gear falls into its daily use with thoughtless ease. There is merely not enough river, not enough time... You don't miss anyone on God's earth's face. You're no more bored with the sameness of your days and your diet and your tasks than a chickadee is bored, or the passenger on the sunny bow, or a catfish; each day has its fullness, bracketed by sleep. In the evenings by the fire and in the clear mornings are when you have it strongest - the balance, the rightness, the knowledge." - p. 292, from Goodbye to a River by John Graves (a book I discovered via Adventure Journalist).

"It is pretty generally admitted, both in the Drones Club and elsewhere, that Bertram Wooster in his dealings with the opposite sex invariably shows himself a man of the nicest chivalry - what you sometimes hear described as a parfait gentil knight. It is true that at the age of six, when the blood ran hot, I once gave my nurse a juicy one over the top knot with a porringer, but the lapse was merely a temporary one. Since then, though few men have been more sorely tried by the sex, I have never raised a hand against a woman. And I can give no better indication of my emotions at this moment than by saying that, preux chevalier though I am, I came within the veriest toucher of hauling off and letting a revered aunt have it on the side of the head with a papier mache elephant - the only object on the mantelpiece which the fierce rush of life at Totleigh Towers had left still unbroken." - pp. 239-240, The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse.

Last month, I finished reading Jimmy Carter's Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, the latest book by the prolific former president.

Instead of providing the reader with a dry historical retelling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Carter blends history with personal experiences and eyewitness accounts - from his first visit to Israel in 1973 through his last visit to the region for the Palestinian elections last year.

Throughout his account, he highlights the successes and setbacks of diplomatic efforts over the past thirty years. He then outlines a way for the peace process to move forward, which he sums up in one paragraph at the end of the book:

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of its own citizens - and honor its own previous commitments - by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.

Since finishing the book, I've read a number of reviews and opinion pieces blasting Carter, claiming his book is unbalanced and lacks historical context. Some have gone as far as to accuse him of being an anti-Semite.

While I felt Carter was extremely critical of Israel, more so than he was of Palestine, I don't think it was because of some underlying hatred of the Jews. Nor do I think his criticism of the United States stemmed from a hatred of Americans. I think all of his criticism stems from a frustration with a long peace process that has seemingly gone nowhere.

It's a book written by a man who has played a role in that peace process, in one capacity or another, for thirty years. I don't know how anyone involved in such a longstanding and heated conflict could write an objective account of it. And I think what people expected was an objective account.

They expected him to be the peacemaker like he's always been and diligently navigate the diplomatic waters like he always has. When his book didn't meet their expectations, they bashed him.

Despite the charges of his critics, I believe Carter wrote this book with a genuine desire for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine with both nations coexisting in peace. Overall, it isn't a perfect book, but due to the subject and the author, it's a book worth reading.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows doesn't come out until July 21, 2007. That's still five months away. J.K. Rowling's books have long been a guilty pleasure and I'm eager to read the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter series. I'm trying to keep my expectations under control. This is likely the most anticipated book since, well, her last book, and I can't imagine the amount of pressure she must be feeling to deliver a story that not only meets her fans' expectations, but her own expectations as well. I hope she doesn't focus on the people she might potentially disappoint, but rather on the people who are rooting for her to give them a great ending to the tale of Harry Potter.

1. It features Draco Malfoy, or the person calling himself Draco Malfoy, as the main character.
2. Flashbacks. It was fun to drop in a few black and white panels.
3. A screen capture in the last panel. I wanted an actual screen on Malfoy's computer. It took some time to scale it down and get the right angle of perspective, but I finally got it to work.

Reeling from my horrible fantasy experience, I needed a good dose of reality. A report on Iraq seemed like a good place to find some. After unsuccessfully attempting to read the report online, I bought a bound copy of The Iraq Study Group Report by the Iraq Study Group, James A. Baker III, and Lee H. Hamilton.

The report provides an assessment of the current situation in Iraq (as of December 2006). It takes a look at the key players within the country (Shia, Sunni, and Kurds) and in the region (Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and others). After outlining the alternative courses of action considered, the group offers its approach to the problem in the form of 79 recommendations covering what needs to be done by those inside and outside of Iraq.

Inside Iraq, the group focuses on issues like performance milestones, national reconciliation, security, the Iraqi police, and oil. Outside of Iraq, the group emphasizes the need for strong diplomatic efforts and strong international support.

I was struck by the report's clarity, frankness, and common sense approach to an extremely complicated situation. I was also struck by how the bipartisan group didn't allow the report to get mired in what mistakes were made, but focused instead on the realities the world faces as a result of those mistakes and the positive steps that can be taken to address those realities.

Most of all, I was struck by the number of recommendations encouraging the administration to be more engaged and communicate directly with others - with Moqtada al-Sadr, with the insurgents, with the militias, with Iran, with Syria, with the international community, with our allies, and with our own military leaders. It's clear the group believes America should be shifting from a military role to a diplomatic and supporting role in Iraq.

Finally, the report has a number of quotable passages, but the most memorable one comes from the section concerning the U.S. intelligence agencies and their inadequate data collection and analysis of threats to our armed forces…

Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.

It's a pearl of wisdom for policy makers or anybody who sets goals to keep in mind. It also gets to one of the fundamental reasons for the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Progress is difficult to achieve when one is more intent on aligning reality with one's beliefs instead of acknowledging the reality and adjusting one's beliefs accordingly.

For anyone interested in current affairs or a good nonfiction read, I would recommend this book.

On a related note, earlier today, I went to Santa Clara University to listen to Leon Panetta, a member of the Iraq Study Group, talk about Iraq and the report. I'll write more about that event tomorrow.

After reading a piece of historical fiction, I thought I would give fantasy a chance, so I read R.A. Salvatore's The Highwayman.

The book begins with a world that has warring religions, warring kingdoms, and a vengeful hero in black. The premise seems promising, but once the stage is set, the scenes that follow are predictable and disappointing. Instead of giving us a new hero, the author gives us a recycled one - a hero that is part Robin Hood, part Zorro, and part Spider-man. In my head, I envisioned the Highwayman played by Toby Maguire sporting the mustache of Errol Flynn and the accent of Antonio Banderas.

Halfway through the story, I realized I wasn't reading a fantasy novel; I was reading a comic book striving (and failing) to be a fantasy novel. But even as a comic book, it still lacks that one vital ingredient that would compel me to buy the next issue and that is originality.

It's February, which means I would usually write a post about the books I read in January, but since this is a new year, I wanted to try something different. And by something different, I mean I'm going to try Elkit's approach and dedicate one post per book. I'm also tossing the 0-10 rating system since last year's rater would either score the books erratically or outsource the job to a ferret.

Like last year, I intend to read at least 52 books in 52 weeks. As part of this year's challenge, I want at least two of those books to be poem collections. I already have one by Walt Whitman and I'm thinking of reading one by Charles Bukowski, a poet often quoted in one of my favorite baseball blogs, The Soxaholix.

I began the year by finishing Flashman's Lady (wiki) by George MacDonald Fraser.

This packet from Harry Flashman's memoirs finds the British anti-hero exhibiting the character flaws that make his adventures a joy to read. Pride, lust, jealousy, and cowardice all play a part as Flashy loses his wife, Elspeth, in a cricket match to Don Solomon Haslam, a wealthy, womanizing businessman; gets dragged into rescuing her from her suitor-turned-kidnapper and fighting pirates in the Far East by James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak; and desperately seeks escape from Madagascar and enslavement to the diabolical Queen Ranavalona I.

Like other Fraser novels, this one was thoroughly researched and entertaining. Two topics I'm curious to learn more about after reading this book: cricket and James Brooke.

The Caucus, a political blog produced by The New York Times, just posted the latest list of best selling political books. I mention it because it seems to be one of the few lists I've come across recently that includes titles of books I've actually read, which is something special indeed considering I somehow avoided reading the ten best books of 2006 and ninety-nine of the hundred notable books of last year.

Of the fifteen political books listed, I've read two - State of Denial by Bob Woodward (No. 15) and Palestine Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter (No. 3), which I just finished this morning.

I haven't gotten to The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama (No. 1) yet, but I will. It's next in the stack of unread books I own. I even removed its dust jacket in preparation for some heavy handling.

By the way, did you know there is a Wikipedia entry about dust jackets? It links to a site with a short article about their history.

Anyway, other books on the list that I hope to read this year include Culture Warrior by Bill O’Reilly, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (No. 5), Imperial Life In The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (No. 8), and Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks (No. 10).

What follows is the list of the books I read in 2006. Of the 52 listed, 34 were fiction and 18 were nonfiction. 44 were written by men, 8 were written by women, and none were written by ferrets. Who were the hot authors to read in 2006? Terry Pratchett (5), Jasper Fforde (5), George MacDonald Fraser (4), and P.G. Wodehouse (3). But enough statistics, let's get to the list...

1. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
2. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
3. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
4. The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner/Andrew Porter
5. C.S. Lewis: A Biography by A.N. Wilson
6. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton
7. Shopgirl by Steve Martin
8. The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
9. The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis
10. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
11. The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
12. Had Enough? by James Carville
13. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
14. Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett
15. A Preface to Paradise Lost by C.S. Lewis
16. Jingo by Terry Pratchett
17. Wedding of the Waters by Peter L. Bernstein
18. Misunderstimated by Bill Sammon
19. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
20. Quicksilver by Neil Stephenson
21. Jefferson's Second Revolution by Susan Dunn
22. Flashman on the March by George MacDonald Fraser
23. The Last Assassin by Barry Eisler
24. Fantasyland by Sam Walker
25. Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
26. Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser
27. Generation Me by Jean Twenge
28. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
29. The Life of David by Robert Pinsky
30. Upon the Altar of the Nation by Harry S. Stout
31. The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
32. Flash for Freedom by George MacDonald Fraser
33. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
34. Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
35. Call Each River Jordan by Owen Parry
36. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
37. State of Denial by Bob Woodward
38. Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor
39. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
40. American Gospel by Jon Meacham
41. Big Money by P.G. Wodehouse
42. Common Sense by Thomas Paine
43. The Truth About Diamonds by Nicole Richie
44. Bold Sons of Erin by Owen Parry
45. Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
46. Mike and Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse
47. Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
48. Blandings Castle by P.G. Wodehouse
49. A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony
50. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
51. The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony
52. The Truth by Terry Pratchett

This is my last post of November - the thirtieth in thirty days. From a word production point of view, November has been a hectic month. It has also been a hectic month from a word consumption point of view.

I completed eight books in the last thirty days. With the exception of two of the titles, they were all light and humorous reads, which explains how I was able to tear through them so quickly. Nowhere in the small print of this yearlong challenge was there ever any mention that my book selections had to be daunting or humorless (or even tasteful for that matter) and I took full advantage of that omission. I might as well use the loophole while I can. Who knows what restrictions might be imposed next year?

1. Big Money by P.G. Wodehouse (7.9)
2. Common Sense by Thomas Paine (6.6)
3. The Truth About Diamonds by Nicole Richie (5.0, a score low enough to almost warrant a peek. Almost.)
4. Bold Sons of Erin by Owen Parry (6.4)
5. Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett (8.3)
6. Mike and Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse (8.2)
7. Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde (7.7)
8. Blandings Castle by P.G. Wodehouse (8.0)

If you ever need to get to Chenery Street in San Francisco from 280, don't exit at Alemany Boulevard like Yahoo! Maps recommends. If you do, you will have to negotiate a confusing series of forks in the road that will leave you lost, miserable, and wishing whoever had designed those forks had been beaten senseless with a spoon. The experience will also leave you in tears. And while there's no shame in crying, AAA road maps aren't waterproof (at least mine aren't).

Instead of Alemany, exit at Monterey Boulevard and conserve some time, gas, and patience. With the holiday shopping season upon us, you're going to need that patience; unless you've already completed your shopping, in which case, there's a spoon I'd like you to meet.

Chenery Street is home to a cluster of coffee shops, restaurants, salons, and boutiques. It's also home to Bird & Beckett Books & Records (technically on Diamond Street, but close enough). Unable to resist the temptation of an independent bookstore, I had to stop in.

When I entered, only a few incandescent lamps were lit, giving the tiny place a dark, mysterious atmosphere. Books were everywhere. They filled every shelf of every bookcase. They sat in stacks on top of the bookcases and in piles on the floor in front of them. The store didn't have the sterile, organized feeling of a Barnes & Noble. New books mingled with used books, old editions with revised editions. It felt like a place where books were read, not merely sold.

As I perused, I was struck by the romantic notion that I might stumble upon a rare or forgotten book. I might come across a title I had been wanting for ages and then find a better one next to it. I was immediately overcome with the feeling that I had to leave with something.

I had no idea what that something was at first, but then I remembered my previous visit to a bookstore (Borders Express, I believe). I had been looking for books by P.G. Wodehouse and hadn't been able to find a single title. So, I went hunting for Wodehouse.

What followed was a brief but invigorating search. In the end, I came across two titles. Not wanting to be greedy, I flipped a mental coin and chose a used copy of Mike and Psmith (the P is silent).

It wasn't exactly a rare or forgotten book, but it was good enough to brighten my day, bolster my belief in independent bookstores like Bird & Beckett, and make the earlier driving confusion seem entirely worthwhile.

I happened to stop by Terry Pratchett's website and discovered Feegle Free-Fall, a funny game based on the Nac Mac Feegle that appear in a few of his Discworld novels. I definitely recommend giving it a try. It'll only take a minute and it's a great way to burn of steam if you're stressed, get a laugh if you're down, or procrastinate if you're attempting to write a novel. I've played it [number redacted] times and scored a high of 160 so far. Not bad.

I should add that I still intend to read Pratchett's most recent novel, Wintersmith, and I hear he's in the process of editing his next Discworld novel, Making Money. Exciting!

I thought today would be a good day to share a few jewels I discovered in The Truth About Diamonds, the book I joked about reading, secretly swore I wouldn't read, but ended up reading anyway. It's also a book I've now linked to three times in the past week, which can't be good for my health.

I share these not to mock the author (because I know my blog could be mined just as easily for equally pristine jewels of silliness), but to spread a little joy and happiness. When it comes down to it, my writing and Nicole Richie's writing are, I'm embarrassed to say, eerily similar in quality. The only real difference is that people actually read what she writes.

Ana had a way of entering a room with all the subtlety of a sexual assault. (p. 21)

Her MAC makeup - she always only wore eyeliner, no base, and an unblended shade of lipstick to match her outfit - was no match for her despondent tears. (p. 32)

Chloe looked back over her shoulder at her serious-as-cancer mother. (p. 110)

Hugs were not allowed, even if supposedly initiated by the stars, and pictures were forbidden, but Chloe broke both edicts, causing the line to move as slowly as FEMA. (p. 148)

My reunion with Chloe was bittersweet - chocolate, that is. (p. 183)

The Persian motif was haywire, with fake gold Arabic script and cat statues everywhere. The bed had what looked like reams of netting around it, straight out of somebody's warped vision of what a sheik's inner sanctum might look like. It was so Sinbad, it was good. (pp. 202-203)

Forgive me, journal, for I have sinned. It has been three months (and eleven books) since my last confession. Since January 1st, I've read forty books, which means I'm only twelve books away from my goal of 52 books in 52 weeks. I realize I have to step up the pace if I hope to finish a dozen books in the remaining two months of the year, but I haven't reached the point of desperation yet. You'll know I've reached it if Lynne Cheney, Jamie Lee Curtis, Terrell Owens or any other recognizable celebrity-turned-children's-book-author appears on my list.

1. Upon the Altar of the Nation by Harry S. Stout (5.9)
2. The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde (8.1)
3. Flash for Freedom by George MacDonald Fraser (7.5)
4. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (7.4)
5. Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde (7.2)
6. Call Each River Jordan by Owen Parry (7.6)
7. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (8.2)
8. State of Denial by Bob Woodward (6.9)
9. Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor (8.0)
10. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (7.5)
11. American Gospel by Jon Meacham (6.4)

As you can see, I've been unhealthily obsessed with Jasper Fforde. I know I'm three years late to the bandwagon, but now that I've jumped aboard, I can't get enough of his Thursday Next series. His books are inventive, silly and a trip to read. If you aren't familiar with his work and want a good laugh, I would definitely recommend checking out The Eyre Affair to get a taste of his writing and a tour of the alternate universe he created.

About a month ago, I stumbled across a site called DailyLit. Essentially, it's a book-by-email service. Its working theory is that most people "spend hours each day reading email, but don't find the time to read books". Instead of trying to get you to spend less time with your inbox and more time with a good book, it simply send the book to your inbox.

DailyLit boasts a 200-title collection of public domain books. Each book is broken down into five-minute fragments. Currently, I'm subscribed to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Personal Memoirs of General U.S. Grant. The former is divided into 131 parts, while the latter is broken into 305 parts. Every morning, I receive a fragment from each.

It's a different way to enjoy a book. While it seems a bit ridiculous to stretch a book out over several months, it makes perfect sense for folks who don't have huge blocks of time to set aside for reading. And for those who have a few extra minutes and want to get through a book faster, DailyLit offers a link in each email to send them the next fragment. I'm sorry for sounding like a commercial, but I just felt the need to rave about the site.

I'm a chain book reader. It's true. I barely finish a book and I'm already starting the next. Sometimes, I don't even bother to use a new bookmark. It probably isn't a safe practice. Luckily, one can't catch a textually transmitted disease¹ from reused bookmarks... as far as we know. If that were the case, there would already be SaniRead dispensers installed in schools, libraries and bookstores across the country providing the public with hermetically sealed, hygienic bookmarks.

As other chain book readers know, the cheapest way to feed the book habit is to bum them off friends visit the public library. For most folks, having one library account is enough, but in a few extreme cases, belonging to only one library system isn't sufficient. Like shopaholics with credit cards from every major store they frequent (and one or two they don't), chain readers can't resist applying for library cards. If there is a public collection available to read, they want access to it.

Of course, it's more appealing to some chain book readers to actually possess their own private stash, which is why outfits like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are so dangerous. The only way they would be more dangerous is if they sold books in six or twelve-packs ("May I have one Twain twelve-pack, please?"). Or perhaps if they sold their wares in book machines strategically located at gas stations or in coffee shops. You just insert your credit card, pull the appropriate knob and a Mitch Albom novel would drop into the tray, ready for quick consumption.

The realization I'm a chain book reader came only this morning as I was getting my backpack ready for work. After I packed my lunch, I grabbed a book to read on the train. I was just about to toss it in when I noticed that I had but a few pages left to read. A shudder ran through me as the horrible image of finishing the book and having nothing else to read flashed across my mind. I quickly snatched a fresh book from my unread stack and dumped both in the backpack.

Chain book reading. It probably isn't the healthiest habit to have, but I hope it isn't one I kick anytime soon.

By the way, Terry Pratchett's newest book, Wintersmith, is due on shelves today. It's the third book in his Tiffany Aching series, an offshoot of his Discworld series aimed at younger folks. I'm not the book's target audience, but I'm still looking forward to reading it.

¹ If you coin a phrase and discover 220 other people have coined it before you, is it still clever? Darn, I didn't think so.

On Saturday, after nearly a month of sporadic reading, I finished Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a group biography about Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates.

Goodwin does an excellent job of weaving together the lives of her subjects. I also found her narrative style engaging and it was easy to follow the parallel timelines of the main "characters".

Of the four men, Chase was shown in the most negative light. He shined brightly in the beginning, but lost wattage as events unfolded. Eventually, the power games he played while Secretary of the Treasury (e.g. submitting resignation letters on multiple occasions) and his relentless quest for the presidency in 1864 would overshadow his good qualities. Perhaps, the only other man portrayed more negatively was General George McClellan, who led the Army of the Potomac early in the war and ran against Lincoln in 1864 as the Democratic nominee.

Bates and Seward received more even depictions. Goodwin made sure to balance their moments of weakness with their moments of greatness. By the end of the book, both came out favorably.

Obviously, Goodwin was most sympathetic to Lincoln. Considering the complete title of her book is Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, that didn't come as a surprise.

The book painted Lincoln as a man of immense patience and magnanimity, a man of great humor and an endless supply of anecdotes, a man who was slow to decide, but steadfast in his decisions and a man who had a remarkable sense of timing in matters where public sentiment was most critical. One wonders if he was truly this way, or if he only appears this way due to some historical "airbrushing".

With today's cynical attitude towards everything (especially heroes), it seem extremely easy to dismiss Goodwin's characterizations of Lincoln as exaggerations and to believe Lincoln was somehow less than she depicts him to be, but wouldn't it be nice if that cynicism was unfounded for a change and Lincoln turned out to be "all that" and maybe more?

It would be wonderful if somebody we esteemed as patient, magnanimous and wise were truly so. It would also be heartening if the people we seem to look up to (like actors, athletes and models) and the people we're expected to look up to (like historical figures and current world and religious leaders) were what they claimed or what they seemed. In other words, it would be nice if our heroes were real.

Okay, well, that was a bit of a birdwalk. Anyway, finishing this book puts my year-to-date total of completed reads at 33, five books shy of my book-a-week pace. The next four books are stacked and ready to go. They're also significantly shorter, so there's still hope I'll catch up.

This weekend, I

>helped my mom celebrate her birthday by taking her to Olive Garden for dinner on Friday. My parents have this thing for the OG, which I don't get, but don't question either because, well, it's their day, be it Mother's Day, Father's Day, their birthdays, their anniversary or any other day the family gets together. I suppose I also don't mind going because it brings back childhood memories. You see, the building Olive Garden occupies was once the home of two restaurants my folks would take us to many years ago: Coco's and Reuben's. We usually had breakfast or lunch at Coco's and dinner at Reuben's (not on the same day, mind you). Both restaurants closed in the eighties. Back then, I thought the timing was an extraordinary coincidence. Only when I was older would I grasp the concept of parent companies. After a few years, Coco's reappeared a block from its original location when Bob's Big Boy, another family favorite, closed.

>toddled around downtown Burlingame Saturday afternoon. Toddling is good fun, whether it be "walking at a leisurely pace" or "walking with short unsteady steps", though the latter is more likely than the former to attract unwanted attention from onlookers and possibly the police. Anyway, toddling affords one the opportunity to gaze into store windows, stop at cafes for coffee and sit at any number of benches to watch people or read.

>read Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy. I recently finished an extensive book about the moral history of the American Civil War and just began a lengthy book about Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet. I thought I would take a break from the laugh-a-minute reading and spend the weekend reading something shorter and more serious, which is why I selected a novel that follows Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary of Reading's Nursery Crimes Division as they investigate the murder of Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloyius Stuyvesant van Dumpty. If you like puns, fun with plot devices, parodies or general nonsense and need a good chuckle or groan, I'd highly recommend this book.

>contemplated hiking, but didn't because I couldn't make up my mind. Part of the problem is that I get bogged down with the possibilities. It's the whole too-many-choices-where-do-I-start predicament, which, by the way, is also known as "The Predicament Most Likely to Garner No Sympathy Whatsoever, so Shut Up and Choose Already". Big Basin, Big Sur and Forest of Nisene Marks are my top picks for hiking in the coming weeks. I'm also trying to narrow down the candidates for hikes starting from the Tioga Road when we return in Yosemite next month.

>watched the pilots of two new television shows on DVD. NBC and Netflix worked out a deal where folks could request a DVD containing the pilots of Studio 60 and Kidnapped. Kidnapped is a single-event drama in the same vein as Lost, 24, Prison Break and every third show scheduled to be on the air this season. I thought the pilot was strong, especially when it focused on Jeremy Sisto as the mercenary hired to find the kidnap victim, but it's difficult to see the writers maintaining the same quality and momentum through all twenty to twenty-four episodes. Studio 60 is Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes look at a sketch comedy television show similar to Saturday Night Live. I'm a fan of Matthew Perry and Sorkin's rapid and sarcastic dialogue (an underpinning of his The West Wing), so I liked it.

Beyond whether or not I liked the shows, I'm sure somebody is wondering why anyone would "waste" a DVD rental to watch two shows that could have been seen for free in a matter of weeks. While I recognize the silliness of it, I let curiosity and novelty get the better of me. To me, it was worth delaying the next movie in my queue by a few days to satisfy that curiosity rather than waiting a month to find out if I liked either show. Plus, a sneak peek of a TV show on DVD sounded like a new and oddly appealing concept. Next year, when every network is promoting their new crop of shows this way, I'm certain the freshness of it all will have worn off.

It's the last day of the month and I'm 390 pages away from the end of the book I'm reading currently. Since it doesn't contain a lot of pictures or graphs, I'm going to venture out on a limb (a short, sturdy limb) and predict that I'm not going to finish it tonight. That means I can share the list of books I read in July. This month, I completed five more books, which puts this year's total at 29.

1. Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser (7.4)
2. Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser (7.7)
3. Generation Me by Jean Twenge (8.1)
4. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (7.5)
5. The Life of David by Robert Pinsky (6.2)

1. Quicksilver by Neil Stephenson (6.1)
2. Jefferson's Second Revolution by Susan Dunn (7.3)
3. Flashman on the March by George MacDonald Fraser (7.8)
4. The Last Assassin by Barry Eisler (7.3)
5. Fantasyland by Sam Walker (8.2)

Of the five, The Last Assassin (TLA) was the quickest read and Quicksilver was the slowest. Measuring time in espresso drinks, I was able to finish TLA in the time it took to drink two grande lattes, which isn't a knock, but a credit to the book considering it took sixty venti lattes to complete Quicksilver.

TLA is a great cafe read. Without revealing too much, I was glad to see Eisler's assassin return to his roots and make at least one death look like a result of natural causes, but I was sad to see one of my favorite characters pass away.

Jefferson's Second Revolution focused on the contentious Election of 1800 that pitted John Adams against Thomas Jefferson and resulted in the first peaceful transfer of power in history. I use peaceful in the narrowest sense of the word. Federalists and Republicans, the emerging parties of the day, waged a mighty war of words in the papers and in Congress that shook the very foundation of the Constitution, but they didn't actually kill one another.

I discovered Flashman on the March because Terry Pratchett mentioned that Fraser was one of his favorite authors. I actually read the last book in the series first and recently went back to the beginning. I just finished the first two books in the collection.

The book I most highly recommend is Fantasyland. In 2004, Sam Walker, a sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal, finagled his way into Tout Wars, one of the nation's elite rotisserie baseball leagues. What starts as an experiment soon becomes an obsession. To help him win, he hires a crack research team (including a NASA scientist and a psychic) and travels to ballpark locker rooms around the country to get the inside scoop and encourage "his" players. The book is infused with humor and is a great summer read for anybody who loves baseball.

I attended Barry Eisler's book release at Kepler's in Menlo Park last Thursday. The Last Assassin is the fifth book in his six-book John Rain series. I wasn't going to mention it until I finished reading the novel, but with a stack of unread library books accumulating dust (and potential late fees) at home, I have no idea when that will be. June would be nice. July is more likely.

One reason why the books remain unread is that I watched two baseball movies on Friday and Saturday. The first was Eight Men Out, a film about the Black Sox scandal where players from the unstoppable Chicago White Sox took money from gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series. The second was Billy Crystal's 61*, the story of Roger Maris' and Mickey Mantle's 1961 pursuit of Babe Ruth's single season home run record. I want to write more about both films, but feel rather pressed for time now, so I'll just say I enjoyed them.

Another reason I didn't read is that I saw X-Men: The Last Stand on Sunday. I went in with high hopes, but came out rather disappointed. From the previews, I thought the film had potential. A government-funded laboratory announces a "cure" for the mutant gene. At the same time, Jean Grey (a.k.a. The Phoenix) returns. What happens next? Well, to me, what happened next was a muddled mess. If the two plotlines were dance partners, they were stepping all over each other's toes. They didn't move well together and actually seemed to hinder one another. Certain elements that worked in the previous installments seemed diluted in this one: the rivalry between Charles Xavier and Magneto, the love triangle involving Jean Grey, Cyclops and Wolverine. Even the tension between the government and mutants seemed watered down. And at times, it felt as though events unfolded a specific way, not for the sake of the story, but for the sake of showing off mutant abilities.

I thought I would take a minute to list the books I read in March and April. I also thought I would use the same minute to rate them on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is "Help! My eyes! My eyes!!" and 10 is "I never ever want to stop reading this book. Never. Ever!" I could have said I would score them on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is bad and 10 is good, but that would make sense and, well, why would I want to make that? I would recommend anything rated 6.5 or greater.

• Had Enough? by James Carville (6.3)
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (7.0)
• Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (8.1)
• A Preface to Paradise Lost by C.S. Lewis (6.0)
• Jingo by Terry Pratchett (8.5)
• Wedding of the Waters by Peter L. Bernstein (7.2)
• Misunderstimated by Bill Sammon (3.5)
• The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett (8.0)

As you might notice, I've resumed my Pratchett habit. I know of no more entertaining way to read about discrimination, racism, nationalism (or jingoism), crime, war (the worst crime of all) and werewolves than to read a Discworld novel.

For over two weeks, I've been trying to get through Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. The book is over 900 pages long and is the first of three in Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. (I say this not to brag, but to excuse my slowness.) It's a piece of historical fiction set in late 17th-century England. The first quarter of it focuses on Daniel Waterhouse, a member of the Royal Society, who returns to England from Boston to try and settle a dispute between Isaac Newtown and Gottfried Leibniz over which of the two men invented calculus first. This book is like quicksand. It isn't a quick read, but I'm hopelessly drawn in and the only way to escape is to finish it.

Test Question: What was the significance of the Erie Canal?
Calvin's Response: In the cosmic sense, probably nil.
Calvin: We "big picture" people rarely become historians.

When I read this morning's Calvin and Hobbes (originally published on this day, eleven years ago), I thought somebody was playing a practical joke on me because I just happened to finish reading a book about the Erie Canal late last night. Coincidence? I don't think so. Obviously, Bill Watterson drew the strip knowing that Peter L. Bernstein would write Wedding of the Waters ten years later and that I would come across the book at the library a year after that, read it and complete it this week.

The construction of the original Erie Canal in New York took eight years and seven million dollars to complete. The 363-mile manmade waterway connected the Hudson River with Lake Erie (and the Mississippi River beyond that). When it opened in 1825, it not only revolutionized New York's economy, but America's economy as well. It was a catalyst for westward expansion and international trade. Considering the tools and technology available at the time, the Erie Canal was an engineering marvel and is one of the most impressive public works projects in American history.

I remember learning about the Erie Canal in the fifth grade. The memory is quite clear because I remember the teacher playing the piano and having us sing an old folk song called "Low Bridge, Everybody Down". As I recall, the teacher was very fond of playing the piano and increasing our appreciation of music. Her classroom must have been one of the few in the school that actually had an instrument in it. Anyway, the first verse was always my favorite part of the song.

I've got a mule, and her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
She's a good ol' worker an' a good ol' pal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
We've hauled some barges in our day,
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay,
And we know every inch of the way
From Albany to Buffalo.

The hills are so green. They are a sight I could admire for hours, maybe even for days. I often wish they would stay green throughout the year. I imagine it won't be long before they are brown once more.

Okay, I just spent half of my train ride (a.k.a. writing time) staring at the hills, when what I meant to do was recount some of the highlights of this three-day weekend.

This weekend, I

> finished The Historian. Because of this lengthy book, I fell off of my book-a-week pace, but it was worth it. The story involved many train rides across Europe and visits to old monasteries and libraries. It was an enjoyable piece of historical fiction that blended the Dracula of history (Vlad Tepes III or Vlad the Impaler) with the Dracula of myth (Stoker's vampire). I am a sucker for books with maps, so I was hooked once I spied the map of Cold War Europe on the inside cover.

> beheld, but did not hold a twenty-six-hour-old baby. As babies go, she is tiny and extremely cute. Of course, now that she's four times as old as when I first saw her, I wonder how much she's grown. While she appeared alert and observant in between her naps, I doubt she remembers who I am. Such is my life.

> watched the pilot of MacGyver on DVD. When it premiered on television, back in 1985, I thought it was one of the coolest shows on the air. Twenty-one years later, it seems a little more corny than cool, but I got a good laugh from watching it. If one were to watch it with a critical eye, one could point out many flaws, but that would ruin the fun of the show.

Random bit of trivia: The baby and MacGyver were both born on March 23rd.

Another random bit of trivia: Her parents did not name her Angus. How corny cool would that have been if they had?

> ran three miles. This is only significant because I have been extremely bad about running. It had been quite a while since I last run three miles and my legs are feeling it today. All it means is that I need to do it more often and regain some of that lost endurance.

• The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner/Andrew Porter
• C.S. Lewis: A Biography by A.N. Wilson
• Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton
• Shopgirl by Steve Martin
• The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
• The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis
• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
• The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

It took an eternity a while, but I finally finished reading Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton. It was a humbling experience. I never felt more ignorant about mythology, geography and the English language in my life. The last book to make me feel that inadequate was Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.

In the edition I read, the translator, Christopher Ricks, included an abundance of footnotes at the bottom of every page to assist readers with Milton's references and use of words. They were initially helpful, but eventually annoying.

Through the first few books, I tried to read them as I would any footnote. Each time I saw an italicized superscripted number, I would jump out of the flow of the poem, read the corresponding footnote, frantically search for where I left off and jump back in. I soon grew tired of this and went with an alternate strategy, which mainly involved reading the entire page of poetry before reading all of the footnotes. I don't know if this decreased my understanding of the writing, but it definitely increased my enjoyment of it.

I still find it a tad bizarre that a three-hundred-year-old book, written in English, would require translation into English. It makes me wonder how future translations of current books will look three hundred years from now. I worry that scholars of the future will translate such serials as Sweet Valley High and Star Trek because historians in 2406, searching through the ruins of the great library of Amazon.com (somewhere in ancient Seattle), will mistakenly label them as classics and attribute them to the most prominent American novelists of our time, Pamela Anderson and William Shatner, who, due to erroneous conclusions, will also receive credit for writing a multitude of plays including Macbeth, Death of a Salesman and Rent.

Although it sometimes felt more like required reading than reading for leisure, I'm glad I experienced Milton. And should I forget, I have Philip Pullman to thank. If he had not credited Paradise Lost as a major source of inspiration for his trilogy, I would have foolishly avoided Milton completely.

By the way, the book's cover art was a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (of whom I a fan) called The Fall of the Rebel Angels. I only mention this so that it's recorded somewhere that I can easily find because there will be a day when I'll want to recall it and will inevitably draw a blank.

The same week that I finished Milton, I also began and finished two novellas by Steve Martin - Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company. The transition from Milton to Martin was tremendous, but I figured I deserved some lighter fare and some laughter after Milton's less-than-hilarious epic. Of Martin's two books, I liked Pleasure better. It had a stronger plot, a more likable character, better pacing and more humor than Shopgirl.

This weekend, I:

> finished watching Gettysburg. This was a big feat only because the movie was over four hours long. The film, based on Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels, which I've yet to read, was made in the early nineties and starred Martin Sheen (General Lee), Tom Berenger (General Longstreet), Sam Elliot (General Buford) and Jeff Daniels (Colonel Chamberlain).

Shot on location at Gettysburg National Military Park, it featured thousands of Civil War re-enactors and dozens of artillery pieces. Between relatively bloodless battle scenes, I felt like I was watching a Greek drama with heroes delivering emotional monologues or philosophizing on the battlefield. That element of the movie I can forgive only because the film strove for and achieved authenticity in every other respect, especially when it came to facial hair.

Of the many men waxing poetic, Buford moved me the most. An excerpt of his "speech", as he stood on the outskirts of town the day before the battle and observed the Confederates approaching, is at the end of this entry.

> watched part of Super Bowl XL. I missed the first half, but caught the half-time show and most of the second half. With no real interest in either team, it didn't matter to me if Seattle or Pittsburgh won. Because I'll soon forget, Pittsburgh prevailed 21-10 and the quarterbacks were Hasselbeck (Seahawks) and Roethlisberger (Steelers).

The Rolling Stones were the much-hyped half-time performers. The most impressive thing about their act was the stage, which was in the shape of their logo (the big lips with the big tongue hanging out) and surrounded by hundreds of screaming fans. During their first song, "Start Me Up", the tongue rippled until it finally fell away to reveal more screaming fans underneath.

I've never been much of a Stones fan. I'm sure they are great musicians and performers, but I just don't find them or their songs very likable. Considering that football's biggest event was happening in Detroit, I would have rather listened to the sounds of Motown.

The best commercial I saw was a MasterCard spot featuring Richard Dean Anderson reprising his role as (Angus) MacGyver. The closing scene of him at the grocery store buying tube socks, paper clips and chewing gum and stuffing them in his pockets was classic.

> finished reading C.S. Lewis: A Biography by A.N. Wilson. I read this book because of my renewed interest in the author since the release of the Narnia movie.

The film rekindled the battle between those who wish to deify Lewis and those who wish to demonize him. Instead of listening to either side, I hunted for an unbiased biography. Wilson presents Lewis in a fair light, revealing his strengths and weaknesses, providing the reader with a realistic picture of the man.

Lewis was a brilliant literary critic whose theological writings were most powerful and accessible when rooted in allegory and imagination. At the same time, he was an inferior poet (his first professional aspiration) and philosopher (his second) who could see the talent of others, but was blind to his own.

The most surprising thing I learned about Lewis was his thirty-plus-year relationship with a woman twenty-seven years his senior, who he claimed was his adopted mother, but was most likely his lover. My favorite (and probably the most famous) story is the one concerning Lewis' late night walk through Oxford with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, which eventually led to the writer's conversion to Christianity.

> finished reading Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner (translated by Andrew Porter). One of Lewis' childhood influences was Wagner, specifically his Ring operas, which were inspired by Nordic and Germanic mythology. Normally, I actively avoid anything related to opera, but once I read the basic storyline, my curiosity led me to read the English translation of the German libretto (in book form) and listen to the first two operas (Das Rheingold and Die Walk�re) in the four-opera cycle.

Although I'm still not a fan of operatic singing, I must admit that Wagner has me hooked. I'm blown away by his prodigious array of leitmotifs to represent characters, places and themes. I'm also taken with his effective, if sometimes excessive, use of alliteration (Stabreim), which I learned from one of the essays was a very old German form of rhyming.

While I was intrigued by the story's underlying mythology, I was most struck by some of the similarities between it and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien didn't come anywhere close to plagiarizing Wagner, but one can tell that he was aware and likely influenced by the German composer. With a quick search, I was able to find a great New Yorker article comparing the two sagas.

"Meade will finally attack, if he can coordinate the army. Straight up the hillside, out in the open... in that gorgeous field of fire. We will charge valiantly and be butchered valiantly. And afterward, men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chests... and say what a brave charge it was. Devin, I've led a soldier's life... and I've never seen anything as brutally clear as this. It's as if I can actually see the blue troops in one long bloody moment... going up the long slope to the stony top... as if it were already done... and already a memory. An odd, set... stony quality to it. As if tomorrow has already happened and there's nothing you can do about it"
- Sam Elliot as Brigadier General John Buford

Last Friday, I finished my third book of the year, Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. She packs this quick and enjoyable read with information, anecdotes and asides about her obsession with assassinated presidents and their assassins that inspired her "vacation".

Because we're in the middle of Blog Sweeps Week, here is a simple game that you (or your inner-child, age five and up) can play. I'll call it The President-Assassin Matchmaker, primarily because I can't think of a cute or clever name for it. Actually, with the number of times I've used the word assassin, this entry will probably pop up on some federal agency's radar, so it might be better to call this Match the Bunny Rabbit. The answers are at the end of this entry.

A. Abraham Lincoln (1865)
B. James Garfield (1881)
C. William McKinley (1901)
D. John F Kennedy (1963) [not in the book, but added anyway]

1. Leon Czolgosz
2. Charles Guiteau
3. Lee Harvey Oswald
4. John Wilkes Booth

From her writing, one can tell that Vowell is enthusiastic about her subject, unabashedly tossing in facts and details that typical people would discard as extraneous trivia, but fellow enthusiasts and those with any sense of curiosity would happily soak up like a sponge. She has a way of blending her knowledge of history with humor and pop culture references that I find appealing.

1. Stephen Sondheim wrote a musical called Assassins. It ran from December 1990 to February 1991. I can only imagine how disturbing it would be to watch actors portraying presidential assassins sing and dance. Would I want to see it? I don't think so, unless I was in one morbid mood.
2. Vowell loves plaques. I must admit to being fond of them, too. I like that they kindly remind us that an important event transpired or a significant building once stood on the very spot where we're standing. Whenever I spot one, I can't help but stop and read it. Plaques are more than markers. They're time traveling devices. I know it's dorky, but maybe one day I'll make a Top 5 list of favorite plaques.
3. The Robert Todd Lincoln (a.k.a. Angel of Death) Link. Lincoln's son stood at his father's deathbed, witnessed Garfield's assassination as his Secretary of War and detrained at the station where McKinley was shot only moments before. If I were a president back then and could connect the dots, I would make sure the man stayed as far away from me as possible.
4. The Story of Theodore Roosevelt's Assassination Attempt. His would-be assassin shot him at close range, but a fortuitously placed steel eyeglass case and folded campaign speech in his chest pocket slowed the bullet. He defiantly declared, "You see, it takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose." He then went on to deliver the speech before rushing to the hospital to remove the bullet.
5. Vowell's religion is American democracy. In the book, she states that she doesn't believe in God, but she believes in our nation's system of government. She doesn't worship at any church, but regularly visits the Lincoln Memorial. Her journey to various historic sites isn't a road trip, but a pilgrimage. And she frankly states that our latest president has shaken her faith.

As a tangent from that last fun fact, I never really equated the belief in the principles of one's country with the belief in the principles of one's religion, but I can see the similarities. I know it's going to sound weird, but I find the parallels fun to think about. It tickles my brain to view our country in terms of devout or non-practicing Americans and our political parties as denominations of the same faith. In times of partisanship (or denominational division), as was evident during last night's State of the Union address, it would be nice if those in the room and those of us at home could refer back to a (yet-to-be-written) book called Mere Democracy. It would be akin to C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and would "explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians Americans at all times."

As a final aside, it's apparently old news, but I only found out last night, from watching The Tonight Show, that Harrison Ford is currently shooting a historical drama about the capture of John Wilkes Booth. It's called Manhunt and is slated for release in 2007. After reading this book, I can't wait to see the movie, but I have a feeling that Vowell can't wait to see it even more than I do.

Answers (if they could be upside-down, they would be): A � 4. B - 2. C - 1. D - 3.