2010 Reading List

From the archive:

Since 2008 I've kept track of the books I've read and I'm happy to report that in 2010 I read 41 books, which is a substantial jump from the 25 in 2009 and the 29 in 2008.  I attribute the increase to the amount of business travel I did this year.  All the travel led to a lot of time sitting in the airport, the airplane, and the hotel in the evening where I could get some reading done.

And before we get to the books... here's a breakdown I did because I'm a nerd:

• 26 Fiction 15 Non-Fiction
• 29 different Authors (8 - Kage Baker, 4 David Mitchell, 2 Stephen King, 2 Joe Hill)
• Author Nationality Breakdown: 31 American, 5 English (4 David Mitchell, 1 Jacobs), 1 Irish (Murray), 1 Canadian (Sawyer), 1 Lebanese (Talib), 1 Zimbabwe/Rhodesian (Rogers), 1 Russia (Petrushevskaya, which was also the only translated book I read)
• 10 books by women, although 8 were by Kage Baker (Julie Klausner and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya were the other two)
• Publish Date skewed very recent, with 14 published in 2010, 6 in 2009, 1 in 2008, 6 in 2007, 4 in 2006, 1 2005, and 2 in 2004.  The rest was 2 in 1999 and 1 each in 2001, 2000, 1997, 1990, and 1969 (the outlier here being Slaughterhouse-Five by  Kurt Vonnegut

Goals for Next Year: Seek more diversity.  More international, more women, more minorities.  Also, maybe try and read another classic or two.

Best Fiction of the Year: Despite a late charge from Paul Murray's Skippy Dies, the fiction book that captivated my imagination and sent me on a mad dash to read everything the author has written was David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.  The book has six different stories that are nested within each other.  For example, the 1st story is in the form of a journal article that the protagonist of the 2nd story comes across.  The book is structured so that each part is abruptly stopped and you move to the second story and so on and then it picks up on the other side (I know this is confusing but  it goes 1,2,3,4,5,6,5,4,3,2,1 and when you are reading it is very fluid and totally awesome... still confused Wiki does a better job than me explaining it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_%28novel%29).  I'd recommend this book to almost anyone who enjoys a good book, with the exception of people who only like thrillers or who have short attention spans.

Best Nonfiction of the Year: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
What happened to the Zeitoun family during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is both horrifying and fascinating. Eggers provides an exceptionally well written book detailing Zeitoun's efforts to help his neighbors and his "I can't believe this happened in America" ordeal after being arrested for looting.

This book truly illustrates how tenuous civil society is and how it can go to hell in a heartbeat. However, despite my empathy towards Zeitoun, I can also understand the perspective of the individuals who arrested him. The city was under a mandatory evacuation and Zeitoun was found with several other individuals, one who had 10,000 of cash on him and another (Ronnie) who may have indeed been involved in some looting. This in no way excuses the treatment Zeitoun was subjected to during his incarceration. An American citizen should never be treated like that. And it is a testament to Zeitoun's strength and character that he decided to remain in New Orleans and rebuild after this ordeal.

Also, Eggers points out the fact that while individuals were still stranded on rooftops and in their home surrounded by water, a prison was being constructed, a prison equipped with portable toilets and MREs, only a few blocks from the desperate scene at the convention center and Superdome. It's clear that, as President Bush said, the system failed New Orleans at every level of government.

Worst Fiction of the Year:
When I first heard the title of this book I thought for sure it would be great. Who isn't instantly drawn to a book that has "There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby" as a title? Then I read some reviews and I was even more excited.

Sigh.

Maybe I was expecting too much, but I was let down. Many of the stories seemed to be VERY similar. I would say 75% of the stories had the same basic twist. The titular story was a big letdown. There were a few stories toward the end in the Requiems section that were okay, but I think they stood out because some of the others weren't as great. Perhaps something was lost in translation, but I didn't quite get was the fuss was about for this one. Other than "The Black Coat" all the stories were pretty forgettable.

Worst Non-Fiction of the Year:
I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated by Julie Klausner

This book was an easy read. However, it wasn't as funny as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it was very hard to feel anything other than pity for the author, who despite her professed dislike of Midwestern values, seems in constant search of them as she is crushed by guy after guy after guy. The entire book consists of her meeting some guy, explaining how horrible the guy treated her on their first "maybe" date, sleeping with him anyway, and then being crushed when the guy dumps her. So by the time page 200 rolls around and she describes meeting a guy, who on their very first meal together, discusses how he just ended a relationship with a woman who had an abortion after he got her pregnant and how he was once arrested on charges of DUI, Grand Theft Auto, and Kidnapping, you know how it is going to play out. At this point any sane person would be running away as fast as they could. But as I had read the previous 200 pages I knew what Ms. Klausner would be doing... and yup, she provides a nice description of how she ended up teabagging the guy.

I was expecting a fun read about horrible relationships and I got that...sort of. But I didn't understand how someone could keep making the same mistake over and over and over. Also, I have no problem with the sexual escapades, live it up! But, if you know how horrible the guys are then why get depressed when after sex they don't call, they have another girlfriend, etc. etc.

Finally at the end of the book we get a "I met a guy who was married and instead of banging him I turned him down, look at how grown up I am" moment. But really... too little too late. Ms. Klausner proclaims "What I Learned!" I'm not sure I know what she learned, and I don't think she knows either.

Best New Find: Kage Baker
One of the best surprises of this year was a great little story in the Wizards anthology by Kage Baker, The Ruby Incomparable. I found this tale of the daughter of an evil overlord and his empathic do-gooder wife to be well told, original, and fascinating. In fact, I decided I needed more Kage Baker and quickly devoured the 8 books in her Company series.  Though parts of the Company series were not my favorite, overall the entire concept of a Company developing time travel and creating immortal cyborgs to save items of historical importance that would otherwise be lost (think Roman libraries before the barbarian invasions etc.) was fascinating and obviously I couldn't get enough.  It was sad to find out Baker had died of pancreatic cancer earlier this year.

Complete List(Books in bold I rated as 5 Stars on Goodreads, Books in Italics are books I wouldn't recommend to anyone):

1. The Magicians by Lev Grossman 1/2/10
2. The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe by Douglas Rogers 1/8/10
3. Strange Maps: An Atlas of Catographic Curiosities by Frank Jacobs 1/10/10
4. There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya 1/15/10
5. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 1/25/10
6. The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire by Joe Jackson 2/16/10
7. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin 2/21/10
8. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks 2/28/10
9. Horns by Joe Hill 3/9/10
10. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill 3/18/10
11. The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ is Wrong by David Shenk 3/31/10
12. Next by James Hynes 4/4/10
13. Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut 4/16/10
14. I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated by Julie Klausner 4/19/10
15. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell 5/16/10
16. Blockade Billy by Stephen King 6/3/10
17. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism by Robert Richardson 6/29/10
18. Stumbling on Wins: Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports by David Berri & Martin Schmidt 6/29/30
19. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers 6/30/10
20. Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner by Dean Karnazes 7/5/10
21. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell 7/20/10
22. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell 8/7/10
23. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 8/19/10
24. In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker 9/1/10
25. Sky Coyote by Kage Baker 9/2/10
26. Mendoza in Hollywood by Kage Bake 9/11/10
27. The Graveyard Game by Kage Baker 9/20/10
28. The Life of the World to Come by Kage Baker 10/2/10
29. Invasions by Eugene Izzi 10/7/10
30. The Children of the Company by Kage Baker 10/14/10
31. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson 10/21/10
32. The Machine's Child by Kage Baker 10/28/10
33. Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir by Dave Mustaine with Joe Layden 10/31/10
34. Wizards: Magical Tales From the Masters of Modern Fantasy edited by Jack Dann 11/10/10
35. How to Live Safely in a Science Ficitonal Universe by Charles Yu 11/12/10
36. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande 11/16/10
37. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King 11/20/10
38. The Sons of Heaven by Kage Baker 12/3/10
39. Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer 12/6/10
40. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray 12/24/10
41. FreeDarko Presents: The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History by Bethlehem Shoals et al. 12/27/10

And if anyone actually made it all the way down here I'd love to have your recommendations for what I should check out in 2011.  And I'd be happy to expand on any of the books in the list if you are on the fence about giving it a shot.

The Quest for Silence

A recently published study notes that one of the things people value most about libraries are the quiet space they provide. Having a quiet safe space to read or just think was viewed as more important than research resources and internet access. It was only after reading this study that I really considered how much I too value quiet.

Growing up, I was always trying to find a quiet place to continue my adventures in Narnia, to help Encyclopedia Brown get his man, or to keep Wayside School from falling down. I remember sneaking out of the house on cold crisp days, laying in the backseat of my parent's car, kept warm by the sun shining through the windows. On warmer days I would just head off into the woods with a book in my hand. I found a perfect place next to a very small stream underneath several large trees. I built a bridge over the stream and I would sit on it listening to the water run beneath me as I turned page after page. At night, I would lay in the bathtub long after the water had grown cold getting one last chapter in, periodically answering my Mother's knock on the door, assuring her that I had not drowned. I loved spending time with my extended family over the holidays, but whenever we visited Mamaw's I would bring a book along. As the evening hours crept in I would sneak to the back of the house and make my way upstairs to continue my reading.

Perhaps this love of quiet places explains my fascination with Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain, a book about a boy who escapes from his eight brothers and sisters to live in the wilderness of Upper State New York. If I could find a hollowed out tree like Sam Gribley, I thought, I bet I could get some reading done. Every time my mother took my sister and I to the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History I tried to figure out how I could live there like Claudia Kincaid did in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. How nice and quiet it would be at night.

I remember waking up by myself in the house one day during summer vacation. I took a book outside on the porch and just sat and listened to the quiet. It was so quiet I felt like I might be the only person left in the worldI always thought it would be cool to be in this guy's shoes, especially as I have 20/20 vision.. It was perfect.

Nowadays my house is filled with the screams and laughter of two perfect little children. I can't begin to describe the joy they have brought to my life. And yet, I think I might be overdue for a trip to the library.

So Much for My Happy Ending

DISCLAIMER: This post discusses key plot points of Into the Woods (the musical), Twin Peaks (the tv show), The Bourne Supremacy (the movie), and the following novels: Max Barry's Lexicon, Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady, and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. If you don't want any of these spoiled I would probably skip this post.

One of my favorite musicals is Into the Woods, a fairy tale mash-up in which JackFrom Jack and the Beanstalk., Cinderella, Rapunzel, a Baker and his wife, and even the Witch find their happy ending before intermission. The Baker and his wife are able to break the curse the Witch placed upon their home and conceive a child. Cinderella goes to the festival and marries Prince Charming. Jack becomes rich beyond his wildest dreams. The Witch’s youth and beauty are restored.

But despite all the hilarity and good times in Act I, Into the Woods is my favorite musical because Act II shows what happens after Happily Ever After. The wife of the giant Jack slew follows him down the beanstalk and begins wreaking havoc. The Baker’s wife is seduced by a straying Prince Charming. The latter abandons Cinderella (he was raised to be charming, not sincere) and the former is killed by the Giant. Jack’s mother is killed. In other words, shit gets realAct II starts with the characters singing a song entitled So Happy, which ends abruptly when the giant's wife starts raising hell. The song can be found here. Shit gets real at 1:58..

My wife loves Act I and wants to leave at Intermission. I love Act I, but I have to admit I’m always anxiously awaiting the carnage that awaits in Act II. For whatever reason, the unhappy ending is what seems most powerful to me. The stories that resonate with me are the ones that are not wrapped up in a nice tidy bow at the end. I don’t want the star-crossed lovers to overcome the obstacles placed in their way and live happily ever after. I want Newland Archer, sitting on the park bench looking up at Madame Olenska’s apartment unable to knock on her door. I want Agent Cooper slamming his head into bathroom mirror, possessed by the evil demon BOB. I want Isabel Archer getting on that train and heading back to her son of a bitch husband. Endings like this just seem to have a greater impact on me. They have more emotional kick. I think about them long after I've finished reading them. They feel more real.

Which bring me Max Barry’s Lexicon. The book is one helluva ride. The first chapter starts with two guys kidnapping a man named Wil and the reader has absolutely no idea what is going on. The next chapter focuses on a sixteen year old girl named Emily who is recruited to join a special schoolLike Hogwarts or Xavier Institute For Higher Learning but this school teaches kids how to use special words to persuade people to do almost anything they tell them to do.. Wil and Emily’s stories continue to alternate chapters and part of the fun is figuring out just how their stories relate. When I realized that Emily was the bad guy hunting down Wil I was blown away. I felt it was an awesome choice for Barry to make. Instead of retelling Harry Potter’s story he was giving us Voldemort’s origin. But then it was all a lie. Emily had unwillingly been under the control of Stock Villain #1 (creepy old man who wants to remake the world in his image). Ugh. Then I thought Barry salvaged it by having Emily sacrifice herself by persuading Wil to shoot her to save the worldIt’s complicated, just roll with me here.. That’s a powerful ending right there.

Then I turned the page. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Somehow Emily survived (Wil probably just shot her in the shoulder through and through) and they are currently living happily ever after. Booo! I hope all you happy ending lovers are pleased. Just know that when Barry writes the inevitable sequel I will be rooting for Wil to get waxed Bourne Supremacy Style in the first chapter so Emily can spend the next 400 pages following her current prime directive: KILL EVERYONELike I said, it’s complicated..

Book Riot Quarterly

One of my favorite reading sites, Book Riot, has a new service where every quarter they mail you a box of bookish goodies. In their words: “The theme of our mailings is The Reading Life. Being a reader is about loving books, but it’s also about a lot more than books. Each of our boxes will contain an awesome book and a bunch of other bookish stuff we love, and that we think you’ll love too.”

My first thought was SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! My second thought was, The Reading Life? That’s a pretty broad theme. So I decided I’d take a crack at some themes that will more than likely not make Book Riot’s Cut.

David GilmourGilmour, a novelist and visiting lecturer at the University of Toronto, recently set the Internet on fire by stating that he was "not interested in teaching books by women.". Please don't confuse him with the Pink Floyd guitarist. Grab Bag

- An advanced reader’s copy of Gilmour’s new book, Fantastic Female Authors and Where to Find Them: A Guided Tour of Virginia Woolf’s House. BJOD Press. 11 pgs.

- A one year membership to G.R.O.S.S.(Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS). Tree house access and free bumper sticker included.

-A one size fits all Read Like it’s 1799 t-shirt.

-An excerpt from Gilmour’s upcoming memoir, Won’t Get Fooled Again: How George Eliot Broke my Heart. BJOD Press. 967 pgs.

Book Riot Potpourri

- Start Here Vol. 5507Out Winter Quarter 2087. In the meantime click here to buy Start Here Volume 1.: Just when you thought we were out of authors. Featuring chapters on

• Christie Sims and Alara Branwen: “I’d recommend starting with Taken by the Pterodactyl. When you go Jurassic you definitely want to start small and work your way up. You can’t just walk into a prehistoric jungle and try and tame the T-Rex if you know what I mean” - Rebecca Schinsky

• E.L. James: “Yes everyone thought I was trolling the Internet when I added 50 Shades to my Well Read list. But you just can’t beat paring 50 Shades Freed with a nice bottle of Red Satin50 Shades themed wine is a real and non-ironic thing. I double dog dare you to google it.. If Johann Thorsson lets you use his bathtub so much the better” – Jeff O’Neal

-Amanda Nelson’s entire animated gif collection (comes formatted on a 3 Yottabyte hard drive).

-Exclusive A Good Day To Read Hard T-Shirt. Back reads “And Alexander wept for there were no more books to conquer”.

Blue Marble Books

This past Saturday my wife and I took our two year old son and eleven month old daughter to Blue Marble Books in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. I have very fond memories of my mother taking my sister and I to Blue Marble when we were kids so I was excited to share the same experience with my kids. I also couldn’t wait for my son to see one of Blue Marble’s main attractions: a room made to look exactly like the room in Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon.

I have to admit I was worried that the book store wouldn’t live up to my childhood memories but I’m happy to report it was even greater than I remembered. The minute we walked in the door my son’s eyes lit up, he yelled, “BOOKS!”, and sprinted to the first rack of books he saw. Before we started browsing the books I asked the owner, Peter Moore, to direct us to the Goodnight Moon room. Mr. Moore was kind enough to run upstairs and move some furniture (earlier in the day there was a book signing in the Goodnight Moon room) to get the room ready. My son loved it! We sat and read Goodnight Moon while he ran around the room pointing out all the objects. “Daddy! Mush!”. We also played one of our favorite games: finding the mouse that moves around the room (today he was sitting on the fire place).

After we finished Goodnight Moon we headed back downstairs. Both kids immediately keyed in on this:

My son loves trains and his little sister loves whatever he is playing with so they immediately set to work shunting trucks and hauling freight with Thomas and his friends.

Meanwhile my wife and I started looking around, reliving our childhoods. There was an entire section devoted to Eric Carle, and when I saw this Brown Bear Brown Bear puzzle I knew my son (and his Daddy) had to have it.

I turned, immediately found an entire side of a spinning rack devoted to books about trains, and started sorting through to find the perfect train storyWhich ended up being Patricia Hubbell's Trains: Steaming! Pulling! Huffing! mainly because it has a caboose with a moose. Nothing beats a moose in a caboose in my son's eyes. . On the other side of the store my wife was mowing through the Berenstain Bears section. We picked up The Birds, The Bees, and the Berenstain Bears just in case we decide to have Baby #3 and also added The Messy Room, which was somehow missing from the set of Berenstain Bears books from my childhood we have. This version of The Messy Room was new and improved! It had stickers! I was immediately filled with a jealous rage. Messy Room stickers would have been the bomb digity.

Next, my wife and I hit the Halloween section, trying to add to our existing Halloween books. We settled on I’m the Scariest Thing in the Castle a tale of a vampire bat who might not be as scary as he thinks he is and You Are My Little Pumpkin Pie which is supposed to be a sweet tale comparing children to standard fall food fare, but contains creepy lines like “You are so delicious – The star of any feast”.

At this point my wife decided to try and find some books for our daughter that had strong female characters. She said she wanted a book where our daughter could be the hero instead of a damsel in distress. Mr. Moore overheard and said, “I have just the book” and handed us The Paper Bag Princess, a story of a Princess whose castle is burned down by a dragon who also abducts her prince. The Princess outsmarts the dragon and saves the Prince, only to be chastised for her lack of fashion (as the dragon had burned up all her clothes). The Princess then proceeds to lay the smackdown on Prince Ronald: “Your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat. You look like a real prince, but you are a bum”When I read this part to my son he turns, points to me, and says "Daddy - Bum!" Not cool son. Not cool. and instead of marrying him she skips off happily into the sunset. Well done Mr. Moore. We also added Michelle Sinclair Colman’s Not that Tutu – the story of a girl who refuses to take off her favorite piece of clothing.

Finally, since my son is really into space and astronauts right now, I asked Mr. Moore if he had any books about space. He led me to an entire shelf filled with space books. After flipping through them I came across Brian Floca’s Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11. My son absolutely loves watching Saturn V rocket launches on youtubeWe've watched this video approximately 10,000 times. and this book does a great job illustrating the entire Apollo 11 mission. The countdown sequence is particularly well done and my son’s face just brims with excitement as the countdown starts and you can just feel his anticipation to see the rocket liftoff on the next page. This book is not only perfectly illustrated but also historically accurate. Everything the Apollo 11 astronauts did and said is there. The book covers how Armstrong had to search and search for an appropriate landing site and almost ran out of fuel. It describes all the stages of the Saturn V as well as both the Columbia and the Eagle. I can’t wait to find more non-fiction children’s books like this oneAdult Apollo 11 fans should give Craig Nelson's Rocket Men a try.. I bet Mr. Moore has a recommendation.

When it came time to checkout and we had to leave Blue Marble (and its awesome train table) my son started to melt down. Once again Mr. Moore came to the rescue. Before you could blink he had calmed my son down with some stickers and we were on our way, our wallets lighter but our memories fuller.

The Playroom Mural

As you can see with the new header, I'm finally starting to make this blog look a little nicer. It took awhile to implement the functionalityGetting the sidenotes to work in blogger was not fun. and I have been hesitant to mess with the look for fear of messing up the formatting. The new header is a panoramic shot of our kids' playroom! When my wife and I first purchased our home I don't think we quite knew what to do with this extra room without a closet.

But once James arrived and began acquiring toys at an alarming rate it was fairly obvious that this little room would be the perfect playroom. I've always loved the cartoon murals I've seen at day care centers so I thought it would be neat to make a storybook mural for their playroom, with some of the characters from their Mine! favorite children's books.

My wife did a bunch of the legwork for finding an artist capable of bringing what was in my head to life. She contacted a company called Lettuce Paint and we had an initial meeting where I conveyed to them what I was looking for. My initial guidance was vague (Castles! Dragons! Enchanted Forest!) but things really took off once I saw Lettuce Paint's initial sketch.

After taking a look at the initial sketch I knew I liked the overall themes and ideas. However, I wanted a more detailed scene. In my head, in addition to having a castle and sea on one side leading to a forest scene on the other (like the sketch has) it would also have a bunch of "easter egg" type details within. I also decided that the castle was obviously Narnia's Cair Paravel, and the ship must be The Dawn Treader.

Then I imagined there could be a transition to the woods (similar to the book We're Going on a Bear Hunt) with a field of grass, then some mud, then a river and then the forest. Within the forest there would be details like the below sign post (with James' Room added).

Then I suggested a bunch of other ideas: a cave and a bear (Bear Hunt), a lamp post (Narnia), the big bad wolf and little red riding hood, a beanstalk reaching into the sky. Maybe a hot air balloon with the Wizard of Oz floating by? Dorothy's house? Aladdin on a flying carpet? Harry Potter on a broom chasing a golden snitch?

Lettuce Paint took these ideas and ran with them. They made some really cool mockups to show me and I was blown away! Now I could really see where touches could be added to really make the mural a mash-up of James'Mine! favorite children's books! The cave had to have a bear in it. The tree in the foreground could be used to incorporate The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The path leading into the woods? Well it had to be made of yellow bricks right? And the dragon had to be EustaceNarnia again. But you knew that right? didn't he?

After this final round of feedback, Lettuce Paint went to work:

They had some great ideas, like using chalkboard paint on the signpost so we could change the names:

and decoupaging the fruit from The Very Hungry Caterpillar into the scene:

We couldn't be happier with how it turned out, and James loved it!

Here are a few more shots so you can really see the detail:

The Three Little Pigs

My son loves tractors. It began the first time he saw me mowing and only grew once I started taking him on tractor rides. This information spread through our extended family and before you know it James had four different toy tractors. Of course, you can’t just stop with the farm equipment. Toy barns and toy animals soon followed and James' small toy farm quickly grew into a giant toy agribusiness.

One day while looking at his four toy pigs and the nearby pile of megablocks I thought, “Man if I had a toy wolf I could act out The Three Little Pigs.” I scurried over to Amazon and typed in Toy Wolf Toddler and the first thing that popped up was this cool looking playset from Melissa and Doug:

Wow! A toy wolf, three little pigs, and the houses? Sign me up! After a quick search through the reviews I knew I also needed to get a Three Little Pigs board book. After viewing several options I decided to go with Three Little Pigs illustrated by Thea Kliros.Which is mostly great except there is only a Mother Pig. Perhaps Lazy Pig #1 and Playful Pig #2 would have made better housing choices if they had a father figure in their lives. When James and I read it, I replace “Mother” with “The little piggy’s parents”. We started reading the book to James a few nights before Easter and on Easter Morning the Easter Bunny left the playset in his basket. James absolutely loves the book; he’ll bring you the book and then go and gather up every piece of the playset. To be honest, I absolutely love it too. I get to howl like a wolf, add “And your little dog too” when the wolf says “I’ll get you little piggies”Which totally makes sense because the Piggy family seems to own a dog in this version., start the book in my best Stephen Sondheim impression, tickle James’ chiny chin chin while doing a horrible impression of this song,

and act out the entire story with an awesome playset.

Also, with this story the foundation has been set for me to get all postmodern with James once he gets older. “James… did you ever think about the wolf’s side of the story? According to the wolf, he just had a bad cold!”

Or “Hey James! Let me tell you about breaking the 4th wall!”

Or "Did you ever wonder what would happen if the Three Little Pigs met Snow White?"

The possibilities are endless!

The Age of Innocence

“Not to understand the doer is to have no certain knowledge of what has been done, or why it was undertaken” – Philip Wylie, The Disappearance

In the last chapterWarning! I am about to spoil the ending of a book published in 1920! of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence Newland Archer, after the death of his wife, has traveled to Paris, where his true love Ellen Olenska, who he has not seen in over 30 years, resides. When Archer arrives he finds himself paralyzed, only able to look up at Ellen’s window on the fifth floor:

Archer sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at the awninged balcony. He calculated the time it would take his son to be carried up in the lift to the fifth floor, to ring the bell, and be admitted to the hall, and then ushered into the drawing-room. He pictured [his son] entering that room with his quick assured step and his delightful smile, and wondered if the people were right who said that his boy "took after him."

Then he tried to see the persons already in the room--for probably at that sociable hour there would be more than one--and among them a dark lady, pale and dark, who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out a long thin hand with three rings on it. . . . He thought she would be sitting in a sofa-corner near the fire, with azaleas banked behind her on a table.

"It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other.

He sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening dusk, his eyes never turning from the balcony. At length a light shone through the windows, and a moment later a man-servant came out on the balcony, drew up the awnings, and closed the shutters.

At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.

On its own, this passage is powerful enough, a tragic ending for the reader who has been hoping against hope that true love would finally triumph and Newland and Ellen would be united. But a little more insight into Wharton's possible source for this scene truly makes this passage tragic. Wharton named Archer after two characters in novels by her good friend Henry James: Christopher Newman (The American) and Isabel Archer (The Portrait of a LadyDiscussed in depth here.). In fact, a character in The Age of Innocence says to Archer, “You’re like the pictures on the wall of a deserted house: ‘The Portrait of a Gentleman.’”.

Wharton goes even further than referencing James’ work. In his wonderful examination of The Portrait of a Lady and its relation to Henry James’ lifePortrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece., Michael Gorra describes this heartbreaking story:

“[James] had once stood at dusk on a city street, watching “for the lighting of a lamp in a window on the third storey. And the lamp blazed out, and through bursting tears he strained to see what was behind it, the unapproachable face.” James had stayed there for hours, wet from the rain and repeatedly jostled by the hurrying crowd, ‘and never from behind the lamp was for one moment visible the face.”

The similarities between this story and Newland Archer’s vigil seem so clear that one assumes James told this story to Wharton as well. We do not know for sure who James was looking for in the window. Perhaps it was Paul Zhukovsky, a Russian who James had developed “a most tender affection for”As described in Gorra's book. as Colm Toibin in his fictionalized version of James’ life, The Master, speculates. Whoever it was, it is almost a certainty that it was someone James loved, a love that due to the social norms of the day was doomed to be unrequited. In this wondrous passage Wharton has not only captures the emotion James must have felt standing there, paralyzed in the rain, but has passed it along to us, her readers. For three hundred pages we have yearned for Newland and Ellen to finally be together. And we, like Newland, like James, are left wanting.

Notes

As I’ve previously mentioned I am very particular about the appearance of my books. After I’ve read them I still want them looking brand new when I put them up on the shelf. So, instead of writing notes in the book like a lot of people do I prefer to write notes separately. Here’s a look at the different types of notes I take.

Standard
Whenever I read a passage that really makes me think for whatever reason I write it down. Also, if I’m reading a novel and a family tree starts to grow and all of a sudden there are tons of cousins to keep track of I start a family tree. Here’s an example from Henry James The Portrait of a Lady:

Of course this method does has its drawbacks. As you can see there’s a big gap between pg. 65 and 325. I’m fairly certain there was something worth writing down in there. Unfortunately, what tends to happen is I end up bringing the book places but forgetting the note book. I have every intention of going back and writing stuff down later but hey, life happens.

Vocabulary Words
This doesn’t happen much, but this particular book of critical essays on the work of David Mitchell proved to be a doozy My handwriting sucks but yes that is the phrase "deleuzian rhizome" you see.:

Oh, and speaking of David Mitchell...

Keeping track of the connections in David Mitchell's books Very much deserving of its own category.
One of these days I’m going to make a map-based graphic representation of this. One of these days.

Recommendations

Many of my friends know that I read a lot, so I get asked to make recommendations on a frequent basis. Unfortunately I’ve always found it very difficult to decide what book to recommend. Usually, the person asking isn’t a very frequent reader, and upon finishing The Hunger Games has decided that maybe this reading thing isn’t too bad and wants more. Often this person was soured on reading during their high school English class, when Mrs. Master of Fine Arts made them write a twenty five page paper on the symbolism of the rose bush in The Scarlet LetterYes I'm speaking from personal experience. The mere mention of Nathaniel Hawthorne makes me break out into a cold sweat.. Basically, this person almost drowned when they were a kid and after cautiously dipping their toe back in the water they are now about to jump off the high dive. And you’re the lifeguard. Do you just say hell with it and throw them Dan Brown or Ender’s Game? Or do you throw caution to the wind and recommend a book that you love? I once recommended Cloud Atlas to someone that unbeknownst to me had PTSD from an English 101 paper on Moby Dick. This person has stopped answering their phone and I think unfriended me on Facebook.

All of this is a very long way to say that recommending books is a difficult and dangerous thing. Thankfully there are a few individuals who accept this challenge, even from people they have never even met. Who are these fearless literary warriors?

Up first is John Warner, the Biblioracle. Every so often the Biblioracle comes out of hiding and offers to make recommendations based solely on the five previous books that a person has read. I’ve always found this fascinating because the Biblioracle doesn’t care if you liked the books or not. He does not ask for this information. All he cares about is the last five books you’ve read. I’ve taken him up on this offer on several occasions. Here’s how it turned out:

The first time I used the Biblioracle, I followed the letter of the law and provided the following books which were the exact five books I had read previously: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, The Magician King by Lev Grossman, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, and A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer. Now I don’t know what went through the Biblioracle’s head, but I imagine this one was tough. Two of the books are non-fiction and I’m fairly certain the Biblioracle usually recommends novels. Luckily he could probably infer from my double dose of Murakami that I’m a fan of his other stuffBased on this information the perfect book would be about cats making pasta in an old well while listening to classical music and talking about ears.. With only this information the Biblioracle, before I could even blink, recommended Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon.

A few mouse clicks later and the book was on its way. The premise sounded interesting with three different stories gradually coming together, and I thought the Biblioracle might have nailed it. Ultimately however, I was disappointed. The characters were not well developed and the plot twist was not enough to overcome what I felt was boring prose.

But hey, the first time I tried Thai food I didn’t like it but I gave it another shot and now it’s one of my favorite cuisines. So when I heard the Biblioracle was back in business I went to wait in line with all the other desperate readers looking for something new. This time I decided to game the system a bit. I lied to the Biblioracle. I eliminated the non-ficition and tossed away any book I didn’t likeSuck it Jonathon Franzen.. This time I told him the last five fiction books that I had enjoyed: number9dream by David Mitchell, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard, and The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley.

This time the Biblioracle hit a home run. I may not like postmodern art but I love postmodern literature. Give me multiple perspectives, jumping around in time, and fragments to put together and I am a happy person. So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman had all this and also a cherry on top... it really surprised me. I don't want to give too much away, because slowly figuring out exactly what was going on is one of the pleasures of reading this novel. In fact, for me, this book was muddling along until all of a sudden the pieces came together and I was blown away. The multiple perspectives and style were a bit slow in the beginning, but wow is the payoff worth it. I can see how perfect a recommendation this was. The multiple perspectives of Mitchell, Murray, and Flynn are there, as well the horrific elements present in Dark Places. A missing girl drives the story, much like Pittard's novel, and ethics are at the center just like Mosley's. Well done Biblioracle. Well done.

Next up was a new service from a bookstore called Paperback to the Future. For $20, an employee of the bookstore will interact with you via e-mail and then mail you a book that suits your reading tastes (and promises it will be a book you haven’t read). As finding and enjoying a good book is well worth $20 I went ahead and signed up. First, the employee who contacted me asked me to name three of my favorite books (I went with Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Replay by Ken Grimwood, and Skippy Dies by Paul Murray), one book I read recently and loved (The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball), and one book I read recently and hated (Freedom by Jonathan Franzen). After this exchange the employee sent me an email with a simple question: Burroughs, Bolano, or Calvino. Definitely Calvino, as If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is awesome and Invisible Cities has some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever readIt also didn't hurt that I've never read anything by Burroughs or Bolano..

About two weeks later The Facts of Winter by Paul La Farge arrived. I had never heard of the book (as the store's website suggested) but I immediately loved that it was published by McSweeney'sWho also publish the awesome looking Grantland quarterlies.. The author, Paul La Farge claims this book is a translation of a book written in the early 20th century by a Frenchman named Paul Poissel about dreams people had in Paris in 1881. The first 3/4 of this short book consists of Poissel's french on the left and La Farge's "translation"Obviously La Farge is the true author.on the right describing a dream that may last only a few sentences and at most several paragraphs. Though I couldn't quite understand the thread that tied all these short dreams together, the afterword is what really made the book intriguing. I also enjoyed the second person plural point of view as it is a technique of Calvino's I mentioned enjoying in my response to Paperback to the Future. And the reasoning behind the structure of the dream parts is satisfying. However, I do like my disparate threads to have some underlying connections and the ones underlying these short dreams is much more tenuous than say the threads in Mitchell's Ghostwritten, Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, or Ball's The Way Through Doors. Overall this recommendation ended up somewhere between the two by Biblioracle.

So there you go! Don’t bother me anymore. You want a recommendation? Go ask Biblioracle or Paperback to the Future. They’ve got the life preserver you need. Me? All I’ve got is silent film actor biographies and the latest Henry James novel I’ve fallen in love with.

Tennis Anyone?

No sport is more isolating than tennis. There are no teammates to rely on and no timeouts to halt your opponents momentum. You have no corner to retreat to and you are not allowed to consult with your coach during a match. It's just you and the person on the other side of the net. This is why so many tennis players go absolutely insane. Playing tennis in high school I would just live for the moment when I broke the person I was playing against. The minute they started slamming their racket on the ground in frustration and muttering to themselves I knew I had them. And nothing was worse when it happened to you.

Tennis is also a beautiful game to watch. I am fortunate enough to live near the Cincinnati ATP tournament so every year I get to watch the best players in the world. In the last three years I’ve seen Roger Federer vs. Mardi Fish, Novak Djokovic vs. Andy Murray, and Federer vs. Djokovic. It’s just amazing watching how good these guys are and you have to wonder how they became so skilled. The short answer is of course hours and hours and hours and hours of practice. Want to know the long answer? Here’s where to go.

Start with Some History:
I have two books that have "the Greatest Match Ever Played” in the title. The first, Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played by L. Jon Wertheim intersperses a description of the 2008 Wimbledon finals between Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer (considered by many to be the best players of all timeWith Federer the clear #1. Yes Nadal owns an advantage in their one on one battles, but here’s the statistic that is mind blowing. The record for most consecutive Grand Slam finals appearances is Federer with 10. Second place? Federer with 8. The next highest? Nadal with 5. Nadal is the greatest on clay, but Fed is still the GOAT.) with biographical information about the two men. But despite the greatness of Federer and Nadal, and what a great tennis match the 2008 Wimbledon finals was it pales in comparison to the key match of the 1937 Davis Cup match between Don Budge (USA) and Baron Gottfried von Cramm (Germany), set on the eve of WWII with implications far greater than tennis. Marshall Jon Fisher describes the stakes of this match in his wonderful book A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, A World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played. The book does a great job demonstrating how the events of the day affected the men on the court and gives you a great lesson about the early days of tennis.And leaves you wondering just how many Grand Slams Don Budge could had won if professionals could have competed in them. Perhaps he would be in the GOAT discussion. And what about Big Bill Tilden? Seriously Brian Phillips, write the Book of Tennis already!

Then get into a Player’s Head:
I have read a bunch of sports autobiographies and most are fairly average. They meander in clichés and mainly seem designed to further the athlete’s brand. Not so with Andre Agassi’s Open. From his bad boy image is everything Brooke Shields loving early years to the physical specimen workman of his later career Agassi is a fascinating person. Agassi is candid and his memoirs are engrossing. It was amazing how much he hated tennis and it was almost painful to read how much tough losses impacted him. After reading this book you get a sense of how unfair it is that the losses are always remembered more vividly than the wins. Despite the career grand slam, 8 slam titles, and Olympic gold Agassi probably wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking about those matches with Sampras he let get away. The book conveys just how hard it is to become great at tennis, and just how cruel the sport of tennis can be.

Then improve your own game:
If you play tennis you will eventually find yourself on the court with someone who is just flat out better than you. They will be able to do things with a tennis racket that you can only dream of. Fortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to lose. One of the best strategies to adopt in these situations is pushing: don’t try to hit winners, just minimize unforced errors, focus on hitting the ball back and try to extend the point. The idea is that hopefully, the guy you are playing against will get increasingly frustrated with how long the point is taking and will start taking more and more chances until he hits an unforced error. After repeating this process over and over sometimes you can get a player to snap and it’s game over. Obviously this won’t work against Roger Federer, but against that 4.5 player when you are a 3.5? It gives you a punchers chance. If you want a how-to guide for this strategy you can do no better than Brad Gilbert’s Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis--Lessons from a Master. In Gilbert’s playing days he was a master of finding and exploiting his opponent’s weaknesses and it was under his tutelage that Andre Agassi reached his full potential. In the book Gilbert provides some great lessons on how you too can use strategy to bring down better players.

On Practice

An essay on the importance of practice, extraneous to the goal of this blog and yet its foundation, which the impatient may skip and the reflective might enjoy.This essay, the title of which pays homage to the title of Ch. 13 from Philip Wylie’s The Disappearance, was originally written as one of my many aborted attempts at starting my dissertation.

“Genius can appear anywhere, but the origins of Carlsen's talent are particularly mysterious.” Time Magazine

A 2010 article in Time Magazine profiled Magnus Carlsen, a Norwegian who at 18 became the youngest world No. 1 chess player in history. Carlsen, who became a grandmaster at 13, has been coached by Garry Kasparov who has stated of Carlsen’s play, “Before he is done, Carlsen will have changed our ancient game considerably.” As Kasparov is considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time this is very high praise. According to Kasparov, Carlsen “has a natural feel for where to place the pieces”. Experts watching him play are often surprised by his selection of moves and only after the fact realize his choice was perfect. Even Carlsen himself has a difficult time describing his ability: “It’s hard to explain, sometimes a move just feels right”. The take away message from the Time's article is clear: Carlsen’s genius is an innate ability and the origin of his innovative and creative play will remain an unsolved mystery.

Recent research has attempted to shine a light into the black box of innovation and creativity. The majority of this research has focused on answering the question, “When are people most creative”? Jia (2009) for example. The research has spawned an impressive list of items that may promote creativity: mood, intrinsic/extrinsic rewards, regulatory focus, bodily cues, temporal distance, spatial distance, and even sexual imagery. Though quite an impressive list, a laundry list of potential factors does not improve our conceptual understanding of creativity. Throughout the course of a tournament, Carlsen’s mood, his focus on intrinsic/extrinsic rewards, and his temporal distance from the chessboard most likely vary, and though these variations may impact his performance to a certain extent, his creativity and innovation on the chessboard remain consistent. Rather than focus on when Carlsen is creative, research must focus on why Carlsen is creative to uncover the mystery.

By all accounts Kobe Bryant is one of the best basketball players on the planet; Bill Simmons, author of The Book of Basketball, states that if Kobe maintains his current pace he will end his career with five championship rings, 34,000 points (3rd all time), 10 first team all-NBAs, and would be the 3rd or 4th greatest player in the history of the league. Most people attribute his success to “god-given ability” and obviously it helps your NBA chances if you are 6’6. However, if size and athletic ability were all that mattered, as Chris Ballard puts it, Eddie Curry would be all-NBA and Derrick Coleman would be getting ready for his hall of fame induction ceremonyQuotes in this paragraph are from this Sports Illustrated article by Chris Ballard. The reason Kobe has been so successful is that he works harder off the court than anyone else. Every day he makes (not takes) 700 to 1,000 shots, in addition to 4 hours of weight trainings and conditioning. Kobe’s method is consistency; in his words, “You have a program, and a schedule, and you have to abide by that, religiously. You just stick to it, and it's the consistency that pays off.” Additionally at the end of each season, Kobe sits down with his coaches to break down the season and establish goals and a plan for improvement over the off-season. This past off season while the majority of his peers were relaxing on the beach or even focused on their training, Kobe was working with Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon to improve his post-up movesLeBron James made a trip to Olajuwon University two seasons ago and the results speak for themselves, adding yet another skill to his bag of tricks.

The old joke goes something like this:
A tourist is wandering around New York City and he is clearly lost. He walks up to a local and asks, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”. “Practice, Man, Practice” responds the local. If you want to be good at something you have to practice. The key to achieving mastery in a specific area is the amount of deliberate practice an individual performs Erickson (1993). Though it is easy to attribute Kobe’s success to his “god-given talent”, the amount of hours he has put in the gym are just as crucial if not more so to his success. Similarly, the genius and creativity Magnus Carlsen displays while playing chess are attributed to mysterious factors such as intuition or innate talent. However a closer look at Carlsen’s daily routine sheds light on the origin of his talent. Carlsen, Lehrer (2010)Yes that Lehrer. The self-plagiarizing, Bob-Dylan quote fabricating, lying while his hand was in the cookie jar former wunderkind who has only recently emerged from wherever he has been hiding. This essay was written several years before the scandal broke and I think the ideas are still good despite Lehrer's actions. writes, has taken advantage of something his predecessors like Kasparov didn't have, computer chess. He typically plays multiple games at once against sophisticated chess playing algorithms allowing him an unprecedented amount of deliberate practice. While previous generations of Chess players were limited by the the number and stamina of quality opponents they could find, Carlsen had played more games by the age of 13 than many grandmasters had their entire lives. Lehrer goes on to explain the how this practice allowed Carlsen to develop his famed intuition. All the games Carlsen has played allowed him the chance to make more mistakes than other players. Lehrer quotes Neils Bohr A quick Google search suggests Bohr did indeed make this statement. With Lehrer, you have to check.: an expert is, “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Carlsen has been able to make more mistakes, and learn from them, providing him with so much experience that he is able to utilize the knowledge he gained through deliberate practice at a level so automatic it appears intuitive.

Thus, deliberate practice is key when you want to improve a skill. This seems like an obvious point, and most people grasp this idea when you are discussing an activity like driving a car or solving math problems. However, there seems to be a block when we encounter someone like Carlsen. Carlsen must be an innate genius is often the default mode of thinking. Why is this? Obviously, if we place the reason on innate talent it lets us off the hook. If we had only been blessed with “god-given ability” we too could be a chess master or an NBA superstar. To consider the role that deliberate practice plays might place the blame to close to our own doorstep. As Erickson states, there is nothing fun about deliberate practice. In fact, the desire to practice, even though practice is not fun, is another characteristic that is important in the development of any skill:

“There’s a difference between loving basketball and liking basketball. There are only about 30 guys in the league who love it, who play year round. Allen Iverson loves to play when the lights come on. Kobe loves doing the shit before the lights comes on. This thing, this freakish compulsion, may be the hardest element of the game to quantify. There are no plus-minus stats to measure a player’s ruthlessness, his desire to beat his opponent so badly he’ll need therapy to recover.”From that Chris Ballard article. No I ain't hyperlinking it again. Scroll up!

Carlsen provides similar statements. When asked by Time magazine if he saw chess as a game or combat or a game of art Carlsen replied: “Combat. I am trying to beat the guy sitting across from me and trying to choose the moves that are most unpleasant for him and his style. Of course some really beautiful games feel like they are art, but that's not my goal.”

The will to succeed and win is so dominant in both Kobe and Carlsen that they are able to overcome the negatives associated with deliberate practice. In fact, both men continuously work on their skill through deliberate practice. Like Kobe seeking out Hakeem, Carlsen has began working with Kasparov. This perseverance and passion of long-term goals has been referred to as GritDuckworth (2007) and is the second key component of developing any skill, including creativity.

Thus both the amount of deliberate practice and the willingness to engage in practice are critical to skill development. However there is one additional critical factor: type of practice. Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots has won three Super Bowls and was a miracle play away from the first 19-0 season in NFL History. What separated Belichick’s Patriot teams from the rest of the NFL? According to Gasper (2008) the answer is situated practice. Gasper interviewed a former Patriot who described his first day of training camp under Belichick. The head coach created the following situation: it was late in the game, the Pats are down by a field goal and had the ball at their own 17 yard line with 1:21 left and zero timeouts. This was a recreation of the Patriots drive to win Super Bowl XXXVI. Belichick had his players practice these scenarios in training camp so they could make mistakes and learn from them so that by the time they needed to perform perfectly in the post-season they would be ready. Belichick understood that in addition to drills and conditioning, players needed to practice the skills they would need during games.

In order to design successful deliberate practice you have to understand the constraints of the task you are trying to practice for. Additionally, it is vital to understand that simply practicing the exact task is not enough. Edward Zagorski has spent the last thirty years teaching industrial design at the University of Illinois. After attempting to teach his students how to design he learned that it was more critical that he learned how to effectively teach students to design. He mentions how he once asked students to design a toy for a 5-12 year old child. The results, according to Zagorski, resulted in “push-pull, bland, and tired solutions”. The next time he asked the students to design a toy that would render a random decision. This resulted in much more creative designs. Hence, the nature of the task and the task's constraints are important to understand when designing deliberate practice to improve a skill. Zagorksi’s method focused on providing enough constraints to allow the student to focus, but not so many that they were constrained.

In conclusion, any skill can be improved through deliberate practice, as long as the individual is able to commit to a significant amount of deliberate practice and that deliberate practice has been tailored to hone the critical skills needed to succeed at the target task. I will be using this blog as a way to engage in deliberate practice to get better at writing about reading in a style that is hopefully witty, not too lengthy,Off to a great start there bucko! This entry is turning into a manifesto! and provides opportunities and encouragement for reader engagement. I hope you decide to stick around for the ride!

So You Like The Hunger Games?

About a year ago I finally gave in to the hype and ended up reading The Hunger Games. Though the prose didn't blow me away, I thought the book was well plotted and entertaining. If you enjoyed The Hunger Games but aren’t sure what to read next, here are some suggestions based on some opinions you may have had after finishing the series.

I totally think Gogo Yubari would whip Katniss’ ass.

Me too. I mean she was thisclose to taking care of the bride in Kill Bill. The actress who plays Yubari, Chiaki Kuriyama, is in the film version of Battle Royale, a novel by Koushun Takami which is basically the earlier, more violent, Japanese version of The Hunger Games.

You know this whole forcing teenagers to kill each other is so distasteful. I wish they were volunteers or something.

Then you’ll want to read Stephen King’s The Long Walk, the gold standard in the teenagers fight to the death game show genre. One hundred volunteers start walking along the United States eastern seaboard at the Maine/Canada border. They have to maintain a pace of 4 miles per hour. If they fall under that mark they receive a warning (which can be reset to zero if they walk for another hour without falling below 4 mph). Once they receive 3 warnings if they fall under 4 mph again they are shot and killed. Once the long walk is started there are no breaks for sleeping, eating, or bathroom breaks... they keep walking until only one walker is left alive. The participants are not allowed to physically harm each other... but oh the mental gamesmanship is awesome. How this hasn’t been made into a film yet I have no idea.

I love all the blood and guts and even the forced participation is fun. But the age of the participants makes me feel bad.

No worries I’ve got you covered. In fact, you can stay right here with Stephen King with another story in The Bachman Books, The Running Man. Though the novel itself is fine, I highly recommend the movie, as you get not only Arnold Schwarzenegger but also former Family Feud host Richard Dawson egging on the bloodlust of the viewing audience. That blue haired freak in The Hunger Games couldn’t hold Dawson’s jockstrap.

You know I just don’t like the game show aspect. Can’t we just throw a bunch of kids into a desperate situation and see what they do by themselves? Surely they’ll all get along and build a new society right?

Well I suggest you take a trip back to sophomore year and check out Lord of the Flies by William Golding. In this novel a plane crash leaves a group of boys stranded on a deserted island without any supervision. Despite their English pedigree their attempt at creating a new civilization on the island slowly but surely descends into delicious chaos. Don’t worry about the symbolism bullshit crammed down your throat by your English teacher. Yes we get that the gradual destruction of Piggy’s glasses reflect the gradual disintegration of civilization amongst the boys. That ain’t what we're here for. On one side we’ve got Ralph and on another side we’ve got Jack. Let’s get it on! FEED THE BEAST!

I’m having a hard time visualizing all the blood and guts. Hunger Games would have been better with some illustrations. Give me some comic books!

Well there’s this obvious Hunger Games rip-off called Avengers Arena where Arcade, formerly a D-level bad guy, turns into a bad ass and kidnaps members of Avengers Academy, the Runaways, Braddock Academy, Darkhawk, etc. and forces them to fight to the death.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Those dingbats killed my favorite character!

Well then I have to recommend Strikeforce Morituri, a late 1980s Marvel comic book with the tagline: We Who Are About to Die!. The storyline revolved around an alien race known as the Horde that had invaded and basically conquered Earth. Humanity's only hope was the Morituri process, a process that would grant a person superpowers. However, the Morituri process also causes that person to die within a year (on average... a person could last longer or go quicker). Thus, one could gain the power to save humanity but at the cost of their own life. This lead to great stories as the heroes struggled with the fact that they were mortal and could literally die at anytime. The cast was constantly revolving due to the deaths and the creative team never failed at creating new and intriguing heroes, who gave their lives to fight the Horde.There are a TON of comics book storylines that follows The Hunger Games formula. Contest of Champions. Secret War. Almost anything that happens in the Mojoverse. The X-Force/New Warriors crossover called Child’s Play. Contest of Champions II. Marvel vs. DC. Planet Hulk. Inevitably Thor jobs.

Hunger Games had too many damn characters. Let’s get rid of the red shirts and get down to business. One dude hunting another dude. That’s what I want! And make it quick! I’ve got a short attention span and no time!

Then you have to check out this short story by Richard Connell called The Most Dangerous Game first published in 1924. A big game hunter by the name of Sanger Rainsford is shipwrecked on an island and soon finds that he himself is being hunted.

Ya know I really don’t even like reading and barely got through The Hunger Games. Any TV Shows?

Well in the ‘90s there was a TV show called Sliders, where a group of 4 people (a physics student, his professor, his girlfriend, and a musician) are stuck traveling (i.e. sliding) from dimension to dimension.Like Quantum Leap but different worlds instead of different times. For example, one of their earliest slides takes them to a dimension where the Soviet Union won the Cold War. In the first episode of the 3rd season the Sliders travel to a world where they find themselves competing in a televised game show where groups of teams try to make it to a sanctuary before other teams do. Along the way they face the dangers of the environment as well as the other teams trying to kill them.

Whoops, that was my bad. I meant any TV shows not starring the fat kid from Stand By Me.

Hey Jerry O’Connell is a stud muffin! You’ve gone too far! I’m out of here!

The Wikipedia Hole

Yesterday I briefly alluded to falling into Wikipedia holes and I thought today I would describe the process visually.

Where do you end up when you fall into a Wikipedia hole? Is it even possible to stay on task when reading Wikipedia articles?

Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Once upon a time I was stuck in an airport without a book. This rarely happens to me. For example, while writing this entry I was stuck in an airport and had 3 books with meOut by Natsuo Kirino, Volume 5 of Grantland Quarterly, and 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill which for some reason I just can’t seem to finish.. But for some reason I had only brought one book along on the trip and I had finished it, so I headed to the airport bookstore. Luckily I was in a large airport and the bookstore had a fairly big selection including a bargain book table. After browsing for awhile an anthology called Wizards caught my eye. What a dorky title I thought. But then I noticed the book contained short stories by Orson Scott Card, who at the time was one of my favorite authorsWe've since had a messy breakup., as well as Neil Gaiman, who I had also enjoyed in the past. So for $5.99 I thought what the hell and bought it.

While I was reading the anthology I had one of those moments every reader loves. Something new hit me upside the head and made me say, “Wow”. I fell in love with a story called The Ruby Incomparable by Kage Baker. It was fantasy story of the daughter of an evil Master of the Mountain and a good Saint of the World. The description of the world was so lyrical and I really enjoyed the daughter’s coming of age story. Baker’s sense of humor also shone through and really hooked me. I immediately wanted more. Who was Kage Baker and what else had she written?

I turned to the Contributors section in the back and read something like the following: “Baker is best known for her Company series, in which immortal cyborgs are sent back through time to secure knowledge and treasures that would otherwise have been lost”. It was like someone put an arrow through my heartBig Hair!. I immediately hopped on Amazon and ordered the first book in the series, In the Garden of Iden, which arrived at my door the next day thanks to the wonders of Amazon Prime. I finished it very quickly while on another trip, this time in San Diego. I desperately wanted to read the 2nd book in the series but I was only going to be in San Diego for a few days. I drove to a used book store not really expecting to find it, but there it was Sky Coyote, sitting there on the shelf, the only Baker book in the store.

I powered through Sky Coyote and found myself reading the 3rd book in the series, Mendoza in Hollywood. The 3rd book is set in Hollywood in the 1800s, long before the movie industry came to town. However, the cyborgs know what the area will become in the future so they have a movie night every so often. Baker, in her infinite wisdom, spends an entire chapter with the cyborgs as they Mystery Science 3000 D.W. Griffith’s 1916 epic film Intolerance. Perhaps best known for Birth of a NationWhich after watching you could see just how racist people were in 1915, even people like D.W. Griffith who didn’t think they were., Griffith’s Intolerance was a both a masterpiece and a disaster. After reading this chapter I had to see the film.

So all of a sudden I’m watching a 1916 silent film and it is completely blowing my mind. How in the world did Griffith make this film without CGI? There are literally thousands of extras and massive sets with walls hundreds of feet high. I was so amazed by the spectacle I needed to know more. I purchased D. W. Griffith's Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision by William M. Drew and learned much about film including the cast, and how directors often worked with the same company of actors from film to film. The next thing you know I was reading books about Griffith actors and actresses such as Lillian Gish: The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me and Dark Lady of the Silents by Miriam Cooper.

And that’s the story of how I started with a $5.99 book about Wizards and ended up reading an autobiography of a silent film actress. I just always seem to fall down these rabbit holes in my reading life. One book has a brief mention of something that seems interesting and the next thing you know I’m reading an entire book about that other topic. It’s a very similar, albeit much slower process, than when I fall into a Wikipedia hole. Wikipedia hole: When you start off by looking up something work related like cognitive systems engineering and end up reading about shark attacks.

Authors as Musicians

Today we look at the musical equivalents for some famous authors.

Stephen King – Ozzy Osbourne: Born less than a year apart, the Master of Horror and the Prince of Darkness have led eerily similar lives. Both have overcome serious substance abuse problems. Both have considered retirement and then decided that retirement sucked. Both have had success in various incarnations (Ozzy with Black Sabbath and solo, King as himself and as Richard Bachman). And both continue to kickass in their mid 60s.

Dan Brown – Nickelback: I had a friend post the following message on facebook: “Hey I have two extra tickets to the Nickelback concert tonight. Anyone want them?” The first response was “No thanks, I’ll just go to hell when I die”.Which was subsequently liked by 15 people. Nickelback is just a band, as Chuck Klosterman points out, that is totally acceptable to reflexively hate. Dan Brown is the Nickelback of the literary world. He sells millions and millions of books, yet gets absolutely no respect. If you tell people Dan Brown is your favorite author you would get the exact same look as you would if you tell people Nickelback is your favorite band.

Gillian Flynn – Halestorm: In 2006 Halestorm released their first EP, in 2009 their first album, and in 2012 released their second album which won a Grammy for Best Heavy Metal/Hard Rock song. In 2007 Gillian Flynn released her first novel, her second in 2009, and in 2012 released Gone Girl which is going to win should have wonGone Girl lost in the Zombie Round to The Orphan Master's Son. Damn you Lev Grossman. The Morning News Tournament of Books. Here’s the lyrics to Halestorm’s I Miss the Misery:

I miss the bad things, The way you hate me, I miss the screaming, The way that you blame me! Miss the phone calls, When it's your fault, I miss the late nights, Don't miss you at all! I like the kick in the face, And the things you do to me! I love the way that it hurts! I don't miss you, I miss the misery!

Boy does that sound like Nick and Amy’s relationship in Gone Girl or what?

Orson Scott Card – Ted Nugent: Both achieved early success with big hits (Ender’s Game for OSC, Stranglehold and Cat Scratch Fever for the Nuge) which they have continued to milk. Both have recently gone completely overboard on a controversial political issue (OSC – gay marriage, Nugent – gun control). And both are completely washed up as artists.