Reading in 2010

I have decided to re-up the 2009 reading challenge, albeit with a slight tweaking. To reiterate, the goal is to read 50 new books in a year. Note that it is restricted to new (to me) books. I love old books, and in some year, maybe 2011, I’ll do a reading challenge for them. Re-reads are pretty much always quicker and I know which ones are good. But I want to try to learn something new in this project. And thus, all new books.

Of the 50 new books, five are to be religious works. The theory here is a sort of literary tithe.

Also, to keep me from discriminating against the big, fat books that are piling up, another tweak is this: I want 50 books and/or 20,000 pages. I’d say 400 pages is a reasonable length for a book, and counting pages should also keep me from avoiding the big Lincoln biography, or the history of the Supreme Court, or the account of the lives of the wives of Henry VIII.

So anyway, finishing out January, I also got these in:

3. Big Man by Clarence Clemons. Odd, uneven book, with chapters by Clarence interspersed with chapters from his co-writer, screenwriter Don Reo, and other chapters of “legends” which are admittedly mostly lies. Fun, interesting, but REALLY uneven.

4. It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over by the staff of Baseball Prospectus. This is a book about baseball pennant races. The staff of Baseball Prospectus use history as a jumping off point to ask questions about baseball and to try to use empirical data to answer those questions. If you’re a hardcore sports nerd, this is great. If not, likely a bit dry.

5. Under the Dragon by Rory MacLean. Fascinating travel writing about Myanmar (aka Burma). Since a good friend spent a long chunk of time in and around the area, I’ve been very interested in it. MacLean writes the story of he and his wife journeying across the county in search of a particular kind of basket. En route, they encounter persecuted, browbeat, beautiful people who, bit by bit, spell out the story of a doomed land. Heartbreaking, engaging and very well written.

January total: 5 books completed/50
January page total:
Magic in the Night 268
The Book of Basketball 715
Big Man 384
It Ain’t Over 457
Under the Dragon 224

As yet unrevealed 6th book in progress 101
January total 2,149/20,000

Another outpost of the fried chicken world

Out on business recently, I stopped by the semi-world famous Bon Ton Mini Mart on the outskirts of Henderson, Kentucky, to sample their fried chicken. The good folks at roadfood.com had talked the place up, and circumstance placed me in Henderson. So I took advantage.

George Markham, the proprietor, greeted me. I told him I’d traveled far for his prized chicken. He told me it would take 20-25 minutes to cook. I assured him that was fine, that I knew that good chicken took a little while. The Bon Ton Mini Mart is not a mini mart, and I have no idea what Bon Ton is. It’s basically just a mom and pop restaurant, with excellent kitschy decoration. Mad props to curtains with chickens and frying pans on them.

The chicken was… wow, REALLY, REALLY good. It is perfectly fried. Not too greasy, wonderfully crunchy, flavorful, moist, and brilliant. My love of Prince’s Hot Chicken is well known within anybody who bothers to read this blog. This stuff is just as good. Different, as in not likely to set your mouth ablaze or drown you in grease, but just as good.

George came back to check on me. I heard him disappointedly say, “I haven’t seen him licking his fingers.” I assured his it was REALLY good chicken. Excellent banana pudding too. I gave my compliments to Donna King, the “chicken lady” who whips it all up, and told George I had two questions: 1) When I could make it back and 2) Whether I’d get a half chicken or whole chicken the next time.

Apparently, BTMM is closing in June. So go there. You won’t regret it. And if you can’t go there, here’s the recipe. I know jack squat about frying a chicken, and this looks hard, but if it tastes half as good as theirs does, do it sometime. And save me a piece.

http://www.recipelink.com/mf/14/33518

It Hurts Me Too

Cyberbullying.

I had never heard of it before yesterday. While I could guess at what it was thanks to the linguistic skills that a college degree should confer, the word was a new one. But in Boston, a pretty fifteen year old girl named Phoebe Prince apparently committed suicide due to cyberbullying.

The more I read yesterday, the more I learned. I read of an 11 year old boy who killed himself because he was taunted for being allegedly gay. I read of a 9 year old who hanged himself at school. I am just sick at this situation. It is a depressing thing to live in a world in which children, sweet, innocent children are driven to suicide by things on their computers.

Like Charlie Starkweather in Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska”, I end up being unable to account for the evil in our times, aside from a general meanness in this world.

And I remember when I was young.

I was bullied sometimes. One boy was so persistent that eventually my parents wormed it out of me, called the school, and involved them. Much to my own amazement, once the bully was confronted, he actually behaved himself from then on. That certainly seemed unlikely then and now. So I guess I was lucky. There were others, but never with that same scary intensity.

I also bullied sometimes. There are few things that I have done in my life that I would genuinely change, and that I really and truly regret. Bullying is one of them. I wish I could apologize to every person I ever taunted, persecuted or made uncomfortable.
When you’re 12 or 13 years old, calling each other names and insulting each other is just what boys do. Except when it isn’t. And those lines are often imperceptible to the persons doing the hurting. Until it’s too late, like it is for Phoebe Prince.

As a parent, there’s no easy way to say that this stuff scares the crap out of me. It scares me because I want to physically dismember anybody who says hurtful things about that little angel in my household. And it scares me because I don’t want her to be a tyrant to her own peers and contemporaries. Like I probably did a time or two.

And the baby tomato says…

catch up.

By popular demand (OK, the request of David Vance, and Chad Webb mentioning it to me when I saw him in Subway), there shall be more blogging.

I have read some more books. So far in 2009…

1. Magic in the Night by Rob Kirkpatrick. As mentioned before, some good Springsteen bio-criticism. Worth reading, and not just because he read my blog.

2. The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons. As mentioned before, one of the funniest books I have ever read. This book actually made me want to watch NBA basketball, which nothing else, up to and including John Wall, can do.

Two more are approaching being finished, and I will talk about them. I thought I read another book, and if I can remember what it was, I’ll tell you if it was any good.

Anyway, other odds and ends I want to talk about shall follow…

Three more that snuck into 2009

42. A big book list of 1001 things about the Bible
43. A book about the origins of things from Mental Floss
44. Bounce Back by John Calipari

So I was six short of 50. Except that I was working on three books at the end of 2009. I don’t know; maybe I read 46.1 books. But I didn’t count three that Julie read to me in the car on long trips. Eh, I don’t know for sure, but I didn’t get to 50 new books in 2009. I was close, but as I had predicted, the key would be getting ahead before my daughter announced her arrival. I didn’t, and so, no dice on the goal.

These books were books. THey had pages and said things. I liked Cal’s book– it was a much better self-help/motivation/life skills book than I would have suspected. Plus, he signed it to me, which is good.

I have finished Rob Kirkpatrick’s “Magic in the Night”, which is one of the better Springsteen related books I’ve yet read. Kirkpatrick is about 97% less full of crap than most music critics, so kudos to him.

I am currently reading Bill Simmons’s “The Book of Basketball”. which has caused me major abdominal pain from laughter. It should tell you something about my lack of sleep and general level of maturity that I absolutely cracked up at a list of players from the 2007 Cavaliers that included Turdo Sandowich.

So there, that’s over with, and I can get back to something or other else. I assure you that I was just as tired of writing about the books as you were of reading about them… if there’s anybody still left reading, that is.

#41 Down Thunder Road: The Making of Bruce Springsteen by Marc Eliot

This book, written “with the assistance” of embittered former Springsteen manager Mike Appel, is an interesting early career history of The Boss, although it does tend to focus on the struggle amongst Appel, Springsteen, Jon Landau and Columbia Records to control the cash cow which was mid-to-late 1970’s Springsteen music.

The book is interesting for its view of a very naive young Bruce, signing one bad business deal after another and later having to reap the consequences of same. I do give Eliot and Appel credit for not slamming Springsteen entirely. Most of Appel’s scorn is resolved for Jon Landau, who he definitely seems to paint as the Yoko Ono of 1975 Springsteen (although mercifully without the nude album cover). Appel is very defensive in the book about his role in helping to craft the genius of Springsteen. Ultimately, it seems to me, there is plenty of credit to go around.

I recently read that in Buffalo, at the last show of Bruce’s latest tour, he acknowledged Appel from the stage and indicated that his first album never would have happened without Appel. In fact, Appel and his son were on hand as special guests, and were apparently afforded the royal treatment. I can’t pretend that Bruce Springsteen isn’t a human being. I do give him credit for being a little quicker to recognize that fact than most of his peers and contemporaries.

Eliot’s book is interesting. It wasn’t as negative as I thought, but I do still commend Dave Marsh’s Springsteen books as the best of their type. Start there… but if you wonder sometimes if you’re getting the whole story, you might check this book out.

Joe

#40 A Magnificent Catastrophe by Edward Larson

Larson’s book is in regard to the 1800 US Presidential Election. Thomas Jefferson ultimately defeated John Adams in the first change of power between political parties in American history. This was also the election which appeared to begin such modern staples as the two party system, public campaigning, and of conservatives accusing liberals of being Godless infidels, and of liberals accusing conservatives of trying to set up an aristocracy which governed in its own interests.

While I was familiar with the basic details of this election, Larson digs into primary sources and brings Hamilton, Burr, Adams, Jefferson, Pinckney and others to life. 1800 was a troubled time for a young America, and it is refreshing to see that then as now, candidates quickly resorted to turning on each other like wild dogs to try to salvage the problems of the day.

As a new country, it was essential for America to survive this election with a peaceful transition of power. It did so and, more or less, hasn’t looked back. Larson’s book is an entertaining and relatively quick story of a nation on the brink of major trouble, saved from same by the same combination of democractic virtue and luck which triumph still, more or less.

Joe

#39- Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie by Mark St. Amant

Mark St. Amant quit his job and seemingly dedicated his life to trying to win his fantasy football league. If you think it sounds crazy, you’d be right. So the truth is that he quit his job to write this book about quitting his job to try to win his fantasy football league. Which is mildly more sane– if only by comparison.

Fantasy football, for the uninitiated, consists of “drafting” real (NFL) football players to imaginary teams. The statistics which said players compile in their actual NFL games are weighed against other players, and the team “owners” or “general managers” gain points for the statistical achievements of their particular players.

As a hobby, it’s slightly less nerdy than fighting each other with plastic light sabres or playing Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy card games.

It is, strangely, incredibly popular. I have been part of various and sundry fantasy football leagues for years. Mostly, they were an excuse for a group of my friends to make fun of each other. St. Amant means business, which is kind of amusing and, admittedly, kind of pathetic.

The book is a fun read, if rather light. I am torn on the end result. Part of me buys in to a live and let live sort of credo– if it makes people happy, no matter how nerdy it is, good for them. The other part of me realizes that if 2% of the energy used on fantasy football was instead diverted to something real and meaningful, the world would be a much better place. Of course, you could say the same thing about reading 50 new books in a year.

Joe

Bruce & The E Street Band fight the wrecking ball

Nashville, TN
11/18/09

Wrecking Ball
Seeds
Trapped
Something In The Night
Hungry Heart
Working On A Dream
Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Night
Backstreets
Born To Run
She’s The One
Meeting Across The River
Jungleland
Waiting On A Sunny Day
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Two Hearts
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Badlands

Ring of Fire
No Surrender
Bobby Jean
American Land
Dancing In The Dark
Rosalita
(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher

There are few privileges in life that match seeing Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. OK, I lied. There aren’t any. For three hours, troubles are gone, sorrows are lightened, and there is a community of people in which you can belong. The ones screaming out the first verse of “Hungry Heart”, the ones jumping to their feet when the opening chords of “Badlands” pulse out. When the light come back up, I don’t know the people next to me. I probably wouldn’t even like them. But there we are, sharing a moment for those three hours. Amused, enraptured, taken aback, and always moving, a step or two closer to the land of hopes and dreams.

I think last night was the last of these shows I”ll see. I think it’s the third to last one that will be. Something in the mood, something in the performance just spelled “Goodbye.” It wasn’t always somber. The arena jumped and rocked and smiles were passed player to player, in the joy of the moment. But the softer moments were so tender, they seemed so meaningful that I can’t believe this is just another tour.

Clarence Clemons looked as moved and as contemplative as anyone can, when he blew away everything else with his solo on “Jungleland.” And when Springsteen came to the end of “Backstreets”, he softly, carefully echoed “’til the end”, over and over, until he built the song into a second climax.

The centerpiece of this show was a full-album outing of Born to Run. Springsteen said a few things first, talked about how this was a huge album, because he had signed a three album contract and the first two had been released and had sunk rather quickly. And they played it. Thunder Road, 10th Avenue Freezeout, Backstreets, Meeting Across the River, Jungleland. BAM. BAM. BAM. And they the survivors walked forward– Stevie Van Zandt, Roy Bittan, Gary Tallent, Clarence Clemons, and the Boss himself. “These are the guys who played on the record,” he said, “Along with ‘Phantom Dan’ Federici (with a finger point to the sky on the last name).

The song that seemed to best fit the night was the opener, the brand-new “Wrecking Ball”. Ostensibly “about” the destruction of Giants Stadium, where Springsteen debuted the song, it’s not about that at all. It’s about time and age, and the distance between what we are and what we become. “So raise up your glasses and let me hear your voices call,” Bruce sang, “Because tonight all the dead are here/So bring on your wrecking ball.” Some of the dead are literal– Phantom Dan, gone too soon. Most are the selves who we were a week or a month or a year or 35 years ago. But we raised our metaphorical glasses in Nashville, and the voices certainly called. Because what was left was a monument itself. I hope we’ll hear from Bruce & The E Streeters again soon. But if not, I could never complain. Some things are destined to live longer than bricks and mortar and wrecking balls.

#38– Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Hornby has written another one. It’s brilliant, probably the best book he’s penned since “High Fidelity” and possible even better than it, although I’d like it better if the ending had felt a bit more resolved.

We follow Duncan, who is a manic fan of Tucker Crowe, a semi-Dylan, semi-Springsteen, semi-Leonard Cohen, semi-imaginary creation of Hornby. Crowe apparently experienced a life changing epiphany in a Minneapolis bathroom in 1986 and disappeared. Duncan runs an Internet site dedicated to studying Crowe’s every belch, whimper and fart, and the new rumors of same.

I have to break off here to say that yes, this does ring somewhat true in my own life. I am an equally semi-obsessive Dylan fan. Or maybe was. I can, or at one time could, listen to a few seconds of a version of “All Along the Watchtower” and probably tell you what year it was from. Maybe what tour. Probably who was playing on it. Likely even recommend a better specimen from the same time frame. I have a box of probably over 1,000 Dylan CD-Rs under a spare bed at my house. I certainly own all his albums, I’ve read a good deal of the meaningful books about him, have seen him live something like 16 times, and have spent way too many hours driving other perfectly sane people crazy about Bob Freaking Dylan.

Duncan’s longtime girlfriend and object of his Crowe-worship-torture, Annie, tries to tolerate his obsession. When Crowe releases a “new” album of old demos, it is Annie who hears what is really going on in the music. Partially to spite Duncan, she posts a review on the website. Lo and behold, about the time a cranky Duncan is taking up with a new woman, Tucker Crowe e-mails Annie and appreciates her insight into his work.

I won’t go through the rest of what happens. Even Crowe, who is Dylanish in his inability to take responsibility for his social failures (see Joan Baez, also secret marriage and child/ren, etc), comes off as an amazingly likeable character. I usually want to punch at least one of Hornby’s characters in the face. Not this time. And if I did, it would probably be Duncan.

Again, stepping back in, there was a big “guilty pleasure” factor in this book. I would laugh at the ridiculousness of Duncan’s behavior, and then think, “well, there was that one time when I dd such and such…” and realize that I wasn’t THAT much less ridiculous myself.

This was a very impressive book. Hornby just gets the male psyche. If we can’t BE Bob Dylan or Tom Brady or Barack Obama or whomever, we have to know EVERYTHING about them, and “understand” them completely. It’s utterly pathetic. And accurate. He also gets the female psyche. I like Annie as much as I like any character he has ever written. I’m heartbroken for her failures and problems and wish that just once, he’d broken out happily ever after for her. Maybe when they make it a movie.

Joe