End of Summer Reading

Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon. The story of a rinky dink horse race track in West Virginia, and the entertaining cast of characters that inhabit it. I liked this book quite a lot, although the track slang and depth of inside baseball-ness of the story took some work. The characters were fun, and I was ready to try my luck at the Hot Springs track afterward.

Murder City , by Charles Bowden. A must-read if you're looking for an excuse to stay the hell out of Mexico, particularly the city of Juarez. The story is mostly an ongoing recitation of crimes and murders in Juarez as it gets more and more consumed by the rampant drug culture and our race-to-the-bottom global economy lights the fire under the process. Thoroughly depressing, and the writing to me felt too mechanical.

Empire of the Southern Moon, by S.C. Gwynne. The story of Quanah Parker and the last "wild" Indian tribe in the US, the Comanches. Quanah's mother was kidnapped during a Texas raid, but he rose in a tribe whose entire value system was built around accomplishments in battle. A terrific read and true story that I read while in Santa Fe and Taos.

Rumors of Peace, by Ella Leffland. Once again, I am a sucker for the coming-of-age story, this time as a vehicle to enlighten me about life on the home front during WWII. This book was one of those re-released from an earlier publishing. The main character is a young girl growing up in the north bay, so the whole California scene entered in for me. A very good story and well-written as these things go, you can enjoy her journey and maturing from Pearl Harbor through the end of the war.

Hellhound on His Trail, by Hampton Sides. Hampton Sides (Blood and Thunder) knows how to write about history while make it compelling and readable. This time he takes on the manhunt for James Earl Ray after Ray assassinated Martin Luther King. Actually, a lot of the book is the lead-up to the assassination, which is pretty amazing. The hunt for Ray was the largest effort the FBI had ever put forth, spanning countries and continents. Interesting stuff, with lots of unvarnished insight into King himself and his retinue -- highly recommended.

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. The goon squad, as it turns out, is simply the time, or rather the continual progression of time in the lives of a set of characters we are introduced to in high school. Probably if I read more or had an MFA degree, I'd be able to be more articulate in my criticism, which generally is... meh. Takes a lot of work to try to connect the little vignettes into a coherent whole, and I just could not relate to or care about any of the characters. I'm sure it was masterful execution, though.

The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman. Mom recommended this book by the author who wrote a favorite book of mine, Intuition. It follows the paths of two sisters. One is a driven, high-tech startup founder in Silicon Valley, and her little sister is a wistful tree-hugging grad student at Cal. Okay, all the ingredients to meet our requirements out here! The story takes place during the dot-com explosion and implosion, with a smattering of 9-11 and the bookstore business worked in. Details and context for the high-tech parts was quite good, and I enjoyed the whole thing.

Bonobo Handshake, by Vanessa Woods. Terrific and fun non-fiction memoir of Woods' time spent with her academic husband studying Bonobos in the Congo. She can be a bit annoying, but she is also very funny and the story is fascinating. You get a mixture of people, politics, nature, science, academia, married life and stress all mixed together. Check it out.

Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin. This detailed examination of the days following the failure of Bear-Stearns all the way through the passage of TARP is pretty damned hair-raising. Definitely worth the time to get a truly insider view into how Paulson, Geithner, and the major players of all the "too big to fail" institutions grappled 24x7 with how to keep an unstable situation from becoming even worse than it was. Sorkin is way too much of a fanboy of the most of the players for my taste -- I suppose that's how he got such amazing access. It also makes you realize just what a different world these people live in than everyone else in the country. You can envision how that aggressive kid you sat next to in elementary school, who happened to fall into a different career path, might even today be gambling with the entire world economy in his incompetent hands and taking basically no risk personally. At least some of the key Enron folks were held accountable.

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases, by Mike Capuzzo. I left that sensationalistic subtitle in, because that's what suckered me into buying this poorly written and boring book. When I left it on a plane, I had the excuse to start a different book and not look back.

The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. This was the group reading assignment from Kyla. I enjoyed it, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been called something like "Idiocy of the Italian Police and Judicial System". The first half of it is actually about a serial killer in Florence, Italy and the series of murders of lovers parked in their cars that took place over many years. Spezi was a reporter who was obsessed with it and reported on the crimes. Preston, a crime novelist, joins the story when he and his family move to Florence and he befriends Spezi. The Italian police are off chasing conspiracy theories, so the two of them embark on their own investigation as they write a book about the Monster of Florence. How they got caught up in it and became accused themselves was probably the most interesting part of the story. And don't forget the Epilogue, that is relevant to another murder trial you've probably heard of, too!

Spring Reading

The Women, by T.C. Boyle. I figured I would educate myself on Frank Lloyd Wright, and perhaps ingratiate myself with my architecturally inclined wife. Bottom line: Wright was an egotistical jerk, but perhaps that is the price of being a genius. The story is woven around the three loves of his life, only one of whom is marginally more likable than him. An interesting story, but it's hard to make your way through a book about someone when the author succeeds so well at capturing him that you do not want to read about him any more.

Ordinary Thunderstorms, by William Boyd. A young climatologist witnesses a murder in modern London. He ends up becoming the prime suspect while at the same time being the target of the murderer. A not-so-novel plot line with some cardboard villains, especially for an author I've found to be consistently outstanding. The story was mildly entertaining, but I was disappointed overall in comparison to his many other books.

West of the West, by Mark Arax. California is populated by some interesting characters, and Mark Arax (King of California) has to be one of the best at capturing them. No doubt too California-centric for those of you not living the life. The book is a collection of encounters with various real people across a diverse state, woven together with his own family story. Enjoyable, but not great.

Crossers, by Philip Caputo. I picked this up because Keith was looking for it one time. Caputo has a kind of Cormac McCarthy grittiness to his stories, and this certainly fit the bill. The story takes place on a border ranch and centers on the way the porous border situation, the drug and worker trade impacts them. Cutthroat bad guys, hapless Mexicans looking for a better life, noble ranchers defending their turf and heritage, everyone trying to survive and make a buck along the way. As you might expect, there are no clear answers or winners in the end.

Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey. A tiresome recasting of Alexis De Toqueville's visit to early America. I just could not warm up to the characters, and a lot of the book is background on them before they get to America. Olivier is the aristocratic son of a French family caught up in the revolution, who goes to America to escape the chaos and violence of the revolution. He is a bit of a nitwit who bumbles his way, Inspector Clouseau like, across the young nation together with his unwilling companion.

Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer, by Wesley Stace. Jessold is a brilliant musician who apparently kills himself, his wife, and his wife's lover just prior to the premier of his most important opera. The book unravels the mystery of what actually happened, introducing us to Jessold in his early days as told by his collaborator and friend. I mostly enjoyed the book, but once again fell victim to a story inhabited by unlikeable, overprivileged characters drawn like moths into orbit around the equally unlikeable title character.

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. A fun historical mystery whose main character is a rare book expert. She is called in to examine an illustrated 15th century book and discovers some clues that help uncover its entertaining history of survival across the years. Part of the story follows the book and the people associated with it, and part follows the book expert's investigation into its history in modern time. I learned some history and some things about rare books along the way.

Winner-Take-All Politics, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. This book is quite highly thought of in the liberal blogosphere as a well-researched analysis of our current political climate and how we've gotten here. In contrast to Nixonland, which focused on the realignment of the parties in the wake of the civil rights movement, Hacker and Pierson focus on the role of organizations and money in reshaping today's landscape. Fascinating and worthwhile if you're interested in a better understanding of what we're living through now in politics.

Fatal Journey , by Peter C. Mancall. For Christmas in Hawaii, my niece Sarah brought books from her work in a publishing house. This was my grab from the pile, the story of Henry Hudson's final and fatal expedition. The crew mutinied after having over-wintered in Hudson's Bay, apparently because Hudson was ready to keep looking for the Northwest Passage once the ice broke up. Who could blame them? A few of the mutineers made it back to England, and their version of events is the basis for the book mostly. Interesting to find out about some obscure history, but a pretty bland read overall.

The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman. I probably enjoyed this book most of the bunch. It centers around the cast of characters at an international newspaper, in Rome, that was founded by a rich patron (read approximately: the International Herald Tribune). Each chapter follows one of the interesting and quirky folks, and as you read more, you can see how they view and relate to one another. The paper, like all traditional news media, is undergoing a bunch of change and pressure, so you get to see it from the perspective of the strivers, the enablers, the lifers, and the hangers-on. Fun read, especially perhaps for those of you formerly in the newsletter business ;-).

Winter Reading

Oh, long neglected blog! You're still useful to collect my reading lists, don't worry. I've been reading (and enjoying) a lot more non-fiction lately.

The Last Time I Saw You, by Elizabeth Berg. Fluff about middle aged women (and a few men) going to a 40th high school reunion. I am embarrassed to admit that I picked up this book thinking it was by a different author. Readable but not my cup of tea. But I finished it!

A Friend of the Family, by Lauren Grodstein. A thoroughly depressing story about a physician father who is more ambitious for his son than his son is ambitious for himself. The son falls for the daughter of a family friend who is thoroughly messed up, provoking the father to actions everyone regrets. While all this is going on, the father is dealing with a malpractice lawsuit that he certainly bears some responsibility for, along with feeling guilty. Gosh, I am depressed reading my summary. Still, if a good depressing book is the medicine you need to feel better abut your own life, this book will perk you right up.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, by Allison Hoover Bartlett. A real-life story about a guy who is so obsessed with owning rare books that he steals them. Bartlett does a great job getting inside the head of book thief John Gilkey and the strange world of rare book dealers. The detective work involved in actually connecting Gilkey to many missing books across the country, but particularly here in the SF bay area was also fascinating. Fun read and highly recommended.

The Big Burn, by Timothy Egan. Egan also wrote The Worst Hard Time, which I enjoyed. This non-fiction book covers the huge fire that consumed much of the American west in 1910. The fire itself is framed by the background on the Fire Service and the role of Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot in founding it and establishing our national forest system against long odds. Good story and great history.

The Last Season, by Eric Blehm. More non-fiction. When veteran back-country ranger Randy Morgenson ends up missing in Sequoia National Park, it sets off a massive man-hunt. The hunt is intertwined with Morgenson's life story, including being raised in Yosemite, and teaches you about the special kind of dedication it takes to be a seasonal ranger in the remote back-country. I liked the book, but the details of Morgenson's life beyond the ranger-ness of it, while no doubt essential to a complete picture, whipsawed too much between the mundane and sublime for a consistently good read.

A Gate at the Stairs, by Laurie Moore. I enjoyed this quirky and surprisingly complex book about a student who finds a job babysitting for a couple and their adopted child. The couple are downright strange, the surprising reason for which comes out during and is central to the story. There is a 9/11 connection (I seem to be finding these in books more often these days) as that event occurs during the story. Interesting characters and storyline.


Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. Has Krakauer written any bad books? No, but he sure wrote a boring one here. I was hoping that this non-fiction account of the Pat Tilman story would focus on what happened in the field and in the coverup and politics surrounding it. And there was some of that. Unfortunately, I had to learn about Pat's grade school and high school experience in such glorious detail that I was worn out by the time any bullets were fired.

Fordlandia, by Greg Grandin. Henry Ford was certainly a fascinating person who left a deep footprint on the world. Turns out Ford built an entire town in the Amazon jungle in order to harvest rubber. For reasons you will learn about in this non-fiction book, it was an amazing failure. Along the way, you can learn about the complex person Ford was, the company he built, unions he fought, and the conflict between his vision for society and the reality of his automobile legacy.

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis. Keeping with my tradition of reading at least one book about history-changing current events (Enron, global warming, 9/11, etc), I settled on this book about the great financial meltdown. It was highly entertaining and enlightening. Lewis follows several key figures in the financial world who recognized what was going on, as bad loans were made and then repackaged to be sold and re-sold in misleadingly solid form by greedy Wall Street powerhouses. I felt guilty rooting for these guys, who literally created ways to make the risky bet of "shorting" the big boys pushing the bad paper. Lewis succeeds in producing a highly readable story that makes a nearly impenetrable maze of financial chicanery understandable.

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, by Neil Sheehan. The author of my favorite Vietnam war history, A Bright Shining Lie, turns his sights on the cold war and the ICBM program that was central to it. Terrific story! Sheehan weaves the history together with the human story of the ICBM program in the person of Bernard Schriever, who was the Air Force mover who made it happen. I could have used a little less time on the bureaucratic infighting, but clearly there could have been no mutually assured destruction without quite a bit of that going on. I wonder if being a child of the cold war and a professional participant in some form myself from 1974 to 1990 or so made this story more interesting to me than it will be to others, but I hope you'll give it a try.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in 1951, but her cancer cells live on today and have been used to help produce the polio vaccine along with many advances in gene mapping, virology, and elsewhere. Her family knew nothing about it until years later. Skloot does a lot of detective work on Henrietta and her family, and works hard to earn their trust that she will tell Henrietta's story and not exploit them. That process is part of the story, along with the understandable details of the science associated with the cells. I was a little concerned this was going to be a sob story about exploitation, but it really was not. The family story was actually interesting, and it served to highlight the often complete disconnect between the world of science and those who are on the receiving end of its efforts.

Facebook Tips for Boys and Girls

Another reason to stick with blogging.

Size Matters

As long as I'm on the engineering video kick, check this video of a miniature pie-throwing machine aiming at insects. Perhaps even weirder are the Google ads for exterminators that appeared on it as I was watching.

A Classic, Updated

Rice Krispy Treats have always been a classic Beatty family comfort food. I have even learned to try to avoid crushing Krispies while stirring in melted marshmallows, a feat nearly as challenging as avoiding crushing grass while mowing. This morning I saw this article in the SFChronicle's terrific food section that provided two new Rice Krispy Treat recipes inspired by the reporter's discovery of a Japanese variety of the classic. One is a "Matcha-Brown Butter" version (a kind of green tea), and the other seems like a great match for an oyster stout: Bacon Crispy Rice Treats.

Canine Physics

Courtesy of Wired Magazine, I saw this video that appealed to the dog lover engineer in me. From the corresponding article in Fluid Dynamics magazine:

The drying of wet fur is a critical to mammalian heat regulation. In this fluid dynamics video, we show a sequence of films demonstrating how hirsute animals to rapidly oscillate their bodies to shed water droplets, nature's analogy to the spin cycle of a washing machine. High-speed videography and fur-particle tracking is employed to determine the angular position of the animal's shoulder skin as a function of time. X-ray cinematography is used to track the motion of the skeleton. We determine conditions for drop ejection by considering the balance of surface tension and centripetal forces on drops adhering to the animal. Particular attention is paid to rationalizing the relationship between animal size and oscillation frequency required to self-dry.

Just keep back when a wet dog comes in the house!

La Nina, Baby

Not looking good for Sierra snow.

California and the Southwest: warmer and drier than average. This will likely exacerbate drought conditions in these areas.

Mostly boring for you mid-Atlantic-ers (which you could use after last year). Whistler might be a good bet.

Vicarious Space Flight

Amazing what kinds of things you can do for a science project these days.

Clown Posse Revealed

Keith mentioned that he named his fantasy football team Clown Posse after a band he saw on Dan's iPod. So, courtesy of one of my favorite blogs, I thought he might be interested in this profile of them. They're certainly, er interesting, but oh so revolting, at so many levels. I wonder if Dan knows that they've recently revealed that in spite of their incredibly violent lyrics, like:

I stuck her with my wang. She hit me in the balls. I grabbed her by her neck. And I bounced her off the walls. She said it was an accident and then apologised. But I still took my elbow and blackened both her eyes.

they've been evangelical Christians all along. In their newly confessed evangelical zeal, they seem to find the most mundane things to be miraculous, and science not to be trusted. Saturday Night Live did a parody of them that makes them out to be the Sarah Palin of rappers.

Garrett has some interesting things on his iPod, but I guess he's wary enough to keep tight control over what his parents get to see. Speaking of the Beatles from a few posts ago, Garrett once told us he had discovered a great song by the Beatles, Norwegian Wood!

Facelift at Age 6

For the blog's sixth birthday, I decided to give it a facelift. No more dreary white-on-black lettering. Maybe it will inspire some of us to blog more often :-)

The 40 Year Old Rumor

Did you hear? There is a rumor that Paul McCartney is actually dead, and he was replaced by an impostor running around all these years. Apparently there are all these hints -- like him being bearfoot on an album cover, and wearing a badge that meant "killed in action" in England. Thus was the newest online rumor passed on from Garrett to us, like a weird echo. Really, it seems to have been recycled for the new generation, but with the power of the Internet to push it along. Witness this YouTube video. It goes on for five installments, if you can bear it. It's more fun than Lindsay Lohan rumors, because those all seem to be true.

iPad - Natural Enemy of the Blog

I like my iPad, but it definitely drags me away from the computer at home. It's great for browsing content online and for reading things, but it is just inadequate for writing more than the most terse notes. It also is a truly sucky tool for blogging. The usual Blogger editing page doesn't work properly in Safari on the iPad, and it's basically impossible to post pictures. So, in iPad style, I bought an app that makes it almost bearable, but really doesn't remotely approach the functionality I have on Blogger right now in a browser. One thing that has kept me blogging over time is the phenomenon of reading things online and then blogging about them at the time. This is just plain hard to do on the iPad, so I keep seeing things and saying I need to blog about them. But then it never happens. I'm going to try to do better.

The Cup

Among all the competitor-bashing at Oracle World this week was this display of the America's Cup. A guy wearing white silk gloves was standing nearby.

Beer With Those Oyster Pancakes?

This article about oyster beer made me think of Dad, not to mention Ken and those day-after-Thanksgiving breakfasts.

French Laundry - Spin Cycle

While I don't watch any of those reality shows that revolve around chefs and cooking, I like a good meal, and I find the high-pressure, high-reward nature of the top restaurant business to be interesting. So, this article in the SFChronicle about the famous French Laundry restaurant in Yountville was right up my alley. A restaurant that serves $250 per person meals to 74 people every night it is open can afford to pull out all the stops. The reporter manages to track the entire day in the kitchen, starting off with the selection of some offerings for that night's meal with the chef.

He weighed out and smelled Australian winter truffles the size of softballs, each worth approximately $1,100. "You see how this smells a little off?" he asked me, holding one up to my nose. I didn't. "I'm going to send it back."

Then he took a mother-of-pearl spoon and in succession, scooped a generous spoonful from each caviar tin, smeared each on the fat of his thumb, then licked it off, as if he were about to take a shot of tequila. He asked me which caviar I liked best. They all tasted amazing. I willed my palate to perform, then, winging it, pointed to the second tin.

"Hmm," he said, "That was my least favorite. But to each his own." My heart sank. Hey, I'm the girl who likes the worst of the best caviar in the world, nice to meet you.

It gets better from there. We might have to work on a reservation. Fortunately the waiting time to get in will give us a chance to save up.

The picture at the top comes from the accompanying article about their three acre garden across from the restaurant that supplies almost all the produce they use.