American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

First half of the book where he's actually talking about nerd culture and what it means to be a nerd was good. The second half "Among the Nerds" was a bit scattered and incomplete. Some of the sections seemed to just stop short and not be developed like they should have been. Still, a good enough read just for the first half alone. And it's always nice to know more about one's "people." :)

Catching Up

I've once again fallen greatly behind in posting. Here's what I've been reading and the date I finished it.

10/1/09 Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer

10/4/09 Read half of Fakers by Pete Maliszewski. Stories were good, but the writing was awful. I had to quit.

10/4/09 The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden. Awesome and incredibly fun reference book for people of all ages. Getting my own copy for Christmas.

10/14/09 The Blind Side: The Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis. Now a major motion picture. I'll read anything Lewis writes. He's an amazing reporter and storyteller.

10/22/09 The Jason Voyage by Tim Severin. In 1984 Severin recreated the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. This meant mostly rowing from Greece to Georgia on the far end of the Black Sea in an open, single-masted galley.

10/31/09 The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs

11/18/09 Superfreakonomics by Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner. Not as good as Freakonomics, but still pretty great.

11/27/09 The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

11/30/09 Only read about 1/3 of Tim Severin's Sinbad Voyage. Nothing wrong with the book but ran out of time with the interlibrary loan.

Deadwood by Pete Dexter

Finished this book on Friday. I picked it up because Jane made me watch a speech given by the author, Pete Dexter. He's either insane or seriously chemically dependent. Either way, he might just be a literary genius.

I don't feel well enough right now to give this the write up it deserves, but HBO's (David Milch's) Deadwood owes an unacknowledged debt of gratitude to this book. Like HBO's version, most of the book takes place in 1876 and uses real historical figures from Deadwood to recreate that era. Hard to believe perhaps, but Dexter's Deadwood is a much more dirty, nasty, and evil place than HBO's version. Al Swearingen has no redeeming qualities in Dexter's world. Seth Bullock only looks out for his own interests. Sol Star has some streaks of evil. Wild Bill Hickok and Charley Utter have good qualities, but they bend matters to their own benefit as well. And Calamity Jane, well, it's hard to know what to say about her. By turns you hate her and respect her. And you're continuously grossed out by her (particularly the way Dexter describes green mold growing in the folds of her neck because she so rarely bathes).

Expertly written and expertly told, Deadwood transcends genre and is more of a reflection on truth, legend, human passions, greed, lust, and human nature. The story could be written in today's setting; everything's still there, we just pretend that it's not. It's all there right below the surface. The dark nature of man, just waiting for a chance to break through the thin veneer and into the daylight.

Long Overdue Update

So, I'm about three months behind. Whoops!

8/1 Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

8/13 Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

8/18 The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

8/28 Methland by Nick Reding

9/2 The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose

Currently reading Deadwood by Pete Dexter

More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman

PC guy from the Apple commercials and occasional contributor to the Daily Show, John Hodgman's More Information Than You Require is another almanac of fake trivia that uses continued pagination from his previous book Areas of My Expertise. Very funny stuff if you get his sense of humor. I can't believe that he went all the way in listing 700 different "Mole-Man" names. I particularly appreciated the day-by-day fake trivia on every page.

Wow, way behind

I've finished two books that I just haven't had the time to write up.

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. Entertaining and educational, but not nearly as good as her other books. It pains me to say that because I'm a huge Sarah Vowell fan.

Ireland: A Short History by Joe Coohill. A wonderful little history by my dear friend Joe. He does a really good job of describing the nuances among and between the competing groups in Irish history. It's not as clear-cut as the Catholic-Protestant divide. Really amazing how he can be so deft at describing these differences in historical context while under a pretty severe limit to keep it a "short" history.

A Piano in the Pyrenees by Tony Hawks

Let me start off by saying I love Tony Hawks. Not the skateboard guy, but the British comedian. While I've never heard any of his stand up, I've read two of this other books (Round Ireland with a Fridge and Playing the Moldovans at Tennis) and really enjoyed them. While A Piano in the Pyrenees wasn't as good as the other two, it' still a good read.

Hawks is one of those people who gets into a lot of weird "this could only happen to me" situations. And this is where is comedy shines. Hawks is self-deprecating, optimistic, and just seems downright nice. I'm tempted to compare him to David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs but Hawks is a lot nicer than Burroughs and not as well, Sedaris-y as Sedaris (though I still think David's the funniest writer on the planet), because Hawks has a lot brighter take on life.

Anyhow, about the piano and about the Pyrenees. Hawks and his friend head to the Pyrenees in the south of France for a ski trip. However, after a half hour, his friend realizes he can't ski any longer because his ankle is injured. Not wanting to ski by himself, Hawks and his friend decide to drive around the countryside. And Hawks buys a house. Yep, just like that. His friend says he should look into a vacation home and he finds what he thinks is the perfect one and puts in a bid. Just like that, spur of the moment. And he gets the house.

The idea is that he'll use this house as a place to relax and practice his piano skills so he can really get back to music. Alas, things never work out as planned, especially if your name is Tony Hawks. He takes us through his adventures in trying to fix up the house (along with his grumpy friend/handyman from home, Ron), fit in with the village, remember to speak in French, and build a pool. Not to give anything away, but the pool becomes known as "Serge's Hole."

It's tough to go into too much detail, but typical of Hawks, there are many times I found myself laughing out loud, thinking "god what another mess he's in," and most importantly, I smiled almost the whole time I was reading it. A good read, a fun read, and even a little uplifting. Perfect summer reading. Thanks for the good time, Tony!

The Kobayashi Maru by Julia Ecklar

The Kobayashi Maru (1989) by Julia Ecklar is a Star Trek pulp fiction book. I picked it up because the Kobayashi Maru scenario was a cool part in the new Star Trek movie and was a semi-important part of the Wrath of Khan.

Essentially the scenario tests Starfleet cadets responses to a no-win scenario. In the book we're treated to Kirk, Chekov, Sulu, and Scotty's (yes, even Scotty) "solutions" for the scenario.

I can't say the book was good, but it was fun.

The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

The Nine is a look at the workings of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), particularly the Rehnquist Court. I've had this on my list for a while, and I figured it would be a good read given the retirement of Justice Souter and the upcoming confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. I wasn't disappointed. However, this book isn't for everyone. If you don't have an interest in politics, the law, or aren't a history and civics geek like me, the book may not hold your interest.

Toobin does a nice job of giving an historical framework to the court and the major cases that came before the Rehnquist Court. Even more interesting is his history of the conservative movement's push over the years to get "solid" judges placed on the SCOTUS mainly for the purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade and thus reinstating a ban on abortions.

The author also strongly argues against current Chief Justice Roberts' conception of the Justices being just like baseball umpires, simply calling balls and strikes according to well-defined rules. Toobin argues that just the opposite, the Court takes on the cases where the law is nebulous and without well-defined rules. If the rules had been that clear-cut, the cases would have been settled at a lower court or the SCOTUS would have declined to hear the appeal because they felt the decisions already made at the lower court were clear. And this is where politics and ideology come into play.

The Justices are most definitely political actors. They are appointed through a political process and gained their nominations through having political opinions. This doesn't mean that the Justices toe a particular party line (especially since most of them firmly believe in an independent judiciary), however, they tend to stick to their original political leanings. There is much hue and cry over the years about Justices "growing into the job" and becoming more liberal with time. Toobin argues that this isn't the case. It's simply that the Justices (especially Souter and O'Connor) didn't fit in with the ideological right wing's version of conservatism. Souter was (is) a moderate New England conservative and O'Connor grew up and served in Barry Goldwater's Republican Party, the one that was more interested in less restrictive government and didn't have as much of an interest in social issues. Toobin makes an iron-clad case that the Republican Party moved away from O'Connor, rather than vice versa. On the other hand, old habits and affiliations die hard, as is seen in her vote in Bush v. Gore that landed George W. Bush in the White House.

In all, I found it to be a fascinating book, but again, it won't be for everyone.

Way behind in updating

I have two books, almost three, that I need to write up. But when I was on vacation, I didn't feel like blogging them. So there. :)

I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

I Was Told There'd Be Cake is another in what's rapidly appearing to be my favorite genre: humorous and poignant confessional essays. Like the blurb on the book cover says, she reminds me a bit of David Sedaris and Sara Vowell. A little Augusten Burroughs thrown in too.

Crosley recounts such stories as ShitterGate (when she finds a small turd on her bathroom floor after a dinner party and then how she how she slyly tries to find out whodunit) and the trials and tribulations of being a bridesmaid for a high school friend she hasn't seen in years. In short, she writes about situations unique to her that we could all envision ourselves getting into.

Where I give Crosley great credit is her use of metaphor to comic effect. I found myself laughing out loud at some of her comparisons. Here's the best sentence I've read in a long time: "My Australian dreams had disappeared into the night like a baby in a dingo's jaw." Many other great lines in this book.

Funny. Thought-provoking. Quality. Great for summer reading. Go read it now.

Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis

I finished Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis two days ago. Fatsis (whose most recent book A Few Seconds of Panic I read earlier in the year) spent most of 1999 and some of 2000 immersed in the world of competitive Scrabble and attempted to become an expert himself. We learn the history of the game and many of the strange denizens of the competitive Scrabble world. It's a good read about a rather bizarre subject, but if you like words and like Scrabble, it's worth a look.

Jennifer Government by Max Barry

I finished reading Jennifer Government the weekend before last, but haven't gotten around to writing it up until now. Things have been crazy, but here we are now.

Jennifer Government is an insightful, trenchant, and hilarious look at globalism and corporatism run amok. In the world of Jennifer Government no one has family last names anymore. Your last name is the name of the company you work for. So we have characters such as Nathaniel ExxonMobil, John Nike, Billy NRA, and the eponymous Jennifer Government. As you can tell from Billy NRA, even the NRA is a company for hire. Even worse, the Police are for hire. You can even subcontract them as hit men. Children's last names are the sponsor of the school they go to. Jennifer's daughter Kate goes to a Mattel school (instead of Hasbro or some other toy company) so her name isn't Kate Government, it's Kate Mattel.

Without spoiling too much (and there's quite a bit to spoil), the book sets up around a marketing ploy gone awry. Nike's new Mercury shoes are going to be the huge consumer item of the quarter. People are gathering in huge crowds outside of Nike Towns all across the world to get a crack at these shoes (I can't remember the figure, but $5000 per pair seems right). In order to make them even more valuable, two Nike marketing execs come up with an idea to kill some teenagers that just bought the shoes to make it look like they were killed for their new Nikes. Thus, the new shoes will gather even more cachet because it looks like people will kill to get them. As if that isn't weird enough, soon we see Nike trying to abolish the government!

In short, Max Barry's book, while funny, and ostensibly light reading, makes you think about how your choices are manipulated by companies every day. It also makes you think about what the proper relationship between the government and business should be. Good book.

Making the Corps by Thomas E. Ricks

Making the Corps is exactly what it sounds like. How does one make it into the U.S. Marine Corps. Published in 1997 and researched mostly in 1995. Ricks embeds himself with the 3086th recruit platoon at Parris Island, SC and follows them through boot camp and beyond.

Much of it is what you'd expect and have seen on TV and the movies. Lots of physical training, running in combat gear, rifle range training, etc. But there is much to learn here. For one, drill instructors aren't allowed to hit or swear at recruits. If they do and it's found out, it's most likely the end of their career. Other things to note is that compared to Basic Training in the other services, Marine boot camp is as much, if not more, about instilling a set of institutional values in the recruits as training them to be soldiers. That can be handled later at infantry school. Plus, one doesn't often realize what a grueling existence it is for drill instructors and their families.

It was also interesting to see Sen. Jim Webb's name pop up as a person who was critical in re-vamping Marine basic training. Webb is currently the junior U.S. Senator from Virginia, former Secretary of the Navy, and Marine hero during Vietnam. In the post-Vietnam funk, Webb, among others, realized that the Corps had to do something to regain its image. Webb, as Secretary of the Navy, hired maverick General Al Gray to be the man to make those changes. Gray's hiring was opposed by most in the Corps because they didn't want someone who would rock the boat; but Gray's changes, in Ricks's opinion made for a better Corps.

Even though the book deals almost exclusively with enlisted Marines and recruits, Ricks takes note of the increasing alienation of the military from society and the politicization of the officer corps. The Marines feel that one of their biggest fights is against the decadent consumer culture of America and this makes them "values voters" and makes the officer corps very Republican-leaning. Ricks notes that most Congresspeople don't have military experience (I don't think this has changed) and that Bill Clinton didn't serve in the military. I wonder how many of these officers feel now that two Republicans who didn't serve (Bush and Cheney) have them mired down in missions in the Middle East. Ostensibly Bush did, but we know how that story goes. But, the point being, Obama didn't serve in the military either. A semi-autonomous military, as Ricks notes, could be very dangerous to the future of America. Civilians should do more to understand the military, and the military should remember that its role is to protect America and its society.

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Proprietor

Robert Coogan's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Proprietor is a vastly overrated book. I have no idea how it made it into Sport's Illustrated's top 100 sports books.

The story is about J. Henry Waugh, who creates a baseball game using dice and paper (Strat-o-Matic baseball, anyone?) and brings his players to life by giving them names and personalities. He can play a season in a couple of months and he keeps meticulous statistics and a detailed history of the Association. We join the story in year LVI (56) of the Association, which, not coincidentally is Waugh's age. Waugh is in a bit of a funk over the league because not much interesting has happened since they came out of a golden age (The Brock Rutherford Era, named after all hall of fame player; inasmuch as a name on a piece of paper can be a hall of famer). However, Waugh is getting rejuvenated because Brock Rutherford's son, Damon, has just joined the league and is shaping up to become a star.

However, everything falls apart when young Damon is killed by a pitch to the head. Waugh thinks about cheating to keep Damon alive, but decides he must play by his own rules otherwise it isn't worth doing. This leads to Waugh's near total mental collapse. His obsession with the game and his hope for keeping his obsession with the game alive appear to have died with Damon. He starts drinking heavily, missing work, and ultimately getting fired. And perhaps, though it isn't explicitly stated in the text, Waugh may have completely gone insane and simply lived as the god of the association, which would involve completely dissociating with the real world.

Coover tries to write a book about obsession and mythology. It's fairly weak tea.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon

As you might remember, I read David Simon's The Corner (which was about a year in a drug infested inner city neighborhood in Baltimore), a few months ago. It was such a good book, I figured I'd go back and read his earlier work, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. I wasn't disappointed. After all, these are the two books that spawned HBO's The Wire. This book was also the inspiration for NBC's hit show, Homicide: Life on the Street.

David Simon (a veteran police reporter for the Baltimore Sun at the time) embedded himself with the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit from January 1, 1988 through December 31, 1988. For all intents and purposes, he was a homicide cop for the year (though he never tried to act like one...he wanted to blend into the background and that meant dressing and acting like a homicide detective). He attended crime scences, visited the morgue, and participated in a legal exhumation of a body. He was there for search and seizures, interrogations, court hearings and trials, prosecutor's offices, you name it.

The book is so well written that at times it feels like you're reading fiction. The problem is, none of it is fiction. People commit murders every day across this country. Homicide cops have to mentally distance themselves from the crimes in order to cope and do their jobs. They make distinctions between victims (also called taxpayers) and derelicts, dealers, and others who they don't think make a contribution to society.

The life of a homicide detective is rough. Again, all that evil you see on a daily basis, horrific office politics (which is often real politics), incredibly long hours, and incredible stress from dealing with deadbeats all day. This leads to a lot of alcohol abuse among the detectives and a lot of neglected families at home. And if you don't fall in with the unwritten work rules of the homicide department, you'll be hazed mercilessly until you conform or transfer out.

Simon gives us a very honest book. While sympathetic to the detectives, he shows us their flaws (family problems, alcohol abuse, some racism, other things) as well. He also tries to give the "other" side a fair shake as well.

My only problem with the book is that there were so many people involved in the story. Even though each detective was incredibly well fleshed out, it was hard to remember who had a young child at home, who was divorced, who was a sergeant, etc. But this is a minor complaint.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets is an extremely compelling read. Even though it rings in at a weighty 600 pages, they seem to fly by. Great writing by a great journalist on what is unfortunately a timeless topic.

Libra by Don DeLillo

I finished Libra by Don DeLillo last week. For some reason, I haven't been good about blogging recently (almost a month since I updated the dog's blog). Anyhow, I'm having writer's block at work and I thought this would help jump start it.

First, let me say that DeLillo is a master of the novel. He's able to do things with words that few others can. He seems to be able to shift the reader from one character's thoughts to another without any effort at all. I'm surprised he isn't a more popular and revered author.

Libra is a work of fiction about the plot to kill JFK. DeLillo takes care to note that this is a work of fiction and that many of the events and people are imaginary. But he does take on some of the primary players, mainly Lee Harvey Oswald. In DeLillo's world, the plot is hatched by former CIA operatives whose careers were ended or put on indefinite hold by the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Their thought was that Kennedy had let them down and abandoned Cuba. So what they needed was not to kill Kennedy, but to have a very realistic attempt on Kennedy's life that could be traced back to Castro's government. They were hoping for a "spectacular miss." From there the plot unwinds to include the mafia, Cuban expatriates, former FBI agents, private investigators, soldiers of fortune, and of course, Oswald.

Oswald is the focus of the book. DeLillo puts you in Oswald's head from the time he was a boy. He never felt comfortable, but always felt he was bound for something greater. This explains his dalliances with Marxism and his defection to the Soviet Union. But when he found that the USSR didn't provide him with any more opportunities than he had in the U.S., he arranged to come back (but not without complications). The CIA agents found Oswald and promised him better. Promised him that he could be a hero in Cuba. But of course, that's not how it worked out, much to the dismay of Oswald, the hatchers of the consipiracy, and Jack Ruby.

Finished The Men Who Stare at Goats on Wednesday

A little bit ago, I read and enjoyed Jon Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists in which he interviews and follows around conspiracy theorists and other weirdos. So I decided to give his more recent book, The Men Who Stare at Goats a try. I wasn't disappointed. In this work, Ronson investigates many of the oddball parapsychology projects that the U.S. military and government undertook from the 70s through the 90s. Then he goes on to write about how many of these projects are indeed still be going on under the guise of the War on Terror.

Many of these projects involved such flights of fancy as mind control, the use of LSD to see if it could aid in mind control, use of subliminal messages, use of ultra and sub-sonic frequencies to try to cause pain and discomfort to the enemy, and the title of the book, where "psychic warriors" attempt to explode the hearts of goats just by staring at them and concentrating. One of Ronson's interviewees claims he was successful in killing a goat this way. Of course, none of these used proper scientific or ethical protocols.

As usual, Ronson writes with great wit and clarity. The book is funny, but disturbing. It's hard to imagine that we, the "good guys," are spending money on projects that not only are ethically dubious, but have no basis in science and no chance of working. In what we usually consider to be one of the most steely-eyed and results oriented segments of the nation, our military, it seems that superstition still has a very strong foothold.

Gave up on American Project

Sorry to report that I gave up on reading American Project by Sudhir Venkatesh. I was really interested in the subject matter, but the writing was just too dry.

Finished A Few Bricks Shy of a Load

Finished A Few Bricks Shy of a Load by Roy Blount, Jr. this morning. It's an account of Blount's year embedded with the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers. I've been meaning to read this book for oh, say 25 years, and now I really wish I had read it earlier. It was superb. Blount really got into the heart of the team, which is to say, it seemed he really understood the players as people. Not supermen, no interchangeable pieces in a football puzzle, but as people like everyone else. He also did a fine job reporting on the ownership of the team, the Rooney family. He swore he didn't want to write a glowing review of the Rooney family, but that he couldn't help it. He felt a little defeated as a journalist that he couldn't find anything significantly mean or rotten about the family. Because Chuck Noll was cool to him, Blount never really was able to talk about the coaching much, but that didn't really matter. This wasn't a book of X's and O's anyway.

Blount covered many other important areas: race, drugs, the toll on the body, and locker room chemistry. All were done with a very fine and detailed touch. It's hard to remember a time in sports when steroids were legal, let alone not worth much of a mention. One of the linemen talked about how steroids helped him bulk up out of college but how his wife made him quit. That's it....one small mention. One has to assume that it was so common that it didn't warrant more attention. He did talk about players using amphetemines to get up for games and how some players didn't like that they couldn't smoke pot on the plane on the way back from road games but that they could drink beer.

It was also weird to read a book that had some Steelers I don't really remember well from my childhood. I had heard of Ray Mansfield being a great center, but I never, ever remember the Steelers without Mike Webster as the starting center...he was still in college. And Jack Lambert wasn't a Steeler in '73, he was a senior at Kent State. That was really bizarre. And stranger still, no Lynn Swann and no John Stallworth. They were still in college too. Four Hall-of-Famers that I grew up know as THE Steelers weren't on the team at the time. Noll had a helluva draft in '74 though, wouldn't you say?

Simply put, I loved this book. If it had just been about any football team, I'd have really liked it, but since it was my hometown team, I loved it.

Finished The Know It All by A.J. Jacobs

As a librarian and lover of reference books, I applaud A.J. Jacobs for reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A-Z. Since I'm pretty sick right now, I can't give the book justice, but like The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs is honest, intelligent, and supremely witty. I laughed out loud a few times. Also like his other book, you come away feeling that even though mankind can be a bunch of right evil bastards, we done some wonderful things that we can take pride of as a species. Now if they could just come up with an instant cure for sinus infections, I'd have a lot more pride in homo sapiens.

Still working on American Project. Started A Few Bricks Shy of a Load by Roy Blount, Jr., an account of his year with the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers. So far, so awesome. But I'm a long time Steeler fan.

Back to Slogging

I'm still reading...don't give up on me! I started American Project by Sudhir Venkatesh a while ago. It's a history and sociological study of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes housing development. From what I've read of Venkatesh in Freaknomics and on the Freakonomics blog, he's a very good writer. However, I don't think he was that good of a writer when he published this book in 2000. It just doesn't even seem like his style...it's just not that engaging. I'm glad to see he's grown as a writer though.

So since that was slow going, I figured that since I liked A.J. Jacobs' biblical living book, I started his book on reading the Encyclopaedia Brittanica from A-Z. So far, I'm not disappointed. I'm trying to read both right now, but Jacobs is winning since he's a really funny guy (and it's an easier read).

The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons, and Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowcliffe

Barrowcliffe, reared in Coventry, England, takes us on a tour of his adolescence, which revolved almost entirely around playing various forms of Dungeons and Dragons. A light, funny memoir than will appeal to anyone who ever enjoyed D&D growing up.

True Enough by Farhad Manjoo

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society is one of the most important and relevant books I've read in a long time. I'd recommend that every librarian, heck, every educator and every citizen read this book. Manjoo looks at a lot of topics, but the main theme revolves around how, paradoxically, the overload of information today gets us further away from a factual accounting of the world and more into a world where opinion counts more.

True Enough looks through various information sources (internet, TV news, print journalism, advertising, others) and shows how people pick and choose information to create the world they want to see based on their pre-disposed opinions (and liberals are skewered as well as conservatives for those of you who worry about ideology). Manjoo translates the psychological scholarship on these issues into a very readable form. Other forms of fact/opinion influences (peer-pressure, public relations efforts, others) are also discussed.

Manjoo's book highlight's why information literacy and critical thinking are so important in today's world, and yet so undervalued by society at large. A terribly important book for the times.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

In this book, Jacobs attempts to live by all the rules set forth in the Bible, both New and Old Testament, for a year. Since he was raised in a secular Jewish family, this wasn't the easiest task. Also, being Jewish (and because most of the rules are), he spends most of the year working on the laws from the Old Testament.

Jacobs' writing style is excellent. This comes, I'm sure, from his years writing for Esquire. The book was extremely readable, especially for a topic that could have been deathly dull. But his humor, good grace, and honesty all make the reader really involved in his mission.

He didn't have much problem with some of the laws (such as animal sacrifice, since that's only to be done at the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Romans destroyed the Temple a long time ago). Others, such as not touching his wife or anything she sits on during her menstrual cycle are significantly more difficult.

What's most revealing about the book is that we learn a lot of the thoughts on the reasons why the biblical rules came about. Obviously there are the face value reasons: God said so. But then there are reasons that are out of vogue (no pork to avoid spoiled meat) and current cultural anthropological thinking (no pork to establish a clear group identity, as opposed to say, the Samaritans).

I could go on a lot longer, but suffice it to say that the pictures of Jacobs' beard from the beginning of the year to the end of the year tell a story of his commitment. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and learned a lot along the way which is some high praise from me.

A Few Seconds of Panic by Stefan Fatsis

In A Few Seconds of Panic, Stefan Fatsis takes us into the locker room of the Denver Broncos during his attempt to make the team as a kicker. Mind you, Fatsis is a 43 year old, 5-8", 170 pound sportswriter. However, Fatsis takes his job as a kicker seriously.

He works out with kicking coaches before mini-camp and makes an effort to get in the best shape possible. Despite all this, he's still tiny and not in nearly as good a shape as the rest of the Broncos. Fatsis goes all out to actually be a part of the team, rather than just being an embedded journalist.

The biggest lesson that the reader learns is that the football players are actually real people. It's easy to think of them as players in a video game or just some dudes making big paychecks. They have families, interests, and everything that you and I have. You also learn of the attendant pressures of being a fringe player in the NFL, with no guaranteed contracts. Making the team means everything, even if it's playing hurt.

Fatsis is with the Broncos through the summer, through minicamp, through training camp, and through the exhibition season. He gives the reader a fresh perspective on the players in the game and how cruel a business pro football can be.

Finally writing up The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns

The Corner is written by the co-creators of HBO's awesome show, The Wire and NBC's (I think) Homicide: Life on the Streets. Burns was a homicide cop in Baltimore and Simon was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. In The Corner, they spend a year examining life in one of Baltimore's run-down, drugged-up inner city neighborhoods, focusing on one corner.

Oddly, street gangs didn't have much control over individual territories in Baltimore in the early and mid-nineties. I'm certain they did on the larger distribution end, but there was a lot of freelancing going on by different crews. The drugs sold were hardcore: heroin and crack.

Simon and Burns largely follow one broken family made up of Fran Boyd, Gary McCullough, and DeAndre McCullogh. DeAndre might be considered the main figure in the book, since he clearly shows how an adolescence in the ghetto turns a smart young man into just another dealer using his own supply.

But more than that, the authors show the full constellation of people in the inner-city neighborhood. From the hard-working "civilians" who haven't fled yet, to the dealers, to the cops, to the touts, to the shooting gallery "doctors," to the shooting gallery owners, to the stick-up boys who prey on the unwary dealer, and most importantly, to the addicts themselves. The reader becomes truly immersed in this microculture. And it's not a pretty place to be.

Simon and Burns show the desperate measures these people go to just to get their next fix. Further, they include sub-chapters where they examine the social failures that led to the creation of the drug culture and dependency culture in the inner-cities. Their take on welfare as a "bribe" to keep the poor from rising up is very insightful.

The Corner is one of the best non-fiction books I've read in a long time. It's disturbing to middle-class sensibilities, but it's a story that we've ignored for far too long. While I don't agree with some of their conclusions, Simon and Burns make the reader face some realities that we often feel safer ignoring. An excellent book excellently written.

Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson

Ronson gives a humorous and enlightening view into the world of conspiracy theorists. Keeping in mind that these adventures were pre-9/11, not much of made of Islamic fundamentalist conspiracy theories (except for the first chapter where Ronson befriends the self-styled "Osama bin Laden's man in London"). Largely the conspiracies deal with anti-Semetic theories of how the Jews run the world. And in the conspiracy theorists minds, you don't even have to be Jewish to be a Jew. You just have to be part of the small ruling group. One of the groups continually referred to is the Bilderberg group (which actually exists, but doesn't have much to do with running the world).

Other adventures include meeting with leaders of two different Ku Klux Klan sects, a man who thinks that the ruling elites are actually genetically 12 foot lizards, and Randy Weaver, the man who holed up in a cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho where the FBI and ATF held his family under siege.

In all, an interesting look at the paranoia of the conspiracy theorists and how one might get swept up in their passions.

Finished The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns Last Night

The dog is making it difficult to get a lot of reading done.

Review forthcoming.