Collected Miscellany

–> 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days — and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance by Dean Karnazes with Matt Fizgerald

Product Description
In the Fall of 2006, Dean Karnazes, known as the “Lance Armstrong of the running world,” took on the ultimate challenge: running 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days. Dean set off in a caravan packed with fellow runners, with nothing more than a roadmap and a determination that defied all physical limitations.

50/50 goes beyond the incredible story of these 50 marathons. It is a firsthand account of what happens when your body defies all limitations, and it is a fascinating story of what it’s like to push the limits of strength under grueling conditions.

This book is also packed with Dean’s secrets and training tips that runners everywhere will want to know. These include what to do when you hit a wall, how to adapt quickly to drastic terrain, how to get motivated after a really tough day, and the best diet and exercise tips to improve your own best time. Complete with Dean’s practical tips on building endurance, this book will appeal to marathon runners and athletes everywhere.

–> The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. What could be more intriguing than the young writer Roald Dahl—destined to create such classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—assigned by His Majesty’s Government to Washington, D.C., as a diplomat in the spring of 1942, charged with a secret mission? Dahl’s brief was to gather intelligence about America’s isolationist circles (indeed, he infiltrated the infatuated Claire Boothe Luce in more ways than one) and propagandize for prompt American entry into the European war. The United States had technically been at war with Germany since December 1941. However, the U.S.’s attention was focused mainly on the Pacific theater—and such pro-German political figures as Luce and Charles Lindbergh meant to keep it that way. Dahl’s most important job was to influence public opinion generally and the opinions of Washington’s powerful specifically. As bestselling author Conant (Tuxedo Park) shows in her eloquent narrative, Dahl’s intriguing coconspirators included future advertising legend David Ogilvy and future spy novelist Ian Fleming. Most fascinating, though, is Dahl’s relationship with the great British spymaster William Stephenson, otherwise known as Intrepid. This all boils down to a thoroughly engrossing story, one Conant tells exceptionally well.

-> Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind by Margalit Fox

Publishers Weekly
The world of sign languages and cognitive research comes to life in this story of a remote Israeli village that’s become a test bed for understanding how the human brain processes language. New York Times reporter Fox follows researchers, led by University of Haifa professor Wendy Sandler, to the Bedouin village of Al-Sayyid, where isolation, genetics and inbreeding have led to a higher than usual percentage of deafness in the population. In response, the villagers have created a home-brew sign language used by both the hearing and deaf. By studying this unique language, Sandler and her cohort hope to gain deeper insight into how the brain acquires and uses language. Chapters alternate between the painstaking work in Al-Sayyid and a history of sign language itself. Both are gracefully reinforced with vivid examples, from the early insistence of experts that proper sign language must produce words in one-to-one correspondence with spoken language to a lively gathering in Al-Sayyid where conversation flows freely in six languages: English, Hebrew, Arabic, American Sign Language, Israeli Sign Language and the local sign language. Fox takes readers on a fascinating tour of deaf communication, clearly explaining difficult concepts, and effortlessly introducing readers to a silent world where communication is anything but slow and awkward.

-> Duck Duck Wally by Gabe Rotter

Publishers Weekly
Rotter relies heavily on black street slang for comic effect in his zany debut, starting with chizapter 1. Wally Moscowitz, a self-described frumpy, kinda chubby little boring man living in Los Angeles, writes lyrics for rapper Oral B, the current star of Godz-Illa Records. When not penning lyrics full of four-letter words for Oral, Wally also writes dirty bedtime fables for adults, examples of which are sprinkled throughout the novel. Godz-Illa CEO Abraham Dandy Lyons has assured Wally that if anyone ever discovers that Oral B isn’t writing his own lyrics, Wally will end up in a ditch. Soon, Wally’s dog gets ‘napped, goons are trying to kill Wally and everyone rushes to and fro against a backdrop of glitzy L.A. bizness thuggery. Rotter’s a talented writer, though readers who find variations of the same joke funny enough to support the silly plot will be most rewarded.

-> The Tourists by Jeff Hobbs

Publishers Weekly
An unnamed narrator details the post-Yale love triangle of three people much, much wealthier than he in Hobbs’s Gatsby-meets-McInerney debut. Unlike Nick Carraway or the persistent “You” of Bright Lights Big City, the speaker at the heart of this novel is more cipher than seer. A shiftless New York freelancer edging into his 30s, the narrator discovers that his Yalie friend—handsome, gay Ethan Hoevel, famous designer of sleek contemporary furniture—has left his boyfriend, Stanton Vaughn, to pursue a doomed relationship with their fellow alum—the married (and female) Samona Taylor (née Ashley). The narrator still carries a torch for Samona, and renews his friendship with Samona’s husband, the also-Yalie Merrill Lynch trader David Taylor, mostly out of a morbid curiosity about Samona’s philandering. Hobbs spends much of the novel recounting how everyone got where they are in the eight years following college, but the plot picks up in the last third, when Ethan’s ne’er-do-well brother precipitates a crisis, and Ethan and Samona’s affair has its reckoning. Hobbs convincingly portrays young, Ivied New Yorkers with money, but he leaves the narrator’s feelings for Samona (and much else) largely unexplored, making the proceedings feel unresolved.

This is just a place to drop quick “notes and asides” without writing a big blog post.  Good for quick links or thoughts.

Things seem to be working here at the new site.  But please be patient as we work out the kinks.  If you find a broken link or something unusual drop me an email or leave a comment.

After reading several interesting books about the naval war during World War II, I wanted to read about the men who led us to victory in that war. William Tuohy’s America’s Fighting Admirals piqued my interest. Tuohy satisfied my interest and more.

The book is organized chronologically by looking at the admirals who led the U.S. Navy during World War II.Tuohy focuses on the men who rose to the occasion and those who fell short. His list of fighting admirals includes such famous men as Admirals Raymond Spruance and William “Bull” Halsey, but also little known, but important men such as Admirals Willis “Ching” Lee and Aaron Stanton “Tip” Merrill.

Tuohy mainly covers the war in the Pacific Theater with a few pages about the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France. I understand that the Pacific Theater was by far the most important theater of operations for the U.S. Navy, but I think that Tuohy should have spent some time on the men who protected the convoys in the North Atlantic (then again maybe there weren’t any “fighting admirals” in those leaders).

Read the rest of this entry »

I was asked by Patti Abbott to offer a post for her Forgotten Books series and like everything else in my life right now I am running behind.

The book that came to mind was A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck.  This was one of my earliest reading experiences and it made a big impression on me.  The story taught me how books can communicate not only action and adventure but depth and emotion.  I was drawn into the life of the characters in the way only great books can draw you in.

Here is the publishers description:

In the daily round of his thirteenth year, as the seasons turn and the
farm is tended, the boy — whose time is the only-yesterday of Calvin
Coolidge, whose people are the Plain People living without “frills” in
the Shaker Way — becomes a man.

That is all, and it is
everything. The boy is mauled by Apron, the neighbor’s ailing cow whom
he helps, alone, to give birth. The grateful farmer brings him a gift
– a newborn pig. His father at first demurs (“We thank you, Brother
Tanner,” said Papa, “but it’s not the Shaker Way to take frills for
being neighborly. All that Robert done was what any farmer would do for
another”) but is persuaded. Rob keeps the pig, names her, and gives her
his devotion … He wrestles with grammar in the schoolhouse. He hears
rumors of sin. He is taken — at last — to the Rutland Fair. He
broadens his heart to make room even for Baptists. And when his father,
who can neither read nor cipher, whose hands are bloodied by his trade,
whose wisdom and mastery of country things are bred in the bone,
entrusts Rob with his final secret, the boy makes the sacrifice that completes his passage into manhood.

I am not sure what qualifies as a “Forgotten Book.”  Although it is still available in mass paperback (with this rather garish cover) and Peck is a prominent author I have never heard anyone else mention this book.  Not even as part of a discussion of their childhood reading.  And I have yet to come across it in any of the used bookstores I frequent. 

It was, however, a part of my start as a life long reader.  So if it has become a forgotten book, it would please me to know that this post might introduce a few readers to this worthy classic.

My goal is to have the new site up and running by Monday August 18.  Now don’t hold your breath on this or wager money on it, but that is what I will try my best to do.

It is then my fondest hope to begin actually writing about books again.  Imagine that!  Try to contain your excitement . . .