What's Everyone Reading? (and I don't mean fu#*ing blogs)

I was feeling pretty burned out on politics tonight. I caught a little of Jane Hamsher ranting on MSNBC and popped by our friend Jamelle's blog and found this post also dealing with our own little left wing crack up -- but Jamelle's title was so much better than my crude admonition of the other day to my fellow lefties -- "Sanctimony is a Force that Gives us Meaning."  Priceless. I was really depressed to click on the attached article and find that it was an attack on gutless liberals from the left written by Chris Hedges, author of "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning," a book I recently read and greatly admired.  Hedges chides liberals for their sterile posturing then boasts of how when he was going to divinity school at Harvard, he lived in Roxbury and belonged to the Greater Boston YMCA boxing team and hung with the real peeps, while learning to hate them Sandinista loving liberals over in Cambridge.  Oy, it's a tiresome piece, written by a guy with issues -- and one who admits to voting for Nader and Cynthia McKinney with no hint of embarrassment, no sense that he is a poseur with a u in it himself.  

Anyway, it depressed me because "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning" is actually a pretty incredible book, a reminder that truly good journalism does exist and carries a profound weight.  In a nutshell, Hedges trots around the world looking for trouble, finds it, loves/hates it, really understands it, and writes well and insightfully about it.  Don't be put off  by the tripe I linked to -- the book seems like it was written by a different man.  Oh he too is a bit sanctimonious -- but he seems in the book to see his own heart of darkness pretty well too.  I recommend it unhesitatingly.

Another book of extraordinary journalism that I would urge you to read is "Methland" by Nick Reding, the depiction of the incredibly devastating impact of methamphetamine in a small Iowa town, a scourge prompted in large part by the incredibly devastating impact of globalization, deunionization, and deindustrialization. Reding doesn't just report -- he really becomes a part of this town, living there for months and getting to know its citizens on a very personal level, including quite a few tweakers.  He describes in amazing detail how the meth trade was established and the human and environmental devastation it brings.  He also notes its connection to work, particularly the way the drug is used to allow people to work inhuman hours at back breaking, poorly paid jobs.  It is, as Reding describes, the most American of drugs.  The book is not totally unrelentingly bleak -- there are good people in the community battling the problem and Reding gives us an affectionate, yet fully human rendering of them and their struggles.  There even appears to be a glimmer of hope by the end of the book, although one has the sense that these small towns -- always held up as the exemplar of the "real America" -- are critically ill with a poor prognosis.  

Anyway, turn off the computer and turn off cable news and pick up either of these volumes and you will be better for it.

I'll try my hand at my most recent fiction read tomorrow, but for now must say goodnight.  Tell me what you're reading that is worth the effort.

Comments

[big bad wolf]

i'm reading louis begley's "schmidt delivered." i don't think it will change anyone's world, but it is finely wrought.

this post and the afghanistan/revolutionary comment about shining path lead me to recommend mario varga llosa's "the real life of alejandro mayta." i'm not crazy about vargas's politics, but he writes magnificiently and tells things magically. his "the feast of the goat" about trujillo's dominican republic is also quite good, though it sags in the middle. julia alvarez's "in the time of the butterflies" also takes flight during that period. and, perhaps because i am a hard-drinking, somewhat ruefully very lapsed leftist catholic dreamer and near loser, i still like graham greene's the comedians, though it, as with most novels of its and all times, strikes some sour notes in the present.

with all this fiction somehow real life becomes a rumor.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Most of my own reading tends towards either the functional -- for example, a lot of stuff on Early Christianity for my article on "Thy Myth of the Myth of Jesus" -- the current meme that he was a fictional character that is sweeping my fellow atheists is about as annoying as the most recent effusions of Beck or Palin and as absurd. Or it's pure froth -- I am a long-time detective story fanatic and own about 3000 of them, and may pick up anything from a Silver Age pure escape piece to some of the moderns like Val McDermid, Margaret Maron, or Reginald Hill (the Dalziel & Pascoe books only) that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone -- especially Hill's sequence of DEADHEADS, CHILD'S PLAY, UNDERWORLD and BONES AND SILENCE which are literature by anyone's standards. (Not the execrable P.D. James, the most overrated writer around.)

I like some SF, but don't read as much as I used to. Sturgeon -- the best short story writer in the field, Budrys, Dick, and the two classic Bester novels, particularly TIGER, TIGER (THE STARS MY DESTINATION).

I've never read much general fiction on any level, except for some Barth and Coover, and the magnificent Louis Auchincloss, whose style is so perfect you drown in it, who portrays that small world of his perfectly, and who is quite a bit of a moralist -- but so am I as you must have noticed. (POWERS OF ATTORNEY may be my favorite.)

Now I'm back with Questia, I'll be back into non-fiction more heavily, more academically oriented than journalistic -- with quite a tilt towards the law. (Read Abraham's work on the nomination of the Supreme Court justices, but can't recommend it, since it has the depth of a newspaper's report card on a sports team. Lots opf pure info, but nothing else.

And I've never been an anti-television snob and have no qualms in recommending some shows as either 'good entertainment' or, frequently, something more. (If anyone can watch the NCIS episode, Broken Bird, it is a better comment on Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration than almost any magazine article or blog post -- and carefully scheduled so it was originally run as the last episode of the Bush-Cheney era.)

So, Prup is hopelessly middle/low brow. So?

[Off Colfax]

Salt: A World History -- Mark Kurlansky. The topic may seem self-explanatory, yet it is truly fascinating.

For a couple of newer books:

Why Things Break -- Mark Eberhart. Molecular cohesion has never been more interesting. Seriously. I know, that doesn't sound like all that great of a plug. Try it.

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind -- William Kamkwamba. About a boy who built his own wind-powered electric generator in the middle of one of the most poverty-stricken areas of Africa, this is "Three Cups Of Tea" all over again. An excellent read.

[Corvus9]

Man, I have been in the middle of three Neal Stephenson books for what seems like ages now: Anathem, Quicksilver, and Cryptonomicon. Anathem is like the ultimate science fiction novel, and is the first book that is so good that I had to put it down. I can't tell where Cryptonomicon is going, but it's fun to read while I read it.

I can't decide if I want to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell again right now. It's like the greatest book ever, but it might still be too familiar from the last time I read it.

I started trying to read the Histories lately. That was pretty interesting, just to read something so old that it felt both alien and familiar at the same time.

Really, lately I haven't been reading all the much to get my regular dose of fiction (hence all the stalling). Instead, I have been watching lots of TV on DVD. I recently watched the complete runs of Battlestar Galactica and Veronica Mars. BSG is very, very well done, but it's mythology falls apart in the latter half and they have to do lots of retconning to make up for it, which hurts integrity of the show. Veronica Mars is a really fun mystery show, but WARNING! it ends on a cliffhanger. Goddamn cancellation. The last thing I actually watched was Season Four of Bones, which is just a wonderfully delightful show. If you haven't seen it, think CSI done as a goofy comedy, anchored by the best comedy duo on television. Not deep or anything, but man is it fun.

[MR Bill]

I have been working my way through Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates, her account of the lives of the Puritan (as opposed to Pilgrim) fathers of New England, such as John Bradford, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather. Their beliefs and struggles do illuminate the current time, and the space between our image of them and the historical reality (as presented) is instructive. I find Vowell's style a bit twee and sometimes annoying, but worth a read.
And my son brings me Terry Pratchett books, and they have been a lifesaver in a dark time. Small Gods is actually, under the puns and jokes, a very serious novel about the uses of religion. And Wee Free Men, a "young adult" novel, is more adult about life and death than, say, The Lovely Bones.
I miss my copies of favorite rereads (Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell, Paris Babylon, Lord of the Rings..)

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

Boy that's weird -- I was contemplating invoking either the "Real Life of Alejandro Mayta" or "Life of Brian" to discuss the tendency toward purity in left wing movements. The People's Front of Judea thing always cracks me up.

I am a huge Vargas Llosa fan -- particularly his two epic works, "Conversations in the Cathedral" and "The War of the End of the World." I saw him give a reading here about twenty years ago -- strangely enough somewhere out in the suburbs. He was very charming and elegant.

I will even defend a little bit his embrace of Thatcherism. I don't think he did so out of mean-spiritiedness -- and if there was one thing Thatcher was it was mean-spirited -- but out of a sense that the regulatory burdens in Peru had made the society impossibly sclerotic and that without some degree of entrepeneurial energy, the country would get nowhere.

Jim,

Far be it from me to denounce televison. I was just suggesting turning off cable news for a day or two. Most nights when I come home I am too mentally tired for serious reading -- if I can find something decent to watch, it makes me very happy. Like a lot of people (especially intelligent women) I became a big Mad Men fan. But I'm not all that high brow. I love House just to see Hugh Laurie no matter how ridiculous the show is.

I don't know much about either detective novels or sci-fi, although I loved, and would highly recommend, the "Berlin Noir" trilogy by Philip Kerr, which depicts the life of detective Bernie Gunther around the time of the 1936 Olympics, again around 1938, and then immediately just after the war under the Russian occupation. Great stuff.

I'ver only read one Auchincloss novel -- it was pretty good, although seemed to depict a New York that doesn't really exist anymore.

O-C,

"Salt" was really well received as I recall. There was a whole slew of books that came out with similar themes around the same time. My wife read "Cod" and said it was strangely compelling. And "Rats" which creeped me out.

I have heard the young man from "The Boy who Harnessed the Wind" on NPR and the Daily Show but haven't had a chance yet to pick up the book.

Corvus,

As I said, I'[m pretty ignorant on sci-fi. In my old age I find myself drawn more to the novels of the mundane. I thought about getting "Jonathan Norrell and Mr. Strange" for a while. I may pick it up as a stocking stuffer for my wife.

Although I don't watch it regularly, I too thaink the chemistry between the two leads on "Bones" is very enjoyable. I have to check out Veronica Mars. I've heard great things but never seen it.

MR Bill,

Sorry to hear your books got burned. One of the reasons I haven't made the kindle move is that I love books -- I like them as objects too, not just as words on a page.

Pratchett sounds like an interesting guy.

Must get to work I'm afraid.

[Sir Charles]

Oy I turned on the italics somehow.

It's bad to have someone technologically inept at the helm of the blog.

[MR Bill]

Italics still there?
I really enjoyed Vargas-llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. A friend who knew Latin American literature claimed the chapters of recounting of the soap opera plotlines were in fact a sophisticated send up of Garcia Marquez and the 'magic realists'.

[big bad wolf]

SC, i think that defense of vargas llosa is correct. he was well intentioned and hoping to get things moving for his country. not for me, from here, to judge him. i just think that, on occasion politics intruded a bit clumsily (that's relative, his worst sentences are better than anything i'd ever hope to write) in some of the later novels.

his death in the andes, of course, shows how terrible deadly purity can be.

wonderful pairing vargas llosa and month python, illustrating the many facets of brilliance in the arts

[MR Bill]

no that didn't work...

[low-tech cyclist]

I don't think it was you, SC - I think Mr Bill failed to close an italics tag at the end of his comment. Typepad seems weirdly vulnerable to this sort of thing. (If I knew how to fix it, I'd do it, but I've got no brilliant ideas.)

[low-tech cyclist]

Pretty much all the books I read these days are aimed at the preschool demographic. Other than that, I generally have one fiction book I'm in the middle of at any given time, that I work my way through at bedtime.

My current read is the latest Falco mystery, Alexandria, and the one before that was the latest Warshawski mystery, Hardball.

[MR Bill]

(kicks self)

[Sir Charles]

MR Bill,

It seems top have cured itself.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a scream. It's very different from everything else I have read by him. I don't know if the tweaking of GGM is true, but it would not surprise me.

bbw,

I agree that the quality of his later work deteriorated, although the fictionalized life of Trujillo was pretty well received. I am not sure if it's the politics or something inherent in the aging of an artist, especially those who write "books of ideas." We only get so many ideas per lifetime. One of my alltime favorites, Milan Kundera, is but a shadow of his former self without Soviet oppression to serve as inspiration. (I am also convinced that I really hated one of Varga Llosa's books because of a bad translation, which is a whole other complexity when you are reading something written in a foreign language.)

l-t c,

I know what you mean. Believe me, you will love when you can read things like Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings to him. It's such a fun leap.

I am a very inconstant reader due to brain fatigue. It's actually one of the few good things I can say about long airplane trips. I get to read uninterrupted in a way that is totally rare.

[Jamelle]

Because I am a huge nerd, I've decided to get back up on my sci-fi reading, and by sci-fi reading, I mean I've decided to get back on my Star Wars Expanded Universe reading.

I will say though that I'm forgoing the newer books in favor of Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn sequence" both the original "Thrawn Trilogy" and the "Hand of Thrawn" series. Zahn does a really good job of capturing the feel of the original movies, as well as the characters themselves. At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

A few comments on my end of writing. Btw, I should say that, before I got married almost 19 years ago and discovered that my wife's personal problems were much greater than I'd expected and I had taken on far greater responsibilities than I had known, and before the Internet was opened to individuals, I had much greater time for reading, both myateries and non-fiction. (I always tend to go for histories of anything I am interested in, and biographical histories above all, because I want to know how we got where we are, and the people who were involved in constructing/discovering the ideas.)

Anywa, as far as Auchincloss, yes, his New York is passing, but on one level it does or did exist when he wrote about it. He is much better at the 'connected short story' format than in full novels -- much like another favorite of mine, GK Chesterton. If you read one book by him, make it POWERS OF ATTORNEY -- and I would really enjoy your take on his picture of life in a large law firm, Sir C. If one story, "The Power of Appointment" in it, which has haunted me, and, in a way, scared me, since I first read it 40 years ago.

(My two other 'must-read' short stories are Chesterton's "The Crime of Gabriel Gale" in his THE POET AND THE LUNATICS -- available at Gutenberg -- and Theodore Sturgeon's "Mr. Costello, Hero" -- can't find the collection it's in. The last, though written 53 years ago and having no overt political content, is very relevant to our discussions of today's politics.)

In general, if you find Rembrandt's portraits and the subtlety of their portrayals of character great art, you will enjoy Auchincloss. (Needless to say, I do.)

As for the Hill books, these are far more than 'mere' detective stories, though they are great just as that. (Ignore totally the tv portrayals, which are good, but have almost no connection to the real characters. The actor who played Dalziel read the script and decided who the character was, obviously without having ever read the books, which makes them almost laughable.) I am not sure if you should read one of the earlier books first, to get a feel for them, but the four-book sequence above should be read -- and MUST be read in order.

When you read them, realize that while Andy Dalziel may be 'the detective,' they are 'about' Peter Pascoe, his sergeant, an ordinary man being pulled, almost ripped apart, by the two gigantic forces in his life, Dalziel and his wife. Saying tht they represent the 'male' and 'female' principles actually understates it, they are far more than that. (When Dalziel is asked to play the Old Testament God in a pageant in one of them, it is either perfectly suitable or a step downward for him.) I have wondered if Hill had planned to end the series with BONES AND SILENCE, but was unable/not allowed to do so.

Tv in another post.

[btw, our dear site is fucking up again. Will someone please put a notice somewhere for new readers that
"If you get a message saying 'we cannot accept this data' copy the comment, open the site in a new window/tab, and repaste it and it will go through"?)

[Steve Balboni]

I caught the BookTV on "Methland", it seemed like a great read and story. Bizarre that the woman at the center of it all is Tom Arnold's sister. Or maybe that isn't bizarre at all.

I'm finishing up, "Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story" It starts a little clunky as it tries to give an Afghan history but when they hit the 20th Century it really takes off. The meat of the book is a discussion of the United States role in destablizing Afghanistan over the last several decades. Anyone reading this blog would greatly enjoy this book.

Also recently read and recommended,

Fidel and Che: A Revolutionary Friendship
Opium Season: A Year On the Afghan Frontier
The Rise and Fall of Communism
Triangle: The Fire that Changed America
Lyndon Johnson, Master Of the Senate

I re-read the Grapes of Wrath this year too, in part as a protest against the booming sales of Atlass Shrugged.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

[Also, if your post doesn't appear right away, don't repost it. It is there, the befuddled squirrels that are in charge of pasting it are just taking a pecan break.]

As for tv, I would have, until recently, listed NCIS as the best show on tv, simply because of the wonderfully developed and constantly growing characters, and the 'celebration of eccentricity' they represent -- the pathologist, Ducky is a classic English 'club bore' who always has to be stopped from telling his stories, but he's also a genius, also a profiler and psychologist, the forensic specialist, Abby, is a soft-hearted goth who sleeps in a coffin, has been known to ride around the lab on roller skates, and had a long discussion about why she gave her teeth individual names, but is also brilliant at her work -- and is played by Pauley Perrette, not just someone described as the 'coolest straight woman in America' by a gay site because of her support for gay rights -- she even preaches about them at a West Hollywood church she attends -- she also happens to have an actual degree in forensic science. (If you get turned off by Tony DeNozzo's 'perpetual frat boy' obnoxiousness, realize it is deliberate and used for humor, making him a perpetual foil for the other characters, though he's the person you want guarding your back if you need pure guts and is far from stupid.)

But my wife and I recently watched a 20-episode marathon of CRIMINAL MINDS -- we don't buy shows on DVD, but we finally filled in all but one of the episodes we missed -- and it has moved above NCIS on my list. Again, a near perfect ensemble cast -- many of whom were unknown before the show -- a brilliant playing off of the personal against the professional lives of the character, as well as the ability to use the horror of serial killers without an emphasis on the gruesome for its own sake.

And a recent 'story arc' I won't even hint at, except for the way it begins. "Hotch" -- Aaron Hotchner, the actual head of the team -- is called back to Boston about what had been his first case, a serial killer called "The Reaper" who had suddenly stopped killing and Hotch had been sent away. He learns that the policeman in charge had been called by The Reaper with the offer "You stop hunting me, I'll stop hunting them -- as long as we both shall live." The ploiceman had accepted, and the Reaper had lived up to his part of the bargain, 'getting off' on the power the deal had given him. Only the policeman is dying now, which ends the bargain. The Reaper reappears, and after killing two more people, offers Hotch the same bargain.

While many of the next episodes deal with specific cases, the response to that offer becomes the underlying theme of the next nineteen episodes, affecting every member of the team, and every piece of it is real, because I know of no show where the characters totally take over from the actors. No hint of what happens from me, but it is a magnificent sequence. The 4th season -- last year -- is available on DVD, but if you get it, you'll be cursing yourself not waiting for the chance to see everything this year brings.

Okay, so I can giive raves on a relatively trivial topic, but if anyone has seen the shows, you'd know why I did. (Btw, if you saw it in the first two years, when Mandy Patinkin was the nominal star -- Hotch is the leader, but Thomas Gibson was never first billed -- the replacement for him after his departure, Joe Mantegna, knows the difference between being a star and being a part of a true ensemble cast, and the show is better for it.)

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

Fortunately I have no experience whatsoever of life in a big law firm. I don't think I would have liked it. It's actually incomprehensible to me how you can practice law with 800 other people -- hell, sometimes 30 seems like a challenge.

Mandy Patankin is a great scenery chewer, although I actually loved the short-lived series "Dead Like Me" in which he played pretty well in an ensemble cast.

Steve,

That sounds like a great list -- how the hell did you manage to read anything else while also tackling "Master of the Senate?" Caro kind of exhausts me.

The Tom Arnold's sister story in Methland is amazing. She is obviously a pretty bright (and deeply troubled) woman.

[big bad wolf]

i remembered that garcia and vargas didn't get along and went looking for information. seems they had quite a dustup. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/books/29marq.html

still, gore vidal manages to steal the article with his comment from his own literary fight: "When the encounter between Mr. Mailer and Mr. Vidal turned physical, if not bloody, Mr. Vidal is said to have responded from the floor, “`Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.'”

on books and afghanistan, i found rory stewart's "the places in between" interesting. it's not the greatest read and it doesn't attempt to connect things up, which may be both wise and accurate, but it provides a view of parts of afghanistan as lived-in place that is rare and informative.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

That picture is awesome. My admiration for Vargas Llosa grows. I particularly like that it wasn't ideology but a woman who provoked the battle. (I don't think the article is correct about Varga Llosa having turned rightward in 1976 -- it seems to me that it was much later than that.)

And the Vidal anecdote is fabulous.

[Eric Wilde]

What to Expect, the Toddler Years

Its helpful, though no earth shattering revelations are coming from it.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Of course all of you who are the official servants of young family members have thought ahead and already bought or downloaded both ALICE and ALL the Baum OZ books -- all of which are available at Gutenberg, btw. Not sure about the ones written by other authors, but the Baums are musts.

[big bad wolf]

helpful is good, eric. even with some help, i'm surprised by my kids daily. luckily, most of the surprises are delightful or at least amusing, if only in retrospect.

[Sir Charles]

Eric,

There is no tome big enough really for this subject. It's all experience, the bitter and the sweet -- preferably a lot more of the latter than the former.

[Glenn Fayard]

This isn't that obscure a book, but The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon was awesome enough that it changed my writing style almost completely. Now I know how how Alan Greenspan felt around Ayn Rand, although far less stupid.

Non-fiction, I still dig Matt Taibbi's Smells Like Dead Elephants, although Christ is he getting grumpy. He needs to get back on the drugs, go have some more borscht.

[Sir Charles]

Glenn,

I haven't read much Chabon, but my 16-year old swears by him.

Actually, the one thing I have read by him is a delightful children's book called "Summerland" which l-t c should keep in mind about 8 or 9 years hence.

It's funny that you mention Taibbi. I was just reading the contretemps over his latest at TAP. The comments there really reinforce my worries about a left-wing crack up. I can't actually believe this is happening.

[joel hanes]

begone

[Sir Charles]

Enigmatic, Joel, very enigmatic.

[litbrit]

Okay, italics are hereby banished.

I am still alive and kicking, just more of the latter than the former at the moment.

As for what I'm reading, I have just (juuuuust) started Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety.

[Sir Charles]

No showing off.

I preferred Dan Brown's "Concept of Anxiety."

How are you kid? We'ved been missing you around here.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Me too! Hope busy doesn't equal bad.

[minstrel hussain boy]

juggling two books, three if you count the one i keep in the car for the odd waiting room. (the car book is a collection of yeats)

book by the bedside is stephen ambrose custer and crazy horse. it's very well written (as is most of ambrose) and draws some very interesting parallels to the careers of the two men who met that one fateful afternoon.

book by the couch is caroline alexander's the war that killed achilles which is an in depth look into the various themes and subjects of the iliad.

she also gets into the history, both of the piece but also the way that through the years we seem to have lost sight of achilles, the more authoritarian folks loves them some hector. i always thought hector was a douche. he doesn't like his brother paris, he doesn't believe in the cause of his city in the war. if hector had been given his druthers he would have shipped helen back to her husband and beat the living shit out of paris before turning him over to the greeks. but, hector, knowing full well that his cause is bogus and his city is doomed, fights on.

achilles, on the other hand, tells agamemnon to his face that he's a jerk and a for shit tactician. he tells agamemnon that his cause is not worth the life of achilles or his soldiers. achilles spends most of his time in a rage at his own side.

it's a very interesting, very well written book. i recommend it highly. as soon as i finish, i intend to read it again and then dig back into my chapman.

[Black Mage]

Just finished The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. Absolutely brilliant -- extraordinary insights into electoral politics, urban politics, transportation, the development of 'the new politics', and a cast of the most extraordinarily bizarre characters.

I finished it in about three weeks. It helps that I have a job in the city now, and commuting takes time -- thanks largely to Sydney's wholesale appropriation of the 'American dream' of gleaming highways and subpar trains, itself courtesy in large part to, well, Robert Moses. There's nothing like sitting on a boiling-hot tin-basher delayed by 20 minutes at a red light outside Liverpool to make you dig in to see how Moses gets his comeuppance.

[low-tech cyclist]

Eric said: "What to Expect, the Toddler Years

Its helpful, though no earth shattering revelations are coming from it."

SC responded: "There is no tome big enough really for this subject. It's all experience, the bitter and the sweet -- preferably a lot more of the latter than the former."

It's more of a triad: the sweet, the difficult, and the just plain exhausting. And the latter wins, big time.

[Sir Charles]

Black Mage,

I haven't read "The Power Broker" but sometimes feel like I have. If you are ever in NYC, there is a group that does a walking tour of the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights, one of the most beautiful urban neighborhoods in world, which I highly recommend. Walking cacross the bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn alone is a fun way to past time. What is fascinating is to see some of the damage that Moses did, but to hear in detail some of the horrific things he wanted to do that were stopped. Thank God. The man was a one man urban nightmare -- as it is the BQE is pretty much of a travesty.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

There really is a physically exhausting component to the care of the very young -- the simple lifting and toting of all of the damn equipment -- the stroller, the car seat, the diaper bag, the porta-crip, etc. There comes a day around when they're 5 or 6 and you have shed all of the equipment and it's almost like you lost twenty pounds. (I said almost.) I have a number of friends who, like you, have entered into the gig later in life --one of my friends just had her first at the age of 49. The mind boggles at how hard this is -- I had just turned 33 when we had my son. If I had to do the drill now I think I would just cry myself to sleep every night.

The beauty of having a 16-year old is that he can actually carry stuff. Plus, you can take him to any movie you feel like seeing without worrying about being a bad parent.

[big bad wolf]

ah, but the loss of baby/toddler equipment can lead to other demands. my boy, at 5, is quite into sports and the other weekend after two days of spotting pitches i could barely hold a pen in my 48 year old fingers. who knew gripping a ball was so hard; certainly it wasn't long ago.

the other tough think for me to do as an older parent was break bad speech habits. it wasn't until i heard my daughter at 21 months curse out the garage door because it bounced in the rain and humidity that i got exactly how much they pick up.

on the book topic: coetzee? i read diary of a bad year a couple of months ago. another fascinating read; i find him amazing and would recommend pretty much anything he's written.

[Black Mage]

Sir Charles,

Even never having been to New York -- never, in fact, having visited the Western Hemisphere -- I can understand. Reading about the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway in The Power Broker feels like the architectural equivalent of one of those alternate-history 'what if the Nazis had won?'-style stories. The idea of taking Lower Manhattan -- this storied place of Yiddish and Little Italy and Chinatown and Alphabet City, the little neighbourhood where one day I hope to live -- and driving a freakin' EXPRESSWAY through it seems too perverse for words. How can one live in New York City, spend every day driving through these most legendary and mythic of neighbourhoods, probably the most famous street corners and ethnic enclaves in any city in the world, and want to bury them under a thousand tonnes of concrete?

It just doesn't make sense.

[Sir Charles]

Black Mage,

Well you certainly need to give NYC a visit when you can. It's an amazingly fun place to be for a few days or more. I get up there a couple of times a year and we usually try to rent an apartment online for a couple of days. It's a slightly different experience than staying in a hotel.

The last time I was there over this summer we stayed in Tribeca and did a lot of walking around Chinatown and Little Italy as well as the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights walking tours and each neighborhood is pretty amazing. Chinatown in particular has retained the air of an immigrant neighborhood, largely because it still is -- it really is like being in a different country for several blocks.

The idea that these neighborhood and this walkable city would have been sacrificed for expressways makes me shudder.

(So the important question -- Manchester United, Man City, or Everton?)

[big bad wolf]

an amusing stanza from fred gardner posted on rick hertzberg's blog:

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could make you hit that fucking tree?
(H/t: John Leone)

[Black Mage]

(So the important question -- Manchester United, Man City, or Everton?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wests_Tigers

Wests Tigers, mate. Keep your pagan 'foot the ball' -- real men tackle each other at a decent fraction of the speed of sound.

[Sir Charles]

Black Mage,

I am afraid I know nothing of Rugby. I see your lads are middle of the table for now. I am intrigued by the idea of a team that has four different home stadiums (or should I say stadia).

I also note that they are the product of a merger of two teams -- the other being the "Magpies" - for reasons I can't figure the Tigers name won out.

bbw,

Sure -- kick the poor bastard when he's down (to his last billion or so).

[big bad wolf]

i'm sure it makes me a terrible person, but i actually don't care about tiger's life. i do wish the verse had come with a blakean etching of the crash.

[Sir Charles]

You mean the etching showing a heroic Erin freeing him from the crashed Escalade armed with only a two iron?

http://mindoversports.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/tiger-erin-woods.jpg

That picture just has love written all over it.