"Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout" by Philip Connors

I randomly came upon a review of this book (on Salon, maybe?) and bought it because the reviewer compared the author to Ed Abbey, whom I love. Indeed, the book did not disappoint, and I would highly recommend it to Abbey fans, National Forest fans and those interested in wilderness policy. The author waxes lyrical a bit more than Abbey, but doesn't go overboard, and the book is not so much gripping as engrossing -- it creates its atmosphere nicely and if that's what you're looking for at the moment, you'll go back to it.

I started reading this a week after the Needles Lookout burned to the ground, which, in turn was a week after we visited it, though I had bought the book much earlier. 

Almost Meatless

Almost Meatless is a cookbook that was recommended to me by food-ethics conscious climber friends. I picked it up because the philosophy of cooking with a little meat, and in a way that doesn't centerpiece the meat appeals to me. It's what I do anyway! So far we've tried two lamb recipes: ragu with home-made gnocci, and albondigas with oatmeal. The latter turned out great, the former however was no less than a revelation. So based on our experience thus far, the book gets a thumbs up!

Look to windward

This Culture novel of Iain Banks was the first ebook I read on my Sony reader, and I found it really disappointing, long winded, pointless...

Maiden Voyage

It's been a while since I've stayed up late to finish a book, but I did it last night. Naya was in the crook of my arm as I was reading about the trans-Atlantic leg of Tania and Tarzoon (her cat) in "Maiden Voyage". This book is a classic that I've known about for years and years and that I've avoided reading until now, not wanting to catch the circumnavigation bug. It describes Tania Aebi's circumnavigation at ages 18-21 in the 80s, on a Contessa 26, a boat most people would now consider woefully undersized for the job. After I got my boat, people would always ask, "Oh, just like Aebi, have you read her book?" But of course I wasn't about to go on a circumnavigation ... not on Shadow Line.

The book does a good job of capturing the crankiness and fearfulness of the 18-year old as she departs New York, and her transformation as she proceeds westward around the world. I'm not sure I'm going to read it again anytime soon, nor that it will become a favorite for me as "the voyage of the Aquarius" did, but I really enjoyed it this first time around. I read it at home and on the bus, and for the last two chapters, I stayed up late with my very own boat cat and finished it off. I should mention that this very moment Nick Jaffey is doing a trans-pacific voyage on the very same type of boat, after having crossed the Atlantic from Germany, and shipped the boat overland in the US.

Roger Lowenstein - When Genius Failed

I saw this book lying on the shelf in the company library and picked it up on a whim. It was a quick read. More than anything else, this shows the importance of marketing in high finance (in the case of LTCM, the mystique of quants and modeling is what was sold).

I do have a few criticisms of style: Greenspan is always "oracular", and banks tend to "squawk" (for some reason), but other than that the writing is crisp and straight-forward.

It was also amusing, just the next day after I finished reading this book, to see an article about Jon Corzine in The Times (during the LTCM saga he was a Goldman executive, and now he is the governor of New Jersey).

Since we have a binary rating system here, I suppose I will have to go with "impressed", though that might imply a slightly too-high level of enthusiasm. But it was interesting, so thumbs up.

The Rider

It's been a while since I read a book and thought, "now, truly, this is a classic". Tim Krabbe's "The Rider" wholeheartedly qualifies. This is the story of a cycling race told from the point of view of one of the participants, the author, who is also a noted chess player. It's full of musings on cycling, racing and the meaning of life, or at least the meaning of life as those of us who race -- bikes, boats, other people, whatever -- see it. Which is to say, we look at everyone else and wonder what could possibly make them tick, since their lives are devoid of competition. There are a dozen fantastic quotes in the book, but the most memorable to me was this:

How often have I seen people clapping and cheering for a rider who, having been lapped six times, pushes on bravely? It's an insulting brand of applause -- for where does a winning rider get the right to revel in applause if the crowd isn't obliged to hiss at him when he fails?

Red Rocks, a climber's guide

This climbing guide to Red Rock Canyon in Nevada, written by Jerry Handren and published in 2007, was recommended very strongly by a friend who'd spent quite a bit of time climbing at RRC. He was specific and adamant that this was the book to get, so we did, and we were not disappointed. First let me say that you cannot, for some reason, buy this guide on Amazon or REI or any mainstream outlet I've found. But you most definitely can get it from Desert Rock Sports, the climbing outfitter in Las Vegas, NV, although it isn't mentioned on their website.

The guide is exhaustive, well researched, and beautifully illustrated. There are no drawn maps, instead every route is plotted on pictures of the rocks. We had a fantastic time reading the articles in between the route descriptions, and the guide was a friggin' pleasure to use, compared to some others we've had to rely on in the past.

Rock climbing Joshua Tree West

The precursor to this book, "Rock climbing Joshua Tree", was introduced to me as "Vogel's book of lies". The original got the bad rep because it was written a long long time ago, before the Yosemite decimal rating system had gelled, and before many of the existing roads and trails at JTree had been established. As a consequence, the precursor had been horribly out-of-date and inaccurate, though it was encyclopedic in its breadth. The author, Randy Vogel, was, from what I heard, the biggest advocate for a complete rewrite of the book.

Since the original was published, so much development has occurred at JTree that it became necessary to split the updated version into several separate books, which, if I understand correctly, Vogel is in the process of writing. So the book covering the Western section of the park is already available in stores, and the book covering the central section is supposed to come out sometime in April -- I'm signed up for a notification when it becomes available. Suffice it to say, the West book is just as encyclopedic as the original, but 10 times more useful, because the locations and ratings of routes are now reliable, and additional first ascent and protection information is given.

Well done, Randy Vogel! I, for one, am waiting for the Central book with bated breath.

Kafka on the shore

This is the third book by Murakami that I've read, and I liked it a lot less than the previous two. There are some very bright moments in it, and I enjoyed the writing, but I thought it was dilute and too long. On the other hand, it does reflect far more than the other two books I've read the issues Murakami brought up recently in his acceptance speech of some award or other in Israel.

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Who?!?

Or Whö?!?

Or Oogly-Woogly and Woogly-Oogly, as I call them.

A wife and husband team that wrote some the best detective fiction I have ever read. In the classic locked-room format even though it is so much more than that.

An excoriating exposé of the "welfare" state during the inflationary 1970's; a searing portrait of police corruption in Sweden; and a depressing Scandinavian portait that things are not always what they seem; and a clear intellectual child of film noir.

It's all worth reading in as much as you can find translated. Worth reading "in order" although this is not quite strictly necessary unlike a lot of more contemporary detective fiction.

The Steel Remains

Richard Morgan became hands down my favorite sci-fi author on the basis of just his first novel, "Altered Carbon". The follow-ups were good, but not nearly as hard-hitting. "The Steel Remains" is the much-anticipated result of his effort to switch over to the fantasy genre. I think the only other fantasy book I've ever read was the Lord of the Rings, so I'm really no expert in the genre. "The Steel Remains" is good, but it's more like Morgan's second and later books than his first. Somewhere after that first book he started taking too long developing his characters' inner dialogs and flashbacks, and I simply have no patience for this. In real life you don't get to hear the inner dialog of the people around you. Ditto in good movies, voice-over narration being the crutch of the crappy director in my mind. So this book was good, competent, but nothing to write home about.

The True History of Chocolate

Brilliantly researched; endlessly informative; witty and insightful.

A scholarly work by Sophie D. Coe (food historian and anthropologist) who unfortunately died young of cancer while working on this book.

One of the more entertaining parts of the book is to see who of the who's who of history were total chocolate-addicts.

Foodies and chocoholics rejoice!

The Inheritance of Loss

Lawd, did this stink!!! I gave up half-way.

This is all part of the nouveau fascination with all things Indian.

PS :- Offspring of famous artists are frequently triple-flusher stinkeroos.

The Athenian Murders

This book by José Carlos Somozo is simply the best I have read in a very long time.

To say too much about the book would be to destroy it completely but you can argue endlessly whether this is a cracklin' mystery story, or a book on philosophical ideas or `ideas', or a meta-fictional philosophical mystery or ...

Incidentally, the original Spanish title La caverna de las ideas (The Cave of Ideas) is far better than the English version in as much as it echoes Plato's cave metaphor.

And it is far far superior to Eco's The Name of the Rose to which it is (very) superficially related. (It is clearly more influenced by Nabokov's Pale Fire than anything else.)

Can we create a "super-impressed" category? This one belongs there.

Bernard-Henri Levy - Left in Dark Times

This is a polemic. Based on the author, that is a given. However, due to Levy's amazingly eventful life and courage, just about everything he writes is worth reading. Particularly, his lucid passage about the conflict between tolerance and secularism (in the "Fascislamism" chapter) is alone worth the time required for the book. It is also interesting to read a perspective informed by the recent history of Europe rather than North America, to see which events resonate in different places.

Once can find many conversations with Levy on CharlieRose.com.

Dissapointing Food Writing

Ever encounter a book (or books) from which you learn a hell of a lot but which leaves you disappointed?

Meet Russ Parsons.

Both his books How to Read a French Fry and How to Pick a Peach have been illuminating but seriously disappointing.

There's always something missing. It's not the knowledge or the writing. It's not the phrasing or the erudition. Perhaps it's the self-conscious effort to get people to buy it by including recipes which are actually seriously crappy.

Either way, if I had bought these books rather than borrow them from the library, I would be seriously pissed off. As it happens, I'm glad to read, learn a few things, and dump.

NYPL

At some point, I just dumped my entire list of "books I wanna read but don't want to buy" into the New York Public Library "bring-it-to-me" scheme.

The local branch is just a few blocks away.

Better yet, you can just keep dumping things into the queue, and they keep bringing them. Alas, the queue can only be 15 long, and you can only have 30 out at a time.

So what? I'm having the time of my life. I think I finished 2.5 books today.

Let's not forget the important part. They bring it to you!!!

The White Spider

My friend Ben lent me this classic mountaineering book by Heinrich Harrer, which chronicles successful and unsuccessful ascents of the North Face of the Eiger, in Switzerland. This is a truly fantastic book, razor sharp, brilliantly analytical, incredibly diplomatic, and distilled from what seem to be vast amounts of research into the subject as well as first-hand knowledge. I enjoyed it immensely, and would recommend it whether you're interested in mountaineering or not.

Thomas Jefferson's Library

At the Library of Congress. Totally impressive. Completely a Renaissance man. The sheer range of books on every topic from philosophy to political thought to mathematics is stupendous.

They are organized by topic.

It is amusing to note that books by Bernoulli and Newton, and treatises on Euclid rub shoulders with practical books on how to construct a set of weights and measures, and surveying. No artificial distinction between theory and practice.

Old man's war

I needed a sci fi that I could get a little lost in, so I picked this one up, and it delivered. Someone compared the writing to Heinlein's, but I think it's vastly superior. After all, I couldn't finish "The moon is a harsh mistress", but I finished this in two days.