Tag: books (Page 1 of 25)

Taste: My Life Through Food – Stanley Tucci
Coincidentally my hold on this came in just as his latest travel/food show premiered. It is equal parts autobiography and food diary of his entire life. He writes exactly as he speaks on his travel shows, which is either a good, comforting thing or annoying based on what you think of those shows. I read a review of his new show that complained about how into himself he is. If you share that view, you might want to skip this one.

James – Percival Everett
An amazing book. It is framed as a re-telling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, but told from the perspective of Jim, the escaped slave that accompanied Huck on his travels. If you know Everett and have read any of his other books, you know this won’t be neither an easy tale, but will be told with tremendous courage and inventiveness.

We quickly learn that most slaves speak and behave much differently when amongst each other in private. Where they act simple and uneducated around whites, when isolated together they speak better English than the white people who subjugate them. They teach their young ones how to behave in public, including lessons in “slave speak” – “Yas massa,” etc – and how to never reveal to white folks their true level of intelligence. If something is missing in the house, you lead them to it while making them think they found it on their own. You never, ever leave the impression that you were responsible for solving these life’s little mysteries.

Jim and Huck fall in together and flee Hannibal, MO down the Mississippi River. They have adventures. They defy death multiple times. But, again, the story is told completely from Jim’s perspective. His mission is to escape capture and find a way to return to Hannibal to buy his wife and daughter’s freedom. Thus he is constantly on the lookout for whites up and down the river who are searching for him. When they enter a town, he must act like he is Huck’s responsibility. When he falls in with other, sympathetic whites, he is forced to behave as if he were their slave. And so on.

The book is split into three sections. The third is pretty intense, and has a monumental surprise reveal in its opening pages. There are a couple clues leading to this moment, but I still had to re-read the passage several times to make sure I understood it correctly. Despite understanding that this book took place in 1861, it was still disturbing and upsetting to get this view of the US during the time when slavery was still legal and how even “kind” whites often treated Blacks like animals rather than humans. We know that the real lives of slaves were far different than what was presented in either contemporary or historical accounts. I like that Everett gives his characters some control over their lives and makes them clearly more enlightened than the people who own them. They don’t just crave freedom. They can make passionate, educated arguments against slavery far more informed than the arguments in favor of slavery.

I know I’ve read Huckleberry Finn as an adult, probably 20–25 years ago, so I just read a quick synopsis of it to remind myself of the gist. I wish I had re-read the entire book to see how Everett’s story lined up with and diverged from Twain’s. Twain was always subtly subversive, so I think he would appreciate what Everett did with the bones of his original.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – Omar El Akkad
This was a difficult book, for many reasons. El Akkad is an Egyptian-born journalist and author who currently lives in the US and has US citizenship. In this he writes mostly about the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how, in his view, the coverage of it in the west has been extremely one-sided and how the defense of the Israeli viewpoint has spilled over to many other aspects of our society. You watch the news, you know what he’s talking about.

I’m not going to get into all the details of that conflict. I feel like my views mirror what most people’s are: that the Israelis had an absolute and unquestioned right to defend themselves against the terrorists that attacked on October 7, 2023, but that response has gone well beyond what was proportionate and appropriate and is more focused on wiping out the Palestinian state than securing Israel’s borders.

El Akkad writes about not just the horrors of the war itself, but how it has spilled over to affect politics and society in the western world. Even if you do not have strong feelings about what is going on in Palestine, if you support democracy and free speech, you have to be upset at how those concepts have been set aside within the debate over the war.

More interestingly to me is how El Akkad uses the Israel-Palestine situation as a jumping off point to discuss the many flawed ways we Americans view ourselves, the inconsistencies in our national myths. For example, Americans love to side with the plucky underdog, and often view ourselves as exactly that, a remnant from our Revolutionary War days when we defeated the greatest world power of the era. Never mind that we have been, since World War II, not just the biggest power of the era but the most powerful nation in the history of humanity. Adhering to the idea that we are underdogs absolves us from acknowledging the realities of our place in the world, from taking responsibility for our actions. We are always fighting some greater evil, no matter that there is no power equal to ours.

The title also refers to how so many of us often prefer to stay silent or not take a stand in moments of crisis, but later suddenly find the courage to proclaim our opposition to policies that went awry.

This book made me think more about our country than the Israel-Palestine war. I would imagine because of that it will not appear in many school libraries, and likely be banned from most public libraries at some point. I’m shocked El Akkad hasn’t had his citizenship stripped and he been shipped back to one of the countries he lived in before becoming an American. God forbid we ever question either our national myths or policies. Especially when it a brown, Muslim, born halfway around the world leading the questioning.

I’m going to delay the weekend notes until tomorrow since we have a rather important event tonight. Fortunately I have two books that I need to share some thoughts about.

Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! – David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker
Truly one of the most fun books I’ve read in a long time. The three men behind the movie Airplane! come together for an oral history of both how their partnership started and the lengthy, arduous process to get their classic comedy made. There are plenty of insights from other people, both from the cast and within the entertainment industry. I laughed almost as much reading this as I would had I been watching the movie, something I’m about to do again for the first time in ages.

My favorite piece of trivia that was new to me: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s part was originally written for Pete Rose. But as the film was being shot during the baseball season, Rose was unavailable and they had to scramble for a replacement. I can’t imagine Rose would have been anywhere near as shocking and funny as Kareem.

Also, fuck Pete Rose. For many, many reasons.

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live – Susan Morrison
After waiting for months my hold on the newest Lorne Michaels biography finally came in. I’m not sure if this was essential, especially since I just read one of the great Saturday Night Live accountings earlier this year. But I heard Morrison on Bill Simmons’ podcast around the time her book came out and the access she got made it seem essential to an old SNL-head like me.

As a biography of a person rather than show, it obviously has a different focus. We learn all about Michaels’ upbringing in Toronto and the early days of his career in Canada and the US before he began SNL. We see how he developed his comedic point of view, both from absorbing the works of others and through his various failures early in his career.

In the SNL years, like so many other books that follow the show’s history, the earlier years get more attention than the later ones. Many anecdotes I’ve read multiple times before appear here. It was interesting, though, to see what ones Morrison highlighted or put into different contexts than past writers have done. There are plenty of quotes from many of the most famous performers in the show’s history. Big surprise that Chevy Chase’s reputation as an ass is confirmed for the millionth time.

We’ve always heard of Michaels’ various personality traits that have a profound effect on the show and its cast members. He can be cold and distant, cruel and direct, inscrutable and maddening. He encourages and supports people in their weakest moments and then ignores them when they triumph. He is a name dropper of the first order, and casually mentions his friendships with some of the most famous people in the world and vacations at some of the most exclusive parts of the world like everyone else, including new cast members with a couple hundred dollars to their names, has the same experiences. He’s kind of a weird dude.

Morrison gets at where all that comes from. The final portrait isn’t necessarily all that flattering. You can admire the institution he created while thinking he could have done some things differently over the past 50 years. I feel like that’s something that has taken me over 50 years to figure out for myself: you can like someone’s work while also thinking that they are kind of a dick.

I’ve fallen behind again and I just started a book that’s going to take a week or so to get through, so some quick-ish book notes.

Charlesgate Confidential – Scott Von Doviak
A fun, pulpy novel that takes place over three different timelines in Boston, centered on an old building that has a complex (and haunted?) history. It begins with a mob heist and killing after World War II, jumps to a college student in 1986 who investigates the history of the building, and lands on a detective in 2014 who tries to tie a case he is working back to the weird cycle of past events. Like most novels of this type, multiple threads tie the three stories together.

The Book Censor’s Library – Bothayna Al-Essa
My first effort at a novel that made this year’s Tournament of Books. It takes places in a mystery country in a mystery time (the book was translated from Arabic, so my brain kept putting it in the Middle East, but an author’s note saying it could be placed anywhere) where the government has taken strong control of people’s lives. Books are heavily censored, and anything that will raise readers’ pulse rates – sex, religion, democracy – is removed from circulation.

One censor is introduced to classic works like Zorba The Greek and Alice In Wonderland by a superior and begins questioning why people aren’t allowed to read whatever they want. Soon he is sneaking books that were slated for destruction to a secret storage area where they are being hoarded for preservation.

There are obvious connections to books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, and Al-Essa directly references those. While these stories can always serve as warnings about the unchecked power of government, no matter who is in charge, they seem extra significant now when books are being pulled off the shelves of public and school libraries because of complains by parents who fear exposing their kids to different perspectives will turn them into mindless, godless woke-bots.

A Place Of My Own – Michael Pollan
Sometimes I read weird books. In this case, a rather lengthy one about a writer building a shed for him to do his work in. But it’s more than that. Pollan gets deep into all kinds of theory and history of design, architecture, and human shelter in general. I can’t say it was all super engaging and there weren’t some sections about theory that I either skimmed or read with glazed eyes and did not retain much from.

That said, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of a workshop, “he-shed,” or similar spaces for some time. It’s not that I need a space to get away from it all. We have a big house and I spend a lot of the day/week in it alone. I can do pretty much whatever I want wherever I want. And when S is home at night, I often default to watching movies, shows, etc on my iPad sitting on one couch while she sits on the loveseat on her own screen rather than go watch stuff on the big screen downstairs. Not that we’re all lovey-dovey, but I just like being near her in the few hours she is home and awake.

But there is some primal desire I can’t beat down for a space of my own. I’m not into tools, mechanical projects, etc, so there’s no need to convert part of our garage into a workshop, or to carve out a section of our unfinished basement for “D’s projects.” I love the idea of what Pollan did, though, building a little structure that would be dedicated to writing, reading, etc. But 1) I don’t make any money from my writing and don’t really have prospects to at the moment, 2) we did build a big structure in the backyard five years ago, aka our pool house, 3) I have about 18 different places in the house where I can go and write, read, etc. and 4) we are in the process of subtracting kids from the house so we are gaining space rather than searching for areas to call our own. M’s room could become my writer’s nook.

Still, the concept appeals. And it was cool to follow Pollan making it happen with the assistance of a friendly architect and helpful carpenter who guided him through the process.

I read two-and-a-half books while on break. I admit I had to go back and read a summary of one of them. That’s what happens when you read most of it in small doses on the beach, I guess.

The Seventh Floor – David McCloskey
The latest entry from the former CIA analyst and host of The Rest Is Classified podcast. This time, operations against a Russian target run into constant obstacles because of a Russian mole deep within the CIA’s leadership. The search for and capture of said agent are both good fun.

Thrilling Cities – Ian Fleming
This is a collection of travel essays that Ian Fleming wrote for London’s The Sunday Times based on trips he took in 1959 and 1960, first published in book form in 1963. Some of it is fascinating, notably how unique it was to travel around the world on a jet plane at the time, and how very different that experience was. Some of it is cringey: Fleming was, infamously, a bit of a racist and could easily judge the people he met on his travels based on the color of their skin, ethnicity, or where they were born. Some of it is very funny. At times he opens with a pretty racist statement, then subverts it and makes himself look silly in the process. He had a sharp eye for what made cities unique, and was not afraid to explore them deep into the night to discover all they had to offer.

These essays are purely entertainment value at this point. Despite the racism and out-of-datedness, it is fun to read about how much the world has changed and how exotic cities that were a day-long plane ride away felt in 1960.

Ballistic – Mark Greaney

Zero Option – W.E.B. Griffin
Last fall I came across Steve Donoghue’s year end lists of favorite books of various genres. I added several of them to my always growing To Read list, especially from his list of best thrillers. Both of these were entries on that list. Given that he focuses on “real” literature, I’m kind of surprised he is so into books where people mostly blow shit (and other people) up.

Ballistic is an entry in Greaney’s Gray Man series, which I started earlier this year. It’s not dissimilar to the opener. The Gray Man faces seeming insurmountable odds as he takes on a Mexican drug cartel nearly singlehandedly, yet somehow wins. I enjoyed it, but have to admit I can only read so many books like this. Especially when by the same author and with the same protagonist, so this will probably be the last Gray Man book I read.

Zero Option is like a modern Bond book, in that Peter Kirsanow picked up Griffin’s “Men At War” series following his death in 2019. In this case, a German plot to kill Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943. The story switches between the Germans, a team of Americans, and a Soviet agent, who are all aimed at the same point in time with very different agendas.

This book seemed like it was written more for teenagers. It was silly and uneven, and spent far too much time building up to the events in Tehran without accomplishing much along the way. A part of me wondered if it had been translated from another language as some of the dialogue pretty dumb. Oh well, this was mostly read on the beach so better to waste time on it rather than something more meaty.

Everybody Knows – Jordan Harper
The second Harper book I’ve read, and this was just about as satisfying as the first (She Rides Shotgun).

In this case, an associate at a PR firm that specializes in sanitizing/killing stories about terrible things famous people do gets pulled into a classic LA Noir murder mystery that winds itself through the richest people in the town. She is assisted by an old flame, a retired cop who works in the same realm, investigating icky stories and finding ways to use them for/against people in the limelight. They dive into the world of childhood stars, controlling agents, and the sick predilections of the wealthy. It is disturbing but very well written and entertaining.

I just read a remarkable book that demands its own post.

The Real Hoosiers – Jack McCallum
McCallum, the longtime NBA writer for Sports Illustrated, dove into the history of the Indianapolis Crispus Attucks high school basketball teams of the mid–1950s, when Oscar Robertson starred there. Famously, Attucks lost to Milan in the first game of the State Finals in 1954. Milan beat Muncie Central that night for the championship. Their tournament run inspired the movie Hoosiers.[1]

The next two seasons, Attucks lost just a single game on their way to back-to-back state championships.

McCallum begins the book exploring that famous 1954 tournament, pointing out how many elements of the movie were only loosely based on fact, and showing how the historical record has been colored both by the movie and by misperceptions based on the movie. He spoke to Bobby Plump, the Milan star who hit the game winning shot in the championship game and upon who the character Jimmy Chitwood was somewhat based. Plump is a terrific interview and has never been shy about pointing out some of the inconsistencies of both the movie and how people consider those real teams.

The title has a double meaning, though. It’s not just about correcting some of the story about 1954, showing how Attucks was as big of an underdog story as Milan in some ways and that the Tigers upheld many of the hoary principles of Hoosier basketball as well as the rural, white teams did. It is also about examining what Indiana was like in the 1950s, particularly in how African Americans were treated. I had never heard this description before, but McCallum says that Indiana was/is sometimes called the “northern-most southern state, or southern-most northern state,” because of its record of race relations. In diving into that history, McCallum shows us that the “real Hoosiers” were people who were not only reluctant to give African Americans their inalienable rights as US citizens, but even deep into the 20th Century these same “Real Hoosiers” were working hard to keep laws on the books that were insanely racist. As McCallum sadly points out, some behaviors which were common 70 years ago and seem hopelessly retrograde are becoming common again today.[2]

Attucks was built to be the only Indianapolis high school open to Black students, ending what had been integrated schools in the city. It was constructed – and still stands – on the old west side of downtown, an area sometimes called Frog City or Frog Island, that was known for its extreme poverty and lack of basic services. Until the land was cleared for a massive building project in the late 1940s, and continues to today, there were regular outbreaks of cholera and more occasional ones of malaria in this part of town. Guess what demographic group was overwhelmingly forced into this area?

As the city began to clear out Frog Island, the Black families of the area were forced to move elsewhere.[3] But Attucks was still the only high school that their kids could attend. Of course, while the city promised a bussing service for these kids, the money was never allocated for it. Oscar Robertson, for one example, had to walk 24 blocks to school each day despite there being several public schools between his family’s new home and Attucks.[4]

I had never realized this, but McCallum points out how much of the physical history of Black people in Indianapolis has been wiped away. There is no 18th and Vine area, as in Kansas City, where the historical contributions of the Black community are celebrated. Any monuments to African Americans in Indy are scattered around town, just as the people they honor were forced to scatter.

Attucks was one of the few things Black Indianapolis residents could rally around. McCallum both begins and ends the book with a long list of Attucks graduates who went on to do great things, often as the first African Americans to penetrate a particular field. And for a few years in the 1950s, thanks to being home of one of the greatest players to ever step on a court, the Flying Tigers basketball team put Attucks on the map for the entire state.

The 1955 team was the first Indianapolis school to ever win the state championship. Remember, this was in the old, single class system. It only took 44 years for the biggest city in the state to conquer the tournament, which seems crazy. It was also the first all-Black team to win a state championship anywhere in the US.

And the 1956 team was the first Indiana team to ever go undefeated.[5] Ray Crowe, the Attucks coach, was a remarkable man who taught his players both to play basketball better than anyone else and how to comport themselves in a way that wouldn’t cause the team trouble given the era they played in. This book just came out last year, but McCallum was still able to talk to a large number of players on that team, teachers and administrators at the school, and several prominent players who faced the Tigers.

He did not speak with Robertson, who declined his requests. The Big O is a complex, sometimes difficult man, and he still holds a lot of painful memories of his time at Attucks. He was far ahead of his time, a huge guard that the offense ran through but who could also defend every spot on the court and still be the best rebounder. He was LeBron James 50 years before LeBron. Oscar also was arguably the most important player in leading NBA players to gain the right to free agency and control their own careers. He did this before Curt Flood sacrificed his career to challenge Major League Baseball’s reserve clause. For some reason, despite being a much better player, Robertson doesn’t get celebrated for this the way Flood does. Perhaps it is because Robertson was so good that the NBA couldn’t blackball him, thus his career didn’t end when he stood up for players’ rights.

Robertson’s history with the city and state remains strained. He is very much like Michael Jordan in that he never forgets or forgives a slight. He has bitter memories of how Attucks was treated after they won their first championship, which he believes was much more reserved compared to how the general public had celebrated Milan a year earlier. Several of his teammates say his memories aren’t accurate of what actually happened, and the newspaper record from the time shows that some of the things Robertson complained about were based on choices made within the Attucks/Black communities, not things that were forced upon them by the racist city council or governor.

It is hard to blame him, though, given the environment and age he grew up in. Because of all of this, while his name is still held in high esteem here, it always pops up a little later than you would expect when Hoosiers talk about great, local players. Some of that is because he left the state for Cincinnati when he went to college, shunning a recruiting pitch from IU, and stayed in Cincy after retiring from the NBA. When his name does come up, though, no one forgets what a unique and dominating player he was.

McCallum’s story is equal parts delightful, illuminating, engrossing, and maddening. Despite understanding our collective history, it is still depressing and deflating to know that the pre-Civil Rights era really wasn’t that long ago. My father-in-law is two years younger than Robertson, going to high school just a couple miles from Attucks. They are both in their mid–80s, but still, are alive and can speak to that era. And in many states, including northern states like Indiana, it was deep into the 1970s before real change came about. And, of course, our issues with race in this country never really go away, and in fact are being used more-and-more to inflame parts of the population and keep us divided.

Sports don’t solve these problems. But they can give people hope, something to ignore the realities they face daily for a little while, and create a shared pride for a community. That is exactly what Crispus Attucks did for African Americans in Indianapolis in the 1950s.

Beirut Station – Paul Vidich
I’ve read a couple of Vidich’s books and was luke warm on both, so had largely written his work off. His spy stories seemed reserved, dry, and emotionally complex in a way that I did not connect with. But I heard him on a podcast where his personality seemed the opposite of that, and read some good press for this book, so decided it was worth the shot.

I’m glad I didn’t give up on him.

The earlier books I read were both set during the early days of the Cold War, and I think that threat of nuclear apocalypse affected their tone. Here he sets his story in Beirut during the Israeli bombing campaign against Hezbollah in 2006. A joint US-Israeli group is working to assassinate a Hezbollah leader, but a young CIA agent calls off a near perfect shot at him when she sees that his young son is in the car with him. She is then tasked with finding a new way to target him, leveraging her relationship with his kids as their teacher. As a Lebanese-American she constantly feels unsure of where she belongs and who truly trusts her. She’s surrounded by representatives from various sides who have their own dueling interests. Soon she is in the midst of a battle between Hezbollah, Israel, and the US, never certain if any of them are interested in keeping her alive.

This book had some common elements to Vidich’s earlier ones. It was dark and complicated at times. The drama is carried more by internal strife and ruptured relationships than by raging gun battles. And we get deep inside his protagonist’s head. So perhaps it was just the more modern setting that helped me connect with it better. Maybe it was focusing on a modern woman that allowed him to add some heft to the story that was lacking in his severe, closed-off 1950s Cold War men.

Whatever it was, I really liked this book.

Saturday Night – Doug Hill & Jeff Weingrad
I’ve read James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’ Live From New York oral history of Saturday Night Live that came out in 2015. Twice it was so good. There is also a new book about Lorne Michaels out that I am on the waitlist for.

But I had never read this book, originally published in 1985, about the early years of the show. I had heard about it often, but I believe it was out of print for several years. Fortunately my library not only had it, but had an ebook edition. I put it on hold the week of SNL50 and it came in this week.

This book is pretty exhaustive, most notably about the lead up to season one and then the first five seasons of the show, aka the first Michaels era. It does cover the disastrous 1980–81 season, then Dick Ebersol taking over and letting the considerable talents of Eddie Murphy carry it into the mid–80s. These next two eras get brushed over relatively quickly. And it ends with Michaels set to take over for the 1985–86 season.

There are tons of great stories in here. If you’re an SNL head you’ll know a lot of them, but as the original cast first took the air over 50 years ago, many of them have faded. Almost none of the stars or producers come out looking great. Everyone had their own ego and personality issues, which were often exacerbated by drug use. Really it was a reminder that TV stars are just like us, in that they have flaws and hangups and having fame and fortune doesn’t make those disappear. Especially in the pressure cooker of live television.

Also, this book answered some of my questions about the accuracy of the movie Saturday Night. There were clearly a lot of moments from throughout season one, and even beyond, that were rolled into that story about the show’s first night for effect.

Alias Emma – Ava Glass
To start, a crackling British spy caper.

Emma, a young agent in a secret department within the British secret service, is tasked with guiding the adult son of a former Russian agent to safety before a Russian death squad can liquidate him. The catch is the Russians have tapped into London’s security network and are able to track many of Emma’s movements. And they may have placed an agent at the top of the security service, preventing her from calling for help. This leads to a thrilling chase through the tunnels and underground rivers of the city. Naturally, when all seems lost things work out.

What I especially enjoyed about this book was how British it was. Not in the almost impenetrable way Mick Herron writes his Slow Horses series. But rather how it does not attempt to be an American thriller in any way. Emma doesn’t have a gun, nor do any of her fellow agents. When she does kill a Russian agent who attacked her, she is worried about what the man she is trying to protect will think of her. American spies never show remorse or self-consciousness about killing bad guys!

I also appreciated how Glass put little moments of sexual tension into the story, but never lets them boil over. It reminded me of the movie Out of Sight a little, and how there was that underlying tension between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, but they never acted on it. Sometimes that is sexier than letting the characters give into their attraction to each other.

American Kingpin – Nick Bilton
I missed some things in the years I was concentrating on raising my kids, driving them around, coaching their teams, etc. It didn’t help that all that coincided with when I began paying far less attention to whatever the biggest news stories of the day were. Thus, somehow, I totally missed the whole Silk Road thing. I never knew a thing about it when it was an active presence on the Dark Web. I didn’t know a thing about the arrest and trial of its creator, Ross Ulbricht. Hell, I didn’t know that our current president had just pardoned Ulbricht a few days before I read a blurb about this book and checked it out.

So I was not prepared for what a wild ride the book would be. As always, you grain-of-salt parts of Bilton’s writing. But if even a fraction of what he writes is close to what really happened, this is an insane story. His brisk writing style turns it into a page-turner that feels more like a novel than an accounting of a criminal empire. The tedious, methodical way the Silk Road empire was investigated and then pulled apart by law enforcement was fascinating.

One thing that struck me about the book was how many characters, both Ulbricht and the people in various government agencies who chased and eventually caught him, hated authority. Agents in Homeland Security, the DEA, and the FBI all ignored their bosses’ commands because they didn’t feel like anyone should have authority over their actions. Ulbricht’s entire motivation was to advance his hyper-libertarian view that all drugs should be legal and the government had no right to tell people what they can and cannot put into their bodies.

What becomes obvious is that all of these people also rarely take responsibility for their actions. The law enforcement agents are seeking to protect Americans and bring a criminal to justice. Ulbricht is just helping people get the things they have a natural right to. The ends always justify the means with these people, and any harm that comes to others is regrettable, but not something they spend much time worrying about or feel responsible for. Free will and all that.

At its height, massive amounts of illegal drugs were delivered to people all over the world thanks to the Silk Road. There’s no telling how many overdoses were caused by it. How much crime was committed to pay for the drugs. How much other damage was done by people who used these drugs. Ulbricht was, indirectly, one of the biggest drug dealers in the world. Again, he received a presidential pardon about a month ago. In doing so, our Great Leader called the legitimate law enforcement agents who brought Ulbricht down “scum.” Remember all of that the next time he either rails against drug kingpins in other countries, yells about illegal drugs pouring into our country, or acts like he supports the police.

Creation Lake – Rachel Kushner
I had given up on Kushner books. I’ve read two of her previous novels. I enjoyed, but did not love, one; the other I found a bit tedious. This was on many Best Of lists last year, then I saw it recommended by two other people I trust, so I decided to give it a shot.

I’m regretting that decision.

This wasn’t terrible. The core story is about a disgraced former Federal agent who freelances for whoever will pay her to infiltrate protest groups. A different take on corporate espionage. In this case, she assimilates into a commune in rural France with a different mission: pushing them to turn their protest into an attack on a government minister her employers – who are never identified – want neutralized.

That all is kind of cool. What is less cool is how roughly half of the story is this agent reading through emails of the spiritual head of this agrarian rights group. Much of that dives back into the origins of man, where Homo Sapiens separated from Neanderthals, they from Homo Erectus, and so on. I may have that order wrong, but you get what I’m saying. There’s lots of stuff about caves and fossils and what not. Not the most engaging reading material.

The point of all that is to establish the group’s ideology, and the protagonist’s discovery that she models her life around similar principals. I just found it all, again, dull. My complaint about Kushner’s The Flamethrowers was that it was too artsy. This book gets into that same territory. Maybe I’m just not cut out for artsy novels.

Once again I am behind on these, so let’s get caught up with my last four reads.

The Miracle of St. Anthony – Adrian Wojnarowski
What a book! Future NBA scoops guru Woj spent the 2004–04 season embedded with the basketball team at St. Anthony High School of Jersey City. The program was famously coached by Bob Hurley for 45 years. For much of that time Hurley also worked tirelessly to keep the school open, spending countless hours fundraising and donating the money he made from speaking engagements and clinics to the school. He, and others, kept it afloat until 2017.

That 2003–04 squad was one of his 26 state title teams, finishing the season undefeated and ranked #2 in the country. Unlike his four national championship teams, this one didn’t have a single D1 senior recruit on the roster.

The book is about more than basketball, though. Woj gets to know the kids on the team, the circumstances they came from, the daily challenges they face, and so on. He tracks the Sisters who run the school as they also fight to keep the facility from being closed and kids from dropping out.

Hurley had a lot in common with Bobby Knight, someone he was friendly with. He was fiery. He held players to a high standard. He expected as much from them in class as on the court. You can see where his sons got their (over) intensity. Unlike Knight, though, Hurley seemed like someone you could have a genuine conversation with that wouldn’t involve him spending most of the time proving that he was smarter than you and everything you believed was wrong.

Like any sports book, it was fun to see how much things have changed in the 20 years since this came out, and how players who seemed like can’t miss prospects at the time faded away.

Lazarus Man – Richard Price
I’ve read a couple of Price’s books in the past, and watched movies and TV shows he’s written for. He never disappoints.

Here he writes of the aftermath of a building collapse in New York, and how several people are affected by it, including a man pulled from the rubble alive three days after the collapse. As these folks navigate the days after the collapse, they give us a view of what everyday life is like for people in Harlem in the late 2000s. These glimpses into their lives pull the story along, but there’s never any great conflict or common ending that their stories are leading us towards. There is a rather notable reveal/twist late in the book, but it is hinted at throughout and doesn’t really shock the reader or flip the story in a dramatic way.

Price is such a good writer, especially of dialogue, that this thinness in plot is fine. Not every novel needs to have a great, deeper meaning or statement on life. That lack does keep this from standing next to his earlier, better works, though.

The Gray Man – Mark Greaney
A decent, mindless, assassin kills a bunch of bad guys novel. There’s a whole series of these. I’m not sure I’m going to work through them all – Lord knows I have plenty of other spy series I could jump back into – but Greaney’s 2024 entry landed on a couple Best Of lists so I may selectively pick some that got good reviews and/or focus on topics that interest me.

Notes On A Foreign Country: An American Abroad In A Post-American World – Suzy Hansen
I forget where I heard about this book, but I also read an article Hansen published in a magazine within recent weeks, so something got her into my feed.

I knew that this was all about her observations as an American living overseas over the past decade, but I did not realize it was almost pure analysis. I was hoping for a book that was as much travelogue as extended piece for Foreign Affairs.

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. Hansen spends the entire book explaining how pretty much everything about her world view was challenged and changed by the decade she spent living in Turkey. She dove into how little history Americans know and understand about other countries. How even our overseas reporters, who are supposed to learn about and explain other cultures to us, are often woefully ignorant about the lands they are reporting from. She gets deeply into how Americans don’t understand the ramifications of our foreign policy and the direct effects it has on people in other countries. How what is “good for America” is often purely about economics for us and has no regard for anyone crushed along the way. And so on.

I tend to agree with much of her perspective, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Pretty woke, right? Where this is important for all Americans is in explaining the “why do (insert ethnic/religious/cultural/racial group identifier here) hate us?” questions we face all too often. It’s because we’ve routinely crushed, or helped to crush, popular, effective governments in other countries because their interests didn’t align with ours (or more specifically with our biggest corporations who have operations in these countries). It’s because we have a long history of supporting very bad people because we didn’t understand local interests or assumed because their opponents might lean to the left, that meant they were deeply indebted to the Soviets. We would never let another world power come into the US and tell us what we could and could not do inside our own borders. But we’ve been doing that to people all around the world for nearly 150 years now, since we first started building our own empire by taking Cuba and the Philippines from Spain.

Even if you disagree with her contentions, Hansen’s perspective is important, especially in an age when we are equally threatened by small, non-governmental actors as we are by China and Russia. Like so much of the bullshit we face these days, a little interest in and empathy towards others could go a long way towards making the world a safer place.

There’s Always This Year – Hanif Abdurraqib
I started the year with this wonderful book. It is a multi-layered examination of the places we call home and how we relate to them as we age, all set against a backdrop of basketball. For the most part, Abdurraqib’s tale follows the career of LeBron James, from high school phenom to his first run with the Cavaliers, to The Decision and move to Miami, and finally his return to Cleveland and winning the title the city sought for so long.

But only a fraction of the book is actually about LeBron. It’s as much about the neighborhood Adburraqib grew up in in Columbus, OH and what it was like to come of age in Ohio in parallel to LeBron. There’s also a nice diversion about former Kansas Jayhawk Kenny Gregory, who was a few years older than the author and lived a few doors down from him, and what it meant to the Columbus projects for a local kid to be a McDonald’s All American, winning both the dunk contest and game MVP award. KG is also used as a counter to LeBron, as the Can’t Miss Kid who, for various reasons, misses. At least compared to all the expectations on him before he went off to college.

There are also bits about music and culture and family and other stuff. Abdurraqib is more poet than social critic/commentator, so the book at times reads as such. There are even sections written in verse. The whole book was surely written over months, if not years. But it reads as though he spun it out over a single night, or maybe two, letting the thoughts flow from brain to pen/keyboard and following whatever diversions they took on the way to getting to his bigger points.

The Wide Wide Sea – Hampton Sides
Captain James Cook was one of the greatest seafarers of the age when men piled into ships and sailed off to parts unknown, hoping to “discover” new lands, peoples, and opportunities. This is an accounting of his final voyage, when his primary mission was to explore the western coast of North America for a potential connection to the theorized Northwest Passage. Along the way he became the first European to land on the Hawaiian Islands.

Cook was unlike most of the other most famous sea explorers whose names are litered across maps and history books. He wasn’t interested in spreading Christianity to “save” the heathens of the unexplored territories of the world. He generally treated the native peoples of the lands he arrived at with respect and intellectual interest, striving to learn about their cultures and societal structures. He took pains to avoid spreading Western diseases in lands where white men had yet to land, not always with success but at least with genuine intent to protect the locals.

But something was off about his final voyage. He seemed cranky and distant, and at times sloppy. There were a series of early setbacks to his journey that were unintentional but set a tone for the remainder of the mission. He was much more likely to punish his sailors with the lash than he ever had been in the past. Worst of all, the change in his mood and behavior led to a massive misunderstanding that ended up costing him his life on a Hawaiian beach in 1779.

This is a remarkable book. It came from a time (Cook left England in mid–1776) when there is a healthy historical record from people on the voyage to accurately recreate their travels. It is truly remarkable that large ships were sent to sea in this time (and had been for over 300 years!). Life on a ship seems like a truly awful experience. Sanitary conditions could be horrific. Boats were filled with rats and cockroaches. Food rotted quickly, supplies of fresh water were limited. The ships constantly leaked. Weather conditions were miserable and the sailors relied on 18th Century clothing to keep themselves dry and warm. Sailors would randomly fall into the sea because of unsettled conditions, often never to be rescued or seen again.

And then there was the matter of it being impossible to communicate with the rest of the world. Ships would set sail and travel for years at a time, family, friends, and benefactors not knowing if a crew was carrying out its mission or on the bottom of the sea until they crawled back into port years later. In severe storms or heavy fog, Cook and his companion ship would fire off their canon at regular intervals to avoid running into each other.

It just doesn’t seem like a lot of fun.

A fascinating story well constructed by Sides.

Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life In Music – Ted Templeman as told to Greg Renoff
Kind of an odd choice, but Alex Van Halen referenced this book a lot in his memoir, and then I’ve come across a couple other random references to it since I read AVH’s book, so I thought it would be an interesting read. Which it was, with some big flaws.

First off, I had no idea that Templeman was in the band Harpers Bizarre, which had a few hits in the Sixties, including “59th Street Song (Feelin’ Groovy).” He spends the better part of the first 100 pages of this book detailing his childhood and his Harper’s Bizarre days. Not the reason I picked it up.

Eventually he gets into his production career, beginning with Van Morrison, moving through The Doobie Brothers, and peaking with Van Halen’s glory days.[1] That last bit was obviously the most interesting.

Yet, the book landed a little flat. In musical terms, it felt a little over-produced, as if the rough sections had all been smoothed away. I wasn’t necessarily reading it for gossip, but controversial moments are relayed in an almost passing manner. He keeps hinting that Eddie Van Halen had “issues” but never really spells out that he had become an addict. It’s a weird avoidance of something that is on the public record. Templeman also glossed over many musical terms without explaining them. And, most strangely to me, he insists on calling artists by their shortened names. Eddie Van Halen is always Ed, never Eddie. Alex is alway Al. Michael McDonald is always Mike. He never, ever strays from this. Which drove me nuts. It’s such a Hollywood thing, like “Bob DeNiro is a pal of mine,” or whatever.

There were plenty of good parts. It was very interesting to read his take on how Van Halen fell apart. He had produced Sammy Hagar as well, and famously wanted Sammy to replace David Lee Roth when he signed the band in the late Seventies. In Alex’s book he said he had read this one, and while he respected Templeman, he disagreed with many of his characterizations of VH’s career. It was fun to try to pick out the parts where their views diverged.

Can’t say I highly recommend this book, but it wasn’t a total waste of time, either.

I completed my final book of 2024 late Saturday/early Sunday as I was battling some insomnia. It was my 62nd book of the year, making 2024 one of my best reading years ever.[1] I read seven books in two different months, six books in three separate months, and never fewer than three books in a 30/31-day stretch. Pretty good work. Now I get to start all over again.

The Siege – Ben MacIntyre
I’ve read two of MacIntyre’s books before, and heard about this latest one via a couple different podcasts. It relates the 1980 takeover of the Iranian embassy in London by Arab terrorists. Our generation remembers the Iranians occupying the US embassy in Tehran well, but I did not remember this event, which lasted for six days that spring.

MacIntyre spoke to many of the surviving hostages, police and military, and government officials involved in the event, which allowed him to piece together a highly detailed, very British accounting of every moment of the crisis, from before the terrorists – who had the stated goal of autonomy for an Arab-majority province in Iran – entered the embassy to the quick but problematic assault by British special forces to free the hostages.

It is a fascinating tale not just for the shady motivations of the terrorists, more on that in a moment, but for how it was one of the first public uses of British SAS forces. The unit had existed since World War II – as one of MacIntyre’s other books outlines – but was barely known to the British public until they stormed the embassy. Quite different from America, where our special forces have always been celebrated as both the elite of the elite and as a warning to forces that want to do us harm.

Now to the terrorists. While most of the force were Arab Iranians who truly sought the autonomy back home they believed the Islamic government had promised them when they supported the 1979 revolution, the power behind them was much less narrowly focused. The organization, training, and money all came from Iraq, leading directly to Saddam Hussein and the super terrorist Abu Nidal. Saddam wanted to embarrass and destabilize the new Shiite government in Iran, hoping to increase his own power in the region. This disastrous event in London was one of the direct causes of the horrific Iran-Iraq war, which lasted for eight years. That, in turn, led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, as Iraq wanted to take possession of Kuwait’s oil reserves to stabilize its economy after the Iran war. Which led to US troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia before liberating Kuwait. The presence of which was one of Osama Bin Laden’s motivations for declaring a holy war against the US. And you know what happened from there.

Anyway, a highly interesting read about a seemingly unimportant blip in history – to most Americans – that ended up being massively impactful on all of our lives.

There Was Nothing You Could Do – Steven Hyden
I intentionally saved this for the end of the year. What better way to wrap up the 40th anniversary of the greatest year in pop music history than with a book about one of that year’s biggest albums?

In Hyden’s latest, he takes on Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, the biggest, most popular, and perhaps most impactful album of The Boss’ career. However, this is not just an assessment/break down of the album itself. Hyden takes a long look at where Springsteen was when he recorded the album, how he was already struggling with the weight of success and popularity. How the E. Street Band was already beginning to fracture ever-so-slightly. How Springsteen took a deliberate step back on Nebraska. How, despite their huge differences in sound, how many of the songs on Born In The USA were recorded around the same time as Nebraska was. Biggest of all, Hyden examines what the USA cycle did to Bruce and how he changed in the years after, from pulling back further from the pop mainstream to separating from the E. Street Band to becoming more overtly political.

Bruce Springsteen is one of the most important and influential artists of the rock era. Because of that, whether you like him or not, his story is important. And the most important part of his story is the point where he both embraced popularity and decided that wasn’t for him.

Favorite Books of 2024

I’ve written about every book I read this year already, so no need for blurbs about my favorites. Here’s a list of the ones that I enjoyed the most. Not all of these were new releases.

The Peacock and The Sparrow – I.S. Berry
Calico – Lee Goldberg
Brooklyn Crime Novel – Jonathan Lethem
The Family Chao – Lan Samantha Chang
Chain Gang All-Stars – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Wager – David Grann
Carrie Soto Is Back – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) – Jeff Tweedy
Middle of the Night – Riley Sager
Nuclear War – Annie Jacobsen