The Fortress of Solitude

I've finally finished my first book in the 2011 "To Be Read" pile challenge: "The Fortress Of Solitude" by Jonathan Lethem. It's hard to express how much of an impression this book made on me--"Fortress" is one of the most interesting and arresting books that I have ever read. For a long while the book …

What It Takes

Usually I blog about books AFTER I've read them, but my copy of What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer has an interesting back story. Since the book is over 1,000 pages long and has landed on my doorstep while I'm right in the middle of several other books I'm attempting to read in my …

2011 “To Be Read” Pile Reading Challenge

Adam at the Roof Beam Reader blog has created the To Be Read Pile Challenge (TBR Pile 2011): Here is my list of 12 books, from my "to be read" pile, that I will read over the next year: Rule of the Bone–Russell Banks Yiddish Policeman’s Union–Michael Chabon Lord Jim–Joseph Conrad The Corrections–Jonathan Franzen The …

10 Influential Books (For Me Anyway)

The right wingers, albeit some of the more thoughtful ones, are engaging in a bit of a blog meme at the moment--10 books that have influenced their world view. Can't let the lefties get cut out of all the fun. Small Is Beautiful-- E.F. Schumacher This series of essays on appropriate technology, ordering production to …

Barack & I Share Our Summer Reading Lists

The White House released a list of five books that Barack Obama will take with him on vacation this year. A couple of urban thrillers written by folks that worked on The Wire, the McCullough biography of John Adams, Tom Friedman's book on the need for America to invest in green technology and a novel …

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu

The novelist John Updike passed away yesterday. I liked the Rabbit books for which he is justly honored. However, he also wrote one of the the best essays ever on baseball, his chronicle of Ted Williams' last game with the Red Sox and his home run in his final at bat: Hub Fans Bid Kid …

So You Want To Be A Community Organizer

So you’ve been inspired by the Obama campaign (and abhorred by the Republican slanders) and you have decided you want to become a community organizer. What better job in the world can there be than helping others change their world? However, most people don’t really have an idea about what organizing is and how they …

Babylon By Bus

No, not the live album by Bob Marley (with the cool map graphic on the inside album sleeve showing a Syracuse tour date). This is a book by Ray Lemoine and Jeff Neumann about their experiences in "Mission Accomplished-era" Iraq. Check out this cool excerpt from Outside magazine Two young guys in post-war, early occupation …

Reading Is Revolutionary

A new survey by the National Endowment for the Arts finds that fewer Americans are reading serious literature. I have always been an avid reader, the summer trips to the library being a highlight of my childhood. Even though I find it hard to believe, my mother used to insist that the first book I …