2019 Books

73 books this year, down from last year, but consistent with the two years I was working in Serbia. Nothing really rocked my world this year, although Matryona's House may have a place in my Top 5 short stories. I'd have to think about it. 25% fiction, which seems about right for me, though maybe a bit low.

Of this year's Top 5, only one is an all timer--more for its detail about the horrible extent to which the west was won at the expense of the people who were already there. I mean, I guess I sort of knew that, but to see it laid out like that is something that every American should experience.

I didn't like James M Cain as much as I'd hoped, and the work I chose is markedly different from the others, which are more of the style for which he's famous. Not for me, I guess.

The Solzhenitsyn work, along with the aforementioned novella makes him my man of the year, and the way he blends fact and fiction put him right there in the conversation with Tolstoi. It also helps a westerner understand the extent to which Russia was decimated by the First World War--the Eastern front was not mentioned in my elementary school Canadian history.

Of the other two selections, the one is mainly of interest to Tbilisi visitors and it is amazing to see how much the city has changed in twenty years. The country's geopolitical situation is still a bit precarious, but it feels like the country is slowly establishing its place in the world and moving away from Russia and toward Europe. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if something happened to suddenly reverse that trend, and despite America's assistance, I think our commitment to Georgia and willingness to stand up to Russia has its limits.

Finally, in this time of depressing and fake news it is reassuring to take a longer look at the recent past and to see how far we have come in reducing poverty, hunger and child mortality. There is still a long way to go, but our progress has been remarkable and there is every indication that it will continue, despite whichever shape the revolt of the public takes.

Jason joined me on Goodreads this year and I have enjoyed following what he and Pat are reading, and have benefited from several of their recommendations. It's easy and fun to track your reading and the network effects are significant, so I encourage everyone to get on board.

Happy New Year, everybody. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark too read.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

by 

Dee Brown

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won. 

August 1914

(The Red Wheel #1)

by 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In his monumental narrative of the outbreak of the First World War and the ill-fated Russian offensive into East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn has written what Nina Krushcheva, in The Nation, calls "a dramatically new interpretation of Russian history." The assassination of tsarist prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, a crucial event in the years leading up to the Revolution of 1917, is reconstructed from the alienating viewpoints of historical witnesses. The sole voice of reason among the advisers to Tsar Nikolai II, Stolypin died at the hands of the anarchist Mordko Bogrov, and with him perished Russia's last hope for reform. Translated by H.T. Willetts.

August 1914 is the first volume of Solzhenitsyn's epic, The Red Wheel; the second is November 1916. Each of the subsequent volumes will concentrate on another critical moment or "knot," in the history of the Revolution.

Mildred Pierce

by 

James M. Cain

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.

Out of these elements, Cain created a novel (later made into a film noir classic) of acute social observation and devastating emotional violence—and a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

by 

Hans Rosling,

 

Ola Rosling

, 

Anna Rosling Rönnlund

When asked simple questions about global trends - why the world's population is increasing; how many young women go to school; how many of us live in poverty - we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and a man who can make data sing, Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens, and reveals the ten instincts that distort our perspective.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world.

Stories I Stole

by 

Wendell Steavenson

Fed up with working for Time magazine in London, Steavenson moved to Georgia on a whim. Stories I Stole relates her time there in twenty vodka-fuelled episodes drawn from all over the country – tales of love, friendship and power cuts, of duelling (Georgian style), of horse races in the mountains, wars and refugees, broken hearts, fixed elections, drinking sessions and a room containing a thousand roses.

Stories I Stole is a wonderful example of a writer tackling an unconventional subject with such wit, humanity and sheer literary verve that one is unable to imagine why one never learnt more about Georgia before. Stories I Stole is a magnificent first book: erudite, engaged, candid and blissfully poetic. 

2018 Books

Here is my list for the year. Thanks for all the recommendations. Special shout-out to fellow bibliophiles, Pat, Jason and G-Lo. Nice to see that my Top 5 includes three works of fiction, which is something I had vowed to pay more attention to in 2018. I am also glad to notice that 3 of my top 5 are women, and none of them are American. Persepolis and Amerikanah were assigned to Evie and Anna through school. Six of the nine top 5 were supplied by the Chapel Hill Public Library!

Harlot's Ghost

by 

Norman Mailer

 3.86  ·   Rating details ·  1,857 ratings  ·  188 reviews

With unprecedented scope and consummate skill, Norman Mailer unfolds a rich and riveting epic of an American spy. Harry Hubbard is the son and godson of CIA legends. His journey to learn the secrets of his society—and his own past—takes him through the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the “momentous catastrophe” of the Kennedy assassination. All the while, Hubbard is haunted by women who were loved by both his godfather and President Kennedy. Featuring a tapestry of unforgettable characters both real and imagined, Harlot’s Ghost is a panoramic achievement in the tradition of Tolstoy, Melville, and Balzac, a triumph of Mailer’s literary prowess.

The attention to detail and intersection with history was absolutely captivating. A big book, but I couldn't put it down.

I didn't like these as much as some, but I loved them nonetheless, more for the portrait of Italy over the last fifty years than for the relationships. The narrator's character is the star of the series, and it was a pleasure to follow her from childhood to maturity, through triumphs and setbacks. A remarkable achievement.

Americanah

by 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 4.29  ·   Rating details ·  181,985 ratings  ·  17,380 reviews

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

Another strong female narrator. I loved the descriptions of life in Nigeria, as well as the insight into life as an African woman in the United States.

   The Princess Bride

William

Goldman

What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?

As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.

Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.

What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.

In short, it's about everything.

Still can't believe I didn't get to this until 2018. The irascible voice of the author tops even Peter Falk, and the meta bits are sui generis. The backstory on the movie makes this edition wortk seeking out.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

by 

Marjane Satrapi,

 

Mattias Ripa (Translator)

 4.24  ·   Rating details ·  134,930 ratings  ·  7,681 reviews

Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love. 

Another unforgettable female narrator, and an unforgettable picture of life in revolutionary Iran and as a stranger in a strange land.

Road Trip

In March, Anna came home from New York for Spring Break. I had just finished a two-year project in Serbia and was in the process of getting reacquainted with my younger daughter, putting in some homework and looking for a new gig. Because there was not much going on in Chapel Hill, I asked her if she might be interested in a road trip to Nashville. She enthusiastically agreed and I found what looked to be a well located air bnb. I didn’t do much preparation beyond that, figuring that I would use the evening and the early morning to plan each day. Beyond the Country music hall of fame, hot chicken and maybe some live music, I didn’t think the trip through that seriously, and was excited to see how it might play out.

The celestial jukebox known as Spotify allowed us to play a game that we had discovered earlier in the year. One person plays a song and the other has to play a song that is somehow related--same word in the title--I Got the Feeling to Feeling Allright to Allright now--, different artist with the same name--Chuck Brown to James Brown to James Taylor. We had gone for 6 hours at Christmas and made it as far as Knoxville, stopping to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack for the final two hours. I was ⅔ of the way through the book and Anna knew the play back to front, having closely followed practically everything related to it over the past 4 years. It was fun to talk about the history; about the events left out of the play; the songs cut from the script; and the adroit wordplay of the characters.

We arrived around 8 pm, and found the key under the mat of our apartment, which was in an older neighborhood, not far from the football stadium, on the east side of the river. I made a quick run to the supermarket, picked up a pizza from a nearby Yelp recommendation, and we made plans to walk to the Country Music Hall of Fame the following morning.

I was up earlier than Anna, and, while I sipped my coffee, I wondered if there might be some kind of dinner theater, where we could hear some live music in an all ages venue that was not too late. I found two possibilities: a steamboat cruise that included dinner and a “musical history of Nashville” and a venue called the “Listening Room cafe,” which had a decent looking menu, and seemed to offer a 6:30 and 8:30 show. The earlier show seemed to be sold out for tonight, but I figured I could probably manage the 8:30 show, and resolved to propose it to Anna when she appeared. She was interested, and, since the venue was close to the Hall of Fame, I figured that maybe we could pop in some time, check it out and see if we could get tickets to the earlier show.

We walked over the bridge to the hall of fame, noticing the Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash museums and adding both to our list of possibilities. We had also discussed a studio tour, and the very helpful HOF employee, in addition to recommending some good barbecue places, sold us on combining the HOF visit with the guided tour of the famous RCA Studio B, where some of Nashville’s most celebrated music, including much of Elvis’ best work, had been created.

The HOF was very interesting, but like many such venues, it left me, by no means a country music expert, unsatisfied and hungry for more information. It was mostly plaques summarizing the work of the inductees, along with costumes and instruments. Pretty much what you would expect from a hall of fame, and I’m not complaining, just letting you know that this type of venue is not my preferred one. I ended up much preferring the Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash museums when we visited them the following day. Each provided a level of detail and interactivity that helped me learn a lot about artists with whom I was passably familiar to begin with.

We finished around noon. Our studio tour was scheduled for 130 and while I retrieved our coats, Anna found a convenient diner, where we grabbed a quick lunch. We returned to the HOF and after a short wait, a bus and a guide arrived to take us to the studio. The guide was well prepared and knowledgeable, regaling us with stories of Elvis, Johnny Cash and all the legends who had made music in the famous studio B.

After the bus returned us to the HOF, we walked over to the cafe I had discovered earlier. It was empty, and although the chalkboard indicated that the 630 show was sold out, I figured I would ask the bartender. He looked at me quizzically and walked over to look at the chalkboard. “That’s from last night.” he told me. When I asked him about tonight, he professed ignorance about ticket sales and told me to go online. Although this seemed implausible, we sat down at the bar and I checked again, finding that tickets for tonight now seemed to be available.

We walked back to the apartment, and adjourned for a couple of hours of rest and social media. Then we walked back to the cafe, where we were ushered to a table in a pleasant space with enough room for a couple of hundred diners. The program for the evening was a pair of accomplished songwriters performing songs they had written for other people, and an up and coming duo from Vancouver, who were selling copies of a recent cd and trying to figure out which song to release as their first single. All were incredibly talented and it gave you a real sense of how competitive the business must be. We enjoyed the show immensely, but, in all honesty, I suspect that we will never hear from any of them again, nor that they will be awarded a plaque at the hall of fame down the road. This was the subject of our conversation on the way home, ranging from the business of songwriting to the creation of art for art’s sake and everything in between. My daughter is still passionate and idealistic about art, while I have a more cynical take on things, and I think it was good for both of us to hear each other, although I was probably more open to her points than she mine. Dinner was a pimiento cheeseBLT for me and fried green tomatoes for Anna. Both were excellent

The next day I discovered that the steam boat was not going out, but, as luck would have it, our beloved basketball team was playing the Boston Celtics in a nationally televised game. After a morning with Patsy and Johnny and a lunch of queso and a variety of small tacos at a local place, we spent the afternoon visiting the capitol building and the state museum. It was nice to see Anna’s intellectual curiosity in history, a far cry from the old days of difficult museum visits with young children who couldn’t see what all the fuss was about all these paintings and longed to go back to Euro Disney.

We walked back to the apartment for another siesta, and then out to one of the recommended hot chicken places; one that I’d confirmed offered chicken tenders for the one of us who prefers her chicken off the bone, as they say. We got there early enough to avoid the reported long lines and ordered our chicken and sides. Mild tenders, mac and cheese and fries for Anna; hot dark meat fried chicken with slaw and mac for me. There were two levels of heat beyond hot, and while delicious, the chicken was at the upper range of my tolerance level, if not a tick beyond. I loved it.

We drove back to the apartment just in time for the game. Most of the Celtics key players were out, as well as John Wall, the Wizards star, so the game didn’t have quite the lustre it might have otherwise. Still, these are our boys and we settled into the sofa to watch. It was a close game, back and forth, and Anna had lost track of some of the recent additions to the roster. When I introduced her to Jodie Meeks, the veteran 3-point shooter signed this season to replace an endless parade of such players (Rasual Butler, Martell Webster, Jared Dudley, etc), she remembered the first line of Lloyd Cole’s Rattlesnakes, which begins “Jodie wears a hat although it hasn’t rained in 6 days.”

We were both silent for a while and then I blurted out: “Jodie shoots a three although he hasn’t scored in 6 games.” We spent the next 30 minutes playing with that line, and then Jodie sent the game into overtime with a clutch three at the buzzer, and Bradley Beal helped the Wizards eke out a double overtime victory.

We went to bed happy, and the next day we spent driving back to Chapel Hill, listening to the recorded versions of some of the songs we’d heard the night before.

The next day, I was walking to the gym, going over the lyrics to the song we’d been playing with during the game. The verse I was trying to rewrite goes like this


Jodie wears a hat although it hasn't rained for six days
She says a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in on the waterfront
She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance.
She's less than sure if her heart has come to stay in San Jose
And her neverborn child still haunts her
As she speeds down the freeway
As she tries her luck with the traffic police
Out of boredom more than spite
She never finds no trouble, she tries too hard
She's obvious despite herself
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On The Waterfront
She says all she needs is therapy, yeah
All you need is, love is all you need .
I came up with this:


Jodie shoots a 3 although he he hasn’t scored in 6 games.
He says a man needs the ball these days
if he’s ever gonna make big plays.
He looks like Vinnie Johnson, in 1988,
Heats up the microwave, in his journeyman circumstance;
He knows that his job's on the line,
Trying hard to get re-signed.
He says all he needs are open looks,
Yeah all you need is luck is all you need.


I wrote it down when I got home and performed it for Anna when she came up for breakfast. But the magic was gone. Looking at it now, it’s obviously imperfect and doesn’t quite follow the original. But it is special to me nonetheless, and the capstone of a great road trip, which combined a little of both the music and basketball that we've enjoyed so much of together over the last twenty years..

The Beginning/Kid Rock

Michael’s stop

But even though she might not ever be a star on the court, I figured we might bond over nba fandom. It’s always fun to have your team, and to share them with a small band of like-minded people. Michael had used the top pick in the draft to select Kwame Brown, an unknown player, who was making the jump from the NBA to high school. I didn’t know anything about him, but he had worked out in the front of the GOAT, and that was enough. Michael was a winner. He had also replaced the college coach with Doug Collins, another winner, and, saints preserve us, he had decided to come back and play!

He had retired at the top of his game. He still looked great and there were rumors that he was dominant in scrimmages on the practice court. I even bought a Jordan Wizards jersey, feeling that it was going to be a part of something special.

That year, Anna was going to day-care in my office, the US Courts building, which is right next to Union Station on Capitol Hill, and several stops on the red line from our house in Northwest. That 30 minutes, coming and going, on the subway in a suit and tie with a two year old, was by far the longest hour of the day for me. I look back on it fondly now, but when I dropped off Anna at Day-Care and got on the elevator to go up to my office, I knew that the rest of the day was going to be easy by comparison.

She needed constant entertaining on the subway, and I tried to mix up a combination of books and games. We would play I Spy (Do you see anyone with a newspaper; an umbrella; a hat, etc; and I tried to have a piece of trivia about each stop. When we would get to Gallery Place/Chinatown, I would tell Anna” “This is Michael’s stop,” imagining the GOAT getting off the train and swiping his fare card as he ascended to the luxury of the newly opened MCI Center.

After awhile, she knew this stuff by heart, and would announce to anyone seated near us that Gallery Place was “Michael’s stop,” usually adding, sua sponte that her favorite stop was Van Ness, although she pronounced it “Bean Ness” and could never explain just why it was her favorite. “I like Bean Ness” she would explain, if I or anyone asked what it was about that particular station that was so special

We also got Direct TV that year, and we would watch the Wizards on the local network. I had fallen in love with Tivo, and would start watching the 7:00 games at 8:00, knowing that I could fast forward through the commercials and halftime and finish up the game pretty much in sync with real time.

Anna would start the games with me, asking lots of questions about Michael and Rip--Richard Hamilton, who was looking like a decent foil to the Wizards new #1 option. But it wasn’t the same Jordan. He had no hops left, and his game seemed to consist of about 80% fadeaway jumpers. The danger of the mid-range jumper was not yet known--at least to me--and even though I marveled at the artistry of his game, the airborne part of it was gone. I remember going to a game against the Timberwolves that year, and when Jordan intercepted a pass and was off on a breakaway, the crowd rose to its feet, knowing what was to come. I can’t remember exactly what happened. The story is better if he missed the dunk, but I think he barely made it. It was a synecdoche for everything we got from his time in washington: a shadow of what he had been exacerbated by a sullen refusal to admit that it was over and he had a lot to learn about the management side.


The Music

Music is a different story, though it is the same in that you begin wanting your kids to love what you love, and some of it rubs off; some doesn’t and then after awhile you have a shared hsitory and a partnership of equals. Anna had a powerful interest in music from an early age, and, or should I say, but, that began with Raffi and the Wiggles. Lloyd Cole recommended Woody Guthrie’s “Songs to Grow on” on his new website in 2001, and although I liked it all right, it didn’t connect with Anna the way Dorothy the Dinosaur and Bananaphone did. Anna was obsessed with a version of “Marie’s Wedding” by the Wiggles, and we used that to introduce her to some other Irish music, and, by association, to Great Big Sea and Riverdance

I tried to work songs that I thought she might like into the new recordable cd technology that was quickly replacing my mix tape universe, and I had some success with songs like “Ham and Eggs” by A Tribe Called Quest, “The Influence” by Jurassic 5 and “Pressure Drop by the Clash; songs that were catchy and contained choruses both memorable and singable.a time,

For her 3rd birthday I made a cd as a party favor, titling it Kid Rock and including the picture below as the cover. The playlist was as follows:


Len: Did you Steal My Sunshine
3 is a Magic Number
Buddy Holly: That’ll Be the Day
Raffi: Bananphone
Paul Simon: Love me Like a Rock
Norman Blake: You are my Sunshine (from the O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack))
De La Soul: Tread Water
Jackson 5: ABC
They Might Be Giants: Don’t Let’s Start
Pete Seeger: If I Had a hammer
Banana Splits Theme Song
Louis Armstrong: If I Could Talk to the Animals
Between the Lions Monkey Time Theater: Sven Said Ted
Beatles: Penny Lane
Shirley Ellis: The Name Game
Ernie: Rubber Ducky
Woody Guthrie: Pick it Up
Tribe Called Quest: Ham and Eggs
KC and the Sunshine Band: Boogie Shoes
Kool and the Gang: Celebration
5th Dimension: Up, Up and Away
Barenaked Ladies: If I had a million dollars
Mystery Song







I’m pretty sure the final song on the cd is This Land is Your Land. In a brilliant metaphor for everything that is great and terrible about technology (and me, I suppose) I found the cover photo on my Google Drive and a copy of the CD in one of the four giant binders to which my bookshelves of discs and jewel cases have now been reduced. I can’t find a copy of the cover, but I did have the cd. When I connected my drive to my computer, I tunes was quickly able to play the old format (it’s probably a Cd-R, if that even still exists) and I quickly fast forwarded through the songs until I got to the last track, where the player failed. But I can tell that the track is 2:19 and looking at my ITunes Library, the only songs that seem plausible candidates for the final track are the one I mentioned and Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene. I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure that’s the case, and I’m actually delighted that it worked out the way it did.

Anyway, we listened to that a fair bit, and some of the songs wormed their way into Anna’s life. Not all of them, mind you, and not all of the ones that I would have bet on (The Name Game, for example). Len stuck, for some reason, as did the Beatles and They Might be Giants, largely because of the hilarity of the “Wake up, smell the cat food/In your bank account” lyric. And I had found the formula: make mixes of favorite songs, sprinkled with a few songs from your collection that you think she might like. See what works; repeat ad infinitum. That’s how Otis Redding, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Clegg and Prince came into our shared folder; and it led Anna into many voyages of discovery and a rich musical experience that would find her introducing me to new material in the not too distant future.

Shaq and Kobe

I had a vision of being one of those hockey dads, but in the nicest possible way. I figured that I would devise various ways to play fun games with my daughter while simultaneously turning her into a basketball savant. I hadn’t been introduced to the game of basketball until I was ten years old and a neighbor had put up a hoop in the alley. My dad, seeing that I was taking to the game, put up a basket in our driveway. It was just a little over nine feet off the ground and, looking back, I am certain that the lost decade of training, the lack of instruction and the improperly calibrated equipment are what kept me out of the NBA. I developed into a decent canadian high school player; rode the bench until my senior year, when I became the starting point guard, the fourth-best player on a team that would surprise everyone by winning the city championship for the first time in a long time for my Catholic school.

But Anna would have all of the opportunities that I had been denied. We lived on a fairly busy street in Northwest DC with a small yard and no parking. This meant that a hoop outside was out of the question, but as Anna was barely walking by now, this wasn’t the time to worry about regulation size equipment. I bought one of those toy baskets that comes with a small soft basketball, and on Christmas Eve, after Anna and her newborn sister, Evie, were asleep, I spent several hours trying to put together what a number of handier friends could have done in fifteen minutes.

I don’t remember Christmas morning all that well. Evie was sick and we ended up taking her to the emergency room, where she lay intubated (in an induced coma) for a couple of very difficult weeks. My wife and I traded watches at the hospital, and Anna, who wasn’t so keen on sharing her parents with a sister in the first place, was feeling neglected.

I figured that i would fix this by introducing her to the game I loved with the toy that she hadn’t yet showed much interest in. “Do you want to play “Shaq and Kobe?” I asked her.

“Sure.” she answered. She was always up for a game.

We went into the living room, and I cleared out some space around the hoop. I showed her the ball. She looked at me.

“Shaq and Kobe” play for the Lakers I told her; and they work together to make the team the best in the world. I am going to show you what they do. I will be Kobe and you can be Shaq. Ok?”

“OK.”

I positioned her with her back to the basket. “We need buckets.” I told her. “It’s the 4th Quarter and we’re six points behind. I will throw you the ball. You catch it, and put it through the hoop.” I had positioned the height of the hoop so that she could dunk it if she stretched out on her tiptoes.

“The fans at the forum are going crazy.” I yelled. “Kobe has the ball at the top of the key. He’s looking for Shaq in the middle. He passes it in.” I gently lobbed the ball into the clearly interested Anna, and it bounced off of her chest and onto the floor. Time for Lesson 1.

“OK, sweetie, you want to make a basket with your hands, catch the ball, turn and put it into the basket. Let’s try again.”

We did, and, although she had her hands in the right position, and was following the ball with her eyes, she didn’t really integrate the two actions.  The ball again bounced off of her body and onto the floor.

No worry, I told myself. That’s why we are starting young. We tried the drill a few more times, and I tried to maintain the level of excitement by describing the screaming fans, the cheerleaders, the tv cameras and all of the things that make the NBA so fun.

But something you need to know about my daughter--which I was only then just learning: she is very much of her own opinion and single minded. It was, and always has been extremely difficult to get her to do something for which the value of the action is not readily apparent.

After a few reps, she picked up the ball before I could pounce on it and reset the offense.

“Kobe invited Shaq on a picnic.” she announced. And she walked into the sunroom with the ball in her hands, spreading out a small blanket on the floor in front of the sofa and sitting down.

What to do now. “But they need us in the game.” I reminded her.

“It’s time for a picnic.” she announced, inviting the stuffed animals strewn around the room to join us. “C’mon Shaq. Sit down.”

I sat down, as she was distributing small plastic teacups and plates to everyone. How was i going to get us back on the court.”

“We’ll be back to the game after a short break.” I announced.

She ignored me. “Would you like a cookie, ApplePeach?” she asked a small stuffed horse. “Is everyone having a good time?”

It was clear to me at that time that Anna’s interests lay elsewhere, and she hadn’t shown any indication of prodigial quality . I would have to introduce her to the game more gradually.  But I still believed that it could work.

As it turned out, after turns in a couple of mite leagues, trying basketball and soccer, Anna had no love and not much talent for athletics. She was bound for a youth focused on dance and theater, and I was not going to be realizing my lost athletic potential through her. I would be attending plays and recitals instead of playoff games, and that would be fine.

After awhile, the hoop lost its seat of honor in the living room. It was exiled to the basement, where it sat for the next two years, a reminder of my failed initiative to develop my daughter into a baller.

Go Wizards--the Preamble

I started to lose interest in the NBA when I moved to Washington in 1990. The Pistons were giving way to Jordan and the Bulls; I couldn’t have afforded cable, even if it had been available in my Capitol hill neighborhood (it wasn’t at the time); and I didn’t have access to Channel 50 any more. The Bullets were bad at the time, playing out in Landover, at the end of the Blue LIne, and I didn’t pay much attention to them. I was vaguely aware of Bernard King, Wes Unseld, Harvey Grant, and the mess of an organization that Tony Kornheiser called Les Boulez, but my interest in basketball was waning.

It was saved by a few things. The first was fantasy basketball, which I started playing with a New York friend and his co-workers. We would get a fax (!) every week detailing the production of our players and our standing in the league. Our performance at first demonstrated our lack of knowledge about rotisserie basketball and the NBA, but I started paying a lot more attention to box scores than standings, and the 3rd iteration of our squad--which we had named Ice Team--led by Patrick Ewing, alongside the playmaking of Muggsy Bogues and the sharpshooting of Glen Rice, was a runaway winner in the 1993 season.

The Bullets also generated some attention from me as they began plans to move into a downtown arena, located in a derelict neighborhood that I sometimes walked through on my way home from work near the White House to my house near Eastern Market. Plus they were contemplating a name change, and the dismal choices--to be determined by a vote that was probably rigged, were also the subject of much derision.

I bought Bullets t-shirts for my groomsmen in 1997, failing to understand that the name change was more about merchandising than anything else, and that the iconic red white and blue motif with the outstretched hands logo was still going to be readily available at the gift shop.

But the new arena was coming and Michael Jordan himself, the man who had ended the Pistons’ run, and who I had watched on WGN when I was in law school, had joined the organization as President of basketball operations. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction for Washington basketball. I spent the 1997 and 1998 seasons in Macedonia, and, although I didn’t see much basketball, the Washington Post (now my hometown paper and internet home page) assigned two excellent writers, Michael Lee and Ivan Carter, to cover the local team, and the quality and breadth of their coverage was fantastic. Despite being 3,000 miles away, without American television, radio or newspaper, I felt like I was closer to a team than I had been since 1988, my last year in the Motor City.

We came back to DC the following year, but I didn’t watch much basketball in the 1999-2000 season. Partly because I had a newborn baby daughter, but mostly because the team, which featured in Juwan Howard, a star who in my view could never be the best player on a good team, and Mitch Richmond, a player who I had heard much about, but never really seen play, because he was on a west coast team that didn’t get any national exposure, wasn’t very good. The team had traded Chris Webber for him, after a promising season and a playoff appearance, but it was quickly evident that he was in the downward arc of his career. It was the type of player I would get used to seeing in Washington.

But give Michael a break. At least he was making moves, and in the 2000-01 season, which was to be Mitch Richmond’s last in the league, his hand-picked coach--a mildly successful NCAA veteran--guided the team to a 7th place finish and a place in the lottery, which in contravention of all Washington tradition, they won, selecting Kwame Brown, a high school phenom who, hand-picked by the GOAT himself, was going to help turn things around.

Anna was starting to talk and soon walk, and it was at this point, the 2001 season that our relationship with the team, and each other, really began.

2017 Books

Full list here. Still feeling like I don’t read enough fiction. Only about 25% of the total, although none in the top 5, so maybe I know what I like. Disappointed by David Foster Wallace and Charles Bukowski; Delighted, as always by Tyler Cowen, Edith Wharton, Rob Sheffield and Tim Harford. Shout-out to Pat, GLo, my dad and 5Books for the referrals and the reviews. Already a dozen titles in my pile, including Norman Mailer (Harlot’s Ghost), Charles Dickens (Martin Chuzzlewit) and Dostoyevsky (Demons).

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

Fascinating look at a cholera outbreak in London in 1854, this book deals with the rise of cities, the dangers of confirmation bias and the growth of science, all built around a riveting story of crisis and investigation.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon

Brilliant study of growth in the American standard of living from 1870 to 1970, and the suggestion that we may never see its like anytime soon. The Internet is great, but it can’t hold a candle to the benefits of electricity, indoor plumbing and the car.

 

This is London: Life and Death in the World City by Ben Judah

 Chronicle of life in the big city for Roma beggars, Filipino nannies, Polish construction workers, Arabic princesses and African sanitation workers, among others. Gives you a real sense of who the people you see on the train are, what they do, and how big cities could not function without diversity.

Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of QuestionsAsked, Answered, Illustrated by Shea Serrano

Delightful, carefully reasoned consideration of various basketball-related disputes and hypotheticals, including a disquisition on pickup dos and don’ts, building Frankenplayer and the concept of a “memory hero,” someone who is overrated by virtue of being a favorite player in our youth. A delightful read from one of my favourite writers right now.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I read this after all of the hype and it still blew me away with its insights and candor on what it means to be black in America. Everyone should read this book.