January Books

I am going to provide monthly updates of what I've been reading this year. I think that the smaller lists may be more manageable. You can track the complete list for the year here. I've also included the synopsis from Google Books. Too much?

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube‎
Patrick Leigh Fermor -
Summary:In 1933 Patrick Leigh Fermor was eighteen. Expelled from school for a flirtation with a local girl, he headed to London to set up as a writer, only to find that dream harder to realize than expected. Then he had the idea of leaving his troubles behind; he would “change scenery; abandon London and England and set out across Europe like a tramp . . . travel on foot, sleep in hayricks in summer, shelter in barns when it was raining or snowing and only consort with peasants and tramps.” Shortly after, Leigh Fermor shouldered his rucksack and set forth on the extraordinary trek that was to take him up the Rhine, down the Danube, and on to Constantinople.
It was the journey of a lifetime, after which neither Leigh Fermor nor, tragically, Europe would ever be the same, and out of it came a work of literature that is as ambitious and absorbing as it is without peer. The young Leigh Fermor had a prodigious talent for friendship, keen powers of observation, and the courage of an insatiable curiosity—raw material from which he later fashioned a book that is a story of youthful adventure, an evocation of a now-vanished world, and a remarkable unfolding of the history and culture of Central Europe. Taking in not just haylofts but mountain heights, country houses as well as cottages, with stops along the way in the great cities of Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, and Prague, A Time of Gifts is a radiant evocation of people and places and one of the glories of modern English prose.

Note: First half of a charming account of an Englishman’s audacious attempt to walk from the Netherlands to Constantinople in 1933. He plunges right in with nothing more than a rucksack and a few contacts along the way, and things go improbably well, at least to Hungary, where part one ends.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific‎
J. Maarten Troost - 2004
Summary: At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost—who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs—decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish—all in a country where the only music to be heard for miles around is “La Macarena.” He and his stalwart girlfriend Sylvia spend the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options (including the Great Beer Crisis); and contending with a bizarre cast of local characters, including “Half-Dead Fred” and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who’s never written a poem in his life).

With The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost has delivered one of the most original, rip-roaringly funny travelogues in years—one that will leave you thankful for staples of American civilization such as coffee, regular showers, and tabloid news, and that will provide the ultimate vicarious adventure.

Note: Often funny account of life in the improbable South Pacific nation of Kiribati. Many stories will be familiar to anyone who has worked overseas.


Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder‎
David Weinberger
Summary: Business visionary and bestselling author David Weinberger charts how as business, politics, science, and media move online, the rules of the physical world—in which everything has a place—are upended. In the digital world, everything has its places, with transformative effects:

Note: No need to index stuff when it's all searchable. That's empowering, but it runs contrary to our nature, as well, which can be disconcerting.

Travel Team‎
Mike Lupica - 2005
Summary: After he is cut from his travel basketball team, the very same team that his father once led to national prominence, twelve-year-old Danny Walker forms his own team of cast-offs that might have a shot at victory.

Note: Story of child star and NBA flameout returning to coach his similarly overachieving son. I give this the edge over Feinstein's for its game description and superior depiction of relationships. Cutesy at times (and a trifle overlong) but enjoyable throughout, nonetheless

Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery‎
John Feinstein - 2008
Summary: Steven Thomas is one of two lucky winners of the U.S. Basketball Writer’s Association’s contest for aspiring journalists. His prize? A trip to New Orleans and a coveted press pass for the Final Four. It’s a basketball junkie’s dream come true. But the games going on behind the scenes between the coaches, the players, the media, the money-men, and the fans turn out to be even more fiercely competitive than those on the court. Steven and his fellow winner, Susan Carol Anderson, are nosing around the Superdome and overhear what sounds like a threat to throw the championship game. Now they have just 48 hours to figure out who is blackmailing one of MSU’s star players . . . and why. ...

Note: Nice, if somewhat implausible story about meddling kids foiling a game fixing scandal at the final four. Interaction with real people, including players, coaches and writers, made it even more enjoyable.


When the Game Was Ours‎
Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson, Jackie MacMullan -
Summary: From the moment these two players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most compelling rivalry in the NBA. These were the basketball epics of the 1980s -- Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West, physical vs finesse, Old School vs Showtime, even white vs black. Each pushed the other to greatness -- together Bird and Johnson collected 8 NBA Championships, and 6 MVP awards and helped save the floundering NBA at its most critical time. When it started they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends. With intimate, fly-on- the- wall detail, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS transports readers to this electric era of basketball and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting one another. From the heady days of trading championships to the darker days of injury and illness, we come to understand Larry’s obsessive devotion to winning and how his demons drove him on the court. We hear him talk with candor about playing through chronic pain and its truly exacting toll. In Magic we see a young, invincible star struggle with the sting of defeat, not just as a player but as a team leader. We are there the moment he learns he’s contracted HIV and hear in his own words how that devastating news impacted his relationships in basketball and beyond. But always, in both cases, we see them prevail. A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketball’s most inimitable duo, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS is a reevaluation of three decades in counterpoint. It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketball’s best times.

Note: Didn't learn much, except how a broken finger almost destroyed Bird’s jumper before he joined the NBA, but enjoyed reliving the 80s.


The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives‎
Leonard Mlodinow -
Summary: In this irreverent and illuminating book, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.

The rise and fall of your favorite movie star of the most reviled CEO--in fact, of all our destinies--reflects as much as planning and innate abilities. Even the legendary Roger Maris, who beat Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, was in all likelihood not great but just lucky. And it might be shocking to realize that you are twice as likely to be killed in a car accident on your way to buying a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery.

How could it have happened that a wine was given five out of five stars, the highest rating, in one journal and in another it was called the worst wine of the decade? Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how wine ratings, school grades, political polls, and many other things in daily life are less reliable than we believe. By showing us the true nature of change and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives fresh insight into what is really meaningful and how we can make decisions based on a deeper truth. From the classroom to the courtroom, from financial markets to supermarkets, from the doctor's office to the Oval Office, Mlodinow's insights will intrigue, awe, and inspire.

Offering readers not only a tour of randomness, chance, and probability but also a new way of looking at the world, this original, unexpected journey reminds us that much in our lives is about as predictable as the steps of a stumbling man fresh from a night at the bar.

Note: Nothing new hear if you've read Kahneman or Taleb, and not nearly as fun to read as either.


Everything That Rises Must Converge‎
Flannery O'Connor - 1965
Summary: Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith and morality.

Note: Collection of bleak stories about unhappy people treating others badly, particularly those of African American descent. Every story ends the same way, which is predictable after reading a few.


Wild Things‎
Clay Carmichael - 2012 -
Summary: Stubborn, self-reliant eleven-year-old Zoe, recently orphaned, is forced to move to the country to live with her strange and bad-tempered uncle. Zoe could care less that he's a famous doctor and sculptor. All she knows is that he is impossible to understand. The only interesting thing on the farm is a feral cat who won't let Zoe near. Together, Zoe and her uncle learn about trust and the strength of family ties. In this moving coming-of-age novel, Zoe comes to understand what it means to love and be loved, uncovers a long-kept secret, and finds family where she least expects it.

Note: Nice story by a local author about finding comfort in a loving and trusting environment. Best of the 3 reading group books thus far.

The Gated City
Ryan Avent
Summary: Something has gone wrong with the American economy. Over the past 30 years, great technological leaps failed to translate into faster growth, more jobs, or rising incomes. The link between innovation and broad prosperity seems to have broken down.

At the heart of the problem is a great migration. Families are fleeing the country's richest cities in droves, leaving places like San Francisco and Boston for the great expanse of the Sunbelt, where homes are cheap, but wages are low.

In The Gated City, Ryan Avent, The Economist's economics correspondent, diagnoses a critical misfiring in the American economic machine. America's most innovative cities have become playgrounds for the rich, repelling a cost-conscious middle class and helping to concentrate American wealth in the hands of a few. Until these cities can provide a high quality of life to average households, American economic stagnation will continue.

Note: People want to move to cities because they're awesome and not let others in once they get there. That is not good economics and stifles innovation.

Quick and Easy Pasta II

I've blogged before about how pasta with spinach, blue cheese and toasted nuts is a frequent visitor to our table. Eyeing a bag of fresh spinach getting ready to turn to crime, I decided to make it last night. But the chunk of blue cheese in the fridge was smaller than I had imagined.

Figuring that mozzarella would stretch the cheese component without interfering with the flavour, I altered the recipe to include equal parts mozzarella and blue cheese. I also sauteed a couple of cloves of garlic, and I cooked a little bacon on the side (for the OG, and to crumble over the pasta, which was otherwise vegetarian, and, hey, you never know, this might be the night the BG decides to try it--it wasn't).

The result was even better than the original. Blue cheese does not melt very well (mozzarella excels) and the combination gave the sauce a silkier texture. The garlic helped too, I think, as well as the bacon, but I'm quite certain that combining the two types of cheese is a legitimate difference maker.

Now I've amended two of the few recipes that I've posted (cookies was the other). So try this at your peril. No doubt there's a better way on the horizon.

Our Favourite Radio Correspondent

Our favourite radio voice, hands down is NPR's Africa correspondent. Although she's reporting today from Mali, she's been in Senegal and Ghana recently, and the way she says "Dakar" or "Accra" when signing off makes it seems like it's the most exciting place in the world to be and she couldn't be more excited to be there. But her name always eludes us. Is it Olivia D'Aqosta? Ophelia Dakustan.

Turns out it's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, and she's from Ghana, educated in Britain, which is exactly what she sounds like. And she looks pretty much exactly like I pictured her.

Surprisingly a quick internet search did not turn up any other Ofeibeas.

Outsourcing and Offshoring

I was very much looking forward to the Economist's Special Report on Outsourcing and Offshoring. I set aside some time this morning to go through it, and after having done so, I didn't learn much, although my interest in the topic is undiminished. Some points to consider:

• Companies are building manufacturing facilities abroad to serve emerging markets better, not just to reduce costs;
• Rising labour costs abroad have eroded much of the cost advantage (Average pay for Mexican manufacturing workers is now only slightly higher than for Chinese ones.);
• Data suggests that offshoring has other disadvantages, which were not factored into initial cost estimates. For example, separating R&D from manufacturing slows innovation;
• When manufacturing returns to the US, automation limits the number of jobs that come with it, but there is concomitant work in the supply chain;
• The overall gains of outsourcing services have been offset by increased customer dissatisfaction and diminished quality;
• China gets most of the manufacturing work, India the services;
• Offshore companies are building capacity in the United States to better serve their customers (Lenovo has just opened a big facility in Research Triangle, and Tata Consulting Services is providing back office support to Harley Davidson from an office in Wisconsin.).

Matt Christopher

Last week, I went to the library with a question for the children's librarian, who has been extremely helpful to me in the past (a trait which Young Jeezy assures me is typical of the position, whose holders tend to be passionate about children's books.). I asked the librarian if there were any books, in the 10-12 year-old range, that were sports-themed fiction with female protagonists.

While she was searching the catalogue, I provided some context from my own youth, telling her that I had read every Matt Christopher book in my library when I was that age. "He's still writing." she told me.

What? 40 years ago, the books seemed like they were from a bygone era already, and although I loved the stories about boys overcoming adversity and winning the big game, I suspected that they hadn't aged very well, let alone endured.

The librarian suggested "Last Shot" by Washington Post alumnus and Bobby Knight biographer John Feinstein, which although it didn't feature a female athlete, did feature a distaff heroine, working with another 12 year old covering the Final Four and uncovering a game-fixing scheme. I read and enjoyed this (the BG is reading it now), particularly the heroine's love of all things Duke, and her partner's corresponding disgust for the Blue Devils, a familiar sentiment here in the Big Chill. I also enjoyed the roles played by real life characters in the story, including Tony Kornheiser, Dick Vitale and the loathsome Coach K (who actually turns out to be a pretty decent guy--but it's fiction, remember?)

But anyway, back to Matt Christopher. While I was waiting for the OG's dance class to finish, I read "Penalty Shot" published in 1997, the year Matt Christopher died. The overall quality of the work was well below the Feinstein book, bordering on bad, perhaps saved from outright condemnation only by my own nostalgia.

Today after the BG's reading group, I went to the librarian to donate a copy of House by the Creek. She saw the Feinstein book under my arm and complimented its quality. When I mentioned my trip to the library and dalliance with Matt Christopher, she snorted, telling me that he had stopped writing long ago, and that ghost writers were now milking the brand. This makes me less inclined to read The Dog That Pitched a No-Hitter when it comes out in April, but I may revisit The Kid Who Only Hit Homers to see if it holds up. I think I know the answer, though. Sigh.

When You're Ready for More Cookies...

I wrote earlier this month about my variation on Alton Brown's chocolate chip cookie, and today, as we get back into the grind after two days off (the holiday plus a teacher development day yesterday) I tried another one of his recommendations, and the poetry of it is so perfect that I thought I would share it.

The basic idea is that, rather than putting the last sheet of cookies into the oven, you put them into the freezer. The next day, you can take them off the parchment and put them in a plastic bag for later use. When you're ready for more cookies (don't you just love the way that sounds?) take the bag out of the freezer and arrange the cookies on a sheet.

Put the sheet in the oven and set it to 375. The cookies will thaw while the oven heats up and then cook as normal, so the total time is whatever time it takes to preheat your oven (ours helpfully beeps when it hits the desired temp) plus 10 minutes for the baking.

The elegance of this recipe speaks to me, and I'm also keen to try making mini-batches in the toaster oven. But for today, the Gs came downstairs to the smell of freshly baked (though pre-made) cookies. Recompense for the Song of the Day, which channeled the BG's beloved Taylor Swift:

I knew you were sleeping when I walked in,
And that's just wrong.
I need you to get up out of your bed,
So heed my song:

Playing the Triangle

Complementing a piece they did on the Triangle awhile ago, the New York times spent 36 hours in Durham this past Sunday. Although neither piece mentions any of the restaurants in our Top 5 (with the possible exception of Chicken and Waffles) they do identify a number of local favourites.

In addition to the Durham farmers market, there is also much to recommend the Carrboro venue, as well as the more serious Raleigh location. We've also enjoyed hiking and creek stomping in Eno River, as well as a couple of trips to the ballpark. And take-out or dine-in, we love us some OnlyBurger.

The Meaning of Free

Last week, as tributes were being posted in the wake of Aaron Swartz' suicide (including my boys Babbage, Yglesias and Worldwide's Blogcrush Andrew Sullivan) she asked me if he had been the person I had been talking to last year in the context of a threat to sue the federal courts for not providing free and better access to court documents online. Turns out that it was another Internet whiz kid with the same first name, but I had a phone call with him. I was hoping to explore parlaying my expertise in public access with his technical acumen into a competitor for PACER, or possibly an advocate for better and cheaper public access. Or something.

The judiciary asked Congress to fund electronic access pilots (remember bulletin boards and 900 numbers?) in the late 1980s, but Congress directed that the courts should charge user fees instead, and use the money to make improvements to the program. By happy accident, the Internet blew up a few moments later, and the program has now grown to practically ubiquitous electronic access and filing at the federal level.

As access improved, the fees continued to drop, until recently, when the Judicial Conference raised them, thus ending my belief that the path toward zero would continue as usage continued to increase and the universe of available material continued to expand. The fees are still low, mind you, and free for most occasional users of the service, and, for the most part, lawyers love it. Twenty years on, as state courts continue to struggle to improve electronic access, the federal courts are leaders in providing electronic access and e-filing, justifiably proud of the improvements afforded by the imposition of user fees.

But a vocal minority has continued to advocate the position that electronic access should be free, just as physical access is at the court. The problem with this argument, as a recent FT piece articulates, is that by "free" they mean funded by appropriations rather than the more Pigovian method of actual users. Does anyone think that the people cleaning the monkey house at the National Zoo are volunteers? The money has to come from somewhere, and in the time of ceilings, cliffs and austerity measures, there is not a lot of money for operations, let alone R&D.

Anyway, I tried to explain this to the free access crusader--about how great the PACER model has been, but that the judiciary seems to have gotten a little greedy lately--but he decided that a lawsuit was preferable to an advocacy campaign or a competing service and that was that. Good luck with that.

Still, people need to understand that government programs cost money, and that those funds have to come from somewhere. We can increase taxes, or keep printing dollars and borrowing from China, but no-one seems to favour either of those approaches, and sometimes, as with the federal courts, user fees are an efficient way of funding programs that people want, and they should not be dismissed out-of-hand.

Here Come the 80s

You heard it here first.

Last week, I noticed one of the staff at the YMCA rocking a totally 80s haircut, somewhere in the Madonna/Cyndi Lauper vein.

Then today, the cashier at CVS sported a similarly vintage do. "Your hair is totally eighties." I told her, wondering how she would respond. "Thanks. People tell me I look like Boy George." she said. "I was thinking Bananarama." I told her. "Who?" she asked.



Moreover, the OG just finished knitting a pair of leg warmers. You have been warned.

Ready for a cruel summer?

What Mali Means

Courtesy of the Browser, an insightful post from a Bamako-based blogger about what's happening in Mali:

At its core, the conflict in Mali is not between Muslims and non-Muslims; it’s between Muslims with different visions of Islam, and religion is by no means the most important issue at stake.

There seems to be a little too much effort being made to make this support your favourite grand theory of everything.

That Drink Made from Girders

I've written before about how spinach isn't the source of iron we believe it to be, and also that I'll slip a teaspoon of "iron elixir" into the BG's smoothies to make up for what, among other things, she is missing by eschewing meat.

This Christmas, occasional reader and fellow bibliophile Joy slipped a can of  Scotland-made "Irn Bru" into the BG's stocking. The sugary fruit soda, also known--thanks to an ad campaign--as "made from girders" contains 5% of the RDA--that's recommended daily allowance--of iron.

We popped the top last night after rehearsal, and enjoyed it very much, somewhere between redpop and cream soda was my assessment, although, in truth, I have not had a cream soda in thirty years, so my memory may be a little fuzzy.

Looks like we will need to order it online, or drive to Virginia or South Carolina to get it, but at 25g of sugar per serving, I might be better off making the BG's pancakes in a cast iron skillet.

Wild Things

As I mentioned previously, the first book of 2013 in the BG's reading group is Wild Things, a book with broad appeal to lovers of both fantasy/adventure and realistic fiction, two genres preferred or disdained by discrete subsets of my constituents.

One of the kids told me that the author was local, and when I visited her web page (thinking that I might be able to open a dialogue or give the students some background) I realized that she is someone I see often at the Y, and with whom I have exchanged pleasantries on a couple of occasions.

So the other day, I asked her if she was the selfsame person, and when she said yes, I told her that my group was enjoying her book. She mentioned that she was planning a talk at the school later this year, but I got it in my head that I would ask the kids for questions this morning, which I might be able to pass on. So I asked them: "If there was one question you could ask the author, what would it be?" Here are their responses:

• Are you going to write another book?
• Where is the book set?
• Why didn't Will tell Zoe he's her brother?
• What is the message of the book?
• Why didn't the grandmother show up in the story more often?

Not as successful as I'd hoped, but I think I'll pass them on nonetheless, and ask Ms. Carmichael to respond either here or via email. I think it will be interesting for both sides.

Cookie Retraction

After our Thanksgiving trip to Madison, I got to thinking that I should share some of my whole grain recipes with the Lonesome Stone community, both as an attempt to improve the social media component of the company and maybe to get a few more ideas about what to do with all that whole grain flour in the cupboard.

So last week I posted my chocolate chip cookie recipe, which is basically the recipe on the back of the Ghirardelli bag, substituting whole wheat flour for half of the white flour, and chilling the dough for an hour in the refrigerator before baking.

But I have to retract everything, because I've found a better recipe. For Christmas, Brother in Law Bobby Digital had given me a copy of Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for More Food," a complement to "I'm Just Here for the Food," which he had given me as a Christmas present in 2004, I believe. I very much enjoyed the latter book's scientific approach to cooking, and eagerly sought out the author's television show, where I sensed that the charm of his prose did not translate very well to TV, where I found him rather annoying and tiresome.

So the new book is about baking, and Brown does a good job of explaining why measuring and technique in baking is far more important than it is in cooking, which is perhaps the reason why my projects in the dessert round have been generally less successful than the others.

He also explains that, most cookies are made using the "creaming method," where fat and sugar are blended together, followed by eggs and then the dry goods. This process creates a fine texture, and is familiar to anyone who has ever baked a cake.

In contrast, the "muffin method" involves mixing all of the wet and dry ingredients separately, and then quickly combining the two without overmixing:

Since bubbles are not created during mixing (as they are with creaming) the bubbles blown by the leavening are haphazardous and varied in size.

This technique will be familiar to anyone who is serious about their pancakes.

Although all of the other cookie recipes in the book are in the "Creaming Method" chapter, the chocolate chip variety are in the "Muffin Method" section, and I decided to try them on Friday. The batter was a little drier than I'm used to, and I tried to handle it as little as possible, simply dropping globs of it from an ice cream scoop onto a parchment lined baking sheet.

I have to say that the results made my earlier cookies look like hockey pucks by comparison. The appearance was more of a moonscape than I'm used to, but the balance of fat, flour and sugar was absolutely perfect, and every bite was "toothsome," a word that I don't really understand, but which seems perfect in this sentence. I even rolled out a few at the end into perfect balls, just to test the effect of overmixing, and the results were not nearly as textured, or as good, as the ones I had just dropped on the sheet.

Try it yourself and see. Brown says that you really should weigh ingredients, rather than measure them, and if this recipe is any indication, you better listen to the man. The only difference in my recipe is the whole grain flour.

Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Preheat oven to 375.

Combine 2 1/4 cups of whole wheat and all purpose flour (in equal portions) with  a teaspoon each of baking soda and salt. Pulse  for 5 seconds in a food processor.

In a separate bowl, combine 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 2 sticks of butter (melted and slightly cooled), 2 egg yolks, beaten and 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

Add dry ingredients to wet, along with 2 cups of chocolate chips and stir until just combined. DO NOT OVERMIX!

Drop golf ball size portions onto a parchment lined baking sheet (I used an ice cream scoop, but the cookies were too big, and I'll try a tablespoon next time).  Bake for 13-15 minutes until golden brown on top. Let cool for 2 minutes on baking sheet and then transfer to rack to cool completely.

Kitchen Gadgets

On a couple of occasions when we lived in DC I found myself stuck in the midst of a home improvement project. A trip to Strosniders or a visit from an expert usually revealed the existence of a hitherto unknown tool that was perfect for the job. The problem is that my "seat wrench" for example, hasn't been used in over a decade, and the acquisition of these bespoke tools on an "as needed" basis, in addition to being a poor investment, has space and storage constraints. This is equally true in the kitchen, and, atypically, I love kitchen gadgets considerably more than power tools.

About ten years ago, we were having lunch in the pretty town of Port Townsend, WA. The BG was napping in her stroller, so, while Worldwide finished her sandwich. the OG and I visited a kitchen store across the street. I was admiring a "turkey lifter," a sort of double-fork contraption designed for lifting big birds out of the roasting pan. Seeing me admiring the tool, the sales clerk came over to offer assistance: "That is a great tool for lifting turkeys." she said. "Yes." I replied, "but I'm not sure how often I'd have need of it."

"It is a bit of a unitasker." she admitted. For awhile thereafter, the OG was keenly interested in identifying single-use tools in the kitchen, and I became mindful of their actual necessity. A coffee maker and popcorn popper? OK. But a melon baller? C'mon.

The thing is that, despite myself, I still love those unitaskers, and this year, I hit on the perfect compromise: if I get them as gifts, I get to have them free of the guilt that accompanies their purchase.

So, mindful of my wishlist this year, the Gs went into our local Williams Sonoma and asked an associate where they could find unitaskers. Apparently the clerk initially claimed that the store didn't stock such things, or that he didn't understand what the girls were talking about,  but after a consultation with a co-worker, he led them over to an Aladdin's cave of garlic presses, shrimp deveiners, mango slicers and the like. After careful consideration, the Gs selected a strawberry huller, which I was delighted to find under the tree, and even more delighted to use as I packed their lunches this morning. So unnecessary, but so much better than my previous methods, usually a paring knife or a plastic straw .

The bottom line is that a unitasker should be something that you need frequently in order to merit a place in the cupboard; but it's so much fun to contemplate the depths of human ingenuity, and to know that should the need for a cherry pitter arise...

Youth Looking Forward

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm reading Wild Things with the BG's reading group at school. Turns out the author is from Carrboro, and one of the main characters--a doctor who abandons a promising career as a heart surgeon for sculpture--was inspired by her husband, whose artwork was well known to the kids.

Anyway, we were talking about passions and careers, and whether you can make a living doing what you love. I asked the group of eleven year-olds what they loved to do (their talent) and where they saw themselves in fifteen years. Here are the answers:

• Tinker with electronics/Getting my phd at MIT in either computer science or engineering.
• Glowing/Living at home, mooching off of my parents (this person may be headed for a career in standup comedy).
• Running/Working in an ice cream store, trying to take the next step professionally.
• Playing soccer/In Graduate school.

This led to a discussion of robots taking jobs and at what point a person with enough artificial body parts officially becomes a cyborg.

Not quite what the "suggested questions" at the end of the book had in mind, but interesting nevertheless.

2012 Book Reviews

Last year's book contest with the BG, got me to wondering if I might be able to read 100 books this year. 81 was relatively easy, so it didn't seem like a big leap up to 100. I didn't want to give up the Economist or Entertainment Weekly, but I figured that I could assess progress after the first quarter and see if I wanted to or could push on towards the target. I've forgotten the exact number, and deleted the original Q1 library, but is was ahead of the goal, and I decided to go for it.

After the First Quarter, I started copying the titles, along with my notes on each text, into blog posts, and you can find those here with links to each title for Q2, Q3 and Q4. The complete 2012 library is also available here, but for convenience I've set out the titles below. I'm proud of the notes, though, because it's been challenging (and fun) to write reviews within the limit of 300 characters set by Google Books.

It's funny, looking back, how little I recall of certain books, and I'm having a hard time identifying a unifying theme or narrative thread for the year. I definitely read more children's books this year, mainly as a result of volunteering to lead a reading group in the BG's class.

I guess the most interesting thing in 2012 were the 19th century books, a period that I know relatively little about. I loved the President Garfield book (thank you Pat Fay), enjoyed the biography of president Harrison and the history of A&P (thank you chapel hill public library) and Taft 2012 (thank you Joy). I also really liked Hunter S. Thompson's coverage of the 1972 democratic primaries for Rolling Stone, about which I knew even less.

Of the three detective novels I read this year, I much preferred Chandler over Hammett, although all strained the levels of credulity.

Of the history/economics books, I liked 1493 better than 1491, mainly because the connections formed as a result of exploration are so fascinating. I also think I've read enough about the fishing industry for a while.

I was disappointed by most of the fiction, although I did enjoy the Lacuna, for its window into early twentieth century Mexico, and the Alice Munro for the beauty of her prose. Mrs. Dalloway was frightfully dull, and Pale Fire and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I found tedious and self-indulgent, each in their own way. But I tend toward non-fiction anyway, so take that for what it's worth.

I did not move on to Book II of either the Hunger Games or Game of Thrones, although I read both faster than anything else on the list, which says it all, in my view.

Nassim Taleb's new book was not as good as I'd hoped, although I do find myself quoting it often, and I do enjoy Matt Yglesias writing on zoning and other urban issues. Of the other economics books, I enjoyed their pervasive optimism for growth, although I didn't find any worthy of singling out here.

The final book I'll recommend is Stephen King's On Writing, which I found to be extremely insightful, as well as a poignant look at addiction and recovery.

For 2013, I envision more of the same, although I may watch a little more television and try to get to the movies more often. You can track what I've read for the year at this link. The first three things I'll be putting up there are Everything that Rises Must Converge (Thanks Worldwide), A Time of Gifts (Thanks Pat) and Wild Things (Thanks, Reading Group.)

Happy New Year!

Imagine: How Creativity Works	Jonah Lehrer
The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder	Evelyn Waugh
The Chesapeake Watershed: A Sense of Place and a Call to Action	Ned Tillman
Pale Fire	Vladimir Nabokov
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created	Charles C. Mann
Lie Down in Darkness	William Styron
The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think	Matthew Yglesias
Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World	Sam Sommers
Holes	Louis Sachar
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business	Charles Duhigg
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption	Laura Hillenbrand
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty	Abhijit Banerjee,  Esther Duflo
The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town	Mark Kurlansky
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies	Jared M. Diamond
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President	Candice Millard
Gulliver's Travels	Jonathan Swift
War Horse	Michael Morpurgo
How We Decide	Jonah Lehrer
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness	William Styron
Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class	Katherine Porter
The Golden Compass Deluxe Edition	Philip Pullman
The Mysterious Benedict Society	Trenton Lee Stewart
The Maltese Falcon	Dashiell Hammett
The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America	Marc Levinson
Context	Cory Doctorow, Tim O'Reilly
Caribbean: A Novel	James A. Michener
The Thin Man	Dashiell Hammett
The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy	Matthew Stewart
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths	Michael Shermer
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters	Richard P. Rumelt
Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy	Joan Magretta
The textile industry in North Carolina: a history	Brent D. Glass
The Fix	Damian Thompson
The Amber Spyglass Deluxe Edition	Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials	Philip Pullman
It's Not You, It's the Dishes: How to Minimize Conflict and Maximize Happiness in Your Relationship	Paula Szuchman, Jenny Anderson
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking	Susan Cain
Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life	Steven Landsburg
Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World	Brian Fagan
The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology	Lee Ross, Richard E Nisbett,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success	Carol Dweck
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson	Hunter S. Thompson
A History of the Middle East: 3rd edition	Peter Mansfield
Shipping News: A Novel	Annie Proulx
Fish Into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century	Peter Edward Pope, Omohundro
Mrs Dalloway	Virginia Woolf
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon	Grace Lin
The Lacuna: A Novel	Barbara Kingsolver
Food Matters: a Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes	Mark Bittman
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft	Stephen King
influence: The Psychology of Persuasion	Robert B. Cialdini
The Daydreamer	Ian McEwan
The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills	Daniel Coyle
William Henry Harrison: The American Presidents Series: The 9th President,1841	Gail Collins
The Atomic Weight of Secrets: Or the Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black	Eden Unger Bowditch
The Call of the Wild	Jack London
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration	Isabel Wilkerson
Some Great Thing	Lawrence Hill
Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food	Terry Burnham, Jay Phelan
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World	Daniel Yergin
A Short History Of Progress	Ronald Wright
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey	Trenton Lee Stewart
The Numerati	Stephen Baker
Coffee with Shakespeare	Stanley Wells, Joseph Fiennes
Bone: Out from Boneville	Jeff Smith
A Game of Thrones	George R.R. Martin
Detroit: (a Biography)	Scott Martelle
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human	Jonathan Gottschall
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation	Steven Johnson
The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World	Michael Spence
Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection	A. J. Jacobs
Can You Trust a Tomato in January?	Vince Staten
The Long Goodbye	Raymond Chandler
Rickshaw reporter	George L. Peet
Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age	Steven Johnson
The Perks of Being a Wallflower	Stephen Chbosky
Death in Venice	Thomas Mann
Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator	Ryan Holiday
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values	Robert M. Pirsig
Friend of My Youth	Alice Munro
The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table	Tracie McMillan
Public Opinion	Walter Lippmann
Taft 2012: A Novel	Jason Heller
The Cay	Theodore Taylor
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder	Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963	Kyla Brown
Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep	David K. Randall
The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963	Christopher Paul Curtis
Paper Promises: Debt, Money, and the New World Order	Philip Coggan
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World	Jacqueline Novogratz
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us	Daniel H. Pink
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think	Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler
The Phantom Tollbooth	Norton Juster, Jules Feiffer
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves	Matt Ridley
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty	Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson
The One: The Life and Music of James Brown	RJ Smith
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong	Terry Teachout
An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies	Tyler Cowen
Earth and High Heaven	Gwethlyn Graham
Franny and Zooey	J. D. Salinger
Haircut and other stories	Ring Lardner
Candide	Voltaire
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less	Barry Schwartz