Made in America by Bill Bryson

Before the 1820s, dining out was an activity reserved almost exclusively for travelers. Though it was possible to eat in hotels and taverns, there were no places dedicated to the public consumption of food for the mere pleasure of it, nor any word to describe them. Then, in 1827, a new word and concept entered American English from France: restaurant.

-Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States

If you're going to pick up a book by Bill Bryson, be prepared to learn things. So many things--truly interesting things--that there's no way you'll be able to remember everything you'd like to. (O, for a photographic memory!) You will be highly tempted to put down the book every few pages and tell anyone in the vicinity whatever nugget of trivia you've just learned. If you're reading Made in America, I hope you keep company with people with a thirst for more information about language and history.

I very much enjoyed the facts thrown at me on every page; so many that I can't even begin to recount them (though the excerpt above, with the introduction of the word restaurant, is a good example). Just as when I read Bryson's At Home, I was staggered by how many things in everyday life I'd never stopped to consider. Like how the phrase "mother of all," in the sense of the biggest of something, only dates back to the Gulf War. Who knew?

I will say Made in America isn't a page-turner--it lends itself to being read in little chunks. You could certainly put it down for a while and return to it later without losing the thread of things, I think. It took me a bit longer than expected to get through it, but it was definitely a worthwhile read. I wonder if Bryson has considered updating it, since it came out in 1994--certainly an additional chapter on the last twenty (well, nearly--gulp) years wouldn't go awry.

Up next: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed. I stood looking at the sky. The clouds were the colors of a Raphael. A wounded rose. I had the sensation he had painted it himself. You will see him. You will know him. You will know his hand. These words came to me and I knew I would one day see a sky drawn by Robert's hand.

-Just Kids 

I can't say I knew much about Patti Smith before beginning Just Kids. I could have picked her out of a lineup, sure, and I knew of Horses. I'm pretty sure I've heard "Gloria." That's about all I had.

And I wouldn't have done much better with Robert Mapplethorpe, frankly, despite having majored in Art History. I knew photographs of flowers, and knew of some others that were somehow scandalous (though I don't know if I saw any slides of those ones, to be honest). I knew he'd died young.

So there was a lot to take in in Just Kids, which traces the relationship Smith and Mappelthorpe had, both romantic and artistic. It's also a portrait of New York City at a very particular time, a time of The Factory and the Hotel Chelsea and automats. I warmed quickly to Smith, but I especially loved reading about the city--a place I know--in a totally new way. It was really amazing to watch how Smith grew as an artist, from poet to rock and roll star, and how she encountered all the bright lights of that era in New York.  I loved hearing about her place in Brooklyn, about her going to Blick's Art Supply, about the bare-bones spaces she shared with Mapplethorpe in Chelsea (no bathroom, for one). In addition to recounting her history with Mapplethorpe quite beautifully, she also captures a moment in time. And I must say, I got teary when I read the passage I quoted above.

Up next: Almost nearly caught up! Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs, which I just finished this afternoon.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Bren and I befriended each other early on, became inseparable through a shared sense of humor, a trove of nonsensical private jokes, and had the same enemies within the Drama Department. We clung to each other with blind loyalty, like Lord Voldemort and his snake, Nagini. I, of course, was Nagini. If you messed with one of us, you knew you messed with both of us, and Voldemort was going to cast a murder spell on you, or Nagini was going to chomp on your jugular. It was such a good, dramatic time.

-Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? 

Oh, dear. I am disastrously, disastrously behind here. Things have been fun & busy here in real life, which has left me with slightly less time to ruminate about books. Still, I hate to abandon things, so I'll try to scrape together some--probably abbreviated--posts.

I wanted to come up with some cute intro for Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, something to explain how much I like Mindy Kaling or how much I'd been looking forward to reading her book. Unfortunately, all I seem to be able to come up with are cliches and anecdotes about cupcakes, which I'm going to skip in the interest in keeping things moving.

I read this book quite quickly--I think I read the first chapter before going to bed one night, then finished the rest the next day. It's light and (unsurprisingly) funny, the tone conversational and very engaging. Kaling writes about her childhood, her college life, and her struggle to make it in New York post-graduation. She has the killer combination of being both extremely funny and extremely dedicated, so (spoiler alert!) even given the difficulty of the industry, it's easy to see why she's been as successful as she has. If she didn't seem so awesome, I'd have to be a little jealous. Instead I'll just content myself by enjoying her Twitter feed and looking forward to her new fall pilot. I could definitely see rereading this one in the future, especially if I were in need of a pick-me-up.

Up next: Got on a little comedy kick and went with Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America.

Dark World by Zak Bagans

I had a thousand questions, mostly of a physical nature. How could an ethereal being have physical properties? How could a dead person make sound and create force? Does she sleep? Is she bored? Is she mischievous? Does she know she's dead? How did she know my name? Does she know the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? I wanted to know if life is just rock, soil, air, water, and fire--or if there is more. Are there spiritual aspects that people ignore?

-Dark World 

I should begin this post by noting that I am a huge, unabashed fan of the show Ghost Adventures. In terms of television, there are few things I find more enjoyable than watching Zak, Nick, and Aaron stumble around in the dark, making me laugh and, moments later, capturing evidence that I find genuinely terrifying. That shadow moving through the background of last week's episode at Letchworth Village, for example, left me peeking at the screen from behind my hands. I really don't know what more one could ask for from a tv show.

Naturally, when I heard that lead investigator Zak Bagans had a book coming out, I was all in.  Especially being that it's October, it seemed like the perfect time for a spooky read. I was also hoping to learn a bit more about Zak, whom I really find so endearing and just plain likeable. Dark World does deliver on both these counts, but I was surprised to discover that it is primarily a book about the science of paranormal investigation.

I will be honest, the scientific angle is not a particularly compelling one for me. I appreciate that the Ghost Adventures crew uses a variety of equipment in order to try to document paranormal phenomena--it certainly has made for some very interesting television. But I don't really need these things to be explained. I like that there are things in this world that could be unknowable; I like a little mystery. However, I understand that if paranormal investigation were your profession, you would be motivated to gather data that would give you more credibility in the scientific community.

It's a tough row to hoe, and I do admire Zak's passion for this aspect of his work. Personally, I don't find it as interesting to read about as a behind-the-scenes account of what went down at Poveglia (I'm still curious about that experience) or a list of the weird stuff that's happened at Zak's home in Vegas. And one of my favorite parts of the book was his recounting of his early years, because it's interesting to see how exactly one does get into this line of work. When I was a teenager, I was a devoted fan of The X-Files, and I recall announcing at one point that I wanted to major in psychology and minor in parapsychology. Obviously that didn't happen, but I've never lost that interest in things weird and otherworldly.

I know it's easy to be skeptical about shows like Ghost Adventures.  I'm sure a lot of people watch and scoff, dismantling all of their evidence as tricks of the light, wishful thinking, and perhaps straight-out charlatanry. But I don't see how one could read Dark World and see Zak as anything but deeply earnest about documenting evidence of life after death. Maybe I'm gullible, but I can't imagine how Zak would dare fake anything, knowing how badly it could discredit his work. It might sound silly, but I really would be deeply disappointed if I discovered anything to the contrary.

I would welcome another Ghost Adventures book--perhaps an episode guide with commentary from all three guys? I'm not sure how many directions they could go in with books, but I appreciated that this one (written with Kelly Crigger) certainly did a good job of capturing Zak's voice. For now, though, I'm happy to just keep watching the show.

Up next: More spooky stuff! The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. Lovecraft.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Why is this book called Bossypants? One, because the name Two and a Half Men was already taken. And two, because ever since I became an executive producer of 30 Rock, people have asked me, "Is it hard for you, being the boss?" and "Is it uncomfortable for you to be the person in charge?" You know, in that same way they say, "Gosh, Mr. Trump, is it awkward for you to be the boss of all these people?" I can't answer for Mr. Trump, but in my case it is not. I've learned a lot over the past ten years about what it means to be the boss of people. In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. In other cases, to get the best work out of people you may have to pretend you are not their boss and let them treat someone else like the boss, and then that person whispers to you behind a fake wall and you tell them what to tell the first person. Contrary to what I believed as a little girl, being the boss almost never involves marching around, waving your arms, and chanting, "I am the boss! I am the boss!"

-Bossypants 

So I decided I needed to take a bit of a breather from Little Dorrit, which I hate to admit is fairly slow going so far. I'm nearly halfway through, and I'm hoping things will kick into high gear soon. In the weeks I've been reading it, a dozen books from various sources have piled up on my shelf, and I thought it might be better to take a break and read a couple of those. Thus, Bossypants, a birthday present from my most excellent brother.

I've loved (and identified with) Tina Fey since she first came into the spotlight as co-anchor of Weekend Update. I always have solidarity with ladies who wear glasses, but beyond that she seemed both funny and incisive, which is about the best you can ask for in a comedian. Also, she went to my alma mater, which means I was lucky enough to see her perform on stage with a touring company of Second City during my time there.

All of this led me to believe that I would be a great fan of Bossypants, and I was absolutely right. Tina (I feel like I can call her Tina, right?) starts with a self-deprecating look at her nerdy childhood, which is always a good start in my book. She covers everything from her college years* to her time running 30 Rock, with enough room in between to share the story of a honeymoon cruise gone wrong and the travails of working at the YMCA. Tina has that enviable talent of a great writer to take a fairly mundane situation and make it both funny and engrossing--you just want her to tell you about everything. 

It's a very quick read--ideal for bringing along on a plane trip or to the beach if you don't mind risking looking a bit crazy while stifling laughter in public. I'm quite pleased to have a copy, as I can definitely see both rereading it and lending it out in the future.

Up next: I am quite behind in blog posts, so I've already finished Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan.

*I was pleased when she took a line to explain a bit of the terminology we use at Mr. Jefferson's University. It's absolutely pretentious of us and I love it so.Wahoowa!

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars. [...] We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its center about once every several hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized yellow star, near the inner edge of one of the spiral arms. We have certainly come a long way since Aristotle and Ptolemy, when we thought that the earth was the center of the universe!

-A Brief History of Time 

Well. Sometimes I get these fancy ideas about what I should be reading. Reading Age of Wonder* reminded me of how much I enjoyed learning about astronomy in college, and it seemed time to delve back into that field. I also thought of how much I like Doctor Who and figured it might be interesting to learn some of the science behind, say, time travel. I remembered hearing about A Brief History of Time, which looked slim and fairly unintimidating when I picked it up from the library. What I didn't take into consideration was that even a layman's guide to astronomy would be way over my head.

Stephen Hawking makes a valiant effort to present things as plainly as possible, but the fact remains that you can only make something like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle so simple--it's a pretty abstract concept for a layperson, as are many of the concepts in discussed in A Brief History of Time. Hawking peppers the text with jokey asides (and has an endearing fondness for exclamation points), but my head was still swimming a lot of the time. There were some concepts that he illustrated pretty clearly: I thought using the ping pong game on a train to talk about relativity was very clear, and I liked his use of the Earth's surface to help explain the boundaries (or lack thereof) in the universe. But when he talked about gluons and the spin of antiparticles and what color a certain quark was, my eyes had a tendency to glaze over.

Still, I don't feel entirely defeated. I'm wondering if there's some other book out there that might be even more simplistic. Or perhaps if I read the same ideas again, a few more of them would click. I'm not by any means a science person, but I'm willing to try--it reminds me of the early days in my AP Physics class in high school, when I optimistically thought I might be good at physics. I think it lasted 3 weeks, tops. After that, things went downhill--aside from the unit on something to do with the moon (I'm hazy on the particulars), which I inexplicably understood quite well. So there's that.

Up next: Already finished Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz, which was quite a change of pace. 

*There's that book again! The book that launched a thousand books, it seems. 

Young Romantics by Daisy Hay

Meanwhile, the goings-on at Diodati were a fertile topic for gossip and speculation. The local hotelier did a brisk trade in sailing trips on the lake during which shocked English visitors could inspect the washing drying outside Byron's villa for evidence of female inhabitants--telescopes were thoughtfully included in the ticket price.

-Young Romantics

I'd fully intended to read Young Romantics some time ago--in April, even, for National Poetry Month. I checked it out of the library after reading of Age of Wonder and realizing that, despite my love of Keats, my knowledge of poetry from that era was still pretty lacking. But then I discovered Inspector Lynley, and I wanted to read Blue Latitudes while Age of Wonder was still fresh in my mind...and well, here we are. Better late than never.

I picked out Young Romantics because I thought it would give me a nice overview of Shelley, Byron, and Keats and further my understanding of the relationships they had with one another and with others in their circle. I discovered as I began to read, though, that Daisy Hay's focus was clearly on Shelley and Leigh Hunt, the poet and critic.* If I'd read the book jacket a bit more carefully, I would have already known this, but it turned out to be fine. I missed Keats, who was absent for long sections of the book, but I did already read a comprehensive account of his life. Byron figured somewhat more prominently. He also came off like a big ole jerk.

I had kind of a sketchy idea of Byron as a ladies' (and gents', to be fair) man; someone talented and charismatic and a bit of a rogue. I did not, however, know that he spent some time fumbling toward ecstasy with his own half-sister. Nor was I aware of his cruel streak--the way he treated Claire Clairmont (Mary Shelley's stepsister), the mother of his illegitimate child, was pretty terrible. 

And while Shelley comes off better than Byron, he still could be remarkably callous, especially in his treatment of women. I did enjoy getting to learn more about his relationship with Mary, which had more scandalous origins than I had realized, and I liked Mary quite a lot in general. It was because of that, I think, that I still found the account of Shelley's death quite moving, even though I hadn't particularly warmed to him. It was just so sudden, and so senseless, and he was just so young.

It can be difficult to learn about artists--once you've discovered something negative about someone, be it merely unpleasant or truly awful, it can be hard to divorce that from your appreciation of an artist's work. Perhaps I'm judging Byron unfairly, even.For the moment, I will say that Young Romantics has definitely influenced my opinion of him as a person, but I can't deny that he wrote beautifully.  As for Shelley, I now know more of his life than I do of his works, so I shall have to remedy that at some point in the future. Neither seems likely to replace Keats as my favorite Romantic poet--and not just because Keats seems by far the pleasantest of the bunch (though it doesn't hurt).

I feel as though I'm giving short shrift to the women in the book, which is unfortunate. The treatment of Mary Shelley and Claire Claremont, in particular, is a great credit to Daisy Hay. I feel as though I got a true sense of the place of these women in the literary circle of their day--they often weren't considered equals of the poets whose company they kept, but they certainly had their smarts and a fair degree of influence on the men. I don't know that I ever would have thought to explore the further works of Mary Shelley before, but I have to say I'm now intrigued. Much like Age of Wonder, I have a feeling Young Romantics will be leading me to more books before long.

Up next: Already finished Coraline, so I just need to come back to write it up.

*Hay mentions in passing that Hunt was the basis for the character of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. It makes so much sense--oh, that elderly child.

Furious Love by Sam Kashner and Nancy Shoenberger

And finally, no interview could be complete until it touched on Le Scandale. "Well, I must say that everyone seems to have quieted down," Richard said. "Good lord, the reputations we had! I mean, I was a bestial wife-stealer, and Elizabeth was a scheming home-breaker...We've been through a lot of fire together, Elizabeth and I. You'd think we were out to destroy Western Civilization or something."

-Furious Love

Where to start with Furious Love? I'm finding that it's hard to review a book about the epic romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton because it's just so, well, big*. Both Taylor and Burton were brilliant and complicated--when they came together, their relationship marked the beginning of celebrity culture as we know it today (much to their own dismay). After all, Federico Fellini coined the term paparazzi after watching the press swarm the pair while they were filming Cleopatra. Today the tabloid culture loves to build up a celebrity couple of the moment and document the (oft-imagined) highs and lows of their relationship, but Brangelina can't hold a candle to the phenomenon that was Lizandick**.

Although I love classic movies, I've only seen a handful of films starring Taylor and/or Burton. I had a vague idea that their relationship had been dramatic, but until reading Furious Love I had no idea how turbulent it actually was. They were quite the match. Elizabeth had virtually grown up in the spotlight, making her screen debut at the age of 10. When she encountered Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra--actually their second meeting--she was already on her fourth marriage. Richard, the son of a coal miner, was considered the next great stage actor; although married, he was also well known as an inveterate womanizer. Sparks flew.

They lived a life of extravagance that is hard for most of us to imagine: they made millions of dollars and spent it accordingly (jewels were a particular passion of Elizabeth's), drank to excess, and jetted around the world with a coterie of family, pets, and hangers-on. Despite this, the couple come off as surprisingly sympathetic in Furious Love. Elizabeth shows an endearing adoration for the ordinary life, and it's hard not to admire her moxie. Richard comes across as an often tragic character: talented beyond measure, but ultimately consumed by his demons. Kashner and Shoenberger had access to his journals--the entries they've included, particularly those in which he tries to understand his own worst behavior, are often heartbreaking.

Furious Love is absorbing from the start--I read 100 pages within a day of picking it up. I would definitely enjoy reading more Hollywood biographies with a similar tone, as it was juicy without seeming lowbrow. It's also clear that I need to bone up on the Taylor/Burton filmography, which I hope to get started on soon.

Up next: Daisy Hay's Young Romantics, a nonfiction book about the circle that included Keats, Shelley, and Byron.

* Though I allow that it would be much more difficult to write the book itself.

**Turns out celebrity portmanteaus are nothing new either. 

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

The warriors taunted and threatened the English, but only rarely did they follow the haka with a sustained attack. Before long, the crewmen responded in kind. When a warrior waved his naked backside at the English, which William Monkhouse termed "the usual sign of contempt" among fishmongers in London, the surgeon decided to "retort the compliment" by baring his ass as well. This so enraged a warrior that he hurled a lance. The English replied with small shot, frightening the Maori--but only for a moment. "They felt the sting of our laughing at them," Monkhouse wrote, and resumed shouting and waving spears and paddles. Thus ended a fairly typical encounter, which reads today rather like a skirmish between soccer hooligans in Europe. 

-Blue Latitudes 

Blue Latitudes had been on my maybe-read list for a while. I knew Tony Horwitz was a gifted writer, since I'd thoroughly enjoyed two of his other books, Confederates in the Attic and A Voyage Long and Strange. Even so, I wasn't hooked by the premise of Blue Latitudes initially. I'd never had any particular interest in Captain Cook, so I had trouble mustering up a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of Horwitz retracing his voyages around the world.

Then, of course, I read Age of Wonder and became familiar with Joseph Banks, the scientist (and ladykiller) who accompanied Cook on his first voyage. Banks was quite a character, and he sparked my interest to the extent that I found myself considering Blue Latitudes with new enthusiasm. I'm glad I did.

In Blue Latitudes, Horwitz travels around the world just as Cook did, although he does have the advantages of airplanes and GPS, not to mention Dramamine when he does take to a boat. He journeys to everywhere from Alaska to New Zealand, and not a few places in between, ending his trip as Cook did in Hawaii, although his own journey comes to a close on a decidedly less bloody note.  Everywhere he goes, Horwitz investigates how Cook is remembered. Today Cook has become a complicated figure. Depending on whom you talk to, you might hear Cook described as an intrepid adventurer or a harbinger of doom. As someone who didn't know much about Cook, I found it interesting to see the many sides of the man. I also appreciated Horwitz's forays into other aspects of history I was wholly unfamiliar with. To wit:

The Aleutian Islands became American territory following William Seward's famous purchase of Alaska in 1867, and for seventy-five years the remote Aleuts survived in a state of benign neglect. Then came World War II, when the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and seized several islands farther out along the Aleutian chain, the first occupation of American soil by a foreign army since the War of 1812. The inhabitants of the occupied islands were taken to camps in Japan, where only twenty-five survived. The United States evacuated the rest of the Aleuts, ostensibly for their own protection, interning them at wretched camps in southeastern Alaska, where many of them also died. Because of wartime censorship, the Aleuts' plight remained unknown to the American public. Not until 1988 did the U.S. government formally apologize to the Aleuts and pay compensation of $12,000 to each of the camps' few hundred survivors.

I certainly don't remember that ever coming up in any of my history classes. It's amazing how much is still left unsaid when it comes to recent history.

Horwitz is a smart, compelling writer, and I certainly feel better informed for having read this book. That said, I still prefer the other books of his I've read. I'm also quite excited for his next book, which is about the abolitionist John Brown and his famous raid on Harper's Ferry.

Up next: Back to Inspector Lynley with Payment in Blood.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

At all events, Coleridge treasured the memory of his father's eager demonstration of the stars and planets overhead, and the possibility of other worlds: 'I remember, that at eight years old I walked with him one evening from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery -- & he told me the names of the stars -- and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world -- and that the other twinkling stars were Suns that had world rolling round them -- & when I came home, he showed me how they rolled round. I heard him with profound delight & admiration; but without the least mixture of Wonder or incredulity. For from my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii etc etc -- my mind had been habituated to the Vast.'

-The Age of Wonder 

I find it pretty remarkable to think that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, some 200 years ago, thought his mind "habituated to the Vast." What hope, then, do we in the 21st century have to experience wonder, when so much more of the world has been discovered and analyzed and explained? Luckily for us, we also have books like The Age of Wonder to help us to consider the world around us in a new light.

If I were to try to sum up The Age of Wonder in one sentence, I might say something like, "It's about the monumental discoveries that were made in every scientific discipline in the late 18th and early 19th centuries." Even with that "monumental" in there, though, I suspect that that sounds rather dry. (Also, passive voice. Badly done.) Imagine this instead: A Scotsman exploring an area of Africa that cartographers have left blank. A German immigrant building the largest telescope in England...and promptly discovering a new planet. A wealthy young English botanist going native in Tahiti. A 20-year-old who spent considerable time experimenting with the effects of nitrous oxide, to which he became addicted, before going on to discover elements like calcium. The Age of Wonder covers all of these stories and many more. If you've guessed that it's ambitious in scope, you would be correct.

It's amazing how much we know of science dates from this time-- even the word scientist itself didn't come into usage until the 1820s. Richard Holmes has quite a lot of territory to cover. He juggles his stories in a way that makes it look quite easy, but I can't imagine how much time must have gone into researching this book. His voice is clear and he sometimes manages to work in some very clever asides--I would definitely be interested in looking into other books of his. (He seems to have primarily written about the Romantic poets, who flit in and out of The Age of Wonder.)

It did take me a little while to get into the book, but before long I was utterly absorbed in the Tahitian adventures of Joseph Banks. On the whole, it's a very interesting book. I particularly loved the parts about astronomy (because if anything can inspire wonder, I really think it's the stars) and the dramatic tale of the adventurer Mungo Park, the first European to find the Niger River. I was less enchanted with the story of Humphry Davy, but that may have been in part because he just didn't come across as a particularly likable fellow. Overall, I feel much better informed about this era than I did prior to reading this book, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Up next: Using Joseph Banks as a jumping off point, I'm on to Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes, in which he retraces the travels of Captain Cook. I loved the other two Horwitz books I read, so I have high hopes. 

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

The distinctive thing about so many nerds I've met is their willingness to pursue a dream version of their lives even when that dream isn't a plausible aspiration. Playing Sir Guillaume doesn't have anything to do with reinventing yourself through ambition. It has no careerist or pragmatic component. It's imitating the thing you most want to be, and that only, with no hope of the world outside your own head and your own group of friends coming round to accept it as the truest version of who you are. 

-American Nerd

In American Nerd, Benjamin Nugent sets out to investigate the origins of the idea of a nerd and to explore how nerdiness manifests in culture today. He also establishes his own nerd cred quickly, and returns to ruminate over his transition out of nerdiness in the strongest parts of the book.

I found aspects of the evolution of the concept of a nerd (or, as it was once spelled, nurd) interesting, but the early part of the book was not quite as absorbing as I had hoped. Although American Nerd is a short book, I didn't read it as quickly as I anticipated, simply because I found it a little dry at first. I did appreciate Nugent's explaining the relation between anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic sentiment at the turn of century and the low rung nerds still occupy on the social ladder, which I'd never considered before. Still, I found myself eager to move on to Nugent's exploration of modern nerd culture.

I was slightly disappointed that Nugent mostly looks at aspects of nerd culture that I don't really have any interest in, like video games and anime. Still, it can be fascinating to see how people can be obsessed with something that I wouldn't give two seconds' thought to. After all, I have plenty of my own geeky obsessions (currently Battlestar Galactica, which ought to get me plenty of nerd cred). I think I would have liked this section of the book to be a bit more substantial--more nerdy subcultures profiled, and more depth in each one.

Throughout the book, Nugent references his own childhood nerdiness, which included plenty of Dungeons and Dragons and video games. At some point he consciously decided to leave behind childish things, breaking ties with his former roleplaying buddies and finding a home in any group that would have him--any group but the nerds, that is. American Nerd gave him the opportunity to consider this decision, and he talks with several of his childhood friends about what nerd culture meant to them. It turns out to be a lot deeper than you might expect, a true safe haven for friends who were doing their best to survive in very unstable households.  It's emotionally affecting, and I wouldn't have minded seeing more reflections from men (and women, who are pretty underrepresented in the book) on how their nerdy habits affected their lives.

So overall, American Nerd has some interesting parts, but it wasn't quite as compelling as I had hoped. No worries.

Up next: The Infinities by John Banville. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, what what.

Ghost Hunters by Deborah Blum

 "I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions, all in equal measure, so that, although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they also can never be susceptible of full corroboration."

-William James, Ghost Hunters

As a child I, like many other children, was equally fascinated and terrified by tales of the supernatural. I'd ask my mom to buy the 99-cent collections of ghost stories sold in our grocery store's checkout line. I visited New Orleans and bought a book of bayou-centric ghost stories (I can still remember the pale pink cover), but at some point decided it was ill-advised to sleep in the same room with it. I believed, in one way or another, in just about everything: ghosts, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the Anna Anderson story, etc.

I grew more skeptical as I got older, but, I have to say, I still enjoy learning about things that can't be explained easily. Last Halloween, I discovered Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures, and was immediately taken with the show's mix of goofy charm, bravado, and a dash of the unexplained. When I stumbled upon Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof for Life After Death, I thought it might be an interesting complement to my recent viewing.

I must say, I'm not overly fond of scientific explanations of paranormal things, however logical they may be. I feel like they suck the fun out of things, to be honest. What I found interesting about the premise of Blum's book was that William James and his fellow scientists experienced things in the course of what they called their psychical research that they could not explain. James is remembered now as the father of psychology, and some of his colleagues would go on to win Nobel Prizes or be awarded knighthoods. These were very upright, very scientifically-minded men, in other words--not the type who would be taken in without good evidence.

The research of these men coincided with the height of the Spiritualism movement. Mediums were springing up all over the place in the United States (where James lived) as well as Europe (home to many of his fellow researchers). The scientific establishment had, on the whole, rejected even research into psychical phenomena as worthless. Nevertheless, these men--James, Henry Sidgwick, Fred Myers, and Edmund Gurney, among many others--were each drawn in for their own reasons. The latter three were among the scientists that formed the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882, an organization that still exists today. Through the SPR they explored many aspects of paranormal activity, though Blum especially focuses on their efforts to document the phenomenon of the "crisis apparition" (the vision of a loved one at the time of his death) and to explore the capabilities of mediums.

They were able to debunk many instances of apparent psychical phenomena that they witnessed--and yet not everything.  Their investigations seriously jeopardized their reputations as legitimate scientists, but they could not dismiss what they'd seen. James was among those who was fascinated by the American medium Leonora Piper, whose abilities, although inconsistent, had produced some very compelling evidence for either telepathy (a term coined by an SPR member) or life after death. Late in the book, Blum recounts a story of cross-correspondence--that is, different mediums in different parts of the world getting similar specific messages alleged to be from the same spirits--that certainly left me puzzled. James and his fellow researchers were often left in the state of uncertainty that he describes in the passage I excerpted above. In a time when science was constantly uncovering new things, is it any wonder that these men thought they might be on the verge of a similar breakthrough? That the concrete evidence they sought seemed to always be just beyond their grasp must have been hugely frustrating, yet it motivated them ever onward.

 Blum packs a lot of information into her book, as you can probably tell from my blathering. I won't lie: with the exception of James, whom I was already familiar with, and Richard Hodgson, who for whatever reason made a big enough impression, I found it rather difficult to keep all of the scientists straight. It wasn't quite as lively a read as I might have hoped--not really a pageturner, that is--but it certainly gave me some interesting insight into an era I confess I'm less acquainted with than perhaps I should be. I admire the passion and the commitment of these researchers to the cause they believed in, and I appreciate that, even though they never proved their case, their work certainly left even the modern reader with some things to think about.*

Up next: I really have a wealth of books to choose from right now. I'm going to go with Jane, a modern update of Jane Eyre.

*Although this is only tangentially related to the research angle, I can't help but think about the famous Fox sisters. As teenagers, they became some of the best-known mediums in the early days of the Spiritualism movement, claiming to communicate with the spirit of a peddler who'd been killed in their home years before they had moved there. The sisters fell on hard times in their later years and one confessed it had all been a hoax, though she later recanted the confession. Several years after their deaths, a skeleton was found entombed in their cellar. Now, say what you will about their abilities, but that's a bit odd, don't you think?

Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

The Woodward-Bernstein book became a famous and successful film. I saw it at my local neighborhood theatre and it seemed very much to resemble what I'd done; of course there were changes but there are always changes. There was a lot of ad-libbing, scenes were placed in different locations, that kind of thing. But the structure of the piece remained unchanged. And it also seemed, with what objectivity I could bring to it, to be well directed and acted, especially by the stars. It won a bunch of Oscars and numberless other awards besides.

And if you were to ask me "What would you change if you had your movie life to live over?" I'd tell you that I'd have written exactly the screenplays I've written.

Only I wouldn't have come near All the President's Men....

-Adventures in the Screen Trade

William Goldman is the writer behind two movies that I love, The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. If he'd never done anything else, that would be a pretty amazing legacy to leave behind. But Goldman has logged plenty of time behind the scenes in Hollywood. In Adventures in the Screen Trade, he pulls back the curtain and shows the reader how movies get made.

Adventures in the Screen Trade is divided into several parts. First Goldman offers his perspective on different players on the scene (agents, producers, etc.) and what they actually do. He also dives into the process of working on each of the films he's been involved with*, even if his screenplay ended up not being used. Some editions apparently contain the entire screenplay of Butch Cassidy with Goldman's commentary--mine did not. Either that or I somehow managed to forget reading an entire screenplay, which seems...unlikely, don't you think? Anyway, Goldman concludes the book with an inside look at the process of writing a screenplay; he provides a short story of his own, his proposed screen adaptation, and comments from various production people (cinematographer, composer, etc.) on how they would handle it. It's really quite fascinating.

Goldman is an incredibly lively storyteller, as you might imagine if you've seen any of his films. I particularly enjoyed some of his opinions on how different actors worked. He clearly loved Paul Newman, who comes across as someone entirely uninterested in the politics of being a movie star**. Robert Redford does not come off quite as well—professional and talented, to be sure, but decidedly more invested in his movie star image, especially once his career takes off post-Butch Cassidy.  Goldman's not just in it to dish, but he doesn't pull punches either: a story about Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man left me wincing.

As someone who is interested in film, I found Adventures in the Screen Trade to be pretty absorbing at points, particularly as Goldman got into his experience with individual films (you might have guessed from the excerpt above that All The President's Men was especially dramatic).  I imagine this would be an invaluable source for someone interested in pursuing screenwriting, particularly the last section. (I especially loved the way director George Roy Hill tore apart the screenplay. He did not mince words. Wow.) I've never read anything that explained filmmaking in such a way. It reminds me of when I took a film class in college and for the first time really began to appreciate the technical elements of film, not just the acting and the story.

Also, it really made me want to watch Butch Cassidy again, and that can't be a bad thing.

Up next: Tales of the City, for real this time.

*Current as of the writing of this book. The sequel, Which Lie Did I Tell? covers his later work. For whatever reason, I read that one first, years ago, and I remember enjoying it thoroughly.

**I love Paul Newman as well, so I was happy to read this. Also excited to add Harper to my Netflix queue, as it sounded quite interesting based on what Goldman described.

Born Round by Frank Bruni

I have neither a therapist's diagnosis nor any scientific literature to support the following claim, and I can't back it up with more than a cursory level of detail. So you're just going to have to go with me on this: I was a baby bulimic.

Maybe not baby—toddler bulimic is more like it, though I didn't so much toddle as wobble, given the roundness of my expanding form. I had been a plump infant and was on my way to becoming an even plumper child, a ravenous machine determined to devour anything in its sights. My parents would later tell me, my friends and anyone else willing to listen that they'd never seen a kid eat the way I ate or react the way I reacted when I was denied more food. What I did in those circumstances was throw up.

I have no independent memory of this. But according to my mother, it began when I was about eighteen months old. It went on for no more than a year. And I'd congratulate myself here for stopping such an evidently compulsive behavior without the benefit of an intervention or the ability to read a self-help book except I wasn't so much stopping as pausing. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

-Born Round

"Born round, you don't die square." So believes Frank Bruni's grandmother: that kind of change isn't possible in a lifetime. What does that mean for Bruni, though? He's a born eater, a self-professed baby bulimic who has struggled with food issues his entire life. At the beginning of the book, he's working in Rome as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. After a rough period during which he covered the 2000 election campaign of George W. Bush and piled on the pounds, he finally seems to have his weight under control. A life-changing opportunity comes his way: the position of Times food critic is open, and he's up for consideration. But can he handle the intense commitment to food that the job requires without falling back into his old habits?

Having posed the question, Bruni travels back to the beginning of things. He details a childhood filled with food and love, with the former seen as an appropriate way to express the latter. His beloved grandmother, born in Italy, never makes anything short of a feast for her family, and Bruni is happy to partake. He does notice that his appetite outstrips that of his siblings, and even at a young age he's bigger than his older brother. His mother begins to devise diets for the two of them to try, but it breaks his heart to turn down one of his grandmother's fritti.

Bruni is able to (temporarily) leave diets behind when he finds he has a natural affinity for swimming. His rigorous practice schedule keeps his weight in check, although he still finds himself eating more than anyone around him. When he goes off to college and quits swimming, he scrambles to prevent his overeating from affecting his weight, eventually turning to bulimia. Although he manages to recover from that, his weight problems continue to plague him. He's intensely self-conscious about his weight, going so far as to repeatedly postpone dates so that he can lose just a few more pounds before he's seen. It may come as no surprise that these dates often never happen.

Things change for Bruni, but slowly, and they get worse before they get better. Born Round is not only a very personal account of  his struggle with weight, but also a moving story of his family life and the sweetness of his professional success. He really lays himself bare before his reader. It breaks my heart to think back to one story he tells, of a family gathering when he was at his heaviest. The siblings are sniping at one another, and one of his brothers calls him fat. It's everything he fears and hates about himself, and he flees the room, finding an out-of-the-way place where he can cry. It's hard not to be drawn in by a writer who is willing to show such vulnerability.

I very much enjoyed Born Round. I spent awhile reading it, but I could easily see how someone could delve in and read for hours. Bruni is a very likable narrator, and in addition to all of the personal stories, he also has some good inside dirt about being a food critic. I think it would be an excellent book to travel with. I would love to read more by him—maybe I'll dig up some old reviews, if I can find them. I'm pretty jealous of his facility with words, I must say. His prose seems effortless. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist before he was thirty, and you can see why. Pretty remarkable.

Up next: The Best American Mystery Stories 2008, edited by George Pelecanos (Wire shout-out!).

Lit by Mary Karr

That's pretty much how the reading went, one balled-up page after another, mingled with lyric poems of great finish and hilarity. The audience hooted in wild and rolling waves. Guys in the front row started throwing the paper balls back, which made Knott hump even deeper in his oversize clothes as if dodging hurled tomatoes. 

At the end, a guy in a tie next to me said, I used to think poets shouldn't get public grants, but this guy really can't do anything else. 

When Knott left the stage, people hollered for him to come back.

I sat on the hard floor almost aquiver. Writers had heretofore been mythical to me as griffins—winged, otherworldly creatures you had to conjure from the hard-to-find pages they left behind. That was partly why I'd not tried too hard to become one: it was like deciding to be a cowgirl or a maenad.

-Lit

Lit is author Mary Karr's third memoir, following her hugely successful account of her childhood, The Liars' Club, and Cherry, in which she recalled her teenage years. I haven't read either of those books, and it did occur to me before picking up Lit that it might not be ideal to drop into the middle of Karr's story. Although Lit might have more resonance in some places for readers who are more aware of the particulars of Karr's background, I found that it worked extremely well as a standalone book as well.

I stumbled upon Lit at the library, where it was shelved opposite Stephen King's On Writing. I had been craving some high-quality nonfiction and, based on some dimly-recalled reviews, I thought that Lit would fit the bill. In Lit, Karr picks up her story on the cusp of a sea change in her life: college. It's a big step for her, a decision she grapples with, and one that will help set her on the winding path to becoming a bestselling writer and award-winning poet (Guggenheim Fellowship!). It's a tumultuous journey in which she is both buoyed by love for her husband (and later her son) and dragged further and further down into the murky depths of alcoholism. The latter takes a wrecking ball to the fragile stability she'd wrought with the former, as you might imagine. Recovery is a slow, halting process.

William Faulkner once famously wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Karr's past pops up continually, from the ongoing drama of her relationship with her parents (Mother and Daddy, as she calls them) to her unease at fitting in with her husband's patrician family to her concern about righting the wrongs of her childhood in raising her own son. The glimpses of her childhood that we get in Lit are traumatic, not the kind of thing that it's easy to make peace with. Karr struggles long and hard, and, surprisingly (to herself most of all), begins to find solace in prayer. She's cynical at first, refusing even to get to her knees as she mutters two sentences of gratitude. Through contemplation and discussion with many people around her, particularly those she's gotten to know through AA, her thoughts on religion begin to change. This can be a tricky subject to address without becoming overly preachy; luckily, Karr is an adept writer who always maintains a humanizing, almost self-deprecating element when recounting her conversion.

Karr's training as a poet is evident throughout Lit. She has a gift for finding the perfect word, and her choices often recall her hardscrabble childhood (people tend to holler instead of yell or shout, for example, as you can see in the excerpt above). It wasn't a difficult read in terms of language, but it was intense, which makes me think I'll wait a bit before picking up The Liars' Club. Based on Lit, though, I know I'll want to read it at some point.

Up next: Continuing the memoir streak with Born Round by Frank Bruni.

On Writing by Stephen King

[B]ooks are a uniquely portable magic. I usually listen to one in the car (always unabridged; I think abridged audiobooks are the pits), and carry another wherever I go. You just never know when you'll want an escape hatch: mile-long lines at tollbooth plazas, the fifteen minutes you have to spend in the hall of some boring college building waiting for your advisor (who's got some yank-off in there threatening to commit suicide because he/she is flunking Custom Kurmfurling 101) to come out so you can get his signature on a drop-card, airport boarding lounges, laudromats on rainy afternoons, and the absolute worst, which is the doctor's office when the guy is running late and you have to wait half an hour in order to have something sensitive mauled. At such times I find a book vital. If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library (if there is it's probably stocked with nothing but novels by Danielle Steel and Chicken Soup books, ha-ha, joke's on you, Steve).

-On Writing 

When I was about 15, I went through a Stephen King phase. It was summer, I remember, and I'd picked up a sheet from the public library with spaces to record everything I read (a habit I picked back up in college, and basically just expanded upon when starting this blog). The Stand, Thinner, The Shining—just a fraction of King's bibliography, but a pretty good run. Somewhere along the way, though, I decided his books were too scary for me and moved on to other things (I think this was also around the same time of my ill-fated foray into Oprah's Book Club books, oddly enough). On Writing is the first Stephen King book I've read since, and I'm glad I finally got around to it.

On Writing is subtitled A Memoir of the Craft, which tidily sums up the different sections of the book. In the first section, C.V., King lays out his history and details how he got from the four-page stories he wrote as a kid to nailing rejection slips to his wall to publishing his first big success, Carrie. King has a special talent for developing an instant rapport with his reader, and I was with him immediately. He's plain-spoken but clever, honest about criticism he's received, and, heck, he just seems like a cool guy. It's hard not to be in his corner.

In the second section, On Writing, King gets into advice for aspiring writers. He covers everything from grammar to dialogue to editing, with some nifty examples included. His biggest piece of advice is simple but undoubtedly true: if you want to be a writer, you need to read a lot and write a lot. (I don't have the book with me right now, but I believe King stated he read 50-60 books a year; a list of his reading in the years he was working on this book is included at the end). I first heard the advice about reading more to write better from my 9th grade English teacher. As a voracious reader since childhood, I could always handle the "read a lot" part. "Write a lot" is harder. King recommends at least 1000 words a day (he himself writes 2000 daily). Whew. While not impossible in the least (you have to average 1700 words a day to make it through NaNoWriMo), it's a definite commitment. Which is good, really—you should be committed to something if you want to get better at it. But coming up with the words yourself is harder than reading them, that's for sure.*

The third section of On Writing is the most affecting. In it, King covers the 1999 accident in which he was hit by an out-of-control van. As someone who has been in the hospital pretty recently, I was wincing in sympathy. The extent of his injuries is actually difficult for me to fathom. I know how awful it is to break your leg in one place. King broke his in nine places; his doctors seriously considered amputation. Plus there was the broken hip, broken ribs, collapsed lung, etc. Really horrifying.

King was in the midst of writing On Writing when the accident occurred, and—unsurprisingly—it took him a while to get back to it.  Thank goodness he was able to. I enjoyed On Writing thoroughly. It even left me open to idea of trying a little more of his scarier works in the future—Misery, for one, sounds pretty gripping. It might be a good Halloween-y sort of read...

Up next: Continuing on the memoir kick: Lit by Mary Karr, whose book The Liars' Club is said to have started the memoir craze.

*This entry (minus the excerpt and this aside) is 610 words, just as a point of comparison, and took me a good hour to write.

All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

June 17, 1972. Nine o'clock Saturday morning. Early for the telephone. Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake. The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Could he come in?

-All the President's Men 

When I was in college, I took a course on the coming of the Civil War. The professor of that course always emphasized how different the war was to the people who lived it. Today we are able to keep the outcome of the war in mind even when we're talking about Fort Sumter, and it's easy to view everything with the advantage of hindsight. But no one in 1861 said, "Alright boys, it's time for the Civil War. We expect to be at it for the next four years. Those of you in the gray coats...don't get too excited."

Similarly, Bob Woodward had no idea that that phone call he received the morning of June 19th would help to set into motion an investigation that would eventually lead to the resignation of the president. In retrospect: well, that's a pretty momentous phone call.

Everything in All the President's Men is like this, and with good reason. The book was published in June of 74; Nixon didn't resign until August. Even at the end of the book, at that time, it must have been difficult to believe that it would come to that. I can see why—it's really hard for me to imagine a presidency falling apart like that (even remembering back to the '98 scandal).

It's such a gradual process. There's about a billion people involved—the robbers, the people who paid them, the people who approved the payments, the people who covered that up, the people who hired the people who covered that up, etc. Thankfully Woodward & Bernstein provide a handy list of characters to refer back to, as well as photos of some of the key players. As someone who had a astonishingly poor grasp of Watergate* prior to reading the book, I must say that was pretty helpful.

All the President's Men wasn't the quickest read, but I think it was a pretty important one. Coming into this book, I only had very basic facts at my disposal: there was a break-in, Nixon had some incriminating tapes, he resigned. I had no sense of the timeline. (Look back up there if you're not so familiar with this point in history: The break-in was in June of '72, Nixon resigned in August of '74—that is a long time for that whole thing to play out). I think I learned a lot. It says something to me that those incriminating tapes, one of the few bits of the period I was aware of, were not even mentioned until the last ten pages of the book—that's how much was going on and that's how long it took to really get Nixon implicated in things. Crazy story. You couldn't make it up if you tried.

Up next: Stephen King's memoir On Writing, which is very enjoyable so far.

*I only just recently learned, for instance, that Spiro Agnew resigned from the vice-presidency for reasons unrelated to Watergate. D'oh.

The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs

After Julie and I watched the John Adams miniseries on HBO, I had two reactions. The first was unsettling: if I'd been alive in Colonial times, I would not have been on the side of the patriots. This is an unpleasant epiphany for someone who's always considered himself moderately patriotic. But I'm convinced of it.

I wouldn't be a king-loving Loyalist, mind you. I'd be somewhere in the middle. John Adams estimated that a third of the country was patriots, a third loyalist, and a third neutral. That'd be me: neutral. 

I don't have a revolutionary nature. I'm not confrontational enough. I'd probably grumble about the tax on tea, but in the end, I'd cough up the money rather than putting on a feathered headdress and storming a ship. I mean, I've shelled out $3.45 for a tall pumpkin latte without declaring war on Starbucks. That's truly intolerable.

-The Guinea Pig Diaries

So I was doing a little research on The Guinea Pig Diaries, for my own personal edification—or perhaps because I was having trouble getting started with this entry—and I stumbled across a couple of interesting pieces of information. 1) In paperback, this book has a new name: it's now called My Life as as Experiment. I've Googled the reason for this change without success. (Frustrating! It's so stupid, yet I must know.) 2) Jack Black's production company has bought the rights to turn The Guinea Pig Diaries/My Life as an Experiment into a TV show. Intriguing.

Anyway, what's this book all about? Anyone who's read A.J. Jacobs' previous books, The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically, knows that he is game to completely reorder his life around a certain goal or idea. (Perhaps that's why the title changed. My Life as an Experiment does sum that up pretty nicely). His latest book includes nine essays that cover some of the other projects he has taken on, from living his life according to George Washington's principles to outsourcing everything he does to India. Naturally, there are consequences to all of these decisions: some funny, some aggravating, and some that actually lead to lasting  change.

The Guinea Pig Diaries is a quick, funny read, but it's ultimately less satisfying than either of Jacobs' previous books.  Because each experiment is short, it can never be as absorbing as one of his longer projects—for either him or the reader. I'm not sure that any of these projects could have been sustained for that length—so good for Jacobs for not trying to stretch something that shouldn't have been—but I am eager to see him get back to such a project. Jacobs really excels at taking things on that benefit from in-depth exploration, and making those projects both informative and funny. The Year of Living Biblically even had an unexpected profundity, when Jacobs realized how his challenge to himself had changed his life. (In The Guinea Pig Diaries, he notes that he still is devoted to the concept of thanksgiving, which he first practiced in the previous book.) I did enjoy The Guinea Pig Diaries, but I don't expect to return to it the way I have with The Know-It-All, or the way I feel I could with The Year of Living Biblically.

Up next: Watching Frost/Nixon, I discovered I have some serious gaps in my 70s American history knowledge. Thus, All The President's Men by Woodward and Bernstein.

Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis

To play competitive Scrabble, one has to get over the conceit of refusing to acknowledge certain words as real and accept that the game requires learning words that may not have any outside utility. In the living room, Scrabble is about who has a better working vocabulary. It's a sort of crossword puzzle in reverse. But in the tournament room, Scrabble has nothing to do with vocabulary. If it did, I – an Ivy league-educated professional journalist, for crying out loud – would rule. But I can only dream of competing with the champions. No, Scrabble isn't about words. It's about mastering the rules of the game, and the words are the rules.

-Word Freak

I love Scrabble. I've played it since I was kid and I consider myself to be a decent living room player. But I'll never play at the same level at Stefan Fatsis and, honestly, I wouldn't want to—I get hung up on the whole "real word" thing he discusses in the passage above. Nevertheless I love love love Word Freak.

Word Freak chronicles journalist Stefan Fatsis's journey into the world of competitive Scrabble. It's a weird place, populated by all varieties of social miscreants.  Stefan begins at the bottom of the heap, playing the blue hairs—and not always winning, either. He begins studying words, which means memorization, and lots of it. Can you imagine memorizing a list of two-letter words that are valid in Scrabble? And then, when you've finished that, three-letter words? And four, five, etc. There are more words on each list, naturally. It's a Sisyphean struggle for Stefan, although he does make slow progress.

Word Freak is not all about words, though there are certainly plenty of them. Let's get back to those social miscreants, the real heart of the story. It takes a special kind of person to be an expert Scrabble player. Dedicated would be one word for it. Experts could doubtless think of many more, a fair amount of which might be less flattering. But while Stefan's new Scrabble friends may be single-minded in their devotion to the game, they're also pretty fascinating. There's the friendly but ever-ailing "G.I" Joel Sherman (the G.I stands for "gastrointestinal"). There's the funny, hot-headed Matt Graham, who takes smart pills by the handful in order to boost his performance. Matt's friend, Marlon Hill, a smart, temperamental player out of inner-city Baltimore who is working on a book about race in America. And there's Joe Edley, who has mystical approach to Scrabble and coaches Stefan on the psychological aspect of the game.*

There's many more, besides. Some of them, to be fair, seem perfectly well adjusted — but they also get less face time in Word Freak. Stefan is not condescending, although he is honest about the weirdness level, as are many of players. As time wears on, though, and his obsessiveness about the game grows, he finds he has more and more in common with his Scrabble comrades. It might have been a frightening realization to have, but Stefan often finds himself happy with this crowd, playing Anagrams and rehashing games past. They love the game, they truly do.

And I love this book. I enjoy spending time with people who are happy and successful in a way that might not make sense to the rest of the world.  Good for them. And I especially love that this revolves around language, even if many tournament players might not know (or care about) the definitions of the words they play. There is something exciting about finding the perfect word — be it in writing or, when the universe smiles upon upon you, in the mishmash of tiles on your Scrabble rack. I enjoyed celebrating that in Word Freak. It also really, really made me want to play a game of Scrabble.

Up next: For whatever reason, this entry took me forever to write, so I've already finished Tana French's Faithful Place; I imagine I'll be back to write about it soon. I'm planning on starting The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs later this evening.

*If you're curious to see these players in action, the documentary Word Wars covers at least part of the same time period and features many of the same people.

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Call me crazy, call me idealistic, but you know what I believe? I believe that when you're making hamburger for human consumption, you should at no time deem it necessary or desirable to treat its ingredients in ammonia. Or any cleaning product, for that matter.

I don't think that's asking a lot—and I don't ask a lot for my fellow burger-eaters. Only that whatever it is that you're putting in my hamburger? That laid out on a table or cutting board prior to grinding, it at least resembles something that your average American might recognize as "meat."

Recall, please, that this is me talking. I've eaten the extremities of feculent Southern warthog, every variety of gut, ear, and snout of bush meat. I've eaten raw seal, guinea pig. I've eaten bat. In every case, they were at least identifiable as coming from an animal—closer (even at their worst) to "tastes like chicken" than space-age polymer.

-Medium Raw

I recently moved halfway across the country and—perhaps this goes without saying—it's been stressful. The day before I flew out, I was looking for the perfect book to accompany me on my trip. It needed to be light and entertaining but also totally absorbing—something that would take my mind off of what I was doing. I stumbled across Medium Raw and was relieved immediately: I couldn't have asked for a book that better fit the bill.

Medium Raw is Anthony Bourdain's followup to the bestselling Kitchen Confidential. Since that book's publication, he's gone from a journeyman chef to a household name. In that time he's been on about a million international adventures, divorced and remarried, and reconsidered that whole "no fish on Monday" thing. (His new rule is to use your discretion, keeping the chef in mind: you're fine at Le Bernardin; think twice at TGI Friday's.) Medium Raw is discursive, touching on everything from the consideration of meat (as in the excerpt above) to a slightly terrifying encounter with Sandra Lee.

I read the bulk of the book in the airport and in flight; I was definitely disappointed when it came to a close. Bourdain is a devilishly good travel companion, funny and knowledgeable, but self-deprecating at the same time. I would have picked up another book of his immediately had I had one in my possession at the time. Instead I read New York magazine, which was fine, of course, but not particularly informative about Vietnamese cuisine, Top Chef, or the art of cutting fish*. Sigh.

Up next: Moonshine by Alaya Johnson, a vampire novel set in Prohibition-era New York City. Great so far!

*I'm once again forced to lament the passing of Gourmet magazine, gone before I ever got to snag an issue on the newsstand. Thank goodness for back issues!